This code is practicable. Its provisions are no hazy generalities, incapable of application. The history of matrimony offers continued demonstrations by which the power of Christ-inspired ideals may be measured. Particularly convincing are the radical changes in marital standards during the transition from paganism to Christianity in the cradle days of the Church.
Roman historians have left sordid pictures of the degeneracy into which domestic relations dropped during the softness and luxury of the empire. The perversions openly practiced were so revolting that St. Paul, in his letter to the congregation at Rome, can speak only broadly of these unnatural lusts. Yet it is possible to measure that wantonness by other standards which permit discussion. Divorce steadily became more frequent and was granted on trivial claims. Seneca’s soliloquy is frequently quoted: "Does any woman now blush on account of a divorce, since the time when certain distinguished women of noble family reckoned their years not by the number of the [annual] consuls, but by that of their husbands and go forth [from their husbands] for the sake of being married, and married for the sake of being divorced? . . . Modesty is a demonstration of deformity." (De Benef., 111:16.) Juvenal, flinging his barbed sarcasm against a woman who habitually remarried before the previous nuptial garlands were faded, concludes: "So the number [of husbands] increases; so eight husbands have become hers in five autumns, a worthy fact for the inscription on her tomb." (Satires, VI:227—30.) Martial recorded the almost unbelievable experience of one Thelesina, who married her tenth husband within less than a month. (Epigrams, VI:7.)
The zest for licentiousness was shown by the sneering avoidance of marriage ties. Augustus placed heavy taxes on those who refused to enter matrimony; but legislation could not check debauchery. Wives were interchanged. The austere Cato honored his friend Hortensius by giving him his wife and then marrying her again after Hortensius died. Wives were borrowed or lent. Daughters of patrician lineage became professional devotees of lust, and in such numbers that the senate passed resolutions disenfranchising them. Sanctuaries dedicated to the worship of the gods, particularly of Isis, were transformed into dens of vice. A contemporary observer declares that the temple officials of his day saw more debauchery than those who made their livelihood from immorality.
The curse placed on childhood was one of the most frightful barbarities. Cicero indicts those who assert that the death of a child "is to be borne with an undisturbed mind; that, if indeed an infant in the cradle dies, there is to be no complaint whatever." (Tusc. Disp., I:39.) This unconcern darkens to an uglier hue in the case of crippled or deformed infants. Seneca maintains: "We destroy rabid dogs, we kill the fierce and unmanageable ox, and on sick sheep we let the iron drive lest they should infect the flock; we deprive of life unnatural offspring; likewise we drown children if they are born disabled and monstrous. It is not wrath, but reason, to separate things useless from those that are sound." (De Ira, I:15.) The brutality practiced against unwanted children was exposure, which left new-born infants victims of wild beasts and vultures, or murder, which crushed and strangled them to death. One of the best-known of the many intimate letters discovered among the papyri is an autograph missive from Egypt in which Hilarion demands of his wife, Alis, that, if the child which they expect proves to be a girl, she must destroy it at once. Tertullian raises his voice against his heathen contemporaries: "How many among you, even in the magistracy, destroy your children! You drown them or expose them to die of cold or hunger or to be eaten by the dogs!"
Here, then, was a testing-ground where the power of the Christian morality could be gauged. With no social prestige, no political influence, no popular support in their behalf, Christian standards achieved the most radical revolution in morals that history has ever seen. Women were torn from the clutches of sensuality. "What women these Christians have!" exclaimed Libanius, the pagan teacher of Chrysostom. In the ennobling influences exerted by Anthusa on Chrysostom, Monica on Augustine, as well as by less known Christian mothers on their families a new womanhood and a glorified motherhood arose.
Matrimony itself was dignified by the Christian doctrine of its holiness, its blessing, its permanence. Children, exalted by the precepts and examples of Jesus, could no longer be exposed or murdered; they were welcomed with a new love and guarded as divine heritages. "Christians," admits an early writer whose identity has been lost, "take part in everything as citizens and submit to everything as strangers. Every strange land is native to them, and every native land is strange. They marry and have children like every one else, — but they do not expose their children. They have meals in common, but not wives. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh.” (Auctor ad Diognetum, pp. 5, 6, in T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire.)
In short, out of the decay of a heathen society, steeped in its own vice, came a Christian code of marital ethics by which all subsequent progress has been regulated. While imperial legislation, framed to curb licentiousness, failed, the impulses radiated by a persecuted Christianity brought about the dawn of a happier day in the morals of marriage.
