H. Hensley Henson

“ It is a sound rule of law that no man shall profit by his own crime, and that rule appears to be violated when the adulterer is enabled to gain by his offence the very freedom which he desires. The French law of divorce in this respect appears sounder than our own. "There is this limitation on the power of re-marriage of divorced persons, that the party to the marriage against whom the decree has been pronounced is not allowed to marry the person with whom his or her guilt has been established." ”

“ When, as we shall see presently, our Lord decided in favour of the more rigorous view, His words caused astonishment and even consternation among His hearers. "If the case of the man is so with his wife," they said, "it is not expedient to marry." We could not have a more impressive indication of the depravation of the theory of marriage in the common view. Of Hillel’s teaching it would hardly be excessive to say in the words of Gibbon that "the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure." ”

“ It is clear from the Old Testament quotation that the breach of the marriage does not so much consist in the marrying again as in the separation by man of those whom God hath joined together: consequently the sin is as much committed when man ordains a separation from bed and board as when a new marriage is sanctioned. ”

“ It is not necessary to have recourse to any such expedients when once we remember that the experience of Israel was not other than that of the rest of mankind, that the Levirate-marriage was once common everywhere, and that everywhere for the same reasons it has fallen into disrepute and disuse. ”

“ That marriage is a contract, and therefore from first to last the creature of the law, is the assumption on the one side; that marriage is a sacrament, and therefore determined by a higher authority than that of the State, is the assumption of the other. ”

“ Ascetic contempt of marriage very early stained Christian thought and cast deep shadows over Christian life, but that baleful temper could find no support in the teaching or example of the divine Lord. His contemporaries were perplexed, and even scandalised by the ordinary aspect of His life. It cannot be a mere accident that the "beginning of His signs" was made at a marriage in Cana of Galilee. The Prayer Book justly infers the dignity and pureness of marriage from the fact that "Christ adorned and beautified with His presence" that "holy estate." ”

“ The existence of a careful and legal regulation of marriage in all its bearings is a fact which bears plainly on the practical application of Christ's words, and especially since this regulation has been the work of the Christian State. In view of our Lord's doctrine about the State, and of His recognition of the legitimacy of the Mosaic legislation as a necessary concession to the hardness of men's hearts, it is much to be considered whether His declarations about marriage ought to be applied without many modifications to the circumstances of the modern world. ”

“ And when once they had established that train of religious associations in connection with marriage, polygamy was in every devout Israelite’s mind bound up with polytheism and stricken with the fatal character of apostasy. Jehovah is represented as Israel’s husband; the worship of other gods is a violation of the marriage covenant, devotion to Jehovah alone is as the chastity and faithfulness of a pure wife.
This conception is found in the writings of Hosea, where indeed it appears to have its source in the unhappy domestic experience of the prophet himself. ”

“ But I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Is it not plain that marriage, contracted under such a conception of purity, has a security and a greatness, which are quite absent from so mechanical a notion of its obligation as that which breathes through the Mosaic rules? ”

“ But I do not know of any evidence that in our Lord's time there had been invented this method of acknowledging a woman to be a wife, but treating her as if she were not. If divorce to this extent is permissible, and if we are not to interpret the limitation in Matthew as putting a distinction between adultery and other causes for separation, the law of Deuteronomy practically remains in force. A man in whose eyes his wife, for any cause, does not find favour, may deal with her as the husband of an adulterous wife is permitted to do ”

“ The permission of polygamy, and the comparative facility of obtaining a divorce, may seem to militate against the fundamental idea of the marriage relation. But against these drawbacks we have to put the two indubitable facts, that generally men were only united in wedlock to one wife, and that Jewish females occupied not only a comparatively but an absolutely high position. The law throughout recognised and protected the rights of women, and discouraged the practice of polygamy. ”

“ The circumstance that the literature of Israel came to have a sacred character, and that a mechanical theory of inspiration clothed that literature with an irrational, because an indiscriminating, sanctity explains the fact that a relic of primitive barbarism survived into the age of civilisation, and drew to itself the anxious regard of civilised and religious men. ”

“ When, at a somewhat later stage of Christian history, the theologians of the Church elaborated the doctrine of the Incarnation, this consequence was seen to follow—that all truly human relationships receive a divine authentication and an eternal significance. Marriage as the human relationship par excellence was more than any other exalted by this fact. ”

“ Human law must follow, so far as it can, the lines of moral fact. The State ought not to uphold a covenant which has lost validity, where alone it could be valid, in foro conscientiœ. It seems to follow that no Christian can rightly condone adultery, for that would be to acquiesce in a monstrous association of the nature of polygamy.
In the case of adultery, discovered, repented of and forgiven, it must be assumed that a new marriage has really taken place, though of course no fresh legal ceremony is requisite, since the original contract has not been cancelled by divorce. ”

“ Good citizens, as such, can combine in the effort to preserve the moral heritage of the State, and to bring to the solemn and difficult work of government all the moral forces of the nation. As a first step in such combination there is need that some agreement should be reached as to the principles at stake, the claims on either side which are irreducible, the necessary conditions of co-operation. If I have succeeded in stating the problem form the Christian point of view my purpose has been secured. ”

