The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1899-09-23
THE MARRIAGE VOWS
The Ease with Which They Are
Broken Is DeplOred.
Timely Discourse Of DR.. rainags On
the Marital Relatiohs-Jnt-
form Divorce Laws Are
Needed.

the Marital Relatiohs-Dnt-
form divorces Laws Are
Ne~ded
lCopyrighL iSs. BY Louis KlOpsehl
Washington. sept Il.
Or. Talmage in this discourse dis
eusses a question o. national impOr-
lance. which is eonfesSedly as difficult
as ii 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 infelieitous homes in America
no one will doubt II there were only
one skeleton in the closet that might be
locked up and abandoned. but in many
a home there is a skeleton in the ball
way and a skeleton in all the fpart-
ments. -Unhappily married" two
words descriptive OF many a homestead.
II needs no orthodox minister TO prove
TO a badly mated pair that there is a
hell They are there now. Sometimes
a grand and gracious woman will be
thus incarcerated, and her life viii be
erucifNon, as was the case with Nr&
Sigourney, the great Poetess and the
great soul. Sometimes a e~onSecrated
man will be united to a fury, as was
John Wesley, or united to a vixen, a.
was John Milton. Sometimes. and gen
orally, both parties are to blame, and
Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable grum-
bier, and his wife has a 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 Craigenputtoek
and 5 Cheyne row.
Some say that for the alienation Of
all these domestic disorders Of which We
hear easy divorce is a good prescriptions
God sometimes authorizes divorce as
certainly as he authorizes marriage. l
have just as much regard for one law
fully divorced as l 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 l think of the influences which
have been abroad initiating against the
marriage relation. For many the
platforms Of the country rang with talk
about a 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 &C.
easions 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
with soft accent and cowed demeanor,
~aPologetic for masculinity and holding
the parasols while the iermagant ora
tors went on preaching the gospel Of
free love. That campaign Of about 20
years set more devils into the marriage
relation than will be exercised in the
next 50. Men and women went home
from such meetings 20 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 10 disentangle the Had
OF woes, and this one got allmony, and
that n 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
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 made
against the marriage institution was
that free love campaign, sometimes un-
der one name and sometimes under an
other.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
POlygamy in Utah. That is a stereo-
typed %caricature of the marriage re-
lation 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 sickened
as 10 have any territories or states
polygamized and yet the body of the
nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear
II, good men and women OF America,
thatso long ago as 1862 a law was passed
by congress %forbidding polygamy in the
territories and in all the places where
they had Jurisdiction. Thirty-seyen
years have passed along and nine adj
ministrations, yet not until the passage
OF the Edmunds law in 1882 was any
active policy Of polygamic suppression
adopted. Armed with all the power Of
government and having an army at their
disposal, the first brick had not till then
been knocked from that fortress of lib
ertinism. Every new president in his
inaugural tickled that monster with the
straw Of condemnation, and every con
gress stultifed itself in proposing some
plan that would not work. Polygamy
stood in Utah and in other Of the terri
tories more intrenched, more brazen,
more puissant, more braggart and more
Internal than at any time in its history.
James Buchanan, a much abused man of
his day, did more for the extirpation OF
this Hllainy than all the subsequent adj
illustrations dared TO do up TO 1882.
hr. Buchanan sent out an army, and.
although il was halted in its work, still
he accomplished more than the subse-
quent administrations, which did moth
ing but talk, talk, talk. Even at this
late day and with the Edmunds act in
force the evil has not been wholly ex-
tirpated. Polygamy in Utah, though
outlawed, is still practiced in secret. II
has warred against the marriage rela-
tion throughout the land. II 10 impos-
sible TO have such an awful sewer of in
iqujty sending up its miasma, which is
waited by the winds north, south, east
and west without the whole land being
affected by 1t.
Another influence that has warreo
against the marriage relation in THU
country has been a pustulous literature
with its millions Of sheets every weeI
choked with stories Of domestic wrongi
and infdelities and massaeres and out
RACES, until It is a wonder 10 me tina
there are any decencies or any common
sense left on the subject OF marriage
One-half of the news stands Of our greSr
cities reek with the filth.
The congress Of the United Statei
needs TO move for a change Of the ma
tional constitution and then 10 appoin.
acommittee-not made up Of single gen
tlemen, but Of men OF families, and theil
families in Washington-who shall pre-
pare q good, honest, righteous, compre
h%ensiSe, uniform law that will contro
everYfhlnp from Sandy Hook 10 III