Title: Christian Marriage Indissoluble - A Plain Sermon
Author: Cowan, James Galloway
Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1857 William Skeffington edition.



                            CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
                              INDISSOLUBLE.


                                * * * * *

                              A Plain Sermon

                                * * * * *

                               PREACHED AT

                       ARCHBISHOP TENISON’S CHAPEL.

                 ON THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1857.

                                * * * * *

                                    BY

                          JAMES GALLOWAY COWAN,
                         MINISTER OF THE CHAPEL.

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                  WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY.

                                  1857.

                _Price_ 4_d._, _or_ 2_s._ 6_d._ _per doz._

                                * * * * *

The following Sermon is printed, partly because some who heard it wished
to possess it, and partly because it has been suggested to me that it
would be useful for distribution as a tract.  It is simply what I have
called it, “a plain Sermon,” written and printed for ordinary hearers and
readers.

                                * * * * *



ST. MATTHEW, XIX, 3, 4, 5, 6.


    The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him, and saying unto Him,
    Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

    And He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that He which
    made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For
    this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to
    his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?  Wherefore they are no
    more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore GOD hath joined together,
    let not man put asunder.

“THE priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at
his mouth.”  This was part of the reproof which God, through the prophet
Malachi,{3} administered to His priests and His people, for not teaching
and not learning the divine will respecting idolatry and adultery.

The words may well arouse _us_, my brethren—God’s priests and God’s
people—from the apathy which would neither proclaim nor seek for the
teaching of the Word of God, in the time of a great moral and religious
crisis.  You all know, probably, to what I allude.  There is a bill now
before the Lower House of Parliament, having passed the Upper House,
which proposes to make it a common law of the land, that Christian
marriages may, in certain cases, be wholly dissolved, and that the
divorced persons may re-marry in the lifetimes of those from whom they
have been divorced.  Yea, and even more: the bill would give full liberty
(designedly it would seem, from the language of its advocates) to the
person whose guilt has rendered the divorce possible, to perpetuate that
guilt in company with the first partner in it, and to dignify the union
by the appellation of Holy Matrimony.

Now, my brethren, I could adduce many moral reasons why we should take
alarm at the most distant prospect of such a state of things, and set
ourselves most earnestly to work, if not to oppose it, yet at least to
put it off, until we have had time to judge of its expediency and its
consequences; but I take a higher stand, and I entreat you to do so—a
religious stand.  The Word of God deals with the question of marriage,
and legislates upon it; God prescribes the qualifications for it, the
duties of it, the nature and endurance of its covenant, and the
prohibitions against entering upon it.

Are you prepared, my brethren, to say that all that is now proposed as
law of the land is in harmony with the law of God?  Recollect you do say
so, if you do not strongly deny it and protest against it.  “He that is
not with me is against me.”

God Himself deals with this whole question.  Have you so investigated the
subject, as to feel convinced that man only proposes now to carry out
God’s law?  If you were appealed to to petition against this bill, or to
pray that it may be put off, would your refusal to do so (if you refused)
be grounded upon a thorough conviction, formed from devout and careful
study of God’s Word, that there was nothing religiously wrong in the
measure!  No!  To many of you the trumpet has appeared to give an
uncertain sound, and you have not prepared yourselves for the battle.
“The priest’s lips have not kept knowledge, and you have not sought the
law at his mouth,” or anywhere else.

I say not this in idle declamation against others, dear brethren.  I
exempt not myself when I say that the vast majority of God’s priests and
people have long remained in strange and culpable ignorance or
indifference about the teaching of God, and the occasional human
legislation on this subject; and that it is only very gradually that they
are being awakened, and led to the knowledge of what has Divine sanction
and what has human sanction, and consequently to a correct judgment, as
to what should be done at this crisis.

Let us, my brethren, awake quickly and thoroughly, while there is use in
so doing.  Let us, priests and people, betake us to the Word of God, and
speak and hear what is there written; and then let us go forth to be
doers of that Word, according to our several abilities and opportunities.

