ARTICLE II-DIVORCE.

PART II-DOCTRINE OF DIVORCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

NOTHING places in a more striking light the sway of Christ over the mind of the Christian world than the fact that a few hints of his have been enough to turn the opinions and the practice of men into a new channel. This is illustrated by what he says of divorce; in giving commands concerning which he passes outside of his ordinary line of teaching, and enters into the region of positive external morality, instead of confining his precepts to the regulation of the thoughts and the affections. What he says on this subject is small in compass, it is a moral rule, and not a law for a state, it leaves more than one problem to be solved, and yet it has to a great extent controlled Christian law in an important branch of private relations, it has directed the discipline of the Church, it has helped to purify the family, and thus has aided the spread of the Gospel. It was, moreover, eminently needed at the time when it was made known. We hope to have shown, in our former Article, that the great looseness and corruption, in the marriage relations, of the three nations to whom the world owes most of its progress, called for a reform, that there was need that a higher idea of marriage, a deeper sense of its sanc tity should be placed among men, and a community be formed where the practice should be consonant with the idea. This has been done by Christ through his church; and they who receive him as the Lord from heaven, when they reflect that he is abstinent and reserved on most points of external morality, will admire the wisdom which led him to be outspoken on this. We propose in our present Article to examine his words relating to divorce which are on record, and then to proceed to a consideration of the Apostle Paul's precepts on the same subject.

The passages in the Gospels which bear on the subject of divorce are contained in Matthew v., 31, 32, xix., 3—9, Mark x., 2-12, and Luke xvi., 18. The second and third of these

passages were evidently uttered on the same occasion in reply to tempting questions put by Pharisees, and with some differences of importance they have the same strain of thought. The passage in Luke is found in company with verses between which the connexion of thought is hard to be traced, and in an address or reply to the sneers of covetous Pharisees. When we compare this passage with that in the sermon on the mount, the disjointed thoughts in Luke have a light thrown upon them, and appear to be fragments of the same discourse. Without the place in Matthew we could find no law of association in Luke, or at most could only guess at one. But with

the help of the first gospel, v. 17, of Luke," and it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail," occurring as it does in Matthew chap. v., and being an essential part of that wonderful sermon, is seen to have a vital union with v. 18, which treats of divorce. We conclude that they must be brought into harmony, or that Christ repeated his instructions in similar forms on different occasions, in the one case delivering them to the people, in the other to the Pharisees. Which of these harmonizing theories is to be chosen it is not our business here to decide. We assume that our Lord expressed himself at least twice on the subject of divorce, and not once only, for we assume that there was a connected discourse on the mount, and that the words in Matthew v., 31, 32, fit too well into that discourse not to have belonged to it from the first.

The principal differences between these places of the gospels are the following:-1. Matthew in both his passages adds a condition under which divorce is permissible,-"except on the ground of fornication," "but for fornication,"-while Mark and Luke express a prohibition of divorce which is altogether absolute. It is easy to say with Meyer that the condition, being understood of course, did not require to be expressed. But we ought to notice that St. Paul also, when he refers to our Lord's teaching, inserts no condition whatever. We have then three witnesses to the absence of the condition against one for it, and the conjecture is not altogether improbable that it was added for the sake of greater clearness in Matthew, rather than omitted out of brevity by the others as being understood of

itself. Upon the meaning of opvsía, and the condition itself, we shall speak hereafter.

2. Mark has the important addition, "if a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another she committeth adultery." Now as by Jewish law a woman had no power whatever to put away her husband, this certainly looks like an addition to the original words of Christ, intended for the relations of believers in the heathen countries, where wives could procure divorce as well as husbands. But here again Paul supports Mark in 1 Cor. vii., 10: "unto the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, let not the wife be separated from her husband." What if by the law of Moses the wife could not be active in a case of divorce, we know that this occurred in the family of Herod, and it is likely that Greek or Roman custom may already have begun to creep into Palestine; at least the license of divorce allowed by the rulers of the world could not have escaped the knowledge of our Lord. Why is it incredible then that he should have contemplated the case of a woman putting away her husband?

