Connecticut western news., 1895-03-21
IA FAMILY SKELETON.
REV. DR. TAlMAGE BREACHES ON
 UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.

REV. OR. TAlMAGE BREACHES ON
 UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.
 Lax Divorce Lava Due Primarily to Free healthy Fictiou-Hasty and III Consider
 cd Matches Are Becoming Too Numerous.
 NEw YORK. March 1T.-Rev. Dr. Talmage chose as the subject of his aft ernoon sermon in the Academy of Music today . topic of national interest-viz, Wholesale Divorce ? The great audi snce repeatedly showed its appreciatics, of the sentiments expressed by the rev erend speaker, and his sturdy blows in behalf of the protection of the house. hold and against the dissoluteness of modern society were received with marked appreciation. The text selected was Matthew xix, 8, "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 locked up and abandoned, but in many a home there is skeleton in the hallway and skeleton in all the apart ments
 "Unhappily married" are two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox minister to prove to . badly mated pair that there is he'll. md and gracious woman will be thus incar- cerated, and her life will be crucifix ion, as was the case with Mrs. Sigour ney. the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a consecrated man will be united to fury, as was John Wesley, or united to vixen, as was John Mill ton. Sometimes, and generally, both parties are to blame, and Thomas Car lyle was an intolerable scold. and his wife smoked and swore, and Froude, the historian, pulled aside the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigen- puttock and Five. Cheyne Row.
 Some say that for the alleviation of all these domestic disorders of which we hear easy divorce is good prescrip- sion. God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as he authorizes marriage. have just as much regard for one law fully divorced as have for one lawful ly married. But you know and know that wholesale divorce is one of our na- tional soourges am not surprised at this when think of the influences which have been abroad initiating against the marriage relation.
 A Pernicious Doctrine.
 For many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about free love millennium. There were meetings of this hind held in the Cooper institute, New York: Fremont temple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most prominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great promiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the tyr amy of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women's rights and the affinities- Prominent speakers were women with short curls and short dress, and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with God because they were cre- ated women. while on the platform sat meek men with soft accent and cowed demeanor. apologetio for masculinity, and holding the parasols while the ter magant orators went on preaching the doctrine of free love.
 That campaign of about 20 years set moro devils into the marriage relation than will be exercised in the next 50. 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 their perplexity, and the criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the ''Iliad" of woes, and this one got alimony, and that one xot limited divorce, and this mother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went into an insane aslyum, and those went into dissolute public life. and all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the marriage institution was that free love campaign, sometimes under one name and sometimes under another.
 Braxen Polygnmy.
 Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been po- lygamy in Utah. That was stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation and has poisoned the whole land. You might as we'll think that you can have an arm in . state of modification and yet the whole body not be sickened as to have these territories polygamized and yet the body of the nation not feel the putrefac- tion. Hear it, good men and women of America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was passed by congress forbidding po- lygamy in the territories and in all the places where they had jurisdiction. Twenty -four years passed along and i've administrations before the first brick was knocked from that fortress of liber- tinism.
 Every new president in his inaugural tickled that monster with the straw of condemnation, and every congress stul- eified itself ill proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stood more intrenohed, and more brazen, and more puissant, and more braggart, and more internal. James Buchanan, much abused man of his day, did more for the extirpation of this villainy than raost OA sA0 oADcC4uCns ldI. Buchanan sent out an army, and al- though 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 1t had poisoned generations, polygamy has received its deathblow.
 Polygamy in Utah warred against the marriage relation throughout the land. It was impossible to have such an awful sower of iniquity sending up it's miasma, which was waited by the winds north, south, east and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
 Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in this country has been pustulous literature, with its millions of sheets every week shoked with stories of domestic wrongs and fuAdoitioo and maccacroe and ont