These refining powers of early Christianity have been challenged only by a few eccentric atheists. In his hot-headed attack on Christianity, entitled Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (p.7ff.), Bertrand Russell sinks to these depths: "The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex, an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time when the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make." But history remains history, Russell notwithstanding. Only bigotry can fly into the face of facts.
The purifying power of the Gospel is shown in the chapters of modern missionary history. A section of Dr. Keyser’s book on the Lutheran missions in New Guinea, translated in the Lutheran Standard (June 17, 1933), pictures in distressing detail the burden-bearing of native women there and continues: "The fact is that Christianity has given the Papuan women a vast freedom. Before God and in the Church they are on a par with the men; and their standing in society has likewise been raised very greatly. When men from neighboring villages came to visit, they were most deeply impressed with the respect and courtesy which the Christian women enjoyed. In genuinely heathen fashion they ‘ran down’ their own wives. ‘They are not worth a shot of gunpowder.’ But they praised the Christian women: They are diligent, clean, faithful.’
"One heathen whose wife had died tried his best to obtain a widow from a near-by Christian clan, who herself had not yet been baptized. He offered twice, yes, three times the amount of the regular price, but did not receive her in spite of all his efforts. ... A comparison of present-day social conditions among the Kate and Hube tribes with those obtaining during the time of paganism reveals the astounding progress that has been made in every direction. Everywhere it becomes evident that womanhood has been lifted to a much higher plane — a fruit of Christianity."
Probably 40,000,000 women in India are the secluded inmates of the zenanas (the private, restricted quarters of the women); 27,000,000 are destitute widows, with shaved heads and coarse garments, who do penance for an imaginary sin; 288 women out of every 10,000 of the total population of India are dancing-girls or priestesses, who live lives of prostitution in the temples. (R. H. Glover, The Progress of World-wide Missions, p. 112.) All doctrines and rituals of hoary creeds have not been able to relieve the multiform misery that shackles Indians wives and mothers. Only the purifying teaching of Christianity can produce a Pandita Ramabai (one of Indians greatest women, a convert to Christianity, who championed the cause of her caste-ridden sisters) or that new type of womanhood which towers over the pretenses of paganism wherever the recreating power of Christ's Gospel is exerted.
The demonstration of these Christian dynamics is also decisive in our own country. In the matter of divorce, for example, statistical material shows the effective power of the Church. George Walter Fiske, professor of religious education, Graduate School of Theology, Oberlin College, in The Christian Family, presents this significant survey (pp. 33, 34): "The writer has gathered data from sixty-one parishes in fifteen States in different parts of the country covering the family histories of 22,001 churchgoing white families, including 16,940 communicant families. The ministers reporting these cases were known to the writer as men of high standing and long service in the ministry, mostly in long pastorates, with a reputation for pastoral faithfulness. They know their people and the family histories of their people. We may accept their testimony as fairly accurate when they report that they can find only 196 cases of divorce among all these families, which is only one divorce to 113 marriages. And of this number only 117 divorces were among church-members or where either husband or wife was a church-member. This makes one divorce in 145 Protestant church-member families, or two thirds of 1 per cent. To allow for a wide margin of error in our data, multiply by two, and even then it is quite safe to say that less than 2 per cent of church-attending white families in America, and perhaps 1 per cent of communicant families, are ever divorced. These data give us two significant facts: Divorces in America are mostly among non-religious people. And religion, the Christian religion, is our best possible insurance against divorce.”
Professor Fiske's claims are supported by other convincing testimony. Judge Carl V. Weygant of Cleveland, speaking to the Marriage and Home Conference in that city, showed that of the 7,000 cases which had come before his court only an insignificant number were church-members. {Homiletical Review, 1932, p. 132.)
Dr. Z. Barney Phillip, rector of Epiphany Episcopal Church of Washington, D.C., told the Conference on the Conservation of Home Life that of the 2,000 couples he had married in twenty-five years of his ministry only seven had sought divorce.
