HQ 824 .B52 1921 Badger, Richard G. The bible and the scriptural ground of divorce forgery --^rtrnp-j jai t THE BIBLE AND THE SCRIPTURAL GROUND OF DIVORCE FORGERY BY A CHURCHMAN 'Thinking to the hardest icorlc in the io?rld." —Ralph Waldo Emerson rv o- ou c"nr. (Of ART! —-—-—--j.’ BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS ; vM OF rSi,¥f> ■V I OCT 6 1991 y; »/» a * AfiCG Copyright, 1921, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. PREFACE The Sacrament of Marriage is as distinctly set forth in the New Testament as that of the Lord’s Supper or of Baptism. This book criticises the Roman Catholic Church, but highly commends it for its attitude on the subjects of Marriage and Divorce. We Protestants are stupid, ignorant and immoral as to both of these subjects. For about 400 years we have allowed this “joker” of a Scrip¬ tural Ground of Divorce to make nonsense of the unquestioned words of Jesus Christ and to annul the Sacrament of Marriage. It is a theological asininity to suppose that the Sacrament of Mar¬ riage which God established “in the Beginning” and which is so explicitly and circumstantially re¬ affirmed by Jesus in verses 2 to 8 of Matthew XIX, would be nullified by Himself by adding a scriptural ground of divorce in verse 9, for each one of these things wholly and entirely denies the truth of the other and they cannot stand together in the same Bible. One or the other must go, and the proof of their hostility to each other is, that unfortunately the Sacrament of Marriage is the one that is gone. Protestantism denies the Sacrament of Marriage, 3 4 Preface and as a consequence, marriage among Protestants generally is treated lightly and as a joke, instead of being an actual religion in itself as God estab¬ lished it “in the Beginning.” Protestants have lost not only the meaning of this Sacrament, but the actual knowledge of its very existence. Because a forged Scriptural ground of divorce is found in a single verse of a single book of the New Testament, Protestant clergymen, relying upon what they suppose to be an infallible Bible, claim divorce to be a Divine institution, and they officially uphold it as such while privately they condemn it as immoral; which in itself is a proof of the corruption of public morals, by divorce. While the Spirit of the book in its true interpretation is Divine, they should know that some of its text could not possibly be so, for there are more than 1,400 manuscripts of the New Testament none of which are the originals, and copyists, through accident, mistake or design could make such changes as they pleased, and “Modern Criticism reckons no less than 180,000 variations in the existing manuscripts.” All things considered, King James’ version, in its day, was the best selection; yet scholars have detected more than 15,000 errors in its text and interpolations. It is nonsense to talk about the infallibility of Scripture except in a general way, and that only in its spirit. Plow can Protestantism be relieved from the dilemma of the Sacrament of Marriage which is Preface 5 tindoubtedly divine, and a Scriptural Ground of Divorce, which, according to the Protestant idea of infallibility is also necessarily Divine when both are antagonistic and irreconcilable; the authority for both of them profanely attributed to Jesus, and one of them a rank fraud? There is but one answer, and it is an easy one when a searchlight is brought to bear on Matthew XIX-9. The modest merit claimed for the present book is that it treats of a subject new to Protestantism and enters a field that is entirely new and unex¬ plored; and brings into light two existing facts which will inevitably destroy divorce. The first is that the Revisors of the New Testament, on the margin of verse 9, Matt. XIX, incidentally dis¬ closed the fact that this verse had been tampered with; and that there are other ancient versions of the Book of Matthew which make verse 9 to read exactly like Matthew V-3£; and as the two pas¬ sages are entirely different in text, subject and meaning, one of them is necessarily a forgery for the motive is involved. The second fact is that Matthew V-32 contains no scriptural ground of divorce as Matthew XIX-9 is supposed to do. On the con¬ trary this one short passage, Matthew V-32, con¬ tains a repudiation of the Mosaic law of Deuter¬ onomy XXIV; also a humane plea for an innocent woman; also a statement that divorce causeth her 6 Preface to commit adultery —not that adultery will cause or justify divorce, even of a guilty woman; and this shifts the forgery to Matthew XIX-9. No commentator has ever thus explained the meaning of Matthew V-32, which is genuine scrip¬ ture, and there is no Protestant literature that has ever raised any question of the forgery resulting from the facts stated by the Revisors of the New Testament; or as to the interpretation now insisted upon as the only possible one to make the scripture passage of Matthew V-32 intelligible. Chapters V and VI deal directly with both of these passages, and show that the text of a Scrip¬ tural Ground of Divorce in Matthew XIX-9, is fraudulent. Modem Pharisaism would say that this disclosure is an attack upon the Bible. But on the contrary the proof that the scriptural ground of divorce is a forgery is a grand defense of the Bible, for divorce under all circumstances and for every cause is an abominable obscenity, a crime against the Sac¬ rament of Marriage, and not to be so much as named among Christians who are supposed to follow the express teaching of Jesus Christ. The writer well remembers before the Civil War when any objection to the immorality of an attack upon the Bible and a Divine institution. The Bible has been disinfected of Slavery, and when Protestants cease to give aid and shelter to Divorce Slavery was also claimed to be Preface 7 as a Divine institution, there will be another “dis¬ infection” and both of the so-called “Divine institu¬ tions” will occupy the same limbo. When Jesus denounced the law of Moses, Deut. XXIV, as not being the law of God, and to that extent purified the Old Testament, why should not Protestants con¬ tinue His work and purify the New Testament by recognizing Matthew XXX-9, as an attempt through a forgery to reinstate that which He expressly condemned? Protestantism should address itself to the accom¬ plishment of three things, to wit:— First: To secure the abolition of all divorce on every ground, in every State of the Union (South Carolina has already effected it). Second: To redeem the Bible from the falsehood that Jesus Christ and the New Testament anywhere truly sanction divorce for adultery. Third: To redeem marriage from its present degraded and debauched state by reinstating in Protestantism, the Sacrament of Marriage. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Preliminary. PAGE . . 13 II The Bible. . . 53 III The Book of Mark .... . . 80 IV The Book of Luke .... . . 82 V Matthew V, 31-32 .... . . 83 VI Matthew XIX-9 . . . 91 VII The Sacrament of Marriage . . . 109 VIII Some Practical Suggestions , . 122 THE BIBLE AND THE SCRIPTURAL GROUND OF DIVORCE FORGERY THE BIBLE AND THE SCRIPTURAL GROUND OF DIVORCE FORGERY CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY The subject of Divorce is so intimately related to Protestantism, the Bible, the Clergy, public and private morality and sanity that it must necessarily be treated argumentatively, discursively, and with a certain freedom. Chapters five and six bear directly on the so-called Scriptural ground of divorce, but to prepare the way for an attack upon this iniquity which has fraudulently intrenched itself behind supposed Scripture, it is necessary to bom¬ bard its outlying defences before coming to the death grapple of a bayonet charge. Every word of these preliminary statements and preliminary chap¬ ters is necessary; and however apparently foreign to the subject, has a direct bearing on the matter of divorce, and upon that subject alone as its final objective. 13 14 The Bible and Scriptural t Divorce Forgery Some one has remarked: “With what little wis¬ dom the world is governed,” but it does not need a genius to announce a fact so trite and obvious to any one who thinks. Puck puts it more tersely— “What fools these mortals be.” Somebody once said to Mr. Gladstone in regard to something that was at that time upon the anvil in England: “What will the people think of this?” and he is reported to have answered:—“The people! the people do not think.” He only stated a well known fact, and he might have added that people are governed almost entirely by their feelings and emotions and preju¬ dices instead of their brains; by second hand opin¬ ions and by subserviency to supposed authority. And Mr. Gladstone was himself a striking illus¬ tration of his own statement. At the head of the English government; supposed to be a Statesman of very high rank, a scholar and Bible student, he lacked the intellectuality of moral sanity, and apol¬ ogized for and defended human slavery as a Divine institution. His rank as a thinker may also be judged by a statement he made in regard to the authority of the Bible in defense of slavery: that “What the Bible regulates it approves of.” But he forgot that the Bible regulates murder when Moses provided six cities of refuge, in order to teach and evolutionize those uncivilized Israelites, so that the lex talionis y the law of reprisal, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth should no longer prevail if Preliminary 15 the homicide should succeed in gaining a city of refuge and secure a trial for his life. Notwith¬ standing the regulation of murder the Bible does not approve of murder. It may also be said inci¬ dentally, that he put one hundred thousand dollars into Confederate bonds. I use Mr. Gladstone as a conspicuous example of the “people” of whom he spoke, who never think, who accept all moral and spiritual ideas at second hand; as a type of people, who, whether politicians or clergymen never went to the foundation of a moral question for them¬ selves in their lives; who through all history have buttressed every human infamy of war, despotism, cruelty, race hatred, polygamy, slavery and divorce, and pointed to the Bible as their authority. It is this highly influential class of men, the scribes, pharisees and hypocrites of our day and time, the Doctors of Divinity, the Priests and the Bishops from Caiaphas clear down the line, who have per¬ verted and distorted and added to and subtracted from the simple truths of the Bible, both of the Old and New Testament, and have made theology and institutional religion ridiculous when it is not more often a slander both against God and man. This is true both of Romanists and Protestants, The Bible, the real Bible has been slandered, abused and distorted by both wings of Christendom and has been made to bear a burden of undeserved infamy. Yet, it is an inexhaustable mine of truth; and Chris- 16 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery tianity, in the simplicity of the Gospels, survives in spite of all the perversions and follies of both men and churches. The men of about sixty years ago who believed in human slavery, which has been said to be the sum of all villianies, and claimed to be Christians, also claimed to be sane; but were they really, morally or intellectually sane? Certainly not. Yet multitudes of men in Northern counting houses and Churches upheld and defended slavery upon the authority of the Bible, and clergymen wrote books and preached in its defense. They did not talk of truth and morality which is more sacred than any book, but they made the Bible serve the purpose of a two foot rule, and thus degraded it for base ends. The surrender of the Confederate Army at Appo¬ mattox on April 9, 1865 had the singular and mag¬ ical effect of restoring millions of people both in the North and South to moral and intellectual sanity in a single day. The man who believes in the divinity of the institution of human slavery to-day, —if there is such a man—is a harmless lunatic, and everybody would very much pity him as a moral freak. And so will the man be regarded in years presently to come who will then still avow his belief in divorce, on any ground, as a divine institution, or as having any moral ground for its support, or any true scriptural authority: for there is no authority for divorce of any kind, either in morals 17 Preliminary or in the scriptures. It is fraudulent on either ground; and the perversion of scripture will pres¬ ently be made patent. There is no exception to or compromise with divorce, or any half way measure in regard to it. Instead of being a Divine institu¬ tion, it is wholly and always vicious. If the New Testament contained any veritable scripture au¬ thorizing divorce on any ground whatever, then all the worse for the Bible. But the Bible should be relieved from any such reproach. Jesus denounced the law of Moses with respect to divorce, as not being the law of God, and every word He ever spake on the subject condemns all divorce without any qualification or exception. The clergyman who defends a scriptural ground of divorce, makes it a Divine institution. Such a man may not be regarded at present as a subject for a commission de hmatico inquirendo , but he is really as mad as a hatter. He is precisely as mad as the man who used to defend slavery as a Divine institution. I commend to him the following pas¬ sage, full of wit and wisdom, taken from The Auto¬ crat of the Breakfast Table. Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought not to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrown among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accu¬ mulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often 18 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what was called religious mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well outside of the asylum. Any decent person ought to go mad if he holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his discredit, in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are? Per¬ haps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads, or any human feeling in your heart. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind, and perhaps for entire races, any¬ thing that assumes the necessity of the extermina¬ tion of instincts which were given to be regulated, no matter by what name you call it, no matter whether a fakir or a monk or a Doctor of Divinity believes it,—if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become non-compotes at once. We cannot say how many people and all the subjects that the Autocrat had in his mind at the time of writing the above passage, but we are certain that his statement embraced almost every theolo¬ gian that ever wrote a book. John Calvin, John Preliminary 19 Knox, Jonathan Edwards every one of the West¬ minster Divines, and even St. Paul himself, have had a marvelous escape from deserved incarceration in the insane wards of an asylum, and only owed their immunity to the fact that there was a dearth of such humane institutions in their day, and also to the fact that when everybody was insane there was no need of insane asylums. That whole peoples and nations, and every individual man among 1 them can go insane and turn away from the teachings of Jesus Christ to the worship of Thor or Woden is proven by the recent example of Germany. In the Sixteenth century Germany, naturally, was obsessed to a greater degree than other lands with the idea of witchcraft, and with her instinct for cruelty, she tortured and burned one hundred thousand people, as shown by the records of the Courts of that coun¬ try, and upon the authority of Andrew D. White, our Ambassador to Germany. One remarkable fea¬ ture of all this horror was, that under torture the victims invariably confessed that they were witches, but when chained to the stake and in articulo mortis they invariably recanted and denied it. Now we are sane enough to say that there never was such a thing as a witch, not even a “witch of Endor,” and in spite of the fact that the law of Moses says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And as to demoniacal possession, it is cjuite certain there never was such a thing, nor such a thing as a devil, except 20 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery as he might figure in the Book of Job as a necessary literary invention and figure of speech. I quite believe that Jesus cast out devils, but I could never think he believed in them, although that was the common belief of His time. A celebrated London physician once cast a frog out of a woman’s stomach which was never there. If Jesus had talked sanity and Science to those people, he would have shocked them, and they would have mobbed Him on the spot. Right thinking is, in its best sense, only sanity. Wrong thinking is insanity to a greater or lesser degree, and the man who thinks wrongly rarely suspects that he is insane. A thief is no more than a fool, who steals from himself, and a Bank Cashier who abuses his trust is always insane, although he may not fully realize it until he is behind prison bars and is compelled to think. Hatred, jealousy, bitterness, rage and many other things are beyond the borderland of sanity. Our copy book truly said “Anger is a short madness.” Furthermore, and as a corollary to this apparent but not real digression:—To think rightly is to act rightly. To think correctly will inevitably produce correct action. This statement is an absolute one without possible qualification. It may be objected that a man may think correctly but his will to act mav be impaired, as in the case of the drunkard. The answer is that the will is a mere agent and is subordinate to the intellect. The will is a mere Preliminary 21 animal function as compared to intellect, which in turn is the creature of the Spirit. When a man yields to temptation, both of these latter are in abeyance, and he either does not think at all, or does not think correctly. If the drunkard would think correctly, he would resist temptation as easily as a man who never drank, and he would suffer no lapse from sanity. To construct a plan of salvation, to save souls, to use the familiar phraseology of people who are content with phrases rather than with ideas, it is not necessary to deform and degrade humanity on the one hand, nor to make God a monster of wicked¬ ness, with whom a decent man could have no asso¬ ciation, upon the other. Neither is it necessary to set up a claim for an infallible and inerrant Bible, for the Bible is so human and Divine that it could not be infallible, nor is there any reason why it should be so. Nor is there an infallible church, for it too, is both human and Divine. Any church that is avid of the forms of worldly power and domina¬ tion, even in theory, does not come within the pur¬ view of the statement,—“My Kingdom is not of this world;” and thus the perversion of its real and true foundation is disposed of by Jesus Christ in one short sentence. Such perversions of Scripture in¬ variably degrade truth from its spiritual to the material plane, and whether it is a church or an institution of religion, always corrupt and secular- 22 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery ize it. As an illustration of the fact that every perversion of anything that is spiritual will always end by materializing it, the Sacrament of Marriage, which Jesus says “existed from the beginning,”— before there were any Bibles,—has been destroyed so far as Protestantism is concerned, by a single passage of forged words allowing divorce, and in order to maintain the superstition of an infallible Bible Protestantism denies the sacrament of Mar¬ riage, and has thrown it overboard, and marriage has been wholly secularized in the Protestant wing of Christianity, as one or the other, the sacrament of marriage or divorce, must give way, being incon¬ sistent with each other. Real Christianity is always sane, and the true test of scripture truth is sanity. Before leaving the subject of the sanity of certain theological beliefs, we may venture to say that no man really believes a religious doctrine, whatever he may profess in regard to it, until he has gone to the foundation facts and thereby made the belief his own, instead of adopting it second hand. Certain people profess to believe in the Doctrine of Election, for instance. They also believe they are of the elect, and immediately proceed to damn the great majority of mankind to all kinds of unpleasant destruction and everlastingly. Their particular method seems to be in electing themselves simply by believing in a belief, which in itself is an evidence of irrationality. But upon what facts does any- Preliminary 23 body base the doctrine of election, either for himself or others? He may point to the Presbyterian Con¬ fession of Faith of the Westminster Divines, Chap¬ ter third, on the Sovereignty of God. The reply is, that this is not sufficient, we want the facts. He would reply that it is based on the 9th chapter of Romans. We would then ask, where did Paul get his facts, and what were his facts? Did not Paul say, he would answer, that God said, “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated?” Yes, Paul bor¬ rowed that oriental expression from Malachi, and Malachi meant one thing, and Paul distorts his meaning for another thing, a clear perversion. The only fact that Paul had to stand upon was that God had chosen the Jewish people for certain work in the world, and that he was a Jew. These undeniable facts, however, brought him not one step nearer to the doctrine of election, for according to Christian theology few Jews were to be “saved.” Election