In most cases, it could but be the outgrowth of
impulse and fancy.
It provides for easy divorce, which at best is a
stigma of shame.
It would be a step toward the situation in Soviet
Russia where a marriage of many years’ duration
and much shared labor may be sacrificed to the
caprice of a day’s infatuation and terminated with
but scant ceremony.
It would produce millions of widows and widowers,
Anne Shriver, N. ¥.
United homes are the foundation of society, government, religion
and untold anguish and suffering of mind and spirit.
It would create an army of orphan, or half-
orphan, children.
‘““Companionate,” the report continues, “is a
noble word, but all that it connotes of comradeship
exists between every man and woman who are well
mated. The word is so rich in meaning that it should
not be degraded by being fastened to any form of
trial marriage, but increasingly associated with
permanent and successful marriage.”
“The church should lift up the Christian ideal of
marriage with all the power of its great influence”
and ‘‘ throw about it every possible religious sanction.
The ideal of marriage for life is the only union that
the church can teach.” ‘Especially should the
church emphasize the sterner obligations of marriage,
the difficulties which may be expected, and develop
the will to meet them.”
“The committee appeals with great earnestness
to young people not to break through the restraints
of family loyalty. Great numbers of them are taking
JULY, 1929
their lives into their own hands. Many are sinning
grievously with little consideration for those who
love them. . . . What young people need is restraint,
voluntary restraint of course, and not greater
freedom in the form of indulgence.”
But there is yet another aspect that none should
overlook. The social conditions of this modern
age stand forth in striking fulfillment of New
Testament prophecies. (Matthew 24:37, 38; 2
Timothy 3: 1-5.) Moral standards and safeguards
are everywhere
shattered, which
things serve as
momentous signs
of the times de-
claring that we
live amid the
perils of the “last
days”; and that
Jesus is soon com-
ing as King of
kings to terminate
+ this wild orgy, and
renovate our earth
to become the fair
homeland for a
pure and sinless
"people.
GODLESS
ODAY, wed-
lock is bat-
tered and broken
because men and
women have bro-
ken faith with
God. The popular
theory of. evolu-
tion denies the
power of the Crea-
tor and the fact of creation. It denies the historic
truth of the original Paradise; denies that man came
forth as the perfect masterpiece of divine handi-
work ; denies that God solemnized the first marriage;
and hence denies that wedlock is a sacred, holy
estate, bearing the seal of the Infinite. The next
step is easy: if marriage came only by the caprice
or fancy of man, who shall say it may not as readily
be altered or discarded?
We may speak and write, educate and legislate,
but there will be no universal reform this side of
Christ's second coming. Yet there is an individual
remedy for today’s needs. Let men and women
return to God; and through His infinite grace
homes that have been blasted by sin and discord
may be fashioned anew. Hearts that have been
embittered and estranged may through divine
power be united again in bonds of a love that is
precious and enduring. Even so, in its unity, peace,
and fragrance, the family below may become as a
miniature of the family above. (Continued on page 34)
PAGE FIVE