An investigation undertaken by the Lutheran, national weekly organ of the United Lutheran Church, showed on the basis of 527 replies to a questionnaire that of 68,559 marriage ceremonies only 1,073 ended in divorce. This suggests a ratio of one divorce to more than sixty marriages and shows that the church weddings are broken with only one tenth the frequency of our national divorce rate. The editor concludes: "The data gathered seem to indicate that, where young people’s entrance into matrimony is by way of meeting one another on such decent and orderly occasions as the church furnishes and when their knowledge of the marriage covenant has been gained in catechetical classes and among religious folk, they generally stay married. They do not go to the divorce courts except for due cause.” (New York Times, March 7, 1927.)
Even more extensive was the survey conducted by the Protestant Episcopal Joint Commission to Study the Whole Problem of Divorce — Its Conditions and Causes. A questionnaire submitted to groups of 800 selected ministers in the Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches brought interesting tabulations like these:
Of the 787 Episcopal clergymen reporting 77 per cent did not recall a single divorce, 10 per cent more reporting only one; altogether, 346 divorces were enumerated.
Of the 520 Congregational clergymen 82.8 per cent listed no divorces.
Of the 694 Presbyterian churches responding 83 per cent mentioned no divorce. In 92 per cent there was but one divorce or less, where both the husband and wife attended church regularly.
Of 682 Baptist ministers 84.3 per cent could recall no divorce, and 7.6 per cent recorded but one.
Of the Methodist churches 88.2 per cent reported no divorces, while 5.7 per cent listed but one divorce among the regular church attendants.
A marriage questionnaire was sent to a representative group of pastors in my own Church. Two hundred replies were received from various sections of the country and Canada, from rural and urban groups, small missions and large churches, wealthy congregations and poor, churches which employ only the English language and others that feature services in foreign languages. In this way a typical, cross-sectional view was obtained from approximately 5 per cent of the entire pastorate.
The answers revealed that 87 per cent of these churches had not a single case of divorce during the year 1933.
In the few churches reporting divorces the most prevalent domestic discord occurred in families in which only husband or wife was a member of the Church or in which both were indifferent members. Altogether these 200 pastors married 1,900 couples during the year 1933. For the same time they reported 37 divorces, making the divorce ratio in these 200 typical congregations 1 to 51 instead of the prevalent rate for the entire country, 1 to approximately 6. But of these 37 divorces only 14 were granted in which both husband and wife were members of the Church; and some of these 14 couples were indifferent church attendants.
In some of these divorces the Christian faith worked successfully for the reconciliation of the estranged parties. A New Orleans magistrate, a non-Lutheran, is quoted to this effect: “I have found that very few Lutheran people ever get into the divorce court, and when they do, they are more easily handled if it comes to a question of reconciliation than any other cases of my experience.”
Supplementary statements on the communications from these clergymen present illuminating comment like this:
“In the twenty-four years that I have been pastor here in Buffalo I have performed 202 marriages. In all these years but one couple has been divorced, and there has been only one separation. Of these two couples, in one instance the wife, in the other instance the husband, was not a member of the congregation."
"None of my members in Vinton, Iowa, was divorced during the ten years of our existence as a congregation."
“During my eleven years in Parkersburg, W.Va., we have had only one divorce case in the congregation."
"As to the marriages covering the entire twenty-three years of my present ministry in Elmhurst, Ill., there were three divorces and one separation. In the three divorce cases one pair was not affiliated with our Church, while the other two were mixed marriages."
"I am happy to report that there has been no divorce case in my congregation in Buffalo during the entire seventeen years of its existence."
"There has been no divorce in the history of my congregation in Stratford, Ont., in twenty-one years."
"From 1919 to 1933 I performed 162 marriages in Chicago, and according to the best information I have, there were two divorces. In only one case, against which marriage I protested, were both husband and wife members of our Church."
"Within the history of this congregation in Athens, Ill., which dates back to 1877, I have knowledge of only one divorce. In this case the wife was not a member of our Church."
"In all my twenty-one years in Los Angeles I have had no divorces."
"To my knowledge there is not a single case of divorce in the thirty years' existence of my congregation at Chicago Park, Cal."
"Of the 97 couples I have married during the past ten years in Madison, Wis., only one has come before the divorce court."
"During the past ten years I have married some 75 couples here in Elmhurst, N.Y., and to my knowledge not one of these marriages has proved an unhappy one."
"In my church, during its twelve and a half years of existence, 169 marriages were performed, and of these 2 ended in divorce. Both were marriages between Lutherans and non-Lutherans."