is left to the caprice of the Almighty. If God wanted to create the great majority of the human race, for the purpose of damning them to everlasting punish¬ ment, the people who believe in election think that He has the right to do so, (providing always that they are of the elect). In admitting these facts, they either limit, or do away altogether, with the Atonement of Jesus Christ; and the church that is called the “Bride of Jesus Christ” is thus made to slander God by making Him an immoral and fool- 24t The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery ishly capricious monster. What claim have theo¬ logians who profess such ideas, to any moral or intellectual sanity, and yet they still run at large. They may not be dangerous, but such people are by no means harmless. Now what is the truth of the case? There is such a thing in the spiritual, moral and natural world as election, which is selection. God chooses the Egyptians for one thing, the Israelites for an¬ other, the Greeks for another, the Romans and the English for another. He chooses individuals from all these Nations for their suitability for certain purposes, often without regard to moral character, to do certain work in the world. They are all elected, and help to elect themselves. He also selects certain breeds of men, also certain breeds of ani¬ mals, of plants and flowers, grass and fruits and grains, for their individual superiority. He selected and elected Napoleon Bonaparte, also his conqueror, the Duke of Wellington, a Washington, a Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. He elected Jacob to be the progenitor of a wonderful race of people, in spite of his defective moral character, because he had certain potencies of character which Esau did not possess, and rejected the latter as head of the Nation although his moral character was infinitely superior to Jacob’s,—following the law of selection or election. And now, in the sacred name of the God of Sanity, what has all this, or any part of it Preliminary 25 to do with individual salvation? To say that God out of His mere good pleasure, before the founda¬ tion of the world, chose a few, certainly you and me, of course, unto eternal life, not for any merit of our own, and doomed the great majority of mankind for His mere good pleasure unto everlast¬ ing torments through all eternity, is simply blas¬ phemous nonsense, no matter where it is found, and there are many people, not so many as formerly however, who are possessed with such hallucinations. No man ever really believed such stuff although he often thought he did. Those worthy men, the West¬ minster Divines, in spite of what they said, could never have believed such things about God, or have made Him such a monster; for had they done so, they would never have gone home after their four years of lucubration and become good citizens and reconciled themselves to such a crazy universe; and if they, by any lapse or chance had ever begotten any more children, they would have become appalled by such an act and immediately committed suicide, in view of such an irreparable crime. It is not on record that any of them ever did so, and we are forced to conclude that they never really believed in their fearfully and wonderfully constructed the¬ ology, and were only talking through their hats. If we are obliged to take our choice between tragedy and comedy, Christian charity requires us to adopt the latter. 26 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery Except for the great enlightenment of the last about sixty years, how little has theology helped us to have any decent conception of God? Science has been the handmaid of religion, though a veri¬ table Cinderella. But things have changed and are changing. The universe is becoming enlarged. As in England we build Christian temples on Homan and pagan foundations, Pantheism, often misrep¬ resented, is now the Divine Immanence, and the Life of God palpitates in every atom and in all life of the universe, and all is equally dear to Him. God ceases to be a God; He is the Father; and the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and His Atonement is not for the few but for every soul that ever existed. It could not be otherwise that every soul will in the process of the ages, come into divine consciousness of eternal life in God the Father. At this point it may be asked, “What has all this apparently irrelevant discursiveness to do with divorce?” The answer is that it has everything to do with it. Ignorance, superstition, perverted scripture, both in its text and in its interpretation, and the claim of an infallible Bible which is the slogan of Protestantism to beat an infallible church, and divorce, are all closely inter-related, and divorce cannot be discussed intelligently without covering all this ground. There is a method in this madness, and as divorce skulks behind the Scriptures and an Preliminary 27 infallible Bible we intend to drive it into the open by levelling its defenses. If men who were justly reputed the greatest and wisest of their time can blunder so egregiously as to their interpretation of scripture, must we forever regard their opinions as sacred, and must we accept their theology and the fact of the infallibility of their teachings, as well as the text of the Bible, simply because they chose to say it is true? If the statistics of divorce are a gauge of the morals of a nation, the people of the United States are showing a rapidly increasing deterioration in those private and domestic virtues which center in and have their safeguard in the home. The tide of divorce has been rising for the past thirty years, becoming heavier with each year and out of all proportion to the growth of population. The last Federal statistics were for 1916, and showed that something over ten per cent of all marriages in the United States ended in divorce, double that of the year 1890; and organized Christianity is entirely apathetic on the subject. If the Protestant church is indifferent, then, sooner or later the State will be compelled to interfere and abolish it, and the lawyers and judges and politicians will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven before the clergy and the Doctors of Divinity. Marriage and divorce are essentially and primarily the concern of the church and of religion, but divorce now threatens the wel- 28 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery fare of the State. The Nation will sooner or later, follow the example of South Carolina, a State which long ago happily prohibited divorce on every ground including the so-called scriptural ground of adultery. After years of experience after adopting this Christian and sensible course, she is so well satisfied, that she will never return to it as a dog to its vomit, or as a sow to her wallowing in the mire. The real difficulty in abolishing divorce will be found not with the politicians, but with the clergy which is always reactionary in every great move¬ ment for the betterment of the world until that cause or movement is assured of success. This is a grave charge to make against a body of individually worthy and devoted men, which is supposed to have and does have the welfare of Christianity and society at heart, but it is abundantly established by his¬ torical fact. In the great events in history which mark distinct advancement of civilization, I can recall nothing since the Reformation of the Six¬ teenth Century which was not more to the credit of statesmen and politicians than to the clergy. Until the last fifty years they have been the bitter foes of science. Yet science has done more for religion, in enlarging our conception of the true God and in demonstrating the One-ness and har¬ mony of the universe, and dispelling superstition, than all the clergy and the church have done since Preliminary 29 the Christian Era. No good government can exist or be perpetuated where there is a union between church and state, nor can it exist without a happy blend between Autocracy and Democracy—the ex¬ tremes of either being as dangerous as a wild beast. Jesus gave us the happy mesne between these two opposite principles when He said—“Render unto Cassar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Obey the civil author¬ ities, but first obey God; and this teaching was in striking opposition to those of Peter and Paul, who knew no better in their day and who inculcated a positive and unqualified Autocracy. Pauline theol¬ ogy would have it that God is an autocrat who has the right to do wrong. The clergy generally in all matters of governmental and moral reform, both by instinct and precedent, have been more disposed to follow Paul than Jesus. As a mere illustration of the general tendency of the clergy to support reactionary principles in government, and the belief in an infallible Bible which requires obedience to tyrants and to despotism, they canonized Charles the First; and up until the lifetime of persons now living, this royal blackguard and tyrant was glori¬ fied as “The Blessed King Charles the Martyr,” and a day was set apart in the English Book of Common Prayer for this purpose, and they wor¬ shipped a God who was supposed to endorse King Charles and all his works because he was a King. 30 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery At the time of our Civil War the clergy of the United States as a rule, were active or passive sympathizers of the South, and until the very close of the war for the Union and its success became assured. Church newspapers in the North defended slavery as a Divine institution on the authority of the Scriptures and clergymen wrote books to prove it. Many of them were “Neutral in opinion.” Many had nothing to say and many no doubt who had no particular leaning towards slavery, kept silence from timidity and cowardice. There were excep¬ tions, but they were few. The only prominent ones I can now recall were Henry Ward Beecher on the Atlantic Coast, and 'Thomas Starr King in Cali¬ fornia. Beecher went to England at a critical time, and compelled a hearing, and had a large and possibly a decisive share in preventing England from recognizing the Southern Confederacy, and Thomas Starr King coupled with Edward D. Baker, a United States Senator, were the two men most powerful and influential in keeping California in the Union. If it had depended upon the clergymen of the United States, slavery would probably never have been abolished to this day. It happens not infrequently that when clergymen act either as a body or in their individual capacity, in matters affecting a community or the country, they show a great lack of sensible understanding, and they seem particularly liable to commit great Preliminary 31 blunders. It is probably due to the fact that their profession sets them apart and isolates them from other citizens to an unusual degree, and in time they suffer from it. A recent example of this fallibility occurred in Seattle, at the time of the great strike, which was planned in Russia to be staged in Seattle as a Bolshevik movement in which every trade and every business in Seattle was to be in the hands of the mob. There was already a strike in the City of fifty thousand ship workers, which was in violation of their written contract with the United States Government and it had been in progress for some time. To add to this, a general strike was ordered of every worker in the City, and the Unions all voted for it in sympathy with the shipping strike, but also as a distinct and openly avowed attempt against the United States Government. The strikers were to take possession of the City Hall, depose the Mayor, name their own police, seize all supplies and transportation and take possession of banks, stores, etc., and the stage was all set for ten o’clock on a Thursday morning. Of course; many people began to lose their heads and to act frantically and lay in supplies, as soon as the Unions announced their programme. On Wednes¬ day, the day before this revolution was to open, the Ministerial Federation of the City of Seattle telegraphed to President Wilson, and also to Com- 32 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery missioner Piez, who was at the head of the ship building construction of the United States, to grant the demands of the ship strikers and to stop the strike. Fortunately there was a man at the City Hall who was prompt to act and his proclamation on Thursday morning was to the effect that the City of Seattle was ready for war, and that upon the first movement of the mob, it would be met with bayonets and machine guns, and that the men from the Front in France were ready and waiting to take a hand. The strikers were amazed as they thought they were going to have everything their own way, and by ten o’clock the strike was called off. As upon that memorable occasion which Virgil relates, when the raging winds and waves made havoc with the Trojan fleet, and when Neptune raised his head above the waters, there followed an instant obedience to his will, and the mad tumult was over. I speak of this to show that good men may through ignorance or cowardice do many wrong and mischievous things. And why should we be any more disposed to think that they would be infallible in matters of religion; and what is their judgment worth when it comes to the morality or immorality of divorce, or whether there is or is not a scriptural ground for divorce, which not one in ten thousand has ever investigated? The vast majority of them are committed in advance and are prejudiced against any investigation of the subject, and they Preliminary S3 are not open to conviction. While most clergymen are opposed to divorce, and may even disapprove of it in a sermon, not one of them, so far as ever I have known, has ever questioned the fact of a scriptural ground for divorce, or whether, if it was a reality, it would be worth the paper it was printed on from any moral or spiritual standpoint of divine truth. They simply take it for granted. Is it not very odd that every one of the hundreds of thou¬ sands of Roman Catholic clergymen know that there is no such thing as a scriptural ground of divorce? How is this astounding division between the two wings of Christendom to be explained? The answer is easy. It is not religion, or morals, or spiritual truth that is at the foundation of the differences, and much less is it brains, but it is politics, the politics of religion. All clerics are religious poli¬ ticians. Every church council that ever was held was dominated by religious politics, and so it is in every synod or convention in our own day. This political division dates back to the Reformation as its origin. The Roman Catholics were politically and officially opposed to divorce in the time of Henry the Eighth. The Protestants were led to take a course directly opposite. The truth of the differences was not so important as the political advantages. In order to win Phillippe of Hesse, a very powerful and influential Prince, over to the side of the Reformers, Luther was led to consent 34 The Bible and Scriptural iDivorce Forgery \ and actually to give his approval to Phillippe’s marriage to a second wife, the first being still living. Luther and Melancthon both condoned this iniquity, albeit very sorrowfully and reluctantly. In con¬ trast with this betrayal and injury to the great cause of the Reformation, Catholicism stood true and resisted every attempt of King Henry the Eighth to secure his divorce with its approval. Sir Thomas More was appointed Lord Chancellor against his will, to approve of this divorce and he went grandly to the block in opposing it, and he presents a moral contrast to Luther. Protestantism can never retrieve its error and rid itself of this laxity of morals until it renounces all divorce. Is it not strange that Protestant clergymen should officially sanction that which they do not and can¬ not sanction privately? It is a great risk for a man to go through a Theological Seminary. I am glad that many of these institutions are not what they were fifty and a hundred years ago. But there is still and always will be a danger of a man mortgaging himself for life in advance to a particular brand of religious opinions which may be entirely second hand so far as he is concerned. The chances are that after several years of this intellectual bondage to doc¬ trines approved and required by any particular church, he will never have any real convictions of his own and it is always certain to result, in the Preliminary 35 majority of cases, in intellectual emasculation. If he ever comes out of such an experience as a real man he will be fortunate. I hope my attitude towards the clergy will not be misconstrued, even if I may have said something unfair or unjust. I would not willingly do so, for these people are my people, and I know their worth and belong to their class. Like Paul, I may be excused if I boast a little. My great-grandfather came from Scotland in 1758 as a missionary to Pennsylvania and he established many churches which remain to-day. With other of my relatives he aided in founding colleges. Several of my im¬ mediate family have been ministers, two of them also missionaries. A number of my family have been Professors in colleges and teachers in seminaries; my father, a distinguished lawyer, and a life long educator, and a pioneer in establishing common schools in my State, and also one of the Faculty of a College all his life as a lecturer on English Common Law. They, like the clergymen, all be¬ longed to the Brahmin class, and I, the humblest of them, why should I not be proud of them and glory in their record? Because I love the cause of Protestantism and the clergy is the very reason why I should not spare my criticism where the truth is concerned; but I do not wish to say any¬ thing that would justly give offence. As I have already intimated there has been a 36 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery marvellous change for the better in the old, unlovely barbaric orthodoxy of the days of our grandfathers. The New Theology has brought God and Jesus Christ nearer to us, and brought us nearer to God. It is really wonderful. On the whole, the Medical profession has perhaps made the greatest advance of the three learned professions. All honor to those devoted men, the physicians, the surgeons and scientists who love truth and have so nearly gotten rid of their errors and superstitions. I can look back to a time when I saw our good old family physician bleed my Mother and catch her blood in a wash basin. There were many other harmful superstitions that the profession has happily gotten rid of without any outside pressure. The profes¬ sion of the law is the most backward of the three, and in the last hundred years it has badly retro¬ graded. Like the Clergy and the Church, the Law¬ yers and the Courts are bound by precedents, by traditions and by superstitions which defy all com¬ mon sense and good religion and good law. May I be indulged a minute or two, to make good my assertion as to the latter, as it has a general bearing on my subject. The English Common Law is the greatest monu¬ ment of civilization that the word possesses. Crude and barbaric in some respects, it is essentially the law of righteousness; and being an unwritten law, the growth of two thousand years, and unlike the Preliminary 37 Mosaic law which was written, it was less likely to be perverted, as it consisted only of principles. The foundation of every sound principle of law in the United States is, and always will be the English Common Law. The Supreme Court of Pennsyl¬ vania has said that Christianity is a part of the Common law. Exactly one hundred years ago a case arose in New Hampshire in the Courts of that State, out of an attempt of the Legislature to modify the Charter of Dartmouth College so as to permit an enlargement of its Board of Trustees. When the act was passed it was taken into the Courts of New Hampshire, and finally to the Supreme Court of that State, which affirmed the right of the Legislature to make the change, on the theory that as the people of New Hampshire were the sovereign power to grant a charter, they had the power to modify and regulate it. The case was then taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. Daniel Webster became the Mephistopheles in the case, and he finally secured the reversal of the opinions of all the Courts of New Hampshire that her people had the right through the Legis¬ lature to modify the charter. It was taken into the Supreme Court at the instance of the Federalists of New England, who represented the theories of Alex¬ ander Hamilton as opposed to those of Thomas Jefferson, and this little two-penny quarrel between the Trustees, became a political question which has 38 The Bible and Scriptural tDivorce Forgery changed the whole face of our jurisprudence, and raised the question whether the people of the United States have any right to control or regulate cor¬ porations. It became a political question of Autoc¬ racy vs. Democracy. The methods which were used to secure a reversal in the Supreme Court were reprehensible. The Court perverted the facts and perverted the law. It decided that a franchise was a contract within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. This was not true. It was not only not true but it was a legal quibble. The effect of this decision was to declare that the grant of a franchise became a vested right, that while the Sovereign people could grant a franchise, they could never thereafter control it or recover it by forfeiture on account of violations of the condi¬ tions upon which it was granted, and that the people could part with their sovereignty, which is an im¬ possibility. Now, at common law, a charter is always granted upon two conditions, namely:— First: That the Corporation shall first serve the public. Secondly: That the Corporation shall do no act prejudicial to the interests of the public. The violation of either of these conditions mves the O people the right to forfeit and revoke any charter, as no corporation owns its franchise, and the public may resume the use of them whenever a Court of Equity so decrees. These two conditions comprise the entire Law and Gospel relating to Corporations Preliminary 39 and cover any and every conceivable question aris¬ ing under their regulation. Corporations must regulate themselves. Courts of Law never can effect it, and there is no necessity for the Legislatures of Forty-eight States ever passing a law regulating corporations. These two basic conditions, adminis¬ tered by a Court of Equity are sufficient for any conceivable case. When the Corporation violates its obligations to the public or commits crimes, it has violated the conditions upon which it secured its franchise, and it should be revoked as an example to malefactors. The Supreme Court of the United States in decid¬ ing that a franchise was a contract said, in effect, that these Common Law principles were not law,, and that a Corporation was immune from all con¬ trol ; and so they remain, and the result has been that there are a few of these Frankensteins that, if it was to their interests to do so, could demonstrate the fact that they are more powerful than the United States Government, for they could always act more quickly and more directly. The harvest that has been reaped from this patent perversion of fundamental principles of law has been a sorry one. Aside from the evils of robbery and injustice to the public, the law itself has been made a sport of and degraded. Courts of Equity are the only tribunals to which Corporations are really amenable. They are the only tribunals 40 y Nie Bible and Scriptural {Divorce Forgery of which they have any dread. They have no more use for a Court of Equity than they have for a church, except to apply for injunctions, w T hich are generally sued out to protect their rascality. It is well known to every lawyer that Courts of Equity have exclusive jurisdiction of all matters pertaining to Corporations, trusts, partnerships, insanity and marriage—as courts of law are incompetent to deal with these subjects. But Equity, and Courts of Equity, with their admirable and beautiful methods for the investigation of truth have largely fallen into desuetude. It is true that theoretically there is an Equity side to every Court of Record, but the perversion is none the less true, and nearly every¬ thing is restricted to Courts of Law. The difference is that in a Court of Equity the only question is: “Is this matter right or is it wrong?”