Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



671 



RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS AND PERSONAGES. 



THE DIVORCE REPORT. 



An Appeal to the Bishops. 



Bishop Welldon, writing in the Nineteenth 

 Century, advises Churchmen not to fly into a 

 panic over the Majority report, but to make a 

 serious and active use of the years which must 

 elapse before legislation is possible in order to 

 cr) stallise public opinion in support of the Chris- 

 tian conception of holy matrimony. The Bishop 

 would allow the one exception to the otherwise 

 indissoluble nature of marriage which is 

 generally held to rest on the authority of Christ 

 Himself. The duty of the Church is in legis- 

 lating for her own sons and daughters to stand 

 definitely and finally on the authority of her 

 Divine Founder. She must also call upon Chris- 

 tians to suffer hardship for the good of the Slate 

 and of the Church. The Church, he thinks, 

 ought to allow the religious re-marriage of the 

 innocent divorced man or woman, but should 

 absolutely debar from Christian marriage any 

 guilty divorced person. The Bishop remarks 

 that the majority have strangely ignored the 

 ambiguous position of the child whose parents 

 are divorced. He urges that the Episcopate as 

 a whole ought to act as a Cabinet acts, by 

 adopting a definite policy on this grave 

 question. 



MR. w. s. Lilly's views. 



Mr. W. S. Lilly contributes to the. Nineteenth 

 Century a lugubrious and slightly venomous 

 paper on " The Passing of Marriage.'' He finds 

 the suggestions of the report as a further proof 

 of the current " prurient and pestilential 

 individualism, the direct outcome of the Rous- 

 seau philosophy." He declares that the re-crea- 

 tion of marriage was part of the work of the 

 Author of Christianity, Who revealed to the 

 ancient world the virtue of purity. The degrada- 

 tion of family life is a part of the general moral 

 degradation which ensued in the Eastern Church 

 on its separation from "the centre of unity." 

 The so-called Reformation was a great assertion 

 of individualism, with consequent slackening of 

 the' marriage tie. 



AMERICAN EXCUSES FOR DIVORCE. 



Divorce has been most rampant in those parts 

 of the United States where " the dissidence of 

 dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 

 religion " have been most fully realised, in the 

 commonwealths founded by Puritans and their 

 descendants. Of these Mr. Lilly says : — 



If the matter were not so grave, the causes for which 

 the marriage tie maj' there be dissolved might be re- 

 garded as admirable fooling. It has been held in the 

 Courts of that country to be cruelty sufficient to warrant 

 such dissolution when a man would not cut his toenails, 



and in consequence scratched his wife every night ; when 

 he accused her sister of stealing, thereby severely 

 wounding the feelings of his spouse; when he persisted 

 in the use of tobacco, thereby aggravating her sick head- 

 aches ; and I saw a case mentioned the other day, in one 

 of the public prints, where a man succeeded in divorcing 

 his wife on the ground that she had taken his artificial 

 teeth and worn them herself. 



Mr. Lilly declares that the adoption of the 

 proposals of the majority of the Commissioners 

 would prove to be the beginning of the end of 

 holy matrimony. 



A curious criticism. 



Mr. Lilly, who has hitherto represented the 

 Catholic standpoint, may, it is to be hoped, be 

 regarded as speaking for himself when he 

 objects to the proposal that the sexes should be 

 placed upon an equality in the rnatter of 

 adultery. He says : — 



It appears to me that this view is untenable both on 

 physiological and on practical grounds. I do not deny 

 that adultery in a man is as unethical as in a woman. 

 But I do maintain that from the sociological point of 

 view it is of far less moment. It appears to me absolute 

 nonsense — or perhaps sickening cant would be a better 

 description — to ignore the dillerence between the two 

 sexes in respect of the erotic instinct. Aian by his very 

 nature inclines to polygamy. Woman to monogamy. 



Mr. Lilly may speak for himself. He need 

 not bring a railing accusation against man in 

 general. Least of all should he disparage any 

 endeavour to assert the Christian law of chastity 

 as equally binding on both sexes. 



GENESIS UP TO DATE. 



The story of the coming of man is told in the 

 modern language of evolution by H. M. Wallis 

 (Ashton Hilliers) in the Nineteenth Century. He 



says : — 



The concurrent testimonies of eye, ear, and nose point 

 us back to a nocturnal quadruped peering short-sightedly 

 and interrogating every tainted twig and flake of bark 

 with his pointed muzzle, his great flexible, ever-moving 

 ears meanwhile guaranteeing his safety. Racial advance 

 was impossible along these lines. The creature had 

 specialised to its limit as a lemuroid : a heritage awaited 

 him — upon conditions : he must descend from his branch, 

 hunt by day, develop his eyes and hind limbs. 



Once upon the ground, and in daylight, the compara- 

 tive values of his senses shifted : eyes were trumps : the 

 nose gives no warning of a wheeling eagle : he began to 

 detect silent and scentless enemies from afar. His eyes 

 which had been microscopes became telescopes, but asked 

 for a clear field. Finding his prone posture a drawback, 

 and that herbage blocked his outlook, he began to lift 

 his forequarters and then to go erect, not commercing 

 with the skies as yet, but for the same reason that whip 

 at the covert-corner rises in his stirrups to view the fox 

 away. But a nose habitually carried five feet from the 

 ground lost 50 per cent, of its sense impressions, and 

 grev? careless and inaccurate. As it diminished in im- 

 portance the muzzle shortened. Meanwhile the neglected 

 ear was growing comparatively untrustworthy ; the 

 muscles for erecting it were weakening, its conch 



