at all on the subject is left in the States rather than transferred to the national government, for the sole reason that it is thought that each State should have the power to determine the status of its own citizens. If the national government cannot be allowed, therefore, to grant divorces, how much less should it be permitted to a mere State to exercise the right in respect to citizens of other States. The practice is indefensible and should not be tolerated.

The American Bar Association have recommended that jurisdiction in divorce cases should be confined to the following classes of cases:

(1) When both parties were domiciled within the State when the action was commenced.

(2) When the plaintiff was domiciled within the State when the action was commenced, and the defendant was personally served with process within the State.

(3) When one of the parties was domiciled within the State when the action was commenced, and one or the other of them actually resided within the State for one year next preceding the commencement of the action.

These recommendations were made by the Association in 1882, and were re-affirmed in 1888. In a few of the States they have been embodied in the statute law. There is no doubt that had the matter been properly presented and urged on the attention of the law-making bodies many more of them would have recognized the desirability of making the changes proposed.

5. The remedy should be without any respect to sex. In other words, the law of divorce should place both sexes on terms of perfect equality. This is generally the case under the laws in this country.

6. The remedy, as a general rule, should be granted on such terms as leave both parties free to marry. A total prohibition of marriage tends to immorality, and for this reason the State should refrain from imposing such restraint. There is one case, however, in which it seems wise that the State should impose a partial restraint. It may very properly provide that in cases where a divorce is granted for adultery the offending party shall not be permitted to marry his or her paramour. While such a provision, of course, puts it beyond the power of

the seducer to marry the seduced, and so atone, in part, for the wrong, it yet takes away the inducement in many cases to the commission of the adultery. For this reason such a marriage is not allowable under the laws of Delaware, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and possibly some of the other States. When such a restraint is imposed the paramour may well be made a co-respondent in the original divorce proceedings. A more or less general restraint of any remarriage of the offending party is made under the laws of Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. In some of these States the matter is left to the discretion of the court; in others the offending party cannot marry during the life-time of the former spouse; while in others the parties cannot marry until after the lapse of a certain prescribed period.

In expressing the opinion that the law should allow divorced persons to remarry I do not wish to be understood as disapproving that provision of the Discipline of our Church which forbids our ministers solemnizing marriages in any case where there is a divorced wife or husband living. The Protestant Episcopal Church lays a similar restraint upon its ministers. But the State, in the enactment of its laws, will leave the religious aspects of this question to the individual conscience of its citizens to decide whether such a marriage is scriptural

or not.

7. The Episcopal General Convention sometime ago proposed that "severe penalties should be inflicted by the State, on the demand of the Church, for the suppression of all offenses against the seventh commandment, and sundry other parts of the Mosaic legislation." It has also been proposed that not only should offenses against the marital relations be made punishable under the criminal law, but that no divorce should be granted for such offenses until the party in fault had been convicted of the crime. At the present time adultery is not punishable as a crime in all the States, and even in the States where it is one rarely hears of any prosecution being instituted for the offense. It is doubtful whether making adultery punishable under the criminal law operates to any great extent as a deterrent influence. It does not appear that this offense is any

the less frequently committed in the States whose legislation has proscribed it as a crime than in the States whose laws have not so provided. The parties to the offense do not expect to be detected in it, and when passion is stronger than reason consequences are not considered by them. The suggestion that no divorce shall be granted for adultery until after the guilty parties have been criminally convicted raises a serious question. Those who advocate the change need to be reminded of the difference which exists between a civil and a criminal case. A suit for a divorce is a civil proceeding, and, as in other civil proceedings, the complainant succeeds provided the case is made out by a preponderance of the evidence. But in a criminal proceeding no conviction can be secured unless the prosecution has established the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. The suggestion, therefore, would make it necessary to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in divorce cases, instead of by a preponderance of evidence as at present.