"In my twenty-seven years of ministerial work, during which I ministered to approximately 1,400 souls, I cannot recall having had a single divorce case."
"There has been no divorce in my congregation at Howell, Nebr., so far. My congregation was organized in 1893."
"Throughout my ministry of almost twelve years here in Duluth, Minn., we have not had a single case of divorce."
"In the ten years of this congregation's existence in Brentwood, Pa., there have been no divorces at all."
Multiplied statements to the same effect come from thousands of Christian pastors throughout the land and emphasize this basic truth: the tie which binds is the Christian marriage, and the safest guide to marital happiness is the Scriptural code of marriage.
There is no corresponding precision by which the constructive forces of Christianity can be tabulated for other aspects of family life. In the very nature of the case no statistics are available for the relative occurrence of family quarrels within and without the Church. Neither are there any tabulations covering desertions, separations, and annulments, or the mutual attitudes of parents and children as these are influenced by church affiliation. No one except the rabid exponents of atheistic upheaval can be blind to the fact that Christianity is the most successful power in preventing the disorganization of the family. It is one of the tragedies of present-day social science that, while detailed consideration is accorded the multiplied influences of heredity and environment, of health and vocational factors, sociology quite completely discounts the sustaining forces of Christianity and minimizes the pivotal importance of a spiritually regenerated heart and life.
Young people will make no mistake by heeding the clear voice of repeated and harmonious experience. Recently the people of Longview, Texas, gathered with Mr. and Mrs. William F. Kelley to celebrate their eighty-first wedding anniversary. Mr. Kelley, aged 109, and Mrs. Kelley, aged 105, were married four years before the Civil War. The young husband tried to enlist in the Confederate Army, but medical examiners rejected him, asserting that his health was so poor that he could not live long; yet Mr. Kelley survived these dire prophecies by seventy-seven years, — so healthful has his wedded life proved itself. This unique marriage brought both husband and wife much blessing; and believing that eighty-one years of happy matrimony give a father and mother reason to speak with authority, newspaper men asked the Kelleys for formulae summarizing their requisites for a long and happy marriage. The answer of these two Texans, whose marriage experience embraces more than four fifths of a century, was short, direct, unmistakable. "For a long and happy marriage," they declared, "we need have unwavering faith in God, hard work, and moderation in all things."
In a day of easy and quick divorces it is refreshing to read almost identical counsel from others who have been similarly blessed by many joyous years of matrimony. When townspeople of Wyckoff, New Jersey, met to congratulate "Uncle Johnny" Demarest, age ninety-eight, and his wife, "Auntie Susan," age ninety-six, on their seventy-sixth wedding anniversary, the couple gave this recipe for wedded bliss: "Hard work, forgiving faults, home-cooking, and going to church." Again, when Mr. and Mrs. Gennung of Horseheads, New York, celebrated their sixtieth anniversary, they attributed their marital harmony to music (Mr. Gennung is a musician, and his wife accompanies him), hard work, good cooking, and especially regular attendance at divine worship.
Read the current advertisements, and you will believe that a happy marriage depends on the avoidance of dishpan hands, bad breath, perspiration odors, gray laundry, pink toothbrush. Whatever of practical physical prudence and cure may lurk in these prescriptions by these self-appointed domestic doctors, the fact remains that for protracted and increasing happiness in marriage, young people need Christ, first of all.
To offer a concise, workable, every-day help for the attainment of the high ideals of Christian marriage, I give this prescription for wedded happiness:
1. "Whatever ye do [in courtship and in marriage] in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus!"
2. Make Christ the Counselor in your wedding plans by invoking His help through prayer!
3. Focus home ideals on this central, pivotal point: "My partner in life must be of my faith, my Church. We must both worship the same Christ in the same sincerity and devotion!"
4. Resolve: Every Sunday, with only those exceptions which necessity demands, will find me with my beloved one in church!
5. Resolve: From the first day of our wedded life, in sunshine and shadow, in health and sickness, in prosperity and poverty, our home will be a Church of Christ where the Savior will be worshiped in the study of His Word and in prayer!
6. Resolve: Christ will be the ennobling, uplifting, refining, selfishness-destroying power in my life, so that, instead of insisting upon rights, I will live in and by the sprit of the humble, self-giving Savior!
7. Resolve: All problems and perplexities that may arise in my household will be decided not by the dictates of popular opinion and wide-spread practice but by clear statements of the Word of God!