Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1889 — THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM. [ARTICLE]

THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM.

It is the Most Important for the Safety of the Social Fabric. W. E. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century. __ 'JL'hegreatest and deepest of all human controversies is the marriage controversy. It appears to be surging up on all sides around us, and every book which helps definitely to map out its lines has on that account both interest and value. It is in America that from* whatever canre, this controversy has peached a stage of development .more advanced than elsewhere. Moreover, the present social life us America offers at all points a profoundly important field of observation. toward which European eyes have hardly yet begun to be turned. This social life, if it doesnot already embrace the largest province of the entire social life of civilized man, will shortly embrace notthe largest only, but the largeest beyond all comparison, and will form, in constantly growing proportions, a telling element in the general condition of Christendom and even of humanity at large. The present social life of America may be said to be a new formation and to have begun at a date which would warrant our applying to it the alternative title of Waverly, “ ’Tis Sixty Years Since.” Mrs. Stowe must have drawn upon the experience of her early days in her admirable New England hovels, such as “The Minister’s Wooing,” but the Parity i life which she describes appears to have vanished. ht, least from the wealthier circles of American society. The true meaning of a discussion which calls into question the ancient and specially Chiistian Constitution of the family is that it is a vast upthrow in the world of thought and fact which, if consumated, will change in time the whole moral surface of the earth, and shift, in a revolutionary sense, the polarity of life. The chief spur thrown out laterally from the great upthrow is in America. Many a'reader on this side of the water will be startled when be learns that in the old Stale of Connecticut one marriage is dissolved in every ten, and the new State of California one in every seven. He may learn with equal surprise that in South Carolina there is (as I am informed; no legal divorce whatever; I mean, of course, divorce which leads the way to remarriage. Again, it is necessary to bear in mind that the divorces, as well as the marriages, of anyone State are acknowledged in the courts of every other. I understand that the experience of America, as well as of this country tends to show that divorce is largeiy associated with that portion of communities which is lacking in solid and stable conditions of life generally America may suffer specially from the shiftings of relative position and circumstances incidental to a forward movement in things material of an unexampled rapidity, and it may also be true that a State like Connecticut has to answer for many offenses not her own, though she can not be exempted from full responsibility for the laws she has chosen to enact. We must beware of all sweeping and premature conclusions. But it seems indisputable that America is the arena on which many of the problems connected with the marriage state are in course of being rapidly, painfully and perilously tried out. In so far she is intrusted, like a prerogativa tribus, with the destinies of others and may do much by her example to make or mar them.

A Boy’s Logical argument. b.'wMon Journal. The Up River News gives the following reminiscence of an incident in an Oldtown lyceum forty years ago, te which all the doctors, lawyers and ministers of the town belonged. One evening capital punishment was the question being discussed, and called out the best forces on both sides. During the evening a young boy, who had been a constant member, replied to Deacon Rigby upon this question. The deacon was for hanging. The ooy opposed. Said the deacon, quoting from the Mosaic law: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed.” Thinking this to be a bombshell to his opponents, he dwelt upon it till his time expired, when the boy Sprang to his feet and said: “Supposing we take the law which the gentleman has quoted, and which in a philosophical sense has been abrogated as null and void since the birth of our Saviour, and see what the logical deduction would come to. For example, one man kills another, another man kills him and so on until we come to tbs last man on earth. Who’s going to kill hhn? He dare not suicide, for that same law forbids it. Now deacon,” said the boy, “what are you going to do with last man?” Thnboy’s logic called out rounds of applause and vanquished the deacon. The boy is now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Melville W. Fuller.

Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as petfume is to flowers.—De Finod. If we had no defects we should not take so much pleasure in discovering those of others.—La Rochefoucauld. We know the value of a fortune when we have gained it, and that of a friend when we have lost it—F. Petit Senn.