Marriage, you know, was instituted in the time of man’s innocency.  God
judged that it was not good for man to be alone; He therefore gave him a
help meet for him.  That help was a creature formed, not separately and
independently, but out of himself—bone of his bone, and flesh of his
flesh.  And so close and dear was the union, divinely cemented between
them, intended to be, that Adam was taught by God to say—and Moses to
record for future men—“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” {5}
Thus was marriage, by Divine institution, made the first and closest of
human relationships.  And fresh, and higher, and holier honours were
bestowed on it, when Christ made it the glorious type of His own
never-to-be-broken union with His Church; calling Himself the bridegroom,
her the bride; giving Himself for her, and loving and cherishing her as
His own flesh; and providing that she should be presented to Him a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; that her
espousals should be celebrated by angels, and that she should be for ever
with the Lord.

The history of the institution of marriage, and this exaltation of it
into a type of Christ’s eternal union with the Church (so much dwelt on
in some books of the Old Testament) would teach us clearly, that no
divorce, _save by death_, was originally contemplated in the Divine mind;
and this is further incontestibly proved by Christ in the language of the
text—“Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning” (He,
that is, who designed what they should be and do, and has an indisputable
right to exercise His will) “made them male and female,” (male and female
man, this means—imperfect parts of one being—“_man_,”) and joined them
together, “and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother,
and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.”

This, brethren, is CHRIST the WORD’S answer to the question of the
Pharisees, “Whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife for every
cause.”  He refers His inquirers immediately to the original institution
of marriage, as a sufficient answer, and, quoting the words then used by
the Creator Himself, or dictated by His inspiration, expressive of the
most entire and permanent union required between a man and his wife—words
which He says make them no longer “twain, but one flesh”—He adds His own
absolute, peremptory, and unqualified decree, “What therefore God has
joined together, let not man put asunder.”  In this sentence, observe He
makes no exception; He allows neither adultery nor any other cause, as a
justification of a breach of His prohibition.  He positively forbids
every human being to dissolve a union, which, as He shows, the Almighty
designed to be indissoluble. {7}

His words were objected to by the Pharisees, as my interpretation of them
will doubtless be by some, because in the Old Testament—in the Law given
by Moses—there were distinct rules of divorce; not simply of putting
away, but of marrying again.  “They say unto Him, ‘Why did Moses then
command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away.’”  It is
to these words, contained in the 24th chapter of Deuteronomy, vv. 1, 2,
that the Pharisees alluded:

    “When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass
    that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some
    uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and
    give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.  And when she is
    departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.”

Now this, it must be admitted, was naturally a stumbling-block to the
Pharisees, preventing the easy reception of Christ’s teaching.  And yet
it should have presented no permanent difficulty to teachable minds.  Was
this, in Moses’s time (and since, till Christ’s), the law of God?  What
of that?  God, by His prophet Jesus Christ (_we_ can say God in His own
person), now repealed that law, and reverted to His original declarations
and prohibitions.  Who, then, shall perceive a contradiction in the
forbidding of divorce, because it had been previously allowed, when it is
the same authority which exerts itself first to allow, and then to
disallow?  Who shall venture to say it is lawful for _man_ to act now
upon a law long since repealed by _God_, and replaced by a directly
contrary one?  _But_, _brethren_, _this never was God’s law_.  Hear what
Christ says—“Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, _suffered_
you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Moses, the civil magistrate, finding it impossible to restrain the
obstinate and rebellious Israelites within the bounds originally set for
them by God, attempted to regulate, in some measure, their lawless ways,
and to secure some regard for public and private rights.  Accordingly, as
they had fallen into the practice of dismissing their wives for many
frivolous reasons, and often in momentary displeasure, of which they
afterwards relented, and sought them again, Moses required that _when_
they did so dismiss their wives, they should do it deliberately, and in a
formal way, writing a bill of divorcement; and with the understanding,
probably as a check upon precipitancy, that no after repentance should
render them able to claim their wives again, if they had availed
themselves of their supposed liberty, and taken other husbands.  So much
of sanction and regulation of unlawful courses did Moses condescend to.