—whereas in the Courts of Law the only constant effort is to juggle the law so as to defeat the law. This degeneracy of the law commenced in the Supreme Court of the United States one hundred years ago. A political principle, good in itself, but destructive when in¬ jected into a Court, was deliberately adopted by that Court, and it is charitable to believe that it never could have really foreseen the mischief and danger it would cause our Government. Webster, too, needs to be covered with the mantle of charity, the same that Whittier extended to him in his “Ichabod.” As a part of this harvest of law-break- Preliminary 41 ing by the Supreme Court of the United States, we are to-day having conditions and strikes that threaten the very existence of Government. When Corporations, public utility Corporations, are not amenable to a Court of Equity, there is nothing left but to strike, and a strike is not only the logical, but the only practical resistance to tyranny, if tyranny and injustice there be. The Supreme Court in effect, practically has declared that the peo¬ ple have nothing to do with the control of Cor¬ porations by taking away a charter. Instead of three parties to a franchise, the public, the corpo¬ ration and the employees, there are only the two latter. Instead of the public going into a Court of Equity and compelling justice to itself, the Cor¬ poration or the Employees, the Court being open to any one of the three parties, it is a fight between the Corporation and employees in which the public is always the sufferer, and an imbecile government starts a new Congressional investigation, a thing that always has been and always will be a joke at the expense of the public. Strikes would be abso¬ lutely impossible, unnecessary and useless if the people had not been robbed of their right to control and regulate Corporations through Courts of Equity. The methods of investigations of wrong of, or to, either the Corporation, the Employees, or the Public are actually perfect, through the most experienced and competent examiners and Masters 42 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery in Equity to inform the Conscience of the Court, There may be one, or forty, if the Court should think necessary. They might be lawyers or experts, but they would not be politicians nor would they be political footballs, as Congressional Investiga¬ tions are liable to be. To correct, if possible, the mischievous results of the principle in the Dartmouth College case, the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was passed. This law was necessarily an abnormality, and it violates natural rights. It has never accomplished any¬ thing to its credit, but it has made much mischief, and the evil of the Dartmouth College case remains; and it was possibly intended to remain by those who passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The threatened strike of 1916 when four hundred thousand railroad operators took Congress by the throat, and compelled it, with the aid of the Presi¬ dent to pass the eight hour law, was all wrong and never could have occurred if the Courts had been working normally to force Corporations to do what they should do. There was no time to determine whether the act was or was not just and reasonable or fair to Corporations and to the public. Such a strike would have been revolution. The act was un¬ constitutional, although the Supreme Court has said otherwise. Politics and cowardice dictated the act, and it is hardly to be doubted that the Supreme Preliminary 43 Court thought it prudent for its own sake to ap¬ prove of its constitutionality. The Coal Miners’ Strike has forced the Govern¬ ment to do what it did not dare to do in 1916. Injunctions have been issued against both operators and miners, and it is a weak and ineffectual effort to compel a nominal but an unreal obedience to law and order. All this should have been unnecessary. It puts both the strikers and the Government in false positions. They are both right and both wrong. Under a normal legal system, as already provided by the Common law, such a state of affairs would be impossible. Wrongs are easily righted in Courts of Equity. But if Corporations are not to be governed in the only way that the law provides, by destroying a few of them as warnings, when they violate the conditions upon which they receive their charters, then nothing can be done but start strikes, which means suffering for the public and a debacle of all law. Many years ago there was a case in one of the United States Courts of Illinois, in which a suit was brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust law against the Standard Oil Company. The Company was charged with rebating, and a jury found it guilty under all the fourteen counts of the indict¬ ment. The Court imposed a fine of twenty-nine millions of dollars, which was only a joke, as the 44 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery Company knew that it did not need to pay it, and after the usual interim the fine was removed by another Court of law, and not a dollar of it ever paid. Had the Judge who tried that case been really a great Judge and a brave man he would have had an opportunity of immortalizing himself. When that verdict was recorded convicting the Standard Oil Company of that crime he would have imme¬ diately sentenced the Standard Oil Company to the forfeiture of its charter. At that point every Standard Oil Company Attorney present would have jumped to his feet with the exclamation: “My God, Judge, you can’t do that! What right has this Court to do that when this prosecution was not for any such purpose as forfeiting a charter? We are entitled to a hearing, &c.” The Judge would reply: “Well, you shall have a hearing on the spot. The parties are all in Court, and the Court has juris¬ diction. Mr. United States District Attorney, sit down at that table and draw up a petition ad¬ dressed to the Equity side of this Court setting forth the fact that under a suit brought in this Court the Standard Oil Company has been con¬ victed of a crime (only one of a long list of crimes of every kind dating back the last forty-five years), and the verdict is of record. Ask that this Court shall revoke the Charter of the Standard Oil Com- pany, and appoint a receiver or receivers to make sale of all its property in the United States; and Preliminary 45 attach a decree to that effect. Now gentlemen, what have you to say at this hearing? Can you deny this conviction and this verdict, and is there anything more that could be said?” Of course they would claim that the proceeding was irregular, high-handed, and altogether unlawful, and that it would be shown by precedents that it was altogether illegal, beginning with the Dartmouth case and clear down the line, and the Judge might admit that it was. But he might have said to the lawyers, for the benefit of the Supreme Court of the United States, and also the people of the United States:— “This Court will not recognize any precedent that gives immunity to malefactors. So far as this Court is concerned, there is to be no doubt that there is a God in Israel.” Such an opinion and decree would have startled the Country—and also the Supreme Court of the United States. It is interesting to conjecture after the Standard Oil Company would appeal, what that Court would have done and what possible pretext it could invent to reverse that decree. Would the Supreme Court have dared to do it? I am sure they would have faced an impeachment that would have cleaned out every Judge that would have favored a reversal. But the influence of precedents is so strong in every Court, and the clamps, political and otherwise, are so tightly riveted on Federal and other Judges, that it would be a rare man who would ever dare to make 46 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery an issue between the people of the United States and the United States Supreme Court; which wittingly or unwittingly has protected and shielded malefac¬ tors and degraded the law. No fair-minded man has ever doubted the integ¬ rity and the high individual character of the men who have comprised this Court during a hundred years; but who is responsible for the fact that the Court by relying upon the sanctity of precedents which have been subversive of law and justice, has become practically a shield for Corporation male¬ factors which have exploited the whole land? Indi¬ vidual responsibility is so attenuated that it be¬ comes vague to the vanishing point, yet the evil remains. The morality of judges may not lightly be questioned, but the Court itself, an impersonal thing has much to answer for. Its dealing with the Standard Oil Company and the Tobacco Trust cases a few years ago, when there was an effort to forfeit the Charters of these criminal Corporations, shows its true character. This effort failed and these Corporations were benefited by the marvellous outcome of the Court’s decision. This Court also legislated the word “reasonable” into the Sherman Anti-Trust law, to let criminals escape, after Con¬ gress had twice refused to amend that law by the insertion of that word; thus usurping a function of Government that Congress alone possessed and treating it with contempt. Notwithstanding all Preliminary 47 this there have been some good men in that Court. Associate Justice Judge Harlan, on the occasion of the decision referred to read the riot act to his brother Judges, in a manner that was most edifying to plain and honest people, yet that was all it amounted to. The people have been trained to respect the Supreme Court of the United States and even to invest it with an odor of sanctity. This is as it should be, provided the Court is worthy of respect. Blackstone speaking of the law in a general way said it had “its seat in the bosom of God.” It is very fitting therefore that there should be an odor of sanctity about this Court, but unfortunately the odor is not always of sanctity. The fact is that for a hundred years it has been a Court of politics as well as a Court of law, and the land is suffering to¬ day from its mistakes. The Dartmouth College case, the Dred Scott case and the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trust cases are sufficient to justify this criticism. How are these intrenched and admitted evils to be overcome? Theodore Roosevelt advocated the recall of such judicial decisions as were vicious, but I am not aware that he ever explained exactly how it was to be effected, whether by an act of Congress or a plebiscite. It is quite certain that the Supreme Court will never have the grace to reverse itself. Without the consent of this Court, which would be 48 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery tantamount to a reversal, it would seem that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to pass any legislation that would nullify Supreme Court de¬ cisions, as each of the three branches of our Govern¬ ment in theory are independent of each other, and the Constitution provides no method by which the people may veto an act of the government. While the Constitution does not recognize this right, yet in the last analysis it undoubtedly exists,—the right of the people to give final orders as to their own well being, or to emancipate themselves from vicious Court decisions. An amendment to the Constitution would make such a proceeding regular and orderly. This might require a long look ahead, and a mighty struggle, which in any event, is bound to come sooner or later. We have been talking of an evil,—an autocracy intrenched in the Courts of the United States, foreign to every principle of democracy and good Americanism, and have suggested how we might get back to the two principles of law governing cor¬ porations. Let us now turn back to another evil which is also intrenched in the law and also in religion, and ask the same question as to divorce. How is this intrenched and admitted evil to be overcome? The answer is easier, and the effort will also be easier than in the case of vicious Corpora¬ tion law. If the Protestant Clergymen of the United States have any desire to abolish divorce, Preliminary 49 they could accomplish it inside of five years, in every State of the Union, following the example of South Carolina. It should be done by them, and they should have the credit of it, but if not, it will be done, sooner or later in spite of them. There is every reason both from the religious and political standpoint why all divorce should be abolished everywhere. Divorce a vinculo matrimonii which allows the party to remarry is what is meant by abolishing divorce. Judicial separations, which are easily obtained when a husband and wife should not live together for sufficient reasons, or separation a mensa et thoro, from bed and board, is not divorce. Neither party can marry and each one is protected from the other. The disgrace of Corporation law, and also the disgrace of divorce, both of which are founded on wrong, one of them upon a court that perverted the laws, the other upon a perversion of the Bible, are both a disgrace to Christianity and good morals. If we claim to be people of ordinary common sense, let us make some kind of use of it by getting rid of these evils. The great movement in the Sixteenth Century for religious freedom and emancipation from the cor¬ ruption of a hierarchy, was a distinct advance in civilization as well. It was a natural desire for civil and religious liberty. There was never a time in 50 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery England when it did not seek some expression. The beginning of Protestantism was really in A.D. 597 when those seven English Bishops met Augustine up¬ on the river Dee and gave him a final answer and refusal to the demand of the Pope that the English Church should conform to the Roman in the matter of the observance of a certain day for Christmas and Easter, and that the English Church should give up the liturgy of St. John, for that of St. Peter. These Bishops were jealous not only for religion, but for their civil liberty. The same thing occurred in A.D. 1215, when the Bishops, the laity and clergy, and even English Romanists arose en masse and com¬ pelled King John to sign the Magna Charta. Even William the Conqueror, who made a conquest of the British Isles ostensibly for the Pope, but really for himself, refused to observe his promise to do fealty and pay Peter’s Pence, well knowing the temper and instincts of the British people for liberty. And in the Fourteenth Century, England passed the Statute of Praemunire which forbade any Englishman or Ec¬ clesiastic to prefer any appeal to the Pope of Rome under penalty of forfeiture of lands and goods, and other severe punishment, thus emancipating England from vassalage to Rome, and establishing the Civil Liberty of England forever. And then followed the religious emancipation of the Sixteenth Century, completing the great conquest of Civil and Religious Liberty. This was the mighty work of Protestant- Preliminary 51 ism, extending over a thousand years, by which Eng¬ land was at last enabled to have a Bible and printed in English. The Bible thus became and is the world’s charter of religion and civilization. This was a world victory. But reformers are very human, and they were bound to make some mistakes. In order to offset the claim of an Infallible Church, they set up an equally preposterous claim of an Infallible Bible. They not only made it a matter of life and death to question anything in the Bible, but they put their narrow and unlovely interpretations upon it. If the Bible had said that the “Moon was made of green cheese” they would have believed it. Many wrongs and superstitions have grown out of this attitude toward the Bible, which the Bible has been, most unjustly and unfairly, called upon to defend. Divorce is supposed by many to be defended by Scripture, but this is not actually true. It will always be a disgrace to Protestantism until it recti¬ fies its indirect approval of Divorce arising from the example of Luther and the idea of an infallible Bible. It should address itself to the great work of purging itself from this iniquity, and sending divorce to the limbo of slavery, polygamy or any other vicious thing that injures society. Vicious people should not be allowed to justify their vice, by making false claims with reference to the Bible, and clergy¬ men should not be allowed (shall I say it?) to pass the buck, and shuffle off their responsibility on the 52 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery Bible. The Roman Catholic Church is right on the subject of divorce. All honor to it! It believes in the Sacrament of Marriage, and safeguards it and dignifies it. Protestantism has lost the Sacrament of Marriage and denies it, and is responsible for the fact that marriage has become dishonored, de¬ rided and debauched. All divorce, and every divorce begins in either wrong or in vice, the wrong being usually mutual, and yet Protestantism must logic¬ ally claim, with its theory of Scripture that divorce is a Divine institution, while at the same time it denies the Sacrament of Marriage. Why should not Protestantism at once retrieve this false position and thus invite the two wings of Christianity, so far as divorce is concerned, into one generous and wholesome fellowship? Religious politics should not bar the way, since every Protestant clergyman knows in his heart that with reference to divorce the attitude of his church is a false one. Let them be humble and honest, and let them remember that here¬ tofore the intellect of the w’orld has always been in advance of that of the Church where reforms were concerned, and that in the matter of divorce, they have the opportunity of doing something themselves, which otherwise will be done in spite of them. CHAPTER II THE BIBLE The Bible was never written as a book, and it is an error to think of it as such. It is a collection of writings, an omnium gatherum. It is very miscel¬ laneous in character. They were written by a great many different people who lived in different ages and centuries apart. They comprise literature suitable to the early ages of mankind, a curious mixture of undoubted science and Uncle Remus stories, or folk lore, which, understood properly, were never in¬ tended to be literally believed, and therefore are not entirely childish, but which old-fashioned orthodoxy has childishly insisted upon as history; and upon these myths have risked the integrity of its plan of salvation, instead of resting it upon Jesus Christ alone. Thus we have an account of the fiat creation of man, or rather of two men, one of flesh and the other of spirit, made in the image of God, and this is the great initial spiritual truth of the Bible; the childish story of the creation of woman from the rib of the man; who was