The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1895-03-20
WHOLESALE DIVORCE.
There are Many Infelicitous Homes
in America.
One Separation For Every Eleven Mar
riages in ohio-Dr. Talmage Gives
Some Wholesome Advice on House,
hold Morals, First Qnarrels, Etc.


Rev. DR.. Talmage chose as the sub
ject of Sunday afternoon sermon in the
New York Academy of Music subject
of national interest, viz: Wholesale
Divorce" The text was selected from
Matt. XIX, G.; "What, therefore, God
hath Joined together let not man put
asunder."
That there are hundreds and thou
sands of infelicitous homes in America
no one will doubt If there were only
one skeleton in the closet, that might
be looked up and abandoned; but in
many home there is skeleton in the
hallway and a skeleton in all the
apartments.
'Unhappily married" are two words
descriptive of many homestead. 1t
needs no orthodox minister TO prove to
a badly-mated pair that there is hell;
they are there now. Sometimes q
grand and gracious woman will be
thus incarcerated, and her life will be
crucifxion, as was the case with Mrs.
Sigourncy, the great poetess and the
great soul Sometimes consecrated
man will be united to fury, as was
John Wesley, or united to a viXon, as
was John Milton. Sometimes, and
generally, both parties are to blame,
and Thomas Carlyle was an intolerable
scold, and his wife smoked and swore;
and Froude, the historian, pulled aside
tho curtain from the lifelong squabble
at Graigenputtock and Five, Cheyne
Row.
Some say that for the alienation of
all these domestic disorders of which
we hear, easy divorce is a good pre-
scription. God sometimes authorizes
divorce. as certainly as He authorizes
marriage. have just as much regard
for one lawfully divorced as have for
one lawfully married. But you know
and l know that wholesale divorce is
one of our national scourges / am
not surprised at this when l think of
the Influences which have been abroad
initiating against the marriage rela-
ton.
For many years the platforms of the
country rang with talk about a free
love millennium. There were meet
ings of this kind held in the Cooper in
stitute, New York; fremont Temple,
Boston, and all over the land. Some
of the women who were most promi-
nent in that movement have since been
distinguished for great promiscuosity
of affection. Popular themes for such
occasions were the tyranny of man,
the oppression of the marriage rela-
ton, women's rights and the affinities.
Prominent speakers were women with
short curls and short dresses and very
long tongue, everlastingly at war with
God because they we're created women;
while ON the platform sat meek men
with soft accent and cowed demeanor,
apologetic for masculinity and hold
ing the parasols while the termagant
orators went on preaching the doctrine
of free love.
That campaign of about twenty years
set more devils into the marriage rela-
tions than will be exercised in the next
fifty. Men and women went home
from such meetings SO permanently
confused as to who were their wives
and husbands that they never got out
of the perpleXity, and the criminal and
the civil courts tried to disentangle
the Illiad of woes, and this one got ali
mony, and that one got a limited di-
vorce, and this mother kept the chill
dren on condition that the father could
sometimes come and look at them, and
those went into poorhouses, and those
went into an insane asylum, and those
went into dissolute public life, and all
went to destruction. The mightlest
war ever made against the marriage
institution was that free-love cam
paign, ometimes under one name and
sometimes under another.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
polygamy in Utah. That was stereo-
typed caricature of the marriage rela-
tion, and has poisoned the whole land.
You might as well.think that you can
have an arm in state of modification,
and yet the whole body not be sick
ened as to have those territories
polygamized, and yet the body of the
nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear
it, good men and women of America,
that so long ago as 1862 law was
passed by congress forbidding polyg-
amy in the territories and in all the
places where they had jurisdiction.
Twenty-four years passed along and
five administrations before the first
brick was knocked from that fortress
of libertinism.
Every new president in his inaugural
tickled that monster with the straw of
condemnation, and every congress stul-
tilted itself in proposing some plan that
would not work. Polygamy stood
more intrenched, and more brazen, and
more puissant, and more braggart, and
more Internal. James Buchanan, a
much abused man of his day, did more
for the extirpation of this villany than
most of the subsequent administra-
tions. Mr.. Buchanan sent out an
army, and although it was halted in
its work, still he accomplished more
than some of the administrations which
did nothing but talk, talk, talk! AT
last, but not until it had poisoned gen.
erations, polygamy has received its
death blow.
Polygamy in Utah warred against
the marriage relation throughout the
land. 1t was impossible to have such
an awful sewer of iniquity sending up
its miasma, which was waited by the
winds north. south, east and west,
without the whole land being affected