*A Rapidly Growing Evil***
IN a recent number of Public Opinion, Bishop Wm. C. Doane, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Albany, discusses “The Divorce Evil.” The following startling statistics and comparative statements furnish the basis for the appeal to the Christian church to “rise to its high responsibility, and say that even legal divorce from the bond of marriage will not be recognized except for the one cause which can possibly be claimed as not forbidden in Holy Scripture.” Bishop Doane says:— In the statistics given in a report presented by the United States commissioner of labor in 1889, covering the twenty years from 1867 to 1886, the total number of divorces granted is shown to be 328,716, the number in each year steadily increasing from 9,900 in 1867 to 25,535 in 1886. The population in the meanwhile increased sixty per cent, and the divorces sixty-nine per cent. This means, of course, nearly 700,000 people divorced. Comparatively speaking, it means more divorces in one year in America than in all Europe, Australia, and the British dominions. It means two thousand times as many divorces in the United States as in Canada, the population being only fifteen times as great. It means in some States one divorce to every eight, in one State one divorce to every six marriages; and, as a concentrated instance, it is true that three hundred divorces were granted in Chicago in a single day. This can only mean that there is wide-spread failure to recognize the sacredness of marriage, that it is beginning to be considered more or less as a contract, which, because it is entered into carelessly, can be escaped from easily at the caprice of either party to it. A pure family life lies at the basis of the stability of human society. The destruction of the home is a long step toward shutting out the blessings of the gospel. It is one of the perils of this time.