Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause.
The marriage tie
I. Its prescribed limitation. Enforced by
(1) numerical proportion of the sexes;
(2) evils of polygamy;
(3) teaching of the Bible.
II. Its tender intimacy,
III. Its conditional dissolubility:
(1)toleration of Moses;
(2) justifiable grounds of divorce.
IV. Its optional formation. (Dr. Thomas.)
The doctrine of Christ concerning marriage
(1) Its binding character as instituted by God;
(2) its decay in the progress of history;
(3) its prepared restoration under the law;
(4) its transformation by the gospel. (J. P. Lange, D. D.)
Husband and wife should be not only one flesh, but also one heart and mind. (Hedinger.)
Marriage and celibacy
Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interests of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God has designed the present constitution of the world. Single life makes man, in one instance, to be like angels; but marriage, in very many things, makes the chaste pair to be like Christ. This is (as St. Paul says) a great mystery; but it is the symbolical and sacramental representation of the greatest mysteries of our religion. Christ descended from His Father’s bosom, and contracted His Divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature, and we became a church, the spouse of the Bridegroom, which He cleansed with His blood, and gave her His Holy Spirit for a dowry, and heaven for a jointure; begetting children unto God by the gospel. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)
Marriage
This union should not be entered into lightly, or rashly. It involves all the happiness of this life, and much of that to come. The union demands congeniality of feeling and disposition; of rank in life; of temper; similarity of acquirements; of age; of talent; intimate acquaintance. It should also be a union on religious feelings and opinions: because religion is more important than anything else; because it will give more happiness in the married life than anything else; because where one only is pious, there is danger that religion will be obscured and blighted; because no prospect is so painful as that of eternal separation; because it is heathenish to partake the gifts of God in a family and offer no thanksgiving, and inexpressibly wicked to live as if there were no God, etc.; because death is near, and nothing will soothe the pangs of parting but the hope of meeting in the resurrection of the just. (A. Barnes, D. D.)
Advantages of marriage
If you are for pleasure, marry; if you prize rosy health, marry. A good wife is heaven’s best gift to man: his angel of mercy; minister of graces innumerable; his gem of many virtues; his casket of jewels; her voice, his sweetest music; her smiles, his brightest day; her kiss, the guardian of his innocence; her arms, the pale of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life; her industry, his surest wealth; her economy, his safest steward; her lips, his faithful counsellors; her bosom, the softest pillow of his cares; and her prayers, the ablest advocates of heaven’s blessing on his head. (Bp. Taylor.)
The scriptural view of divorce
I hold that there is only one cause for which a man can lawfully be divorced from his wife, according to the Scriptures; that is, adultery.
I. Let us turn to the scriptures in proof of this view. “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” God thought it not good for man to be alone: so He made him an helpmeet. Had it been better for a man to have more than one wife, God would doubtless have made two. But in our Saviour’s time women had multiplied; but He did not change the original law. The relation of man and wife is nearer than that of parent and offspring. “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother,” etc. Where is the nation or man who shall assume authority to put apart these thus joined together save for the one cause? “And I say unto you, whoso shall put away his wife,” etc. St. Paul says, “The woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth.”
II. The views of some of the leading writers in the Christian church. Dr. A. Clarke, in his Commentary, has the following: “It does not appear that there is any other case in which Jesus Christ admits of divorce” (Matthew 5:32). On Matthew 19:9, “The decision of our Lord must be very unpleasant to these men; the reason why they wished to put away their wives was, that they might take others whom they liked better; but our Lord here declares that they could not be remarried while the divorced person was alive; and that those who did marry during the life of the divorced person were adulterers.” “In this discourse our Lord shows that marriage, except in one case, is indissoluble, and should be so.
1. By Divine institution (Matthew 19:4).
2. By express commandment (Matthew 19:5).
3. Because the married couple become one and the same person (Matthew 19:6).
4. By the example of the first pair (Matthew 19:8). And
5. Because of the evil consequent on separation (Matthew 19:9).
Watson’s “Theo. Institutes,” vol. 2., p. 543, has the following: “The foundation of the marriage union is the will of God that the human race should increase and multiply, but only through a chaste and restricted conjunction of one man and one woman, united by their free vows in a bond made by the Divine law indissoluble, except by death or by adultery.” Dr. Wayland, in his “Elements of Moral Science,” says: “In the act of marriage, two persons, under the most solemn circumstances, are thus united, and they enter into a mutual contract thus to live in respect to each other. This relation, having been established by God, the contract thus entered into has all the solemnity of an oath. Hence, he who violates it, is guilty of a twofold crime: first, the violation of the law of chastity, and second, of the law of veracity-veracity pledged under the most solemn circumstances.
1. The contract is for life, and is dissoluble for one cause only: the cause of adultery.” Referring to the text, he says: “We are here taught that marriage, being an institution of God, is subject to His laws alone, and not to the laws of man. Hence, the civil law is binding upon the conscience only, in so far as it corresponds to the law of God.” Matthew Henry’s testimony is, “Christ allows of divorce in cases of adultery; he disallows it in all others.” Olshausen says: “This union is to be considered indissoluble, one which man cannot, and only God can dissolve, and in which the Omniscient does really dissever only in cases of adultery.” Such are the opinions of some of the most learned and pious Biblical scholars.