But it may be objected: “Moses was God’s deputy, what he sanctioned God
therefore must have approved.”  Now, truly, we do not suppose that Moses
acted without Divine permission; _but such permission did not amount to
approval_.  Suppose you that God approved of the ignorance of the
heathen, because we are told He “winked at it?”  Was wicked Balaam’s
forbidden journey approved by God, because He directed what should be
said and done on it?  Was the lawless divorce between the king Jehovah
and His kingdom Israel, and the re-marriage of that kingdom with an
earthly king, divinely approved, because regulations for the management
of that adulterous kingdom were vouchsafed by God?  No, brethren; God
simply made the best of the evil.  He set bounds to it, and so diminished
it; in a measure condescending to human infirmities, and effecting
through them His good and wise purposes.  Thus He has ever done and still
does: but not in the case of separation of man and wife for re-marriage;
all sanction, all toleration of this breach of His commandment He has
withdrawn for ever.  “I say unto you” (they are Christ’s words)
“whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and
shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is
put away, doth commit adultery.”

But here it is objected: “This is granting the whole matter in
dispute—‘Except it be for fornication.’  This is all that is proposed to
the Legislature now: the putting away of an unfaithful wife, and (the
vows between them being thus loosed) the removal of obstacles to a fresh
marriage or marriages.”  Now, I confess, brethren, that the full
explanation of this apparent exception is what I cannot offer within the
space of time allowed me this morning.  Neither can it be given at all to
those who will not bestow on it close and somewhat learned attention.  I
am satisfied in my own mind (and I believe I could satisfy any one who
will study the passage with me), that this is no real exception to the
general prohibition.  But I can show you all, in few words, how little
its ordinary interpretation is to be relied on.  It is mentioned twice,
{10} once in the hearing of the multitude, once to the Pharisees.  It is
found only in the Gospel of St. Matthew, written for Jewish converts.  It
does not occur in the Gospel of St. Mark, or in that of St. Luke, written
for the Gentiles, in both of which the prohibition of putting away is
absolute and without exception, and it is never once alluded to in any
other part of the New Testament.  Not even in the Epistles to the
Corinthians, among whom the sin in question was a very common one, and to
whom St. Paul gives full directions about the married state, is there the
remotest hint of such a separation being lawful, _though the verse of the
Gospel in which it occurs is actually referred to in the seventh chapter
of the_ 1_st_ _Epistle_, (vv. 10, 11).  “And unto the married I command,
yet not I, but the Lord (‘Matthew xix, 6, 9,’ says the marginal
reference), Let not the wife depart from her husband: but if she depart,
let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and let not
the husband put away his wife.”

Now, when we remember that all Holy Scripture was dictated by the same
Spirit; that that Spirit brought to the remembrance of the Sacred
Writers, or taught them all that Christ did and said, and suggested to
them all that they should write; that all the sacred writings were not
_at once_ put into the hands of each Christian disciple, but that in most
cases probably only a single gospel and an epistle or two were to be
found in any one church, what inference are we compelled to draw from
this exception being mentioned only in the Gospel written _first_, and
written for _Jews_; but that it was a parenthetical recognition of the
Jewish criminal law, which put the adulterer and adulteress to death?  As
though Christ had begun to declare His decree, that marriage should in no
case be dissolved, and then stopped short to announce in a parenthesis,
that He meant not, at least in _their_ case, at _that_ time, to interfere
with the husband’s right to deliver up a faithless wife to the officers
of justice, to be dealt with by the law.  The Gentiles had no such law
delivered them from God: they were receiving Divine law for the first
time: in writing for them, therefore, there was no need of such an
allusion to the Mosaic law, and accordingly the Spirit left it out,
though it had been spoken by Christ.

