ed at any moment, like the
women of Turkey and the Mormon wives of Utah; but if you are recognized as
the mistress and queen of your household, you owe your emancipation to the
Church. You are especially indebted for your liberty to the Popes who rose
up in all the majesty of their spiritual power to vindicate the rights of
injured wives against the lustful tyranny of their husbands.

How opposite is the conduct of the fathers of the so-called Reformation,
who, with the cry of religious reform on their lips, deformed religion and
society by sanctioning divorce.

Henry VIII. was divorced from his wife, Catherine, by Cranmer, the first
Reformed Primate of England.

Luther and his colleagues, Melanchthon and Bucer, permitted Philip,
Landgrave of Hesse, to have two wives at the same time.(543) Karlstadt,
another German Reformer, justified polygamy.(544)

Modern Prussia is now reaping the bitter fruits of the seeds that were
then sown within its borders. Seventy-five per cent. of the marriages now
contracted outside of the Catholic Church in Berlin are performed without
any religious ceremony whatever. A union not bound by the strong ties of
religion is easily dissolved.

This subject excites a painful interest in our own country, in consequence
of the facility with which divorce from the marriage bond is obtained in
many of our States. We have here another exemplification of the dangerous
consequences attending a private interpretation of the sacred text. When
Luther and Calvin proclaimed to the world that "it was not wise to
prohibit the divorced adulterer from marrying again,"(545) they little
dreamed of the fruitful progeny which was destined before long to spring
from this isolated monster of their creation. There are already about
thirty causes which allow the conjugal tie to be broken, some of which are
of so trifling a nature as to provoke merriment were it not for the
gravity of the subject, which is well calculated to excite alarm for the
moral and social welfare of our country.

Persons are divorced by the courts not only for infidelity, but also
without even the shadow of Scripture authority--for alleged cruelty,
intemperance, desertion, prolonged absence, mental incapacity, sentence to
the penitentiary, incompatibility of temper and _such other causes as the
court, in its discretion, may deem sufficient_.

For the year ending June, 1874, seventeen hundred and forty-two
applications for divorce were presen