p. 7 | Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 23, 1904

Note and Comment

A GREAT deal has been said in this country in recent years about the divorce evil. Numerous organizations have passed resolutions condemning it and demanding a remedy, and legislatures have been importuned to put a stop to it by the enactment of laws. The Episcopal Church is now agitating this subject in the District of Columbia. The District law recognizes only one ground of divorce, but clergymen of various denominations are willing to unite in marriage persons divorced on grounds not deemed sufficient, and an effort is being made to “bring about some concerted action among the various Protestant bodies, whereby every Christian minister will agree to refuse to solemnize the marriage of any person who has been divorced for a cause other than that which the civil law now allows.” We have nothing to say against any action that will lessen the evil of lax divorce; but may it not be true that the real evil that needs attention is not so much improper divorce as improper marriages? If there were no improper marriages, the divorce evil would not exist. The beginning of the trouble is not in the action for divorce, but in the marriage which precedes it. So long as marriages are entered into in the hasty, light, inconsiderate manner so common at the present time, there will be a fountainhead of evil calling for such relief as a divorce affords, and it will accomplish little to try to dam the stream by prohibitive legislation. The stream will simply rise till it breaks over the barrier. Society has not much to gain by laws consigning mismated couples to the unhappiness of going through life together, except from the possibility that such legislation might operate to deter young people from hastily entering the marriage relationship. If clergymen and others qualified to speak would take more pains to impress upon youthful minds a sense of the solemnity of the step taken at marriage, of the weighty duties and responsibilities which it involves, and its possibilities of unhappiness, a great deal would be done to check the divorce evil, and to prevent much unhappiness and many tragedies as well. If the marriage relationship is not to be lightly dropped, it must not be lightly entered into. An ounce of prevention here is truly equal to a pound of cure.