But, however this may be, even if there is an exception in the case of
such sin, to the general law against putting away, _there is no exception
whatever to the general law against re-marriage in each other’s
lifetime_.  “Whosoever shall put away his wife” (“except it be for
fornication,” belongs only to these words, most clearly not to those that
follow), “and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso
marrieth her which is put away” (this means in the original Greek _any_
divorced woman) “doth commit adultery.”  You get the full force of this
whole prohibition, if you bear in mind that our Lord is answering the
Pharisees’ reference to the permission given by Moses in the first and
second verses of the 24th chapter of Deuteronomy, and showing what was to
be observed in future.  With reference to the first verse, which
recognises putting away in certain cases, Christ says, “Whoso putteth
away his wife (except it be for fornication), and marrieth another,
committeth adultery.”  In answer to the second verse, in which Moses
permits, “When she is departed out of his house, she may go and be
another man’s wife,” Christ says, “_Whosoever marrieth any divorced
woman_, _committeth adultery_.”  This, then, is the sum of the
matter:—_Perhaps_ Christ permits a man so to put away a faithless wife,
as no longer to have his home and children contaminated by her presence,
or to be responsible for her maintenance and recognition as his wife: but
He does not allow him to take another wife in her lifetime; and if any
one marries her, He counts him an adulterer, a sinner of that odious
class which God, when He ruled temporally, commanded to be stoned to
death, and whom He still condemns to spiritual and eternal death, saying
through His apostle, that they “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
{12}

In the face of all this, and I have urged but a tithe of what might be
said, can a Christian State provide for the divorce of Christians, and
their re-marriage with others, during the lives of their only lawful
husbands or wives?  I say most confidently, No!  In my Master’s name I
protest most loudly against such dishonour to His commands, and entreat
you protest with me.  But suppose the State insists upon her civil power,
alleging the rule of expediency, which is so lamentably urged in these
days, and maintaining that we cannot legislate now according to the law
of God.  Suppose she legalises such divorces and reunions.  What then?
Why, let her take the responsibility wholly on herself: let her treat
them as _civil_ contracts, and not require the Church to join in such
spiritual adultery against Christ.  I crave your earnest attention and
warm sympathy, dearly beloved, in the terrible alternative which
threatens us, the ministers of Christ.  If this bill passes, without a
proviso, that the Church shall not be called on to celebrate or sanction
such unions, then we must either wholly renounce our allegiance to Christ
in this behalf, or brave the law of the land by becoming rebels against
it, in not marrying adulterers and adulteresses, and not admitting them
to Holy Communion.

A politician of the nineteenth century may urge (and be applauded for
it), that you cannot legislate now by the Decalogue.  “You cannot put
down atheism,” he may tell you, “or idolatry, or blasphemy, or Sabbath
desecration.”  That may be, though the admission is a fearful one.  But
you do not call upon the officers of religion to take part in those sins.
Now, if you make me marry adulterers, or administer to them the blessed
Body and Blood of Christ, it is all the same thing as if you compelled me
to preach atheism from this pulpit, or to worship an idol before God’s
altar, or to blaspheme His holy name in His sanctuary, or set the example
of Sabbath desecration.  Look at the Church’s service for Holy Matrimony.
It requires the respective parties to say before God, that there is no
disqualification in His sight to their union.  It pledges them to take
each other _for better or worse_, _till death parts them_.  It unites
them with the solemn words, “Those whom God hath joined together, let no
man put asunder.”  It makes the priest say to God, that it shall never be
lawful to put asunder those whom He by matrimony has made one, and it
requires him to pronounce, as by God’s authority and in God’s name, two
solemn benedictions on the union of those before him.  Is not this an
awful profanation if used in the case of adulterers?  Is it not, in the
memorable language of the Archbishop of Canterbury, {14} “beyond the
power of charity itself to hope for God’s blessing on an union which had
its origin in a guilty passion, and was only rendered possible by the
commission of a heinous crime?”