8. The practice of issuing circulars or advertising for divorces has been prohibited by law in some of our States, and should be prohibited in all. In 1877 the State of Illinois passed the following statute: "That whoever advertises, prints, publishes, distributes, or circulates, or causes to be advertised, printed, published, distributed, or circulated, any circular, pamphlet, card, hand-bill, advertisement, printed paper, book, newspaper, or notice of any kind with intent to procure or to aid in procuring any divorce, either in this State or elsewhere, shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100), nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), for each offense, or imprisoned in the county jail not less than three months nor more than one year, r both, in the discretion of the court. This act shall not app to the printing or publishing of any notice or advertisement required or authorized by any statute of the State of Illinois." This law has had a wholesome effect, and it would be well could it find its way into the statute-book of every State of the Union.

Why Wade logens.

2th

ART. IV. THE CHURCH IN THE SOUTH.

THERE is no truer index to the character of a people than that exhibited in their religious system. With full knowledge of a people's religion one can fairly delineate their general character and the degree of their civilization. The nature of their system and the faithfulness with which they adhere to its precepts are inseparable from their character and civilization. The relation is as fixed and faithful as the needle is to the pole. The rule is equally applicable to every people and every religious system that has ever commanded the faith and devotion of any people. Tell me a people's faith, and I will tell you what they practice; explain to me their religious system, and I will tell you their history. This is axiomatic and admits of no exception. It applies with equal force to the Christian Church as to all other systems of religion.

But, notwithstanding its universal and unlimited character and the essential unity of faith and practice preserved, time, locality, and progressive events have ever, and will ever, exert a modifying influence upon its local development and practical operation. The same holds good not only in other days and in other lands but in this year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two, and in the United States of America.

I leave to others the task of speaking for the Northern portion of the Church in this country. Acquainted to some degree with the Church in the South, I venture a few observations touching that portion of the Church.

The Church in the South, as in all other sections, is the underlying foundation-stone upon which rest our social and political system and civilization. Their excellences or imperfections, in so far as the Church has been able to influence them, are but the resultants of the character and stability of the Church upon which they rest.

In the South, as in the North, the Church is divided into many denominations, but not into as many as in the North, however. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the North is so much more prolific in the development of all kinds of antagonistic notions and theories than the South. Those divisions are all based upon doctrinal, ecclesiastical, sectional,

and, in reference to one race, upon race divergence. These all unite in their divergence from the Roman Catholic Church, which, inspired by the one spirit which occupies the Vatican in Rome, is practically changeless in all lands and all times. Her apparent modifications are but necessary assumptions to accommodate herself to, and to take advantage of, circumstances she cannot control. Her Jesuitical pleas for freedom of worship in America, and her heartless persecution of Protestant missionaries in Peru and other Roman Catholic countries for the exercise of religious liberty, are fair indications of the true character of that Church. She favors slavery, race proscription, sectionalism, and every such wickedness whenever and wherever she thinks such favor can best subserve her interest, but is quite as ready to pose as the original abolitionist, anticaste, and patriotic Church whenever she hopes to secure a greater advantage by the adoption of such a course. Such being her character, I dismiss her from consideration in the discussion of the subject of the Church in the South.

The Protestant Churches of the South are, in DOCTRINE, much more conservative and literal in their interpretation of the Scriptures than are their brethren of the North.

In the Presbyterian Church, for instance, while the Church was almost rent in twain over the question of the revision of their creed, and although the majority decided in favor of the revision, the Southern branch clung most tenaciously to the views of the old Westminster Confession. It is true that the celebrated Woodrow case in Columbia Theological Seminary, in South Carolina, over the question of evolution, created considerable excitement at the time, but it failed to materially disturb the faith of the Church in the South as did that of Dr. Briggs in the North, who would give to reason a place of equal authority in doctrinal matters with the sacred Scriptures. Dr. Briggs was sustained by Union Theological Seminary, and is teaching there to-day, while Dr. Woodrow, in the South, was made to vacate in favor of a man of the old orthodox faith.

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the North embraces in her fellowship R. Heber Newton, and the Congregational Church never condemned Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, and others, for vagaries which would have placed them without the pale of orthodoxy in the South.