The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1899-10-26
THE MARRIAGE VOWS
The Ease with Which They Are
Broken Is Deplored.
Timely Discourse of DIR. Talmage ON
the Marital RelatiOns-Uni-
form Divorce Laws Are
Needed.

Needed.
copyright. 1899. by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington,
DR.. Talmage in this discourse dis
cusses question of national impor-
tance, which is confessedly as difficult
as it is urgent. The text is Matthew
1876: "What therefore God hath joined |
together let no man put asunder."
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 hall |
way and skeleton in all the apart
ments. ''Unhappily married" are two
words descriptive of many homestead.
1t needs no orthodox minister to prove
to badly mated pair that there is a
hell. They are there now. Sometimes
grand and gracious woman will be
thus incarcerated, and her life will be
crucifxion, as was the case with Mrs.
Sigourney, the great poetess and the
great soul. Sometimes a consecrated
man will be united to fury, as was
John Wesley, or united to a vixen, as
was John Milton. Sometimes, and gen.
orally, both parties are to blame, and
Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable grum-
bier, and his wife has pungent retort
always ready, and Froude, the his
torian, pledged to tell the plain truth,
has to pull aside the curtain from the
lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock
and 5 Cheyne. row.
Some say that for the alienation of
all these domestic disorders of which we
hear easy divorce is good prescription:
God sometimes authorizes divorce as
certainly as he authorizes marriage. I
have just as much regard for one law
fully divorced as have for one lawfully
married. But you know and know that
wholesale divorce is one of our national
scourges. l 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
| Academy of Music, Brooklyn; 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 dis
| tinguished for great promiscuosity of
affection. Popular themes for such oc-
casions were the tyranny Of man, the
oppression of the marriage relation,
women'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
apologetic for masculinity and holding
the parasols while the termagant ora
tors went on preaching the gospel OF
free love. That campaign of about &C
years set more devils into the marriage
relation than will be exercised in 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
the perplexity, and the criminal and the
civil courts tried to disentangle the lilac
of woes, and this one got alimony, ant
that one got a limited divorce, and thi!
mother kept the children on condition
that the father could sometimes com,
and look at them, and these went int
poorhouses, and those went into an in
sane asylum, and those went into dis
: solute public life, and all went to de
struction. The mightiest war ever mad
against the marriage institution wa
that free love campaign, sometimes un
der one name and sometimes under an
, other.
Another influence that has warre
upon the marriage relation has bee
polygamy in Utah. That is a sterec
typed caricature of the marriage RI
!. lation and has poisoned the whole lant
, You might as well think that you ca
have an arm in a state of mortificatio
and yet the whole body not be sickene
as to have any territories or state
polygamized and yet the body of th
nation not feel the putrefaction. He;
it, good men and women of Americ
that so long ago as 1862 law was passe
d by congress forbidding polygamy in tt
n territories and in all the places whe1
It they had jurisdiction. Thirty-seve
e years have passed along and nine a
= ministrations, yet not until the passat
IL of the Edmunds law in 1882 was ar
e active policy of polygamic suppressis
n adopted. Armed with all the power
e government and having an army at the
n disposal, the first brick had not till tn
10 been knocked from that fortress OF Ii
ertinism Every new president in b
inaugural tickled that monster with t
straw of condemnation, and every co
- gress stultified itself in proposing sor
plan that would not work. Polygan
stood in Utah and in other OF the ter
tories more intrenched, more brazt
more puissaat, more braggart and mo
internal than at any time in it's histo1
IA James Buch anan, a much abused man
"a his day, did more for the extirpatlon
I ~ oil ~ SuhSQnnpnf