Husband and Wife, Or, the Theory of Marriage and Its Consequences (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886. Excerpt: ... XIV. Consequences as to Divorce. NY principle that affects marriage affects also divorce, if divorce is allowable at all. This would seem clear, for the theory which underlies any legislation as to the severance of the marriage tie will be connected with that which bears on its formation. The current view would seem peculiarly adapted to educate people into lax views in this respect. Telling the world, as the law and teaching of the Church has so long done, that the husband and wife are equal and similar participants in the transaction of marriage can only lead, as it has done, apparently, to the idea of a sacred contract between parties, on a common level. This was the result, as a fact, in the history of Christendom. Both the civil and the ecclesiastical laws came at length to teach this view. But from thence it is a short and easy step to the conclusion that it may be, like other human contracts, easily severed. It will be up-hill work for the Church to remove this impression, and to make people believe hereafter in the binding character of the union, if it is a possibility. Logic will be on their side as long as the Church lays down the major and minor premisses that the two are one flesh by a parity of action in marriage, and that equal consequences result in both directions. It would seem therefore that the arguments commonly used for the retention of the prohibition to marry a deceased wife's sister, and of those connected with it, play directly into the hands of advocates of easy divorce, and that they who use them are giving away what they seek to withhold, when they argue against this abuse. But not only is the facility of divorce in question; its scope is also affected. The theory which is involved in the premiss as to the nature of the "one fl...