A Great Evil and Its Remedy
By L. A. S.
DELEGATES from forty-one States and the District of Columbia have assembled in Washington to consider the question of securing a uniform divorce law in this country. The aim of the congress will be, as stated at the opening meeting, “the securing as nearly as possible of uniform statutes upon the matter of divorce throughout the nation.” It is a well-known fact that divorces in this country have become very common, that the proportion of such decrees granted to the number of marriages has of late years rapidly increased, and that in many States the marriage tie is now severed with but little effort and slight concern. It was stated at the convention that “the dissolution of the marriage tie has become so common as to be regarded as an ordinary event, awakening no comment, and meeting with little or no disapproval. There are more divorces granted annually in the United States of America than in any other country upon earth, except Japan. A writer who has investigated the subject declares that at the time of the census of 1900 there were 198,914 divorced persons living in the United States; that there were nearly seventy thousand divorces granted in 1903, and that the proportion of divorces to marriages is increasing with alarming rapidity.” Such a state of things is unquestionably evidence of serious moral disease in the nation, but it may be well to inquire whether the divorce evil constitutes the disease itself, or is only a symptom of the disease. If it is the latter, something more than a uniform divorce law will be necessary to produce any marked improvement in domestic relations. The symptoms of a disease often require some attention, but the successful physician is the one who has learned to look beyond the symptoms to the disease itself, and to apply the remedy to the causes of the trouble rather than to the effects. The absence of stringent divorce laws is certainly not the cause of the domestic unhappiness which so often leads to the dissolution of the marriage tie. The cause is doubtless to be found in the moral degeneracy of the times, aided no doubt by conditions which are peculiar to this era of rapid and strenuous living. From this source a stream of domestic infelicity is constantly flowing, which it may or may not be wise to dam up by stringent legislation against divorce. More caution about entering the married state and more uprightness, and stability of character are the things most needed to cure the divorce evil, and without these the trouble, in one form or another, must be perpetuated. If the disease does not break out in the form of divorce, it will show itself in some other and perhaps no more desirable way. What is wanted is a cure that goes to the heart and character, and this points us to the great truth that the most truly reforming agencies in the world are spiritual, and not political. Moral degeneracy can not be cured by legislation. Christ, the “desire of ages,” is still the one great need of the world.