3. In Matthew xix. our Lord says everything in the presence of the Pharisees. In Mark x. he gives out the principle of the indissolubility of marriage, and then in the house expounds the matter further to his disciples. Some critics see a mistake or inaccuracy here. If there were any, it must be laid at Matthew's door, for the words of Mark, "and in the house the disciples asked him again of this matter," give proof of fresh clear recollection. But is there anything forced here in the supposition that our Lord went over again to his disciples with what he had said just before, so that there was no need on the part of either evangelist to give an account of the whole conversation. In Matthew the disciples felt perplexed by what he had said, and put him further questions. They would not readily do this before the carping Pharisees, and so Mark's statement that the subject was continued in the house is justified, and his account of what was said in the house rendered at least probable.

Having thus discussed the form in which our Lord's words appear, let us now look at their purpose and their import. Here the first thing to be noticed is that our Lord acts the part

not of a civil legislator, but of a supreme moral teacher. He does not establish a law concerning divorce, but declares that the existing code permits certain things which must be condemned as wrong, as violating high ethical rules acknowledged by the law itself. Every moral teacher, not to say every moral man, must take the same position in regard to the laws of his country. These may, in fact they must, fail to forbid, even when they do not allow, many things which sound morality condemns. The law is an external, general, coarse, imperfect rule, commanding often what the ethical code requires, and as frequently permitting what that code prohibits. If there were any permissions of the Jewish law which ran counter to true righteousness, if it afforded any facilities for transgression which ought to be cut off, it was the business of Christ to notice them and to animadvert against them. Herein he differs in no respect from any other moral teacher. Nor are these verses touching divorce peculiar in this respect. When he cites the lex talionis of the Old Testament, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," he tells his hearers that justice as expressed in the law might permit this to be done, but there was something higher than justice; "resist not evil" was a better law of life, a law necessary for anyone who would be his disciple.

Now it might happen, as it has happened, that some of these rules propounded by our Lord would reform and transform legislation. Such, owing to the fact that marriage has most important civil, moral, and religious relations, would inevitably be the result of the utterances concerning divorce. Still they are not properly legislation, but they are principles which in lands under a Christian faith must leaven all legislation.

Secondly, the tone our Lord uses, and the ground on which he puts his restrictions of divorce, show at once a remarkable depth of thought and the consciousness of an authority such as pertains to a divine messenger. The man who beyond all others was nourished by the scriptures and reverenced the scriptures, criticises a provision of the Mosaic law, and taxes it with imperfection. In so doing he boldly lays down a principle of the utmost importance and of far reaching consequences,—that the Mosaic economy, although given by God,

was rudimentary, transitory, and accomodated to the state of a nation not yet capable of the highest kind of civil polity. There is in his words even the germ of an abolition of the old economy, the beginning of a judgment pronounced against the old rites, in short against the old religion in its external forms; for if divorce was permitted on account of the hardness of the people's hearts, why might not the forms of the ceremonial law be accomodated to an early stage of their progress and be unsuitable for a more advanced stage. Thus our Lord without seeming to do so, drove that entering wedge into the law which Paul and his school drove further, until all men saw that it was done away in Christ.

Nor is the reason which our Lord gives for his new morality, in the matter of divorce, less remarkable. The freedom allowed by the law, he says, was inconsistent with the true primeval conception of marriage. Law, a patch-work of expedients, needs not to conform to the true conception of human relations, that is to say, there are times, there is a state of feeling, a "hardness of hearts," which stand in the way of perfect legislation, although the nearer the law approaches to that standard, the greater the proof and the greater the security of the genuine culture of the people. But morality must conform to the true idea, and it is the highest merit of a moral teacher, if he has the idea bright in his own mind and is able to set it forth to his fellow-men. Christ had this idea. The man who never drew from experience any judgments concerning the human relations of which he here speaks, whose vocation was too high for the entanglements of family life,―he corrects the judgments of men by a reference to the essential nature of marriage; it is the state of life in which two have become one flesh, it is a state founded by God at the first creation of man, it is therefore a union made by divine authority which human authority may not sever.

Before proceeding to the special rules which our Lord lays down, we remark that he does not side with either of the two schools which then divided opinion among the Jews on the subject of divorce. The doctrines of Hillel of course he utterly discards, but he does not give his adhesion to those of

See New Englander for January 1867, Article V., page 88.