Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1899-09-28
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
EASY DIVORCES, LAST SUN
DAYS SUBJECT.
what Therefore God Hath Joined To-
gether Let Not Man Put Asunder /"
Matt. 10: 0-skeletons All Over the
House as Well as In the Closet.

That there are hundreds and thou
sands of infelicitous home In America
one skeleton in the closet, that might
be locked up and abandoned; but In
many home there is skeleton in
the hallway and skeleton in all the
apartments. "Unhappily married" are
two words descriptive of many home
stead. 1t needs no orthodox minister
to prove to a badly mated pair that
there is a hell; they are there now.
Sometimes grand and gracious wom-
an will be thus incarcerated, and her
life will be a crucifixion, 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. Some
times, and generally, both parties are
to blame, and Thomas Carlyle Is an
intolerable grumbler, and his wife has
a pungent retort always ready, and
Froude, the historian, pledged to tell
the plain truth, has to pull aside the
curtain from the lifelong squabble at
Craigenputtock and s Cheyne row.
Some say that for the alienation of
all these domestic disorders of which
we hear, easy divorce is a good pre-
scription. God sometimes authorizes
divorce as certainly az he authorizes
marriage. have just as much regard
for one lawfully 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 rela-
ton. For many years the platforms
OF the country rang. with talk about
free-love millennium. There were
meetings Of this kind held in the Acad-
tute, New York; fremont temple, Bos-
ton, and all over the land. Some Of the
women who were most prominent In
that movement have since been distin-
guished for great promiscuity Of affec-
ton. Popular themes for such occa-
sions were the tyranny of man, the OPP
preston Of the marriage relation,
womens 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,
apologize for masculinity, and hold
ing the parasols while the termagant
orators went on preaching the gospel
of free love. That campaign Of about
twenty years set more devils into the
marriage relation than will be exor-
cised in the next fifty. Men and wom-
en- 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 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 ia
ther could sometimes come and look at
them, and these went into poorhouses,
and those went into insane asylums,
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 is a 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 any territories or
states polygamized 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 a
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 administrations. Yet not I'M
til 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 libertinism.
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
in Utah and in other of the territories,
more entrenched, more brazen, more
puissant, more bragart and more in
ternal than at any time in its history.
James Buchanan, a much-abused man
of his day, did more for the extirpa-
ton of this villainy than all the subse-
ouent administrations dared to do up
to 1882. Mr.. Buchanan sent out an
army, and although 1t was halted in
its work, still he accomplished more
than the subsequent administrations,
which did nothing but talk, talk, talk.
Exen at this late day, and with the
Edmunds act in force, the evil has not
been wholly extirpated. Polygamy in
Utah, though outlawed, is still prac-
ticed in secret 1t has warred against
the marriage relation throughout the
land. 1t is impossible to have such an
awful sewer of iniquity sending up its
miasma, which is waited by the winds
north, south, eac., 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 litera-
ture, with it's millions of sheets every
week choked with stories Of domestic
wrongs, and infidelities, and massacres,