A few words in answer to the objection: “Has not the state of things you
deprecate, been already lawful for some three hundred years?  Is not the
only change proposed now, the substitution of a judicial court to try the
case and pronounce sentence, for the direct legislation of the Houses of
Parliament?”  Brethren, there is as yet no common law of this land which
allows divorce and re-marriage.  There is indeed an imitation now and
then of one of the great corruptions of Popery.  The Church of Rome
pronounces marriage absolutely indissoluble, and utters a loud anathema
against any one who presumes to say that it may ever be dissolved.  But
if she is well paid for it, she will readily grant the Pope’s
dispensation (at least she has often done this to those whom she has a
mind to favour), and allow of their divorce and re-marriage.  A relic of
this Popery, I say, exists among us.  The law of Holy Scripture, echoed
by the Church, is generally recognized by the State, who therefore has no
statute on her books permitting divorce and re-marriage; but if any one
will go to the expense and prove his case, she will grant a special
dispensation, passing a “private act,” which nullifies, in that
individual case, the law of the land.  The toleration of this kind of
legislation for more than three hundred years, is a shameful reproach to
those who brought it about, and to those who do not seek to alter it; but
it is no precedent for a general dispensation with the law: unless it be
a good plea for continuing in sin, and plunging deeper into it, that we
have already sinned, and more than once.  Neither is the effect of such a
private act anything like so great or so injurious as a general law would
be.  Whoever has heard of these special dispensations, either in
righteous indignation, or in jealousy because he is not rich enough to
secure a like privilege, has cried “shame” on them.  But let the State
utter with her whole strength of voice, _and to all_, that the marriage
bond can be easily cancelled, and fresh unions formed; let her add this
sanction, this favouring of adulterers to the encouragement they already
derive, from knowing that the State does not regard their sin as a crime,
though God calls it a deadly one, and—not at once; probably English
decency will long delay it, but surely ultimately—the Word of God will be
made of none effect; married life will lose all its privileges, and
safeguards, and charms; morality will be outraged; evil called good, and
good evil.  This view, my brethren, is illustrated by the effect of a
similar licence in Prussia: and it is awfully corroborated by the past
Providence of God, Who has ever smitten with judicial blindness, those
who would not see, and has left them to grope in foul darkness, and to
fall into destruction.

My dear brethren, I trust that none of you will think that I have taken
up your time unprofitably this morning.  With so few opportunities of
speaking to you of our common salvation, and urging you to lay hold of
it, we should be very blameable if we misused any of them.  But the glory
of God in Christ in the assertion of His holy law; the vindication of His
Church; the preservation of His ministers from unworthy temporizing, or
from conflict with the secular powers; the welfare of the State, and the
defence of our dear English domestic life from the heaviest blow that
ever threatened it, and the foulest blot that ever assayed to stain it,
is surely a Christian minister’s most legitimate use of his time and
opportunity; and I, for one, most strongly feel, that I should have been
fearfully guilty had I not so employed it; and that my position would
have been an unaccountable one, if I had been now silent, and yet, if
this bill becomes law, had ventured to say (as may God give me grace to
do!) “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more
than unto God, judge ye.  For we cannot but speak (and do) the things
which we have heard and seen.”

                                * * * * *

     F. Shoberl, Printer to H.R.H. Prince Albert, 51, Rupert Street.



FOOTNOTES.


{3}  Mal., ii.

{5} Gen., ii, 24.

{7}  See Considerations on Divorce a Vinculo Matrimonii.  By a Barrister.
London: Stewart.

{10}  St. Matthew, v, 32; xix, 9.

{12}  Galatians, v, 20.

{14}  Debate on Adulterers’ Marriage Bill.





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