probably originally bi-sexual, man a mere differentiation and coming later in 53 54 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery period of time; the two different stories of the flood, a picturesque and imaginative account of a histor¬ ical fact happening ages before the Scriptures were written, one cause assigned being forty days and nights of rain which would be inadequate to produce such results; and the other, the foundations of the great deep being broken up, was no doubt, the true cause and which may be explained by the subsidence of a continent, probably Atlantis according to the statement recorded by Plato. Later follows the story of the Tower of Babel, the confounding of tongues and the Dispersion, after which the haze of fable begins to clear and we come down to the biog¬ raphies of individuals more or less reliable. Noah is probably as mythical a character as Adam, but it cannot well be doubted that Abraham was a real personage of flesh and blood; the greatest figure of his age who seems to be the first who had a definite conception of the One God. But his de¬ scendants, the Children of Israel, worshipped many gods during a period of about fifteen hundred years and never really settled down to monotheism until their return from the Second Captivity of Babylon. The Bible furnishes an excellent text book to illus¬ trate the evolution of morals, civilization and re¬ ligion from their earliest beginnings until we come to New Testament times and the spiritual conception of God as we find it in Jesus Christ. The origin, development and purpose of the The Bible 55 Jewish people, a selected race is the burden of the Old Testament, and history, ethics, poetry and prophecy all play their part in the drama of the race. It is a strange medley of the human and Divine. Among all the nations of the earth the Jewish race is the greatest miracle of all the ages save one, that of Jesus Christ, also a Jew, who inde¬ pendently of any of his great works, is Himself, the One great miracle of the Universe. When we come to the New Testament we have reached the climax of the Divine, in the person of Jesus Christ who was born a Galilean peasant, yet was the Son of God. Who His earthly father was, or whether He had one or not is not of any great or vital importance. That He was a historical charac¬ ter, and that the record of Him is substantially true, cannot admit of any reasonable doubt; nor the fact of His trial, crucifixion and resurrection; nor the fact that in His life and death man was brought nearer to God through the Atonement, which, how¬ ever we may view it is the world’s greatest fact. The essential facts of the life of Jesus Christ prove them¬ selves and need no vouchers; and if we should have nothing left to us but the Ideal of Jesus Christ, He would still be for every soul the Saviour of Mankind. He is the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In the beginning of Christianity it had nothing to go on but the person of Jesus Christ. In some 56 The Bible and Scriptural iDivorce Forgery respects it might be better if we could forget every¬ thing else and return to that point. It bad not yet established any Churches, nor formulated a Trinity. Paul presently began to Judaize Christianity; and in the Second Century some wonderful man wrote the Fourth Gospel. An eminent scholar fixes the year 188 when this Gospel was first known. The writers of the Synoptic Gospels may never have heard of the Logos, but in any event it was left to the writer of the Fourth Gospel to identify Jesus with the Logos, an idea familiar to the Greeks and derived from them. This gave Christianity its true setting and completion. Thus was it Hellenized; and later it was paganized by Rome. The Fourth Gospel, while the least authentic, idealizes the char¬ acter of Jesus, and is the most precious and truest thing in Christianity. With the truth of some of the facts recorded in this Gospel, as to whether they were historical, or figurative and allegorical we need not be at all concerned. If we come within the glow of the Divine illumination that shines brightest in this Gospel, it is all sufficient. The Bible contains the word of God; but to say it is the word of God without qualification is to dis¬ honor God and degrade our conception of Llim. It contains a mixture of the Divine and human. It could not be otherwise, nor is it desirable that it should be otherwise if spirituality is to be developed. It is a record of the evolution of man but especially The Bible 57 the evolution of his conception of God, beginning with Jehovah a tribal deity, and incidentally of the development of a race from the time of its emergence from the degradation of slavery and many of the immoralities of the Mosaic Laws, up until the full flower of the man as he is in Jesus Christ, and a conception of God not as a mere arbitrary Sov¬ ereign, but as God the Father, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Even the New Testament reflects these different aspects of truth,—the Epistles, more or less human represent¬ ing the former idea in some of their theology, while the simple truth of the four gospels of Jesus Christ mark the transition from the human to the wholly Divine, with the original record perhaps entirely free from interpolation and human perversions. The Supreme and essential purpose of the entire Bible is the revelation of God the Father through Jesus Christ who was both God and Man, God mani¬ fest in the flesh, the common denominator, so to speak, between God the sum of all things, and man the fraction. As Jesus Christ is the one unique and supreme manifestation of the Father who brings man and God into their true relations to each other, so the Bible is the one Supreme Book among books. But it contains many things that are not the word of God, that are merely human and also many things that are actually immoral. As instance of the latter the law of divorce as given by Moses, was denounced 58 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery as such by Jesus Christ. Another instance was the law forbidding" the Israelites to sell diseased meat to an Israelite, but allowing them to sell the same to a stranger or a Cananite. There has been no human iniquity that has not at some time or other been justified, or claimed to be justified by the Bible. Wars, cruelties and race hatreds have found their buttress and support in the Bible. The tyrannies of rulers and of governments, polygamy and human slavery have appealed to the Bible for their justifi¬ cation. The philosophy of Peter and Paul, and that of Jesus with reference to the basic principles of civil government are as wide apart as the poles. The authority of the Bible has been used by the invet¬ erate and obstinate foes of Science, and civilization has suffered and been long retarded because of this deadly enmity which retreats only sullenly and very slowly. The Bible is not wholly inspired, and there¬ fore it must be read with discrimination and com¬ mon sense. It is a common saying that you can prove anything by the Bible and it is not without an appearance of truth. We do not need to listen to the enemies of the Bible, but if we take the con¬ flicting statements of its friends, we find Christendom divided to-day into many hundreds of sects, nearly five hundred in all, and many of them still in actual hostility to each other, the great majority of them resting on an infallible Bible, and all within the Catholic and Protestant wings of Christianity. The The Bible 59 fault is not in the Bible so much, as not knowing how to read it. Had an angel brought the Bible down from heaven the trouble would still remain, for the mysteries of the human mind would have to be reck¬ oned with. Ignorance and superstition both in the priests and the people would immediately mar the record however divine. If this book were wholly divine it would not have served the purposes of humanity, because it would have been out of reach and incomprehensible. It is both divine and human, because it was written by men and shares their fallibility. Yet it contains the sum of all wisdom, human and divine. Its treasures never can be ex¬ hausted, and they will increase from age to age. The amazing miracle of Jesus Christ is greater than all He did and swallows up all the others. As He was God’s fullest revelation of Himself to man through a man, we believe in Him because that reve¬ lation was a necessity, the only natural one and the only one possible. The Divine Spirit is the only reality in the Universe and we find it abundantly in the Scriptures. The superstition, however, that would make the Bible a mere fetich is to be shunned. If we regard it as partly human we avoid this tendency, and the importance of this fact impresses itself upon us. We see that it is not only not inerrant, but we learn that there is no reason why it should be inerrant and infallible. In fact, it is greater and more far- 60 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery reaching when we consider it otherwise and it appeals to human reason. The mistakes of Moses or Paul can never impair the scriptures. The Higher Criticism, whether constructive or destruc¬ tive, only glorifies and illuminates its twofold great¬ ness, the revelation of God the Father through Jesus Christ His Son. No book has ever been so corrupted, mishandled, misread, perverted and abused, especially by its friends, the priests and the clergy, as has the Bible. It is a proof of its divinity, that it has survived in spite of the church. Moses was a great legislator and also a great politician, perhaps we should say statesman. Like our human and divine Lincoln, who, when the win¬ ning of the Civil War and the salvation of the Union depended upon it, winked at the admission of a State and the purchase of two United States Senators; Moses winked, so to speak, at some things he could not approve of. In vain did he write in the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not kill,” so long as his barbarous horde of followers had a common law of their own, the lex talionis , an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which prevailed in Israel; and so he established as law, a half-way measure, the Cities of Refuge which were designed to stop the Avenger of Blood from killing a homicide unless he could catch him before he could reach one of these cities,— a considerable advance in civilization. Moses did the best he could with the material he had to work The Bible 61 with. And so, because of their low ideas about marriage, he temporized again and he made the law recorded in Deuteronomy XXIV, as follows: When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it comes to pass that she finds no favour in his eyes because he hath found some uncleanness in her: Then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house she may go to be another man’s wife. This law was probably an advance on any law or custom that prevailed during 400 years of slavery in Egypt, or upon the law of the Cave man. It w r as evidently intended to benefit the woman and improve her status to allow her to marry, for it gave her no right to divorce her husband for any cause. It was probably designed to help her against pros¬ titution. This law did nothing for the husband, and it was nothing to him, but everything to her. This law enabled a man to turn his wife out upon the street at any time, on any cause, or upon any pretext, he to be the sole judge of either. Jesus did not think the Bible infallible for He repudiated this law wholly and absolutely as contrary to the law of God, and giving His specific and circumstantial reason therefor, in Matthew XIX-8, by which He cut up all divorce for every cause, by the roots. He also said specifically that this woman thus divorced should not depart from her husband’s 62 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery house and “go and be another man’s wife,” for this would be adultery in her to marry another man, and any other man who would marry her would also commit adultery. Mark X-ll and 12, Luke XVI- 18. One very patent and conclusive reason why this law of Moses was not the law of God was the fact that the law was not reciprocal, and while a man could divorce his wife “if she burned his broth” or on any trifling cause or pretext, or upon none, she could not divorce him for adultery, or any cruelty, or any criminal act. This would be an injustice inconsistent with any law of God, who treats every human being alike, and makes no sex discrimination in His justice. But conclusive as this would be, it does not reach the height of Jesus’ spiritual teach¬ ings in Matthew XIX, which specifically treats of the Sacrament of Marriage which He says was estab¬ lished in the beginning (before there were any Bibles) and that all divorce for every cause was inconsistent with the primal law of marriage. When the Scripture violated the moral sense of Jesus by its cruelty and by its inconsistency with spiritual truth as contained in the Sacrament of Marriage He at once repudiated it. If the Scrip¬ tures actually justified human slavery, we should know that in this particular they were not true, and we would certainly repudiate such Scripture. If the Scripture actually justified divorce on any ground The Bible 63 whatever, even upon the ground of adultery, no matter what the mere text should contain, it should be repudiated on moral grounds, and upon the rea¬ sons given by Jesus Christ. But standing for a pure and undefiled Scripture, and doing only justice to the Bible, it will presently be shown that the only one place in the New Testament where a Scriptural ground of divorce is found is an interpolation and rests on a forgery. If it were genuine Scripture it would still be bad morals, like Deut. XXIV. But when it is bad morals and forged Scripture it is time Protestant Christianity should clean up this hoary fraud and disinfect the Bible. The only real infallibility to be found in the Bible is not in its text but in the spirit of truth, the spirit of Jesus Christ which pervades both the Old and New Testament, but especially the Gospels. There can be no infallibility in the text. This is an impor¬ tant subject. Let us illustrate. Jesus said: “Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my church,” meaning the statement which Peter had just made. If this be literally true, without regard to its true meaning or the circumstances under which it was spoken, then it logically follows from these words and those which immediately follow, that infallibility was conferred upon Peter, to be transmitted by him to his supposed successor, a break in the line of which would be fatal to the church, every one of which links was to be infallible, a doctrine that was 64} The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery officially pronounced in 1870. The Pope being the church, both are declared infallible. Also that there is no salvation outside of the Catholic faith. Also that the Pope is the rightful ruler of all lands and that every King, Emperor and Ruler, and the Presi¬ dent of the United States as well as the Congress of both Houses and every Legislature owes him obedi¬ ence and must think only as he directs. The Spanish Inquisition, the excommunication of millions of in¬ habitants in the Netherlands and the decree for their extermination by Philip II of Spain and the almost complete execution of that decree by the Duke of Alva, with a thousand other atrocities recorded in history, both in the Old World and the New, were justified by this Scripture, and by a church claim¬ ing to be infallible and inerrant. The temporal power vested in the Pope by this Scripture is the pretext for the Vatican to be admitted into the League of Nations, and this power is at the present, and always has been, an insidious or open foe to the liberties of mankind. This church has logically not only its place in the League of Nations, but the Pope, as the rightful Head of the League, should control it according to his own infallible and Holy Will. The Baptist Church, however, or the Metho¬ dist and the Presbyterian, are ineligible. All this mighty power, both spiritual and tem¬ poral, is thus committed to the Pope by this Scrip¬ ture. The Church and State are one, and that one The Bible 65 is St. Peter’s successor. The liberties of every man, and even the destruction of his soul, are in his keep¬ ing. Peace and war belong to him. Yet Jesus Christ has said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” Strange to say, the Protestants in the XVI Cen¬ tury set up the claims of an infallible Bible as against an infallible cburch, something which had never been claimed before that time. They attached a sanctity to the text of Scripture which it did not deserve and which it was to their manifest interest to disclaim. It was this false move which reallv weakened them and strengthened Rome, but this view was greatly obscured by the fact that the Reforma¬ tion was partly fought to enable them to have a Bible at all, or printed in the vernacular tongue. It was this mistake, in part, that led them to con¬ done divorce, because it was Scripture text. The advantage was clearly to the Roman church, which was right in the prohibition of all divorce: and it suited Rome to point to this above Scripture as in¬ fallible and as a rebuke to the m<*nstrous rebellion against its authority. The entire structure of the Roman Catholic Church with all its pretensions and history for the last 1,600 years stands upon these few words as its foundation. They are a beautiful illustration of the fallibility of Scripture. The doctrine of authority of Scripture has been largely overworked and it has had its da}\ It has been very convenient when any fraud was to be per- 66 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery petrated on the world. The only reason why we should ever yield to any authority, whether we find it in the Bible, the Church or the decrees of a Court, or in the opinions of mankind, is that it appeals to our sense of truth and that our intelli¬ gence and our consciences approve of it. An enlightened consciousness is the court of last resort; the Bible may be a great help in this enlightenment, but our consciousness is the test of truth—other¬ wise a host of martyrs have died in vain. It would not be a wise thing to adopt the Bible in the public schools. It would inevitably be abused by one interest or the other, and it would produce divisions and dissensions that would be mischievous. The spirit of Christianity, however, can be intro¬ duced in the schools by the teachings of ethics and good citizenship, which means unselfishness and altruism. All legal objections might be obviated perhaps, if some part of the Scriptures should be taught and memorized as good morals and good literature. A manual might be prepared avoiding everything that could be possibly controversial and containing excerpts from the Scriptures such as the 19th, 23rd, 90th, 91st or other Psalms; the first seven chapters of Proverbs; the Sermon on the Mount and the 13th of First Corinthians; together with a few choice selections from literature incul¬ cating good morals and patriotism such as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The Bible 67 The fallibility of Scripture may be threefold. It may consist in interpolations which may be actual forgeries as in the case of Matthew XIX-9; or in false interpretation as in Matthew XVI-18, just referred to,—(and by the way, this Scripture does not appear in Mark, which is the oldest gospel, or in Luke, or in John) ; or thirdly in false doctrines. When Paul says that: “By one man sin entered into the world,” he was certainly mistaken, and he would thus lay the foundation for his structure of the¬ ology. He did not mean the typical man, for he refers to one man, meaning Adam, and had in mind the story of the temptation of Eve and the supposed Fall of man through Adam. If he had meant man generally, it would have been unobjectionable, and he would not have mentioned one man, nor would it have served his purpose to speak of anything but one man. He thus commits himself to the idea of a fiat creation of a first pair of human beings, which in itself would be a harmless misstatement of a scientific fact. But he also commits a theological error. Sin never came into the world by one man, but every man who has the beginnings of, or de¬ veloped, a spiritual consciousness has brought his share. The Cave man or the bushman of Australia has never known sin, for he lacks the capacity to know what sin is. Paul himself says: “For by the law is the knowledge of sin”; and “For where no law is there is no transgression.” The animal man has 68 The Bible and Scriptural iDivorce Forgery no sin until a moral and spiritual consciousness is developed, which comes slowly. Sin may be defined to be the result of the conflict between the animal and the spiritual nature, where the animal in the man overcomes his spiritual promptings, and where the spiritual nature consciously yields to the animal man. This conflict between the animal and the divine nature in man is graphically described by Paul in Romans, seventh chapter. The first spiritual statement of truth in the Bible is, that God made man in His own image and likeness. But He also made him an animal with the potentiality of becoming Divine when his spiritual consciousness is awakened and the “Christ be formed within” him. There never was a fall of man for the reason that there never was a time when man was not more or less of an animal. In our present stage of existence we are obliged to have animal bodies and animal passions, and the entire purpose of growth of Christian character is not to destroy that which God has given us, but to put the body and all evil passions under bonds, and keep them under the subjection of the Spirit. The body is the temple wherein the Holy Spirit may dwell, and should be kept holy and undefiled. The body can be subject to the Holy Spirit; but as Paul says, “The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be.” There is a great difference. The Bible 69 The doctrine of election is an excrescence upon Christianity, as being entirely useless and unneces¬ sary, and also foreign to Christianity, in the fact that it is pagianistic. It is twofold paganism; firstly, that it is capricious, and secondly, in its cruelty by which it damns the great majority of mankind to eternal destruction and torment. So also, as the end and aim of religion, the idea of re¬ wards and punishments. True Christianity would treat these two things as incidental to something greater and more worthy. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. . . . Moreover by them is thy servant warned and in keeping of them is great reward,” but the conversion of the soul is its own reward. Some religion is only a higher kind of selfishness. It is said by Gibbon that when Chris¬ tianity began to be an influence in Rome, the old patrician and altruistic idea of service to the State fell into desuetude because every Christian was self¬ ishly thinking of nothing but saving his own soul. It is not the mission of Christianity to send people to Heaven as its only aim, but far better, to form and develop character after the pattern and spirit of Jesus Christ and to make noble and true men and women. Furthermore, the idea of salvation by faith alone, or what is called justification by faith, when carried to an extreme is also entirely paganistic. Belief in a belief never saved anybody; there must be something and much besides. There must not 70 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery only be a certain faith, but there must be the patient growth and development of character to express that faith. There is a certain side of all orthodoxy that is true, because it is a perversion of truth itself; but extreme orthodoxy verges on paganistic ideas. We see this in its extreme and material views of heaven and hell; a set judgment day; in certain phases of the Atonement which dishonor God, by which He has to be appeased by a blood sacrifice. That is not a Christian idea, but distinctly Jewish. When Paul says: “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,” he gives us an extreme view in poetical form, but it is not a fact, and the true Atonement of Jesus Christ will bear no such con¬ struction. Extreme orthodoxy is for the ignorant and for people who do not think. They trust in words and phrases and miss the higher spirit of truth. Christianity has had to carry a heavy load of things which do not belong to it and degrade it because we have not known how to read Scripture properly. The church has relegated to destruction the vast majority of mankind; people of different race or color; people of other churches than our own; people who differ from us in religious beliefs; and people who were not elected from the foundation of the world. The comminitary psalms are respon¬ sible for much of this, and they are not fit to be read in a Christian church. The New Testament is The Bible 71 also responsible in part, but is much misunderstood. It is grotesque to see kindly Christian people taking a smug satisfaction in the fate of the wicked, which they speak of so glibly, when the godly and the elect are to meet Jesus Christ “in the air” at His second coming. The so-called heathen people have nothing in their history or their literature in regard to a future state that is quite so barbaric as that which is still preached from Christian pulpits, and which only a generation ago was very common. The heathen poet Virgil in his sixth ^Eneid is much more Christian and certainly much more philosophic when he describes the purgative pro¬ cesses which the soul undergoes; the passage of the waters of Lethe and the final wait in the Elysian fields preparatory to the continuity of life by re¬ birth ; a process of a thousand years; which may be repeated thousands of times. This is of course all speculation, so far as methods of these processes go; but there is no speculation as to the fact of a process, and we are at liberty to use our reason as to the best guess. The difference between souls at birth can only be thus accounted for. It is the process of the realization of David’s prayer: “The Lord will perfect that which concemeth me: Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever; forsake not the work of thine own hands.” It is inconceivable that God can ever damn any- 72 The Bible and Scriptural (Divorce (Forgery thing that He has created, unless we ascribe to Him a moral character entirely inferior to our own. Nothing ever was, or ever can be finally lost, not even force or energy, much less a soul. We punish ourselves, or God punishes us and we may lose our¬ selves for a time, but God loses us never. We can¬ not escape from Him, and He is always with us. “If I ascend up into heaven Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell behold Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter¬ most parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.” The final loss or the final destruction of the soul is an unchristian doctrine. The immortality of the soul is a thoroughly Christian teaching. As to the con¬ ditions of the future existence of the soul the Bible teaches us nothing with any certainty, and nobody knows anything about it. No one has ever come from the world of the dead to tell us anything, and there is every reason to believe that no one ever will, or that it would not be an injury to us if he did. But believing in the continuity of existence it is reasonable to conjecture what the stages of another life may be when we are out of this body, and what are the means and methods by which our spiritual growth and development shall be accomplished; for no man is finished in moral or spiritual growth at his death; it is at best only a guess, but the best guess is that the evolution of a soul can only be The Bible 73 secured through Karma (there is no other English word that means exactly the same)—and reincarna¬ tion. Karma is simply the law of cause and effect. If we make good Karma we are laying up store for a blessed future life; if bad Karma we must pay a penalty here or hereafter, and there is no escape, to the uttermost farthing. Reincarnation is simply rebirth in a body in order to give the soul the oppor¬ tunity of development by experience. What other rational guess is left to us ? This is most wholesome Christian doctrine, and should be preached in every pulpit as the only one possible thing that is rational. It is not only good sense, but it is in accord with the teachings of Paul and Jesus Christ; and not only with the spirit but the letter of Scripture. Paul says, “Be not deceived, for God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. If he shall sow to the flesh he will of the flesh reap corruption. If he shall sow to the spirit he will of the spirit reap life everlasting.” But the question arises, if a man sows to the flesh all his life and is material and worldly, but does not abuse his body, and dies full of honors and success, when and where is he to reap corruption of the flesh? This text necessarily implies Karma and reincarnation to make it intelligible. Jesus also teaches the law of Karma in Matthew V-25. This text has nothing to do with civil magistrates, and the word adversary, which is 74 Flie Bible and Scriptural (Divorce Forgery correctly translated from the Greek means the in¬ ward witness, the accuser, the conscience. Ortho¬ doxy has no use whatever for this Scripture and gives it a wide birth, but the law of Karma could not be more concisely stated. Jesus also teaches rein¬ carnation in the rebirth of Elijah as John the Bap¬ tist. The last chapter of Malachi refers to the com¬ ing again of Elijah. He was reborn as John about one thousand years later. Jesus said John was actu- ally Elijah, Matthew XVII-12. The angel prophe¬ sied before his birth that John should come in the spirit and power of Elijah, and well he might, for he was Elijah, and after he had been beheaded, Jesus stated the fact. John was the spitten image of Elijah in mind and body, habits and character. Reincarnation opens the question as to whether there is a purgatorial state for every soul after death. There is sufficient Scripture to warrant the statement that Jesus descended into purgatory, or into hell as the Apostles’ Creed states, to preach to the spirits that were in prison. If there was no Scripture for it, it would be a very reasonable assumption that there was such a state, call it what you please, as a part of the process of the develop¬ ment and discipline of a soul in its continuity of existence, or in other words of its immortality. The Roman Catholic Church has retained this very sen¬ sible doctrine, and because she has abused it and perverted it is no reason why Protestants should The Bible 75 deny it. The denial of it is far less reasonable than the assertion of it, if neither can be proven. Hades contains both hell and paradise, different stages or planes of existence and every soul passes through and beyond one or both of them to more spiritual stages of existence according to its advancement and later the soul seeks rebirth as a necessary means of progress and experience in a physical body. Jesus has said enough on several occasions to warrant these conjectures, and at all events they are per¬ fectly consistent with a true Christianity. The personality of Paul is so intimately connected with Christianity of the First Century, and his per¬ sonal opinions have been so woven into its texture and fabric that it has often happened that Paul himself and his theology has bulked larger than Jesus or the simple teachings of the gospel. Great as he was, one of the great forces in the world, he had his defects and his limitations. His conversion and his zeal has largely changed the world, but his conversion did not materially influence his nation¬ ality, his intellect nor his temperament. A man that could lynch Christians was bound to be a zealous Christian, and such an ardency of disposi¬ tion would inevitably color much of his theology and his intellectual processes. His logic was very won¬ derful even when based on false premises, and he took unwarranted liberty in misusing the Old Testa¬ ment. He seemed to monopolize into his own per- 76 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery sonality the greatness of his work, and was probably not very easy to get along with. But his difficulty with Peter which for a time threatened to perma¬ nently disrupt Christianity was greatly to his credit, and to his great glory, for he thus became the great apostle to the Gentiles, which in that age of the world was of tremendous significance; and contrary to his narrowness in some things, showed a wonderful breadth of mind and character. He had the defects of his qualities and his mistakes were natural. Paul’s personal belief in preterition should not be mistaken for the true spirit of the gospel. When I was a boy, I was interested in the character of Esau, and never thought he had a fair show or a square deal, either at the hands of his parents, to say nothing of Jacob, or of Paul. Great as were the mistakes of this boy in failing to realize the value of his spiritual privileges, a mistake most of us make at times, he surely was not worthy of eternal damna¬ tion, and of being made an awful example for all time, especially when we remember how he was done up by his family. It is true that he would have killed Jacob if he could have caught him; but his anger soon died away. His disposition instead of being soured was mellowed by amiability and a true brotherly affection toward Jacob, a test that few Christian people could have borne successfully. Jacob on the other hand never trusted Esau, because he had wronged him, and he judged Esau wholly by The Bible 77 himself. I know of no other instance in Scripture or in history which furnishes us such an example of a Christian gentleman. I emphasize the word gentleman in his case and also the word Christian, meaning Christian conduct, for these words have a close identity in spite of theology. A true gentle¬ man is hardly discernible from a true Christian by the naked eye. We can very easily forgive Paul considering the fact that he was a Jew, and the kind of a man he was, for lynching Christians; but how can we for¬ give him for damning Esau, and making him the far¬ fetched example of non-election upon the mistaken idea that God had damned him? for this is what Paul’s argument means, if it means anything at all. Poor Esau! to be robbed of his birthright and even of a blessing, and then sent to hell and pilloried for all time by Paul to prove his doctrine of election. The book of Hebrews, which was written by an un¬ known writer, and for the probable purpose of heal¬ ing the rupture in the church between Peter and Paul, has a passage to the effect that Esau found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears, and this text has often been used to certify the fact that Esau’s soul was lost, in view of the fact that God “hated” him. But this writer only means that Esau’s pitiful appeal to his father was denied because the birthright was beyond recall and had nothing to do with the loss of his 78 The Bible and Scriptural JJivorce Forgery soul. And so, if Esau’s soul was lost, the responsi¬ bility seems to rest, certainly not on God, or not on Malachi, although his language was hyperbole, and entirely too florid; and not upon the writer of Hebrews, but upon Paul alone, and in view of his own history he might have given Esau the benefit of a doubt. And it was always a bad habit of Paul to misread and intensify Old Testament literature because of the intensity of his own make-up. Still, we must not hold this against Paul, even if he had a habit of getting ahead of himself in some things, for, did he not write the 13th Chapter of First Corinthians? The pious condemnation of the great majority of the human race, the dooming to eternal destruction of people as good as ourselves though differing in creed, caste or color; the idea of eternal torture of the wicked or even of their annihilation; the hatred of individual criminals, the failure to pity those who need punishment both for themselves and as deter¬ rent examples, is all wrong and un-Christian whether justified by the Bible or not. Jesus never went out of His way to make any special condemnation of polygamy, intemperance or human slavery; yet in His name and in His spirit these things have largely disappeared from the world. But is it not a very significant fact that He did go out of His way or rather took express occa¬ sion to condemn divorce, and all divorce, expressly The Bible 79 in words and by necessary implication in emphasiz¬ ing the Sacrament of Marriage, Mark X-&-1&; and on another occasion He inveighed against the direful effect of divorce upon an innocent woman which He said would cause her to commit adultery. Matthew V-32. Let us now proceed to a critical investigation of the particular Scripture which is represented as con¬ taining a Scriptural ground of divorce, and the examination of everything on that subject contained in the New Testament. CHAPTER III THE BOOK OF MARK This is the oldest Gospel. The following 1 is the only Scripture in this Book which relates to mar¬ riage and divorce. It contains the Sacrament of Marriage. It is worthy of a chapter by itself for the reason that it is a negation of any ground of divorce, and it reads as follows: Chapter X 2 And the Pharisees came to him and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. 3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife: 8 And they twain shall be one flesh; so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 80 The Booh of Mark 81 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. 11 And he said unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adul¬ tery against her. IS And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. CHAPTER IV THE BOOK OF LUKE The only passage in this Book that treats of di¬ vorce is found in Luke XVI-18, which reads as follows: 18 Whosoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery; and whosoever mar¬ rieth her that is put away from her husband com¬ mitteth adultery. This Scripture also calls for a separate chapter. Like the Book of Mark it is most eloquent in its silence, and most impressive in its dearth of a Scrip¬ tural ground of divorce. The way now is clear to focus our attention on Matthew XIX-9, which is forged Scripture, and the only place in the New Testament where the so- called Scriptural ground of divorce is to be found, but first the meaning of Matthew V-32, which has been misunderstood, will be made clear in the follow¬ ing chapter. CHAPTER V MATTHEW V, 31-32 In the Sermon on the Mount appears the follow¬ ing: 31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorcement. 32 But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. This is one of the two passages of Scripture claimed to establish the Scriptural ground of di¬ vorce, which is adultery. Neither one will support that claim; the one just quoted will not, because it is a condemnation of divorce, instead of an approval; and the other because it is a forgery—* and both of these statements can easily be estab¬ lished as true, as will presently appear in the present and in the following chapter. The above is genuine Scripture, the other in Matthew XIX is not. This Scripture is correctly translated, as well as genuine. It is very confusingly expressed, and is 83 84 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery a veritable Chinese puzzle. On its first serious read¬ ing it seems to be nonsense; for how can a man’s putting away his wife cause her to commit adultery? But knowing that Jesus never talked nonsense, we try again and again to unravel its obscurity. After reading it scores of times, with the words, “saving for the cause of fornication,” buzzing in our ears like a Mother Goose jingle, we either give it up or con¬ clude that it has something to do with divorce, al¬ though it does not say that a man has a right to divorce his wife for adultery. Probably not one per¬ son in ten thousand ever got so far as to find out that there was any puzzle in it. Out of a hundred Protestant ministers probably one hundred read this passage as they have always read it as boys, or as they have been taught to read it by their instructors, precisely as a parrot speaks his words, and would say as a matter of course that these words mean a Scriptural ground of divorce, though they say nothing of the kind. They would say: Are not these words, “saving for the cause of fornication,” sufficient proof, and is not that the end of the matter? And thereupon, like the clam when disturbed, they close their shells, and approve of a Scriptural ground of divorce. The writer con¬ fesses that he himself was very stupid in the matter, and after determining to make an honest and thorough investigation of the whole subject it was Matthew V , 31-32 85 months before the real meaning of this confusing Scripture dawned upon him. Now let us investigate this passage together. To do so we must know why this Scripture was spoken, what were its connections, and what was in the mind of Jesus at the time. An examination of Matthew V will show that in this same connection Jesus was repudiating a lot of things that the law of Moses sanctioned. Divorce was one of them. In this case He was not speaking of divorce itself, but only of the effect of divorce upon a woman, and that an innocent woman. But we must understand what was in the mind of Jesus if we would understand His words. In the first place, in verse 31 He refers to Deu¬ teronomy XXIV. In the next He distinctly repudiates that law of Moses by the use of the word “But” in verse 32, and in Matthew XIX-8 He states it more fully and em¬ phatically, that the law of Moses was not the law of God in respect to divorce, giving His detailed and specific reasons for saying so, and cutting up all divorce of every kind by the roots. In the next place, after repudiating the law of Moses He begins by referring to the many but switches off to a statement about a woman , and the effect that divorce will have upon her. He is no longer concerned about divorce generally and dis- 86 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery misses it to consider the case of a woman, and an innocent woman, not one guilty of fornication, but a woman whose only fault was that perhaps she had burnt her husband’s broth. If he divorced such a woman, as he had the right to do under the law of Moses, he “causeth her to commit adultery.” This would be because he turned her out of his house and exposed her either to become a prostitute in order to make her living, or thereby causing her to find another husband, which the law of Moses allowed her to do, but which Jesus said the law of God for¬ bade, as it was adultery to do so, both in her and the man who would marry her after she was di¬ vorced. Now it is evident that Jesus did not have in mind, and made no statement whatever concerning a guilty woman who had committed fornication, for if He did, her husband divorcing her would not cause her to commit adultery. If she was already an adul- tress, divorcing her would not make her one. In this case her husband would not cause her to com¬ mit adultery. It was only the innocent woman He was pleading for