ng Christians and countenanced by the Church. Even Luther
seems to have had somewhat lax, though not unscriptural, notions on the
subject. When Philip, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, wanted to take another
wife, and threatened to get a dispensation from the Pope for the
purpose, Luther convoked a synod, composed of six of his proselytes, who
declared that marriage is merely a civil contract; that they could find
no passage in the Holy Scriptures ordaining monogamy; and they
consequently signed a decree permitting Philip to take a second wife
without repudiating his first.

In that reconstruction of laws, threatened by the movement in behalf of
female suffrage, it is not probable that the patriarchal institution of
polygamy will be regarded otherwise than as debasing to both sexes; but
perhaps a greater latitude of divorce will be sought as not inconsistent
with public morality. Looking at the question abstractly, and apart from
all religious and social prejudice, it certainly seems the height of
cruelty and absurdity to compel parties to keep up the relations of man
and wife when one of them feels towards the other either a physical
repugnance or a moral dislike. The impediments often raised by our
courts in the way of divorce are gross relics of barbarism, and will be
abolished by a higher legislative morality.

"Whoso," says Milton, "prefers either matrimony or other ordinance
before the good of man and the plain exigence of charity, let him
profess Papist or Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a
pharisee, and understands not the gospel; whom, as a misinterpreter of
Christ, I openly protest against." And, in another passage, he rebukes
those who would rest "in the mere element of the text," as favoring "the
policy of the Devil to make that gracious ordinance (of marriage) become
insupportable, that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock,
and what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate license might
abound."

Mr. J. A. St. John, editor of the Prose Works of Milton, remarks in
reference to the marriage law as it now stands in England:--

"_Having been invented and established by men, it is calculated to bear
with extreme severity on women_, who are daily subjected to wrongs and
hardships which they would not endure, were the relief of divorce open
to them. Those who take a different view descant upon the encouragement
which would, they say, be given to immorality were divorce made easy.
But th