III. Now let us turn to the question already anticipated: what man or nation dare assume authority to put asunder those whom God hath joined together? The answer I call your attention to is this: 1st, the Jews, and 2nd, our own nation.
1. The Jews. I quote from Dr. Adam Clarke’s Commentary, Matthew 19:3. “At this time there were two famous divinity and philosophical schools among the Jews, that of Shammai, and that of Hillel. On the question of divorce, the school of Shammai maintained that a man could not legally put away his wife, except for adultery. The school of Hillel taught that a man might put away his wife for a multitude of other causes: and when she did not find grace in his sight, that is, when he saw any other woman that pleased him better.” Rabbi Akiba said: “If any man saw a woman handsomer than his own wife, he might put his wife away; because it is said in the law, ‘If she find not favour in his eyes’” (Deuteronomy 24:1). “Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian, in his Life, tells us, with the utmost coolness and indifference, About this time I put away my wife, who had borne me three children:, not being pleased with her manners.” These eases are enough to show to what a scandalous and criminal excess this matter was carried among the Jews.
2. Then we inquire, How is it with us in America? I find that divorces are wry common, some for one cause and some for another. So that the question, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” is far from being foreign, but really is applicable to us, and a question of the greatest importance. For, for almost any little thing that springs up between man and wife, a divorce is applied for, and is obtained. From the Standard, a Baptist paper, I took the following: “Those whose attention is not directed to the subject of divorce, will be surprised at the number of applications in the courts of our large cities and centres of population to have the bonds of marriage dissolved. In Indianapolis, in 1866, there were 822 marriages, and 210 applications for divorce, which is more than one to four of the whole number of marriages. In Chicago, the same year, there were 4,182 marriages, and 330 applications for divorce, being nearly one to every thirteen marriages. In both these cases the number seeking divorce is alarming. But the unenviable and disgraceful distance in which Indianapolis leads Chicago in this warfare on marriage, is to be attributed to the peculiarly lax legislation of Indiana, which, for years, has been notorious on the subject of divorce.” “The various courts of Chicago granted bills of divorce in 1865 to the number of 274; in 1566, the number was 209; in 1867, 311; making the whole number of divorces granted in three years, 794. Is not this appalling? But since 1868, Chicago has registered as high as 730 applications in a single year, representing families containing about 3,500 souls, and the most of which are poor women.” The Christian Statesman says that the number of divorces in eight years, in four States, viz., Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Connecticut, have been 5,831. And in the year 1877, in Maine, there were 500 divorces. Brethren and fellow-citizens, I believe that our lawmakers are to blame for allowing such laws to exist as they do, and not bringing the law of divorce in these United States to the Scriptural standard. Look at our statutes of Minnesota, and see the looseness of this matter. In the General Statutes of Minnesota, page 407, sec. 6, we find the following: “A divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be adjudged and decreed by the district court on suit brought in the county where parties, or either of them, reside, for either of the following causes: 1st, adultery; 2nd, impotency; 3rd, cruel and inhuman treatment; 4th, when either party, subsequent to the marriage, has been sentenced to imprisonment in the State Prison; 5th, wilful desertion of one party by the other for the term of three years next preceding the filing of the complaint; 6th, habitual drunkenness for the space of one year, immediately preceding the filing of the complaint.” Here, then, are six causes in our State statutes for which a man or woman may put away wife or husband. The first is according to Scripture; the others are unscriptural. What latitude is here given for divorces! I remark, further, that the peace of the churches is endangered by this ungodly practice of divorce. All Christian people and all true philanthropists must awake to their duty. Politicians have made these laws, and by them public sentiment has been educated. (A Cressey, in American Homiletic Review.)
Jewish divorce customs
Divorce is still very common among the Eastern Jews. In 1856 there were sixteen cases among the small Jewish population of Jerusalem. In fact, a Jew may divorce his wife at any time, or from any cause, he being himself the sole judge; the only hindrance is that, to prevent divorces in a mere sudden fit of spleen, the hill of divorce must have the concurrence of three rabbis, and be written on ruled vellum, containing neither more nor less than twelve lines; and it must be given in the presence of ten witnesses. (Allen, “Modern Judaism.”)
The usual causes of divorce (in Asia Minor)are a bad temper or extravagance in the wife, and the cruel treatment or neglect of the husband. (Van Lennep.)
The Rulee of Reformation
“From the beginning it was not so.” Which rule, if we apply unto “the scope of this text, as it stands in relation unto the context, we shall have more to say for it than for most constitutions, Divine or human. For that of marriage is almost as old as Nature. There was no sooner one man, but God divided him into two; and then no sooner were there two, but he united them into one. This is that sacred institution which was made with mankind in a state of innocence; the very ground and foundation of all, both sacred and civil, government. It was by sending back the Pharisees to the most venerable antiquity, that our Lord here asserted the law of wedlock against the old custom of their divorce. Whilst they had made themselves drunk with their muddy streams, He directed them to the fountain, to drink themselves into sobriety. They insisted altogether on the Mosaical dispensation; but He endeavoured to reform them by the most primitive institution. They alleged a custom; but He a law. They a permission, and that from Moses; but He a precept, and that from God. They did reckon from afar off; but not, as He, from the beginning. (Thomas Pierce.)