The Divorce Evil

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 5, 1911

ACCORDING to the Scriptures, many in the last days would be without natural affection. This spirit is alarmingly on the increase, as seen in the broken family ties on every side. For years some of our large cities have had a court to deal particularly with juvenile offenders. Added to this there has been constituted in some of the large centers a court of domestic relations. The Northwestern Christian Advocate of December 7, speaking of this court in Chicago, says:—

This court will concern itself entirely with matters that relate to the family. The need for it has developed in the fact that an increasing number of domestic disturbances find their way into court, and judges whose minds are occupied in other matters find themselves unable to give proper attention to these cases. Consequently, following the precedent of the juvenile court, the municipal judges have decided to select one of their number to devote his entire time to cases concerning domestic relations. He will thus become an expert on family disturbances. The court will have jurisdiction over such matters as wife abandonment, child abandonment, neglect of children, truancy, unimportant breach-of-promise suits, and illegitimacy.

The great cause of the divorce evil, which is now assuming such alarming proportions, is the hasty and ill-timed marriages constantly being entered into. Marriages are formed on the impulse of the moment, oftentimes by boys and girls, and even by men and women, who are utterly incompetent to enter into such a responsible relationship. Caprice and fancy rather than true love form the inspiration to the majority of these unions. The result is that after a few weeks or months of married life, they are as anxious to effect a separation as they were to form the union in the beginning. No one of life's relationships should be entered into more thoughtfully and solemnly than that of marriage. It is one thing to spend an hour or a day occasionally with one who may be counted a pleasant companion, with the full knowledge that the association can be broken at will, and quite another thing to enter into a union for life, involving association in all life's experiences. The motives prompting marriages, and the little regard placed upon the marriage relation, show the moral degeneracy of the age in which we live.