against a barbarous law that He condemned, and the divorce of such a woman would drive her to another marriage or to prostitution. How can anybody maintain that this passage of Scripture says that a man may divorce a guilty woman, when He was not talking about a guilty woman; and we have seen that this passage is mere Matthew V , 31-32 87 nonsense if a guilty woman was meant. We know that Jesus never talked nonsense. If divorce would have such an effect upon a woman, that it would cause her to commit adultery, whether innocent or guilty, who is going to claim that Jesus favored or approved of such wickedness? Remember it is the divorce that causeth the adultery. Does Jesus approve of divorce that causeth adul¬ tery ? Even though it might be claimed that Jesus was talking about a guilty woman who had committed fornication (which is nonsense), it will hardly be claimed that He approved of her husband’s divorc¬ ing her, if such divorce causeth her to commit adul¬ tery, and is Jesus to be held responsible for such a divorce producing such effects? To say that this Scripture contains any Scrip¬ tural ground of divorce for adultery even by the remotest implication is to torture it all out of shape and read into it with a jingle of words, what is not there. It is good Scripture, spoken for a holy and beneficent purpose by One who did not think the Bible infallible. It was only a humane plea and a protest. The clergy and the church have made this passage serve a bad cause and vicious public morals. This passage of Matthew V-32, may be para¬ phrased to give a clear idea of its meaning as fol¬ lows : “Whosoever shall put away his wife, unless she is 88 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery already an adultress y causeth her to commit adul¬ tery.” It will be admitted that the words, “unless she is already an adultress,” and “saving for the cause of fornication,” are exact equivalents and mean precisely the same thing, except that the for¬ mer makes the meaning a little more plain. It will then be seen that the words, “saving for the cause of fornication,” are merely used as a description of the kind of woman, one being guilty and the other innocent. These words have a meaning in Matthew V-32, which they do not have in Matthew XIX-9, although they^ are almost the same. In one case they are descriptive of a woman, in the other an intended exception to divorce. In this one case they are honest and in the other not so, as we will show pres¬ ently. This passage of Matthew V, 31-32, may be more freely paraphrased as follows in the supposed words of Jesus: I am aware that you have a law of Moses which allows a man to put away his wife if she finds no favor in his eyes because he hath found some un¬ cleanness in her; and he may simply give her a writ¬ ing of divorcement and send her away, and she may marry again with another man, although she may not put away her husband for any cause. This has been the law of the Commonwealth of Israel for about 1,500 years. It is a hard and cruel law, but it is the law of the land and I have no power to change it. The word uncleanness has been variously inter- Matthew V , 31-32 89 preted. The School of Shammai holds that the word means, or should mean, some very grave fault or vice; while the School of Hillel holds that a man may divorce his wife for any cause however small, as for instance, should she “burn his broth.” In either case this is not and never was the law of God. But I say unto you, if you must divorce your wives under this unholy law, which is all wrong, I pray you, do not divorce an innocent woman; for if you do, you turn her out upon the street to make a living as she can, and you will drive her to become the wife of another man by which they will both become adul¬ terers in spite of what the law of Moses allows, or she will be driven to prostitution, and in either case you will cause her to commit adultery. Jesus was always kind and tender with women, and this Scripture was nothing more or less than a humane plea. This is the only construction that this passage will allow, or by which it can be made intelligible. And what is to be thought of the brains and the spiritual discernment that would see in this Scrip¬ ture any justification for divorce on the ground of adultery, when it contains in express words the reprobation of the Scriptural ground of divorce in the Old Testament, which is the law of Moses, and also a reprobation of the thing that causes adultery P Yet sermons in Christian pulpits have actually been preached from Matthew V-32, approving and justifying divorce for adultery. A few years ago a 90 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery very prominent minister preached from this passage, and the character of the whole amazing performance may be judged by the opening sentence of his printed sermon, which was as follows: “The Presbyterian Church of the United States recognizes two Scrip¬ tural grounds of divorce,” which he explained to be adultery and desertion. In the first place this pas¬ sage which he took for his text reprobates divorce, as we have just seen; and in the second, it was news to the Presbyterian Church as well as to the world that this body of Christians were so liberal in the matter of divorce. One Scriptural ground of divorce is too many, but if we are to have two Scriptural grounds of divorce, why not be democratic enough to include a third for incompatibility and another for horse-stealing? CHAPTER VI MATTHEW XIX-9 There is no doubt that there was a Scriptural ground of divorce in the Old Testament and we have seen how Jesus repudiated it in Matthew V-82, and in Mark X-ll, and in Luke XVI-18. It only re¬ mains to investigate whether He made any exception in Matthew XIX-9, which is the only Scripture text that can be found in the New Testament to support such a claim. The whole question of divorce, for any and every cause, including adultery, all narrows itself down and rests upon Matthew XIX-9. We have disposed of the other false claim in the preced¬ ing chapter, and now the gauge of battle rests upon a single verse of the Scripture last mentioned, and the critical intelligence of the reader is once more challenged for a decisive- bout to determine whether or not this Scripture is forged. If so, then there is no such thing as a Scriptural ground of divorce, and the mantle of religion should no longer be thrown around this iniquity that has established itself in the church and debauched marriage and public morals. The Gospel of St. John does not refer to divorce. 91 92 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery St. Mark lays down the spiritual law against it, without exception. St. Luke delivers a broadside volley against it which sweeps the whole field. St. Matthew is the only one of the four gospels where this bogus Scripture appears. The other two Gos¬ pels, St. Mark and St. Luke, are squarely against St. Matthew. Presently we will set St. Matthew versus St. Matthew and thus drive this wretched fraud into a comer to be confronted with the light of truth. Matthew XIX-9, reads as follows: 3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 4, And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then com¬ mand to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hard¬ ness of 3 r our hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry Matthew XIX -9 93 another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery. Forgery is defined by the law as “The fraudulent making or alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man’s right.” From this technical definition we pass to other kinds of forgeries, for there are many kinds: such as forgeries in literature, paint¬ ing, art, and even old furniture, which are fraudu¬ lent. The palming off of anything as genuine which is false constitutes the essential character of any kind of forgery which is always fraudulent—the in¬ tent is to deceive, and profit by the deception. Another necessary observation as to forgery is that in the case of writings, especially such as financial obligations or contracts, a forgery may consist in erasure or omissions, quite as much as in additions. The manipulation of a note or contract, by which any part is omitted which changes its char¬ acter is also a forgery. As an illustration, the writer, years ago, had connection with a case of forgery where a man borrowed a thousand dollars on a property already encumbered by a mortgage to its full value. He effected this by procuring an ab¬ stract of title of the property, and by eliminating from it the prior encumbrance. Being regular upon its face, and there being nothing to show the omis¬ sion of the prior mortgage, the abstract was approved by an attorney, and the money loaned. 94 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery The fraud was soon discovered, the criminal was arrested in a distant State and extradited, convicted and sent to the Penitentiary for a term of years. The man who omitted some original words in Mat¬ thew XIX-9 and inserted something else perpetrated a fraud equally cunning in changing the words of Jesus, and the two cases are to all intents and pur¬ poses alike. The Revisors of the New Testament were a body of men chosen from England and the United States, thirty-eight (38) in all, for their learning and scholarship, and began their work about 1870 and finished in eleven years. They had access to all the ancient versions of the books of the New Testament; and it is amazing to see from their marginal notes how many changes, important or otherwise, that the four gospels have suffered in all their many and respective versions. Matthew XIX-9 is only one of hundreds. Yet its importance, owing to the impor¬ tance of the subject, makes it conspicuous. On the margin of verse nine in the revised version are the words: “Some ancient authorities read, ‘Sav- ing for the cause of fornication maketh her an adultress,’ as in Matthew V-32.” Now in King James’ version you have in verse nine a Scriptural ground of divorce, but the Revisors have shown us that there are other ancient versions of this ninth verse, which contradict King James’ version, and give us something entirely different and Matthew XIX-9 95 which, if true Scripture, forever dispose of a Scrip¬ tural ground of divorce. Somebody has committed a forgery. Either the King James’ version was the original and these ancient versions have been forged to read exactly like Matthew V-32 ; or, one of these ancient versions was the original and has been altered to read as verse nine does in our own Bible, making the Sciiptural ground of divorce there contained a forgery. Which O is most likely, and which is the true Scripture? So far as we are informed there is no other ver¬ sion like King James’. “Some ancient authorities,” does not mean one but are several, perhaps three, and these three are supported by Matthew V-33. Here is Matthew vs. Matthew, which at the very least, puts the existence of a “Scriptural ground of Divorce” in doubt. It is under suspicion, and it is now on the defensive—the burden of proof rests upon it. The testimony, however, is not in equilibria , for these several ancient versions are directly against King James’ one, and Matthew V-32 furnishes another witness which while indirect is of tremendous corroborative importance. All Scripture, and every verse of Scripture that is Catholic and genuine should read alike in the differ¬ ent versions, semper 1 eadem et ubique. If it does not so read, it has been tampered with and corrupted by accident, mistake or fraud. Matthew XIX-9 has 96 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery been tampered with fraudulently. The question is, should this verse read as it does in King James’ ver¬ sion, or as it does in the ancient authorities referred to, and Matthew V-32? Which one is fraudulent? We have verse nine in King James’ version stand¬ ing alone without any support of corroboration. It is made in conjunction with and immediately after the statement of the spiritual law and Sacrament of Marriage, which it contradicts and wholly nullifies, and which is ignored by Protestantism. The motive for the forgery and its disastrous results is with King James’ version. It is coupled with spurious Scripture which imme¬ diately follows it. On the other hand, we have possibly a dozen, but at least three ancient authorities which make verse nine read exactly like Matthew V-32, which we have before discussed, and which we have seen is honest Scripture and with a good and holy purpose. Every one of these authorities condemns divorce and makes no exception. If King James’ version of verse nine is genuine, how came there at least three ancient authorities to be altered so as to read like Matthew V-32; and what would have been the motive? There would be none. A man may be pretty well known by his associates and the kind of company he keeps; and so when a verse of Scripture that has been the subject of a Matthew XIX-9 97 forgery, the bad motive of which is apparent is found in bad company, the fact does not help it, but only confirms our convictions. The passages immediately following in King James’ version the Scriptural ground of divorce relates to eunuchs, and we do not need the Revisors of the New Testament to tell us that this drivel is not the words of Jesus Christ, and that many ancient authorities omit this passage also. This passage about eunuchs, like the Scriptural ground of divorce, is confined solely to the Book of Matthew. It is not in any of the other books, nor in any version of Matthew, save King James’, so far as we know. Neither one of these tramp Scripture verses helps the other when they are arrested in each other’s company and are in the Police Court. I venture to guess that the man who corrupted Matthew XIX-9, and made adultery a ground of divorce was a eunuch. Another fact is well known among scholars and Bible critics. There was a Greek version of Matthew, and no doubt it affected every Greek ver¬ sion of that writer, that was full of interpolations, corruptions and errors; more so than any of the other books of the New Testament. But without this general statement or charge, we can afford to confine ourselves to the single specification that Matthew XIX-9 contradicts itself, and that there are many other versions, of clean character and upiight motive so far as divorce is concerned, which opposes verse 98 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery nine of King James’ version, which so far as known stands alone with no support. Let us put Matthew XIX-9, according to some ancient authorities side by side with the same verse in King James’ version : Some ancient versions and as it should read, like Matthew V-3S: And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, caus- eth her to commit adul¬ tery ; and whosoever shall marry her that is di¬ vorced committeth adul¬ tery. King James’ version: And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her that is put away doth commit adultery. It will be observed that these two versions of verse nine differ in toto ccelo. In the first is the effect that divorce has upon an (innocent) woman. The second relates to the man alone. In the first it is the putting away his wife that is the sin. In the second it is not the putting away his wife that is the sin, but his re¬ marriage unless he put his wife away for adultery. The words, “except it be for fornication,” are genu¬ ine Scripture and are common to both. The forgery consists in leaving out the words, “causeth her to commit adultery”—talking about the man alone in- Matthew XIX -9 99 stead of the woman, and giving the words, “saving for the cause of fornication,” a meaning in King James’ version that it did not have in the original, for we showed in the last chapter that the words of genuine Scripture in Matthew V-32, were necessary to describe not a guilty, but an innocent woman, and no such distinction is applicable in the forged Scrip¬ ture, for it relates only to the man. This is one of the most cunning and slickest frauds that could be imagined. It surpasses in fine work the fixing up and doctoring of an abstract title. The writer at one time, fell into the mistake of thinking that the forgery in Matthew XIX-9 con¬ sisted in the insertion of the words, “saving for the cause of fornication,” as they might have been inserted in Luke XVI-18, as follows: Luke XVI-18—Genuine: Luke XVI-18, if forged: Whosoever putteth away his wife and mar- rieth another, commit- teth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery. Whosoever putteth away his wife “saving for the cause of fornica¬ tion” and marrieth an¬ other, committeth adul¬ tery ; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery. But I was wrong. The skill and ingenuity of this forger consisted in making the words, “saving for the 100 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery cause of fornication,” in Matthew XIX-9 have a meaning that they did not have in Matthew V-32, by omitting what came after them. The man who did that had a cunning brain, and he would have been a dangerous man in manipulating an abstract of Title. The XIX chapter of Matthew is very remarkable for what it contains in contrast with the alleged Scriptural ground of divorce, and in contradiction of it. For in marshalling our witnesses and authority of reasons against a Scriptural ground of divorce, the most overwhelming proof of its falsity is the words of Jesus Christ immediately preceding it. The chapter gives a hostile interview between the Phari¬ sees and Jesus, who hoped to entrap Him, and the same interview is given in almost identical words in Mark X (except that Mark has no Scriptural ground of divorce which cannot be accounted for ex¬ cept on the theory that it is a fraud). Jesus repudiates the law of Moses as to all divorce and explains at length to them the Sacrament of Marriage, by which two become one and the twain would become one flesh. He was teaching spiritual and not physical truth, for the twain could only be¬ come one flesh in a spiritual sense. The Sacrament of Marriage, and the spiritual and religious nature of marriage has never been so comprehensively and so concisely stated as it has been in those memorable words. He declares the absolute indissolubility of the Holy bond of marriage and lays down the law Matthew XIXM 101 that what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. He leaves no ground for doubt or excep¬ tion in this sweeping statement of spiritual prin¬ ciples, and after denouncing the law of Moses as not being the law of God He settles divorce forever by stating what marriage was from the “Beginning” of Creation and what it should be until the end of time. He stated this so succinctly and circumstantially that any qualification of it, however small, would not be an exception but a denial of the principle He laid down; and the Scripture bears witness within itself that there can be no violation of any part of it with¬ out the destruction of the Sacrament of Marriage. This being so we need not follow the sinuosities of a forger’s mind, or measure the truth of the Sacrament of Marriage which was established before there were any Bibles, by the little two-foot rule of Scripture text. If we believe in the Sacrament of Marriage as Jesus believed in it, we know that there could not be any such thing as divorce, Scripture or no Scrip¬ ture, for the one excludes the other, and each is inconsistent with the other. Then after the Sacrament of Marriage follows, or rather should follow in the genuine Scriptures the humane plea for the mitigation of the cruelty by the law of Moses to an innocent woman, which this forger has profanely manipulated. Any one who has any literary perception can at once detect the false note. Instead of the natural summing up with 102 The Bible and Scriptural i. Divorce Forgery which Jesus ends in this ninth verse by asking for a humane administration of the law of Moses for an innocent woman, as he did in Matthew V-32, it ends in an anti-climax, and violence is done to the context both in its letter and spirit. The forgery being established beyond all contra¬ diction by the Revisors of the New Testament, the only possible pretext or loophole of escape, after the admission of the fraud, for the Scriptural ground of divorce, would be to claim that all those ancient authorities were forged, and that the ninth verse of King James’ version is the true reading. But this again would present such an array of impossibilities as to make such a claim hopeless. If there were a score of versions similar to that of Kino- James’ to offset the many or few ancient authorities that read like Matthew V-32, it would still be hopeless. Each of the ancient authorities would have to be sep¬ arately forged, without any conceivable motive, and as the case stands it would be easier to forge the King James’ version, with a ver}^ definite motive for the same, than these three ancient authorities with¬ out anv. And then what about the weight of the rest of Scripture? Mark and Luke, and even Mat¬ thew V-32. Everything combines to establish the fraud in Matthew XIN-9 of King James’ version. There are some other considerations which have a general bearing on this subject. In Matthew XIX, 3-9 we have a wonderfully sublime statement Matthew XIX-9 103 of a spiritual law of the sacrament of marriage es¬ tablished from the Beginning of Time. God’s laws, unlike human laws are absolutely perfect and admit of no exception. Did Jesus have any power, or would it have been possible for him to vary or make an exception to any law of truth or righteousness? Was it possible for him to make a civil and human exception to a law which he distinctly