The Canton times. (Canton, Miss.) 1893-1906, 1895-03-29

Rev. DR.. Talmage Discourses on a
Prolific Subject.
Ono or tho Nations Scourges Whose Tor
Kible Growth Calls FOR Earnest Chris
tian Thought and Action
~ A Word to the Young.

The following discourse on Whole
sale Divorce " was delivered by Rev. T.
X Dewitt Talmage in the Academy Of
music, New York city, being based on
the text:
VA What therefore God hath joined together let
mot man put asunder.-M Matthew xix, @.
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
apartments.
"Unhappily married" are two words
descriptive of many homestead. 1t
needs no orthodox minister to prove to
q badly-mated pair that there is
a hell; they are there now. Some
times grand and gracious woman
will thus be incarcerated, and her
aife will be crucifixion, as was the
case with Mrs Sigourney, the great
times 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 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-
ock and Five, Cheyne Row.
Some say that for all the alienation
Of all these domestic disorders of which
gre hear, easy divorce is good pre-
acription. God sometimes authorizes
divorce as certainly as He authorizes
marriage have just as much regard
for one lawfully divorced as 1 have for
enc lawfully married But you know
and 1 know that wholesale divorce is
one of our national scourges. ! am
mot surprised at this when l think of
the influences which have been abroad
initiating against the marriage rela-
lion.
For many years the platforms of the
country rang with talk about 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 |
nf the women who were most promi- |
Rent 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-
zion, woman's rights and the atfinities
Prominent speakers were women with
short curls and short dress and very
Gong tongue, everlastingly at war
with God because they were created
women; while on the platform sat
meek men with soft accent and cowed
aemeanor, 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 Had of woes, and this one got
alimony and that one got 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,
under another.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
oolygamy in Utah. That was a stero-
earicature 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-
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. TWEEN
ty-four years passed along and five ad-
before the first brick was |
from that fortress of Ebertin-
Ism.
Every new president in hisinaugural
Eickled that monster with a straw of j
and every congress 1
stultifed itself in proposing some plan
hat would not work. Polygamy stood :
more entrenched. and more brazen, !
md more puissant, and more braggart,
= ~ mora informal Jau,as Rrroaauan |
= much-abused man of his day. did '