The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1895-03-29
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Wholesale Divorce One of the
Scourges of the Nation.
The Alarming Growth of the Evil and Its
Causes-Necessity of n Rigorous
and Uniform Law for
All the States.

and Uniform Law for
All the States.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage delivered
the following sermon in the Academy
of music. New York city, on the sub
ject: Wholesale Divorce" basing it
on the text:
What therefore God hath joined together let
not man put asunder.-Matthewx xix, 6.
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 home there is a skeleton in the
| hallway and skeleton in all the
apartments.
"Unhappily married" are two words
| descriptive of many homestead. 1t
needs no orthodox minister to prove to
badl mated pair that there Is
hell; they are there now. Some-
times grand and gracious woman
will thus be inearcerated, and her
life will be a crucitixion, as was the
case with Mrs. Sigourney, the great
poetess and the great soul. Some
| times consecrated man will be united
to a fury, as was John Wesley, or
united to a vixen, as was John Mil
ton. Sometimes, and generally, both
parties are to blame. Thomas Carlyle
was an intolerable scold, and his wife
smoked and swore; and Froude, the
historian, pulled aside the curtain from
the lifelong squabble at Craigenput-
took and Five Cheyne Row.
Some say that for all the alleviation
of all these domestic disorders of which
we hear, easy divorce is 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 know that wholesale divorce is
one of our national seourges. / am
not surprised at this when 1 think of
the influences which have been abroad
initiating against the marriage rela-
tion.
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 promiscuity
of affection. Popular themes for such
occasions were the tyranny of man,
the oppression of the marriage rela-
ton, woman'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 created
women; while on the platform sat
meek men with soft accent and cowed
demeanor, apologetic for masculinity,
and holding 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
relation than will be exercised by 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 their perplexity, and the criminal
and the civil courts tried to diSentangle
the 1liad of woes, and this one got
alimony 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
these went into poor houses, and those
into an insane asylum, and those went
into a dissolute public life, and all
went to destruction. The mightiest
war ever made against the marriage
institution was that free-love cam
paign, sometimes under one name,
sometimes under another.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
polygamy in Utah. That was stero-
caricature of the marriage relation,
and has poisoned the whole land. You
might as well think that you can have
an army in a state of modification,
and yet the whole body not be sick
ened as to have those territories po-
lygamized, and yet the body of the ma
ton not feel the putrefaction. Hear
it, good men and women of America,
that so long ago as 1862 law was
passed by congress forbidding polgy-
amy in the territories, and in all four
places where it had jurisdiction. Twen-
ty-four years passed along and five ad-
mlnlSLTdLIOuS Dc1DTc CuC AAAS1 VI 1ACA w GO
knocked from that fortress of libertin-
ism.
Every new president in his inaugural
tickled that monster with straw of
condemnation, and every congress
stultified itself in proposing some plan
that would not work. Polygamy stood
more entrenched, 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 viii
Iainy than most of the subsequent ad-
ministrations Mr.. Buchanan sent
out an army, and although it was
halted in its work, still he accom-
plished more than some of the admin
istrations which did nothing but talk,
talk, talk! At last, but not until it
had poisoned generations, 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
by it.
Another influence that has warred
against the marriage relation in this
country has been pustulus literature,
with its millions of sheets every week
choked with stories of domestic
wrongs, and ihiidelities. and massa-
cres. and outrages, until it is a wonder