Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-09-18
DIVORCE QUESTION.
DR.. TALMAGE OlScOURSES ON AN
URGENT DIFFICULTY.
Domestic Disorders a Subject of Ma
tIonaI Importance Uniformity of
Divorce Laws In the Various States
Suggested.
ICopyright, Louis Klopsch. 1ss9.l

In this discourse discusses question
OF national Importance, which is con-
fessedly as difficult as it is urgent. The
text is Matthew xix, 6, What there
fore God hath joined together let not
man put asunder."
That there are hundreds and thou
sands of infelicitous homes in America
mo one will doubt. If there were only
one skeleton in the closet, that might
be locked up and abandoned, but in
many q home there is skeleton in the
hallway and skeleton in all the apart
ments. ''Unhappily married" are two
words descriptive Of many a home
stead. 1t needs no orthodox minister to
prove to badly mated pair that there
is a hell. They are there now. Some
times a grand and gracious woman will
be thus incarcerated, and her life will
be a crucif1xion, as was the case with
Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and
the great soul. Sometimes consecrat-
ed man will be united to a fury, as was
John Wesley, or united to 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 a pungent retOrt
always ready, and Froude, the hiStO-
rian, pledged to tell the plain truth,
has to pull aside the curtain from the
lifelong sQuabble at Craigenputtock
and 5 Cheyne row.
Domestic Disorders.
Some say that for the alienation Of
all these domestic disorders of which
we hear easy divorce is a good pre-
Cod SomatiTOaS 9ntboriZoS
divorce as certainly as he authorizes
marriage. 1 have just as much regard
for one lawfully divorced as l have for
one lawfully married. But you know
and l know that wholesale divorce is
one of our national scourges. l am not
surprised at this when l think Of the
influences which have been abroad mill
tating 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 move
ment have since been distinguished for
great prOmiscuOsity of affection. Popu-
lar themes for such occasions 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, everlast-
ingly at war with God because they
were created women, while on the plat
form sat meek men with soft accent
annlnUQti0 for
masculinity and holding the parasols
while the termagant orators 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 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 perpleX-
ity, and the criminal and the civil
courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of
woes, and the 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
insane 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, some
times under one name and sometimes
under another.
Suppress PO1yEnmy.
Another influence that has warred
upon the marriage relation has been
in 70 hot &c or
ed caricature of the marriage relation
and has poisoned the whole land. You
might as we'll think that you can have
an arm in a state of modification and
yet the whole body not be sickened as
to have any territories or states 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. Thirty-seven
years have passed along and nine adj
ministratiOns, yet not until the passage
of the Edmunds law in 1882 was any
active policy ofepolygamic 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 for
tress of libertinism. Every new presi-
dent in his inaugural tickled that mon
ster with the straw of condemnation,
and every congress stultified itself in
proposing some plan that would not
work. Polygamy stood in Utah, and in
other Of the territories more intrench-
ed, more braZen. more puissant. more
braggart and more internal than at any
time in its history. James Buchanan,
4 much abused man of his day, did
more for the eXtirDatiOn of this vii