The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1895-03-22
UNHAPPY HOMES.
Subject of the Latest Sermon by
DR.. Talmage.
Plain Truths That Should BE Well Con
sidered-Why There Are So Many
skeletons in American Family
Closets-The Divorce Evil

ject: Wholesale Divorce the text be-
ing from Matthew xix. 6: what, there
fore, God hath Joined together let no
man put asunder." Following is the
text of his remarks:
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 house there is a skeleton in the
hallway and a skeleton in all the
apartments.
''Unhappily married" are two words
descriptive of many a homestead. 1t
needs no orthodox minister to prove to
badly mated pair that there is a he'll;
they are there now. Sometimes a
grand and gracious woman will be thus
incarcerated, and her life will be a
crucifXion, as was the case with Mrs.
Sigourney, the great poetess and the
great soul. Sometimes a consecrated
man will be united to a fury,
as was John Wesley, or united to a
vixen, as was John Milton. Some
times. 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 life
long squabble at Craigenputtock and
Five. Cheyne Row.
Some say that for the alienation of
all these domestic orders of which we
hear, easy divorce Is a good prescrip-
ton. God sometimes authorizes di-
voice as certainly as he authorizes
marriage. l have just as much regard
for one lawfully divorced as l have for
one lawfully married. But you know
and / know that wholesale divorce is
one of our national scourges. | am not
surprised at this when | think of the
influences that have been abroad mill
tating against the marriage relation.
For many years the platforms of the
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 promiscuosity
of affection. Popular themes for such
occasions were the tyranny of man,
the oppression of the marriage rela-
ton, women's rights and the affinities-
Prominent speakers were women with
short curls and short dress and very
long tongue, everiastingly 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 hold
ing 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 in the
next fifty. Men and women went
home from such meetings so perma-
nently 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 a
limited divorce, and this mother kept
the children on condition that the
father could sometimes come and look
at them, and these went into poor
houses. 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.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
polygamy in Utah. That was 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 a state of modification
and yet the whole body not be sick
ened, as to have those territories polyg-
amized, 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 law was passed by
congress forbidding polygamy in the
territories and in all the places where
they had jurisdiction. Twenty-four
years passed along and five administra-
tions before the first brick was knocked
Every new president in his inaugural
tickled that monster with the 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 internal.
James Buchanan. a much abused man
of his day, did more for the extirpation
of this yillainy than most of the subse-
quent administrations. Mr.. Buchanan
sent out an army, and although it was
halted in its work, still he accom-
plished more than some of the admins
trations 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 al
awful sewer of iniquity sending up it,
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 thi:
country has been pustulous litera
ture, with its millions of sheets every
week choked with stories of domestic
wrongs, and infidelities, and massa
ores, and outrages, until it is won
der to me that there are any decencies
or any common sense left on the sub
feet of marriage. One-half of the news
stands of all our cities reek with the
filth.
Now" say some, ''we admit al
H.. IL. "a +hn nrlr- r.-ar To claa,