DIVORCE AND DIVORCE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 25.

DIVORCE AND DIVORCE.

'Practical polygamy,' says Bishop Leonard, of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Ohio, 'is being practised all over this country. Things have come to such a pass that the flimsiest pretexts are made the means of securing a divorce. A slight quarrel or miserable lust are alike made a means to this end.' Yet divorce was the foundation of all Protestantism and especially of the Anglican Church, the parent of the Protestant Episcopal organization. Divorce brought Protestantism into being, but is now the cancer eating away its vitality. The house of Protestantism was built on sand. The fate foretold in the Gospel is about to overtake it.'—Catholic Mirror.

The divorce business, as carried on in our civil courts, reveals a sad state of society; but there is no just ground for the Catholic Mirror's remark. It knows, or ought to know, that the revolt from Catholicism in England was not caused by Henry VIII.; that gross king simply used it for an occasion.

The revolt was so strong that he felt that under its shadow he could successfully rebel against Rome.

But in a better way 'divorce was the foundation of [true] Protestantism.' It was the divorce of religion from the world. It was the divorce of Church and State, for which Rome stood. And what is destroying Protestantism to-day is that it has turned back to the world. It was built on the rock of God's Word. It is shifting its base to a foundation composed of the quicksands of worldliness and the slough of medieval tradition.

Teach me, Lord, my true condition; Bring me, childlike, to Thy knee, Stripped of every low ambition; Willing to be led by Thee.