Democratic messenger. [volume] (Snow Hill, Md.) 1869-1973, 1895-03-23
A FAMILY SKELETON.
REV Or. TALmAGE breaches ON
UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.

OfNfhrNFF tsiFNfhhN0G(s
Las Divorce Laws Due Primarily 20 Free
Love Agitation. Mormonisnl ard I'm
healthy fiction-Hasty aud M Consider
NEW YORK. March l7.-Rev. DR.
Talmage chose rs the subject of his aft
ernoon sermon in the Academy Of Music
today topic of national interest-viz,
Wholesale Divorce " The great audi
ence repeatedly showed its appreciation
Of the sentiments expressed by the rev
crend speaker. and his sturdy blows in
behalf Of the protection of the house.
hold and against the dissoluteness az
modern society were received with
marked appreciation. The text selected
was Matthew xix. 6. 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. IL there were only
one skeleton in the closet. that might
be locked up and abandoned, but in
many home there is a skeleton in the
hallway and skeleton in all the apart
ments
"Unhappily married" are two words
descriptive Of many homestead. IL
needs no orthodox minister 10 prove TO
badly mated pair that there is hell.
They are there now. Sometimes a grand
and gracious woman will he thus incar-
l,n- ltf. ..sII L..
ion. as was the case with Mrs. Sigour-
ney, the great poetess and the great soul.
Sometimes a consecrated man will be
united 10 a fury, rs was John Wesley.
or united 10 vixen, as was John Mil
ton. Sometimes. and generally. both
parties are 20 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 alienation Of
all these domestic disorders Of which we
hear easy divorce is good prescrip-
tion. God sometimes authorizes divorce
~ certainly as he authorizes marriage
have Just a. much regard for one law
fully divorced as l have for one lawful
" married. But you know and know
that wholesale divorce is one of our ma
tional scourges. / am not surprised at
this when l 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
kind 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 Gre
ated women, while ON the platform sat
meek men with soft accent and cowed
demeanor. apologetic for masculinity,
and holding the parasols while the ter
magant orators went on preaching the
doctrine of free love.
That campaign Of about 90 years set
more devils into the marriage relation
than will be exercised in the next so.
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
got limited divorce. and this mother
kept the children on condition that the
father could sometimes come and look
ut them, and these went into poorhouses,
and those went into an insane asylum,
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.
Drazen PoIygamy.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been po-
lygamy in Utah. That was a stereotyped
has poisoned the whole land. You might
as well think that you can have an arm
in n 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 50 long ago as 1869 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 five
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-
titled itself in proposing some plan that
would not work. Polygamy stood more
intrenchod, and more brazen, and more
pnissant. and more braggart, and more
internal. James Buchanan, much
abused man of his day, did more for the
extirpation Of this villainy than most
of the subsequent administrations Mr.
Buchanan sent out an army. and al
though il was halted in its work still
he accomplished more than some Of the
administrations which did nothing but
talk, talk. talk At last, hut not until
II had poisoned generations. polygamy
has received its death5low
Polygamy in Utah warred against the
marriage relation throughout the land.
IL was impossible 10 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 by it.
Another Influence that has warred
against the marriage relation in this
country has been a pustulOus literature,
with its millions o. sheets every week
choked with stories Of domestic wrongs
and infidelities and massacros aud out
RACES. until il H. n wonder to me that
there are any decencies OF any common
sense left on the subject 81 marriage.
One-half u the newsstands OF all our
cities rceking with the filth.
Now. say some, I'VE admit all
these evils, and the only way T. clear
them ont or correct them is by easy di-
vorce. " Well, before we yield to that
cry let ~ find out how easy it is now.
Wholesale Divorce.