Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1895-03-23
A FAMILY SKELETON.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE breaches ON
UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.

UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.
Lax Divorce Laws Due Primarily to Free
Love Agitation. Mormonism and I'm
healthy Fiction Hasty and Ill Consider
ed Matches Arc Becoming Too Numerous.
NEW YORK, March l7-Rev Dr.
Talmago chose as the subject of his aft
ernoon sermon in the Academy of Music
today a topic Of national interest-viz,
Wholesale Divorce The great audi
ence repeatedly showed its appreciation
of the sentiments expressed by the rev.
erend speaker, and his sturdy blows in
behalf of the protection Of the house
hold and against tho dissoluteness Of
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 i'll America
no one will doubt If there were only
one skeleton in the closet. that might
be locked up and abandoned, but i'll
many a home there is skeleton in the
hallway and skeleton III all the apart
ments
"Unhappily married. are two words
descriptive of many homestead. Ii
needs no orthodox minister TO prove to
badly mated pair that there is hell.
They are there now Sometimes grand
and gracious woman will be th1s incar-
eerated, and her life will be crucifix-
ion, as was the case with Mrs. Sigour-
ney, the great poetess and the great soul.
Sometimes consecrated man will be
united to a fury, as was John Wesley,
or united to vixen as was John Mil
ton Sometimes, and generally, both
parties are 10 blame, and Thomas Car
lyle was an intolerable scold, and his
wife smoked and swore, and Froudo,
the historian, pulled aside the curtain
from the lifelong squabble at Craigen-
puttock and Five, Cheyno Row.
Some say that for the alienation of
all these domestic disorders of which we
hear easy divorce is good prescrip-
ton 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 ma
tional scourges. | am not surprised at
this when | think of the influences
which have been abroad initiating
against the marriage relation.
Pernicious Doctrine.
For many years the platforms of the
country rang with talk about a 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 aiiinities Prominent speakers were
women with short curls and short dress,
and very long tongue, oyerlastingly at
war with God because they were Gre
ated women, while on tho platform sat
meek men with soft accent and cowed
demeanor, Apologize for masculinity,
and holding the parasols while the ter
magant Gators went en- preaching the
doctrine of free love.
That campaign of about 20 years set
more devils into the marriage relation
than will be exercised i'll 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 perploxity,
and the criminal and the civil courts
tried to disentanglc tho "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
at them, and these went il to poorhouses,
and those went into an insane asylum,
and those went into djasolute public
life, aud 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.
Brazeu Polygamy.
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 well think that you can have an arm
in a state of modification and yet the
wbola b0dv NOT ho ciolyonod no 70 La,,o
these territories polygamized and yet the
body of the nation not feel the putrefac-
ton. Hear it, good men and women of
America, that SO long ago as 1862 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
intrenched, 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 most
of the subsequent administrations Mr..
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
it had poisoned generations, polygamy
has received its deathbow
Polygamy in Utah warred against the
marriage relation throughout tho 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 by it.
Another influence that has warred
against the marriage relation in this
country has been pustulous literature,