“ If we would understand rightly the law of marriage according to Christ we cannot limit ourselves to a few texts from the Gospels, however important these may be, but we must take into our reckoning the whole movement of Christian thought during the many centuries of the existence of Christianity, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, present still as always before with Christian men, determine what shall be the actual obligation of discipleship here and now. ”

“ When we seek to ascertain the actual teaching of our Lord on the subject of marriage we find ourselves confronted with some grave difficulties. It is very important that these should be seriously considered, for they disallow many natural and attractive misconceptions. ”

“ Beyond all question for the Church, and for all who desire to call themselves Christians, it is absolutely out of the question to regard those as married who, having been divorced, have been married again contrary to the law of Christ, during the lifetime of their former partner. It is quite true that this indissolubility of marriage may press hardly upon individuals in exceptional cases. ”

“ Morality stands in the closest connection with religion, and the Church hardly less than the State is interested in the rules which determine the conditions under which the marriage union is created and cancelled. Social stability is not to be severed from domestic purity, and this depends on the standard of marital fidelity which is maintained among the citizens. Family discipline determines, more largely than any other factor, public morality ”

“ How barbarous the practice really is becomes apparent when it is considered in the light of the ideas which determined it. Dr. Driver writes:
"The institution of the Levirate-marriage, it is probable, originated in a state of society in which the constituent units were, more largely than with us, not single families, but groups of related families, or joint family groups. In primitive and semi-primitive societies women do not possess independent rights, they are treated as part of the property of the family to which they belong. ”

“ The Christian law of marriage must beyond all question find its principles in the teaching of Jesus Christ, and its exposition within the Christian society, but the application of evangelical principles will not be learned from the pages of the New Testament, nor may the witness of the Church be safely identified with ecclesiastical precedents and decisions in former times. ”

“ The principles of His religion are clearly stated, and therefore we have in the Gospels the postulates of a sound handling of practical questions, but direct pronouncements on practical problems are few, if indeed it can be said that any exist at all, and we abuse the Gospels to our own hurt if we treat them as legislative codes, or as casuistical treatises. Even in the crucial matter of marriage we shall find that our Lord's recorded teaching is not free from ambiguity. ”

“ He discovered the intrinsic force and grandeur of his love for his faithless wife when he learned her falseness, and inevitably he carried into his theology the noblest version he could frame of human character. ”

“ III.—It is in accordance with this exaltation of woman in her most sublime function of motherhood that the Gospel gives a large and honourable place to women and children. Significantly in the sacred narrative there stand together Christ's declaration about the essential indissolubleness of marriage and His blessing of the children, for these are the normal effect and the fairest grace of the sexual relationship as guarded and crowned in the Christian home. Christ's fondness for children was hardly less perplexing to His religious contemporaries than His respectful treatment of women. ”

“ No thoughtful citizen will contemplate without deep misgivings the alienation from the State of the moral force embodied in the Church, and no reflective Christian will lightly esteem the misfortunes inherent in a deliberate and sustained divergence of principle between the New Testament and the Statute Book. ”

“ We are fairly justified by the facts disclosed and appraised by critical scholars in believing that the account of the life and teaching of our Lord, and the broad lines of His character, are faithfully given in the four Gospels, but our reasonable assurance does not extend to an exact knowledge of the very words of Christ, nor are we able to escape from a large measure of uncertainty as to His actual teaching. ”

“ There would be, He said, within the society of believers a divine influence of guidance and illumination, which would from age to age interpret experience and apply the principles of the everlasting Gospel to the novel circumstances of human life. ”

“ No help meet for man can be found in all the circuit of created life outside the sphere of humanity itself. Fundamental equality of nature must condition sexual union, and not less must determine the intimacy and permanence of that union. ”

“ The consecration in Israel of a whole national literature created many moral and social problems when the nation had outgrown its primitive conditions and looked back with perplexity on sacred precedents, which none the less offended the conscience. Polygamy and the Levirate-marriage were instances of such sacred but unsatisfactory precedents. ”

“ Partly, their relatively intense individualism rebelled against the primitive treatment of women as rather chattels than persons; partly their lofty conception of the divine character rendered them increasingly insistent that no conduct could be fitting in man which ran counter to the righteousness of his Creator. The prophets were also poets, and they invested the marriage-relationship with the moral dignity which made it the favourite and most eloquently suggestive symbol of Israel’s relation to Jehovah. ”

“ Probably we may say that the practice was superior to the theory of marriage. Theoretically the Jews, who were the contemporaries of Christ, were polygamists. As disciples of Moses they could be nothing else. The study of their sacred literature confirmed them in a theoretical acceptance of polygamy; and the strong continuous influence of human depravity always secured a certain amount of polygamous practice. ”

“ When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it into her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. ”

“ A married woman, upon the death of her husband, passes consequently, with her children and her late husband's estate, to the new head of the family, who assumes in relation to them the same rights and duties which the husband had: he holds towards them the joint position of guardian and owner ”