declared was a law of God from the foundation of the world? Is it possible for God to violate His own law? This requires no answer. Could there be an exception to a Sacrament, especially if the exception would destroy it? This is absurd and unthinkable. To make adultery a sufficient cause to set aside the Sacrament of Marriage, is to give civil laws a superiority over spiritual law, and to despiritualize marriage. Adultery is a crime punishable by civil law, but it should have no power to break the bond of marriage, nor has it any more power to do so than any of the many causes of divorce under the civil law. It is the greatest offence against the laws of marriage as ordered by the State, but in foro ecclesia , it cannot be and is not so. If adultery is sufficient to break the bond of marriage, why should not cruelty, vice, wickedness and crime gen¬ erally, be also sufficient and why a dividing line? If the answer be that adultery invades the very sanctity of marriage, then we rise from the civil court to the spiritual where 104 The Bible and Scriptural [Divorce Forgery There is no shuffling; There the action lies in his true nature, and the reply to such an appeal is that the suitor to the Spiritual Court does not come with clean hands or a pure heart, for he takes advantage of the crime of another to absolve himself from a vow. Adultery, by whomsoever committed, must not im¬ pair the Sacrament of Marriage. Such an appeal to sanctity would make sanctit}^ non-existent, if the appeal is entertained. Which should prevail—the Sacrament of Marriage, or divorce, for each one is destructive of the other? An exception to a principle, if admitted will often destroy that principle. An exception to truth, honor, righteousness is dangerous or fatal to truth, honor and righteousness. Truth admits of no com¬ promise. Lord Mansfield who sat as Chief Justice in the Court of Kings’ Bench in England about two hundred 3 r ears ago, decided to the great glory of England that any slave who set foot on English soil, whether in England or any of her Colonies was from that moment a free man, thereby deciding a great prin¬ ciple to the effect that English law could not recog¬ nize such a thing as slavery. Suppose that fifty years afterwards some African slave trader had written that Lord Mansfield’s decision contained an exception to the effect that every slave that touched Matthew XIX -9 105 English soil should be free except criminals. Would anybody believe such a thing inasmuch as such an exception would be a total denial of Lord Mans¬ field’s principle, and as a principle, destroy it alto¬ gether? Abraham Lincoln held slavery in abomina¬ tion, and as a thing everlastingly wrong, when he said that there was no man living who was good enough to hold another man in bondage. Suppose some one would represent him as saying that slavery was everlastingly wrong and no man was good enough to hold another man in bondage unless the slave happened to be a negro. Who for one moment would believe such an absurd story? and if Mr. Lincoln had ever said such a thing, what would his principles in regard to slavery have been worth? Now Jesus held divorce in abomination, and that it was everlastingly wrong “from the Beginning” as He said; and that no man could break the bond of marriage, giving His reasons therefor, and at the same tiinb setting aside the law of Moses which allowed divorce for adultery, and said that this was not the law of God. And suppose some man, we care not whether it was some stupid blunderer or a eunuch, or a forger, or even if it w T as St. Matthew himself should state that Jesus made an exception of adultery in Matthew XIX-9, why should we not instantly declare that the statement was false? Why should we suppose that Jesus could be guilty of aberration from a great principle by practically 106 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery denying it, and why should we not think that He would not be more true to the eternal principle of righteousness than even Mr. Lincoln or Lord Mans¬ field ? The purpose of this treatise is to show the fraud¬ ulent nature of Matthew XIX-9, and incidentally to give an intelligible and true meaning to Matthew Y-32. This is what was promised, and this is what has been fully achieved and performed. The evi¬ dence is overwhelming, and for convenience it is here given in concise form by way of recapitulation, as follows:— 1 The statement of the Revisors of the New Tes¬ tament that a number of ancient versions make Matthew XIX-9 read precisely like Matthew V-32. This establishes the forgery, as they are totally unlike and contradictory. ^ There would be no conceivable motive for changing the reading of Matthew XIX-9, as it is m King James’ version to read like these several or many “ancient versions” which read like Matthew V"32, proving that these ancient authorities were not forged versions. 3 There is a definite specific motive for the change of one of these “ancient authorities,” to read like Matthew XIX-9 as it is in King James’ version, namely, to nullify and destroy the teaching of Jesus with reference to marriage, the Sacrament of Mar¬ riage and His prohibition of all divorce, in the context. Matthew XIX -9 107 4 The forgery of one version, that of King James’, which stands alone, was easier than the for¬ gery of a number of ancient versions, to which the forger, naturally could never have access, even if he knew of their existence. 5 The forgery consists in leaving out what was said about the woman, and instead of being merely a humane plea making it read as an exception to divorce. 6 There cannot be sugIi an exception to a spiritual law. It can be reverently said that God and Jesus Christ have no pow T er to violate spiritual laws, or the Sacrament of Marriage. 7 The Sacrament of Marriage cannot admit of such a thing as an exception. 8 This forged Scripture of Matthew XIX-9 is immediately followed in the same chapter by other forged Scripture relating to eunuchs, which also does not appear in these genuine ancient authorities. 9 King James’ version, so far as we know, stands absolutely alone, and unsupported. 10 Against this last fact consider the reasons above given which overwhelmingly show the forgery, and also the fact that Matthew contradicts Matthew in King James’ version. 11 Also different versions of Matthew contradict each other. 12 Mark squarely contradicts Matthew in King James’ version. 13 Luke does the same. 14 King James’ version makes divorce a divine institution which contradicts good morals and de¬ bauches marriages. 108 The BibU and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery 15 The last and best witness are the words of Jesus Christ Himself, who testifies in Matthew XIX- 2-8; whose true words are found in the ancient authorities, verse 9 of which reads the same as Matthew V-32. CHAPTER VII THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE The following news item appeared in the daily papers a few days ago, and it is very suggestive of the subject of this chapter: CHOOSES TO DIE WITH HIS WIFE WHEN HER FATE IS SEEN TO BE INEVITABLE 1 Train Strikes Coupee in Last Embrace When Woman’s Foot is Caught Inextricably at Chicago Crossing Chicago, Sept. 2.—Fate supervened in the pro¬ saic affairs of William Fitch Tanner last night, allotting him thirty seconds to choose death by remaining with his wife Mary, in the path of a fast passenger train or life by abandoning her. He chose death. They died in each other’s arms. The accident happened on the southbound track of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad at Gage Street crossing, Hubbard Woods. John Miller, 1 By permission of the Chicago Tribune News Dispatch. 109 110 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery flagman, was seriously injured trying to rescue the pair. Three children are left orphans. Mr. Tanner was a cashier in the employ of tne B. & O. Railroad. He was 39 years old and Mrs. Tanner was 38. They had started to attend a motion picture show. It was 8:30 o’clock when they arrived at the Hub¬ bard Woods crossing. They were hurrying across the southbound track, when Mrs. Tanner stopped abruptly. Her husband asked what was the matter. “My foot’s caught,” she said. He found her foot had become wedged between the rail and a board. HEADLIGHT SWEEPS TRACK He reached down to extricate it, but found it resisted all efforts. In the distance, the electric headlight, already sweeping the track, whistled the limited passenger train due in Chicago at 8:40 o’clock. Mr. Tanner called to Miller, who hastened over with his lantern. The two men worked desperately to remove the foot. Mrs. Tanner swooned. This impeded their efforts. They called vainly for help, but the roar of the train drowned their voices. “My God, man,” cried Miller, “it’s hopeless.” “Try again,” shouted Tanner. “We must save her.” The big electric eye of the onrushing locomotive Ill The Sacrament of Marriage had now brought them into direct focus. The cross¬ ing on which the tragedy was being enacted was as brilliantly illuminated as a stage. The roar of the train and vibration of the rail served to revive Mrs. Tanner. She raised herself and called to her husband: “Will, I don’t think you can save me.” He did not hear her. She touched him. He bent over her. She repeated the statement and added: “Will, leave me. The babies and your mother. They-” DRAWS WIFE CLOSE The train was not more than twenty seconds away now. Tanner, half kneeling, placed his arms about her and drew her close to him. She placed her arms about his neck. “I stay with you, Mary,” he said, and closed his eyes. Miller, the flagman, witness to the act of supreme devotion, made one last furious effort to save both. He seized Mrs. Tanner by the shoulders and pulled with the strength of a mad man. His efforts were futile. The man and wife were locked in a death embrace and the added weight was too much for him. But he did not realize that. He continued his efforts, and when the pilot of the engine struck the couple and hurled them fifty feet, he was carried along with them. By a miracle he escaped death, but he sustained a fracture of the right arm and his left leg was so badly crushed it was amputated at the Evanston General Hospital. Miller is expected to recover, but his condition is critical. 112 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery CHILDREN IGNORANT OF LOSS Hubbard Woods has its epic to-day. Behind the quiet easy running life of the north shore suburb there’s a feeling of awe, as if something holy had passed through the streets. People coming into Chicago paid homage at the scene of their death to-day. “This is the place,” said the new flagman. Then there was talk. One woman cried as she looked at it. And then she raised the question that all Chicago discussed to-day —whether the husband should have elected to re¬ main with his wife and make the supreme sacrifice as he did or whether he should have saved himself for the sake of his children. But in the Tanner home the epic wears another air. Three children are playing on the porch with a dog named Rab. A Avhite-haired old woman sits in a chair rocking. She is Mrs. W. D. Chatley, Tanner’s mother. Long ago her husband was killed by a railroad train. Tanner was her onty son and now he’s gone. The children don’t know about last night’s tragedy. No arrangements have been made for the future care of the children, one of the women who spent the morning at the house said. All were awaiting the arrival of Mr. Tanner’s sister from New York. She is expected to arrive here to-morrow. Here is another type of what a marriage should be:— Almost a hundred years ago a young lawyer asked The Sacrament of Marriage 113 a gentleman for liis daughter’s hand in marriage. The father said to his daughter :—“Mary, I do not think it would be wise for you to marry your friend. I think he is likely to die of consumption within six months.” The daughter replied, “Father, you have settled it; then I am going to marry him, to nurse him”; and she did marry him and nursed him until he was seventy years of age, and he died in her arms. They had a large family. Ten children became mature men and women, every one of them living useful and unselfish lives to an unusual degree. The father became a distinguished lawyer, writer and speaker and a lifelong educator. His life was full of usefulness. It was the mother who made his fruitful life possible. “Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land.” She was the woman of Proverbs XXXI. They lived in and for each other. Hundreds of other lives were influenced and moulded by them, and their children rise up and call them blessed. Both of these examples of marriage were the results of ideals which governed these people, moulded their lives and made them a success. And what was the secret of that success? Simply that they had old fashioned ideals and were true to them. Let us for a moment consider the necessity of ideals. When God made man He formed him after a divine ideal that existed in His mind before man came 114 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery into being. “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” And man was made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore endowed with the same capacity of conceiving of things before he creates them, just as he conceives in his mind the idea of a typewriter, or a sewing machine, or a chemical process before he can ma¬ terialize it; or what is still finer and higher, the ability to mould his life so as to make it conform more closely to the divine pattern and image. The ability to idealize is God-like, and derived directly from God Himself as our birthright. If we attain to anything it is because we have ideals, and attain¬ ment is impossible without them. Many people, perhaps most, resent the idea of living for an ideal, at least for one that partakes of a spiritual nature. In their lives, they ignore, or perhaps deny the existence of such a thing, although they may have plenty of others that are sordid or material. They know nothing about a Sacrament of Marriage and would laugh at such a thing. They have no conception of what it means, or what pos¬ sibilities are to be realized from the fact that mar¬ riage is a religion in itself and more than a civil contract, and that when it is held as something sacred, the civil contract becomes obsolete and is merged in something higher, The Sacrament of Marriage 115 The power to idealize is the power to see the divine in everybody about us; to transmute by divine alchemy clay into gold; to see the glory in lives that are to all appearances commonplace. Jesus of Naz¬ areth was a peasant, and had not where to lay His head. Pie was despised and rejected of men. So was Abraham Lincoln by the thoughtless, up to the very last. Both of these men lived for ideals. It required idealists to understand them when they lived on earth. The writer of the Fourth Gospel more than any one else understood Jesus when he identified Him with the Logos, and he himself was an idealist. Mr. Lincoln is justly idealized today and his fame fills the world, but he was just as great, when he was a relatively obscure lawyer in Spring- field, as he was when he carried the burdens of the Civil War and the hopes of humanity. The differ¬ ence is not between the peasant and Jesus the Christ, or not between the country lawyer and the Martyred President, but only in our lack of true vision. Such beings as Jesus of Nazareth and Abraham Lincoln bless and inspire the world by teaching us to be¬ come idealists, and such is the lesson that every martyr has given to the world. The first spiritual truth spoken in Scripture is that man is made in the image and likeness of God. This means every man, although most are entirely unconscious of the fact. He still retains that image because he was so created and could not lose it. His 116 Tlie Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery only real purpose in life is to develop the realization of it. The only way to do that is to work it out in his daily life. There is nothing in the world that can so well develop man’s jnoral and spiritual nature as marriage when he realizes what it means. And this is why it is a Sacrament. Protestantism made a very sorry choice between the Sacrament of Marriage and an infallible Bible, and in doing so it made a double blunder; the first in rejecting the Sacrament of Marriage, and the second in adopting an infallible Bible. As to the latter, it was a choice that was ridiculous when it was not mischievous and harmful. As to the Sacrament of Marriage, it was treason to the Founder of Chris¬ tianity and His direct commands; and whether it was bad morals, (for it was in part), or mere ignorance and stupidity the pitiful result is the same; for the world would have been better off since the Reformation if the Protestant Church had not been responsible for the degradation of marriage. The estate of marriage is not held in high esteem today by the majority of people. It is a jest and a joke with the rabble. Few people have ever heard the idea that there is a religious side to marriage; yet a true marriage, in fact any marriage is essen¬ tially religious, and a religion, whether or not the parties are conscious of the fact. No two people can marry without coming face to face with God and without dealing with divine mysteries. They 117 The Sacrament of Marriage may be as ignorant as animals, yet the fact remains true. There is a divine mystery in the union of souls and the union of bodies. Higher than either is the union of spirit, more or less developed in all human attraction when guided by divine promptings which may consciously ripen into a closer union with the Divine itself. What is a Sacrament? It is defined to be “The outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us and ordained by Jesus Christ.” Every Sacrament contains a divine mystery. Baptism is the outward form of the divine union between the individual and Jesus Christ as repre¬ sented by the Christian church of believers, and is much more than church membership. The Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion is the outward form of the mysterious union between Jesus Christ and His followers who partake of His life and make it their own. Marriage is the outward form of a life union between a man and a woman who choose each other for better or for worse, and who, in its highest ideal consecrate themselves each to the other and to God as a religious act. This is the real marriage, and the only one that will ever bring happiness and will endure through the stress and storms of life. It is something entirely different from mere legal con¬ cubinage as too many regard marriage. Each one of the Sacraments typifies a mystery, a holy union and are necessarily religious in their 118 The Bible and Scriptural \Divorce Forgery nature. Marriage is actually a Holy thing and means consecration, and the surrender of each to the other, and both to God. If poor human nature does not lift itself to this ideal often, it should never cease striving for it. Because we see so much failure is all the more reason why we should hold fast to the ideal as our only anchor. It is fitting and right to surround marriage with outward religious rites and observances, to have it solemnized by a clergyman and in the Church instead of the office of a civil magistrate. Civil marriage should be avoided and regarded as irreligious and vulgar, if not totally indecent. The proclamation of the bans of marriage was a good and wholesome old custom, and greatly conduced to the good of the body politic as well as to the dignity of marriage. The occasion of the celebration of marriage should be attended with all decent observances and conven¬ tions as tending to dignify it, whether in the home or the church, and for the purpose of educating people to understand that marriage at its very foundation is religious. The fact is that the Sacrament of Marriage is the only thing that redeems marriage from animality and legal concubinage. Jesus Christ has made marriage honorable by His example and by His explicit teachings. The Sacra¬ ment of Marriage is explicitly recognized by Him as established, not by Him, but God. “From the Be- The Sacrament of Marriage 119 ginning”—a something which made the “twain one flesh.” “Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh.” Jesus gave a metaphysical and spiritual meaning to these words: in other words He made marriage a religion. Otherwise His statements if understood literally and materially would be absurd, and impossible, for two bodies cannot become one flesh except in a spiritual sense. Materially it could not be a true statement, but as a great spiritual fact it is an explanation and statement of the Sacrament of Marriage. Protestantism has chosen to deny the explicit teaching of Jesus Christ, and says that mar¬ riage is not a sacrament. Is it any wonder that when clergymen are oblivious to this teaching of Jesus, that marriage has become generally debauched and is falling more and more every year, just as the tide of divorce is steadily rising, from the dig¬ nity and sacredness of its high estate? The fault is not so much with the people as with the clergymen and they should be held responsible. There are many people who go through life who know nothing of a true friendship—either such friendship as existed between David and Jonathan, or the highest kind of a friendship as that between a man and a woman which may be found in an ideal marriage. Whether they go through the world unconscious of what they miss, or, on the other hand, have longings which are never satisfied, they are to be pitied for the lack of that which alone