Los Angeles Herald, Volume 37, Number 107, 16 January 1910 — UNCHRISTIAN [ARTICLE]

UNCHRISTIAN

SEVERAL learned judges and other authorities have commented on the increase of divorce cases in California. The number of divorces granted in our state is a subject of rebuke or of jest in other parts of the United States. In this land of sunshine and of orange blossoms it would be fitting if the phraa* "as happy as a California marriage" could pass into the language. WQ think probably the reputation of California is not wholly deserved. Many couples come hero from other states and "get their divorce." (We believe that is the easygoing phrn<>e> They resemble the hopeless invallils who come here from other states nnd "tret their death," giving California a wholly undeserved reputation for the percentages of its death rnte.

The pulpit and the press should unite in a protest nnd a. campaign against the divorce evil In California. It is shocking thru the courts of this state should (fain national reputation as dl-> vorce mills. It Is unjust to honorable judges that their names should he associated so frequently with divorce cases. We do not wonder that some of the judges have been protesting. We hope they will go on protesting, and even when they grant decrees will exercise their prerogative and lecture the litigants in language without any vagueness or uncertainty of phrase.

Jesus was opposed to divorce. He paid there was only one cause for which a wife might be pot away, and be said that any man who married a wife who was put away by her injured husband for this cause was a criminal. Yet there are many such criminals In the United States today, and some of them move in what is called good society.

It is time for plain speaking- on the subject of the divorce evil. Jesus said the law of Moses sanctioned divorce for various causes, but that "from the beginning it was not so," and in this regard as in many others Jesus revised the law of Moses, allowed only one cause for divorce and forbade the divorced person to marry again.

The explicit commandment of Jesus forbidding a person divorced for cause to marry again is not cbeyed faithfully. Divorce should be made Impossible, excepting for the one cause, and the person divorced for that cause should not be allowed under any circumstances to marry again. Moreover, if it were not so easy to enter into the marriage contract, the path to the divorce court would not be so well trodden.