The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1895-03-22

"Unhappily married" are two words
| descriptive of many homestead. IL
| needs no orthodox minister 10 prove 10 2
| badly mated pair that there Is hell
| they are there now. Sometimes grand
and gracious woman will be thus incar-
| cerated, and her life will be a crucifiX-
ION, as was the case with Mrs. SiSour-
ney. the great poetess and the great
soul Sometimes a consecrated man
will be united TO n fury, az was John
| Wesley, or united to vixen, as was
John Milton. Sometimes, and general
! ly. both parties are 20 blame, and
| Thomas Carlyle was an intolerable
scold. and his wife smoked and sworei
and Froudc, the historian. pulled aside
the curtain from the lifelong squabble
at Craigenputtock and Five, Cheynt
| Row.
Some say that for the alienation OF
all these domestic disorders OF which we
hear, easy divorce is a 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 lawfully
married. But you know and know
| that wholesale divorce IL one OF our
national scourges. i am not surprised
at this when / think of the influences
which have been abroad initiating
| against the marriage relation.
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 distin-
guished for great promiscuosity OF affec-
| ton. Popular themes for such occa-
sions were the tyranny of man, the OPP
preston OF the marriage relation. wom-
ems rights and the afiinities. Promi-
nent 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,
apologize for masculinity, and holding
the parasols while the termagant ora
tors went on preaching the doctrine OF
| free love.
That campaign of about twenty years
set more devils into the marriage rela-
tion than will be exercised in the next
| fifty. Men and women went home from
such meetings so permanently confused
as to who were their wives and hus-
bands that they never got out OF their
! perplexity, and the criminal and civil
courts tried to disentangle the HAD 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 into
poorhouses, and those went into an in
sane asylum, and those went into dis
solute public life, and all went into de-
struction. The mightiest war ever made
against the marriage institution was
that free love campaign, sometimes
under one name and sometimes under
another.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has heen
polygamy in Utah. That was n stereo-
typed caricature of the marriage rela-
ton, and has poisoned the whole land.
You might as well think that you can
have an arm in state OF Modification
and yet the whole body not be sickened.
as to have those territories polygami-
zed, and yet the body of the nation not
feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good
men and women Of America, that so
long ago as 1862 q law was passed by
congress forbidding polygamy in the
territories and in all the place where
they had Jurisdiction. Twenty-four
years passed along and five administra-
tons before the first brick was knocked
from that fortrss OF libertinism.
Every new president in the inaugural
tickled that monster with the straw of
condemnation, and every congress stul-
tilted itself 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, q
Imuch-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 1t was halted in it's work, still
he accomplished more than some of the
Administrations when did nothing but
talk, talk, talk! At last. but not until
II had poisoned generations, polygamy
ias received its death-blow.
Polygamy in Utah warred against
the marriage relation throughout the
and. 1t was impossible to have such an
awful sewer OF iniquity sending up it's
niasma. 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 of sheets every week
,hoked with stories of domestic wrongs,
and infldelities, and massacres, and out
RACES, until II Is a wonder 10 me that
there are any decencies, or any common
sense LETT on the subject of marriage.
One-half of the news-stands OF all our
cities reeking with the filth.
Now" say some, 1--WE admit all these
evils, and the only way to clear them
put or correct them is by easy divorce"
Well, before we yield to that cry, let us
lind out how easy IL is now.
| 1 have looked over the laws OF all the
states, and / find that while in some
states II Is easier than in others, in
every state IL 10 easy. The state of I'LL
nois, through its legislature, recites a
long list of proper causes for divorce,
and then closes up by giving to che
courts the right to make a decree OF d.
vorce I'm any case where they deem IL ex-
Ipedlent. After that you are not sur
prised at the announcement that In one