makes life 120 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery complete. Selfishness rather than selflessness may deceive for a time; ambition for any worldly success like money or fame may seem to supplant and to usurp love, but in the hnal reckoning life becomes bankrupt without the capacity to love and surrender oneself to another—and love does not necessarily mean to be loved. The friendship of a husband and wife, each supplementing and enriching the other is the highest thing that life can afford. It exceeds all other human love, and the institution is divine. Before the morning stars sang together, and before any human being appeared on earth it was planned by God as the one thing necessary to complete the universe. It holds the divine mysteries of creation, the miracles of physical and spiritual, life for the race which establishes its sacramental nature. The welfare of society and the civil state is involved in it. The home and the influences which should radiate from it, even greater than that of the church, is the hope of the world. Where there is no religion in the home there is none in the church. The home is for the father and the mother and especially for the children; and the kingdom of heaven starts there, as Jesus said. Lo! such the child whose early feet The paths of peace have trod Whose secret heart with influence sweet Is upward turned to God. The Sacrament of Marriage 121 Let us protect and defend the children and the home against the desolation of divorce. Let us also keep, guard and protect the parents. Let us main¬ tain the Sacrament of Marriage in the home, the church and in the state. It is the thing to begin with if we would build noble structures, happy mar¬ riages, fine children, unselfish men and women, noble lives, also the church, also the State. CHAPTER VIII SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS If there was no such thing as divorce allowed there would be fewer improper and careless marriages. If two persons know that they could not divorce each other it would naturally make them more careful as to the future of their union. Not only would there be a mental adjustment to this fact before marriage but especially afterwards. They would know that they had in reality taken each other for better or worse as they should do, and not regard that vow as a mere form of meaningless words. In such case there would be more reason and necessity for harmonizing their differences. There would necessarily be a dif¬ ferent atmosphere of thought. It would save and retrieve many a marriage that otherwise would be wrecked. They would not think of divorce as a safety valve, but would be turned to something better. On the other hand when divorce is allowed the infection will be in the air. Differences may arise from many causes; and irritation give rise to reckless speech and wrongful acts. Instead of having toler- 122 Some Practical Suggestions 123 ance and forbearance with each other, when the fate¬ ful threat—“I’ll get a divorce” is once spoken, there is danger that this poisoned arrow may always leave a barb in the wound. Something has been said that never can be recalled, or at least forgotten. Would it not be well to prevent such a possibility? Divorce promotes and contributes to divorce. If there were no such things as divorce, there would be less cause for it. When husbands and wives have unhappy differences, they would learn that Christian tolerance and forbearance would be the only cure, and instead of hastily breaking the bond of marriage as they suppose, which in the sight of God is impossible, they would naturally seek some modus vivendi which would, unlike divorce, bring them into Christian relations with each other—and thus save a home, their children and themselves from wreck. It is true that there are many marriages that never should have been made. There will often be folly and recklessness, with no thought for the future. Selfishness will play its part, and deception may not be improbable. There may be no foundation whatever, such as would be necessary in an ordinary friendship, and in such case it is not strange that married people, who are governed by passion or feeling alone and not by principle, should pull apart. While such marriages are common, divorce is not the remedy. There are many better ways. There are cases in which a man and woman should 124 The Bible and Scriptural JDivorce Forgery not live with each other, but these will not be common especially if there should be no divorce, for the impossibility of divorce would tend to draw them together. But when there is no hope of this pos¬ sibility, where wickedness, cruelty and crime make life together an improper thing for husbands, wives and children, then as a last extremity they should live apart, but not divorce each other. A legal separation should be had if absolutely necessary, but never a divorce. A divorce is a separation a vinculo matrimonii or from the bond of matrimony. It may provide ali¬ mony either to the husband or wife, also for the custody of children and it permits either party to marry again, no matter what crimes may have been committed against the married state, thus often spreading moral infection through a community not only by the divorce but by new marriages often as immoral as the first which has been violated. A legal separation affords every benefit that is found in divorce, except that it does not allow the parties to remarry. It is called a mensa et thoro; or separation from bed and board. This kind of judicial separation requires that the parties should live apart, without interference from each other— and it also provides for alimony to husband or wife and for the custody of children. This kind of sep¬ aration should satisfy every honest desire of a hus¬ band or wife for protection against, or interference Some Practical Suggestions 125 with, each other. If there was no such thing as divorce, separations a mensa et thoro would be ex¬ tremely rare. Few people have ever heard of such a thing. This law is in force in a few States, and where the statutes of a State do not provide for it there is a common law power in the Equity side of all Courts of Record to give this relief, and a judicial separation of husband and wife may be had in any State of the Union. So far as separation is concerned this law affords a full and complete re¬ lief, except remarriage. It is believed that in ninety- nine cases out of every hundred that the object of divorce is to allow one or both of the parties to remarry, and frequently it is an agreed or under¬ stood thing. Divorce is always disreputable under the best of circumstances but the records of the courts disclose many cases that are simply beastly, and they are so common that the public conscience becomes deadened. If we had no divorce there would be higher standard of morals. To raise the stand¬ ard of morals, raise the standard of marriage and keep it sacred. To lower and degrade marriage is to lower and do away with public morals. So far as the honest separation of married people is concerned, a judicial separation answers every requirement, and fully answers the objection that divorce is necessary. But the advocate of divorce will say that it does not do this, for people must remarry. 126 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery The answer to this is:—Every marriage of a divorced person, the other party being still living, is immoral and unchristian. Jesus declares that whosoever shall marry, being divorced, committeth adultery, and adultery is the ugly word he uses; and further, that any person who marries a divorced person commits adultery. His words in Luke XVI- 18 are as follows: “Whosoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery.” The same clear cut statement appears in Matthew V-32, and in Mark X-ll. The clergy of the Episcopal Church however, pre¬ tending all the while, to follow the teachings of Jesus, have violated these explicit teachings by legis¬ lating as between the guilty and innocent party, oblivious to the fact that the “innocent” party is always a guilty party when he or she remarries. A church canon provides that Court records must be produced to the Bishop’s legal adviser &c., to deter¬ mine the guilt or innocence of the party. This foolish and immoral legislation can easily be evaded. A divorced person can easily be married by an Episcopalian minister to whom the fact of divorce is not disclosed, or is misrepresented, or wholly denied. And why should a divorced person go to the delay, and trouble and great expense of getting Court records, when all he has to do is to go to any Protestant minister and be married without any Some Practical Suggestions 127 such trouble? This legislation is only a pretense, on paper, against the widespread looseness of the church in the matter of divorce, simply a holier-than~ thou attitude toward other churches. The true Christianity is, to marry no divorced persons. An Episcopal clergyman told the writer a few days ago that he had lately been imposed upon, and that after officiating at a marriage, he found out that he had married the guilty party. He claimed that he was not to blame, being imposed upon; but it never occurred to him that of the three wrongdoers, he was the one who should be held the most guilty for an unchristian marriage. It would have been equally reprehensible from the Christian standpoint if he had married a party who had never been married before, who desired to be' married to any divorced person, who had a husband or wife living. The Episcopal church should know that the guilt or innocence of the parties has no place or question in Christianity. In the coming General Episcopal Convention of the United States it is proposed to introduce several things, the very mention of which would make the judicious grieve, and prove the demoralization of the church on the subject of marriage and divorce. One of them is to take out the word “obey” in the marriage service, and also the clause relating to the endowment of worldly goods. In passing hurriedly, it may be said that no woman should ever marry a 128 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery man whom she would not willingly trust and obey for life. When marriage means consecration and surrender, the husband to the wife and the wife to the husband, the question of obedience could hardly arise. As to the endowment of worldly goods, the Convention should further modernize this ancient marriage service and bring it down to date. They should stipulate, as has already been gravely sug¬ gested, that the wife should have wages, or a salary, especially if the husband does not endow her with all his worldly goods, and put everything on a busi¬ ness basis; with divorce coupons attached to the marriage certificate. The proposal to revoke the canon which provides that a clergyman may marry the innocent, but not the guilty party, is a move in the right direction, by declaring that a clergyman shall not marry any person that is divorced. This church is more Phari¬ saical than any other Protestant body on the subject of marriage, for other churches make no weak pro¬ fessions or admissions of belief on the subject; and after this spasm of returning conscience it is to be hoped that the Convention will at least assume a virtue and adopt this legislation. And, by the way, what business has the Episcopal church to adopt any legislation on the subject, when the last word that ever can properly be said was fully and decisively pronounced by Jesus? It would be proper for a Convention to confess the sin of Some Practical Suggestions 129 the church and renounce a scriptural ground of divorce on false scripture; but as for legislating on the subject as it has done, it is an arrogant assump¬ tion of power which it does not possess. This church claims a special function of wisdom and grace through the Apostolic Succession, which is a part of the interesting and ornamental furniture of this ancient and historic church, but is not more essential to a true church or true Christianity than is a church steeple. Instead of being primus inter pares as the greatest historical church and taking a lead in Christendom for the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it uses the Apostolic Succession as the excuse for a certain aloofness and practises a holier-than-thou attitude with regard to pulpits and some other things. Now let this venerable church justify its claim of superior wisdom and grace by taking the lead in restoring to Protestantism the Sacrament of Marriage, and within its pale abolish all divorce for every cause, even as South Carolina has already done as a civil policy; but which this church should do as a matter of religion by declaring that there is no true or veritable Scripture which contains a scriptural ground of divorce. But this is probably just exactly the thing that the Episcopal Church will not do. Since the foregoing was written the Detroit Gen¬ eral Convention has met and adjourned, and has taken no action on this proposed canon which would 130 The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery forbid a clergyman to marry any divorced person. The reason assigned was that such a canon would make no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. The debate showed, it is represented, that the laymen were strongly opposed to any such pro¬ vision “regarding it as a great injustice to innocent people.” Of course. But what has the Apostolic Succession—our friends the Bishops, to say about this—or did they keep a discreet silence and let the laymen do all the talking? The Bishops know very well that marriage and divorce are dangerous things to meddle with, and they are sufficiently acquainted with their Bibles to remember that John the Baptist lost his head for his foolishness in interfering with what some people might say did not concern him; and these Bishops are not likely to make unnecessary trouble for themselves by becoming martyrs or going against public opinion. They are afraid of the public and afraid of each other. It is quite unlikely that any Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in spite of the especial gifts of wisdom and grace that are supposed to belong to his office, has ever had the gumption to puzzle over Matthew V-32, or better still to discover what it really means, or that he possesses any sixth spiritual sense which would make him feel the jar which Matthew XIX-9 gives to the words of Jesus just preceding and to the Sacrament of Marriage; or that if he was sufficiently endowed with intellectual and spiritual qualifications to dis- 131 Some Practical Suggestions cover what was in these two passages, that he would have the moral courage to raise any ruction about it. It is much easier for them to throw an aura of infallibility about this “Holy Scripture,” which is an admitted forgery, as shown by the different ver¬ sions and to let heretics raise the ruction. David Harum might have been thinking about Bishops when he said:—“There’s as much human nature in some folks as there is in others, if not more.” When we think of the special assumption of these Bishops, that by virtue of their real or supposed official descent from the Apostles, by which they claim to be the only Simon Pure depositaries of God’s charter to the Protestant wing of Christendom, and thereby endowed with wisdom and grace and a certain infallibility, they ought not to complain, if we take them at their word and ask them to justify their claim. Let us Jo so. Let us ask these Bishops (not that we do not ourselves know, but only to see what they will say) what Matthew V-32 means. Will they dare say that it has anything to do with a Scriptural ground of divorce? If they do, then they will show that they are not up to grade intellect¬ ually. Then turning to Matthew XIX-9, let us ask them to state squarely whether or not they believe in a scriptural ground of divorce for adultery, and if so how they are to explain this forged scripture in Matthew. Also whether they believe scripture or no scripture in the morality of divorce for any cause. 13& The Bible and Scriptural Divorce Forgery Also whether or not they believe in the Sacrament of Marriage or in Marriage as a Sacrament. These questions should be presented to any or all of these Bishops from some responsible quarter, and direct and categorical answers insisted upon. When we would get these answers, if they would make any, we would be in a position to know how far these men have been endowed with the wisdom and grace that are supposed to go with Apostolic Succession. Until then we are willing to be shown. And in the mean¬ time it will be well to take the conservative attitude of the stranger who said to Jim Smiley:—“I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.” A few weeks ago wishing to know if there was any Roman Catholic literature that I could obtain which would discuss or throw any light upon Matthew V- 22 and Matthew XIX-9, I endeavored to see the Roman Catholic Bishop who presumably might give me the information or possibly supply my need. I was met by his Secretary or Cerberus, and stating that I was a Protestant but in sympathy with the Roman Catholic position as to divorce, I stated my specific object. The Secretary then saw the Bishop and arranged for an audience with his Lordship at a special hour. When I presented myself at the time appointed, I was informed that it would not suit the Bishop to see me, and the information I sought was refused without apology or explanation. Some Practical Suggestions 13$ Of course there is nothing to be expected in the way of Protestant literature on this subject, but there should be records in the Vatican which would contain the proceedings and discussions of the Coun¬ cil of Trent (A.D. 1545), and I have no doubt books have been since written by Roman Catholic authors discussing this Scripture. The only light I can possibly get from any Protestant source would be from commentaries on the New Testament, and they furnish none whatever. They generally fumble Matthew V, showing they have no comprehension of its meaning and think that it squints at a scrip¬ tural ground of divorce. As to Matthew XIX-9, King James’ version, of course they think that is Holy Scripture. So far as I know, there is no Protestant commentator or writer that entertains my view of this Scripture and it is a matter entirely self evolved and upon my own initiative. I am quite aware that any new ideas of any kind on the subject of religion are bound to be met with hostility, and I therefore would have been glad to have found any literature on the subject, or any person that could agree with me. A few years ago I wrote to a friend who was a classmate nearly sixty years ago who sat beside me when we would recite and read Greek together and who became the Bishop of New York. I submitted to him my views as to Matthew V-3£ and Matthew XIX-9, and asked him if he thought they were sound. I received his personal letter of 134 The Bible and Scriptural i Divorce Forgery acknowledgment, but never anything more. I have no doubt that my request greatly embarrassed him, and he considered it prudent to say nothing what¬ ever on this subject. When I was a boy in the Union Army, about sixty years ago, I saw many homes desolated by war of which nothing remained but some ghostly chim¬ neys to mark the spot which a roof tree had covered. The outlines of once trim gardens, often with box¬ wood lined walks, were all that was left of what had been neat and beautiful. A forlorn bunch of hya¬ cinths or jonquils, or a neglected rose bush was all that remained of what was a flower garden which had been the pride and care of some woman’s heart and hands. The Lares and Penates of these domestic shrines had been violated and profaned; homes had been destroyed and their inmates whether comprising feeble old age, or helpless infancy had fled to find some kind of shelter elsewhere. No one with a human heart could survey the evidence of such frequent human tragedies without being saddened and moved with pity. Suffering and adversity were inevitable to these people; yet such things may turn to bless¬ ings. These deserted homes were, after all, only last year’s birds’ nests and kindly nature would in a short time obliterate every scar on the landscape and nothing would be left to indicate that a home had ever stood upon the spot. Best of all there was no trace of sorrow in the physical destruction, and the Some Practical Suggestions 135 mind and soul rise above things purely material. The desolation and loss by fire is as nothing com¬ pared with the ruin of blasted human lives. The horrors of war are trifling compared to the wreck of lives caused by selfishness and sin, though no out¬ ward scars be apparent. A home desolated by divorce is a real tragedy for there is always the background of disgrace, wrongdoing and sin, and in addition there may be gross vice and not infre¬ quently crime. The losses of war do not stain the soul; they may be repaired, or if not, borne with dignity and self-respect. Kindly nature with its winds and rains may heal the scars of the land¬ scape in a very few years, but blasted lives of hus¬ bands, wives and children are the hurts of the soul that are never effaced; and that remain for sorrow to brood over as long as life lasts. The physical and material injuries that war may entail are in every way to be preferred to those of which divorce is but the outward name; a name that covers up a fraud and a lie so far as Christianity is concerned; a name that stands as a whited sepulchre, a charnel house full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Princeton heo ogical Seminary Libraries 012 01196 9773