more than ever impressed with their importance in the education of the present generation, and with the honorable record which they have left behind. When the impression of these events shall become less vivid, and the fresh remembrances of them shall begin to fade, these reports of the organized and organizing beneficence of the Sanitary Commission will serve to bring up to another generation a definite and trustworthy picture of the self-denying and Christian zeal of those who fought the great battle for the nation's life. But they need not speak to another generation. They ought to present an argument to other nations which it will not be easy to set aside, for the purity of the motives and the unselfishness of the spirit which animated the defenders of the Union. It has been common in other times for patriots and partisans to do and to dare, to sacrifice and to die, to struggle to the last with fervent zeal and embittered hate. Those who sought to destroy the Union quite surpassed those who sought to defend it in all these manifestations of ardor and determination. But the people who sustained at the same time a national organization of humane beneficence for the service of friend and foe, and carried it upon the field of battle and into the deadly wards of the hospital, with such considerateness and wisdom, with such patience and unweariedness as this report records, cannot be charged with selfishness in their patriotic aspirations, nor with malignity in the spirit with which they used the sword which they were so reluctant to employ, and which they wielded at first with such awkward and ineffectual handling. If we desire to be understood by other nations, we can do no better or wiser thing than to send abroad such a report as this. No intelligent foreigner can read it without understanding the American people better, and judging us more favorably. The friend of his country can do nothing more effectual for its vindication, or its honor, than to distribute this report freely abroad. If the government should do the same, it would for once wisely spend the funds which are so often squandered in printing and distributing the so-called public documents.

ARTICLE V.-DIVORCE.

PART I.-DIVORCE AMONG THE HEBREWS, GREEKS, AND
ROMANS.

In the present Article we shall attempt to give an account of the law and practice of divorce among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, those three nations, to one or another of which we owe our religion and most of the leading elements of our civilization. The subject has an important practical bearing. It is intended as an introduction to an inquiry into the meaning of those passages in the New Testament, where the matter of divorce is taken up. Christ, by a few words on this subject, has turned legislation and usage into a new channel; he has in those few words, by a higher conception of marriage than was entertained before, thrown in a very important element into Christian civilization. It is our object to answer the question why Christ acted thus in some sense as a legislator, and what the world's need was that it should be taught a higher morality in this respect. Having looked at this point as briefly as truth and the importance of the subject will permit, we propose on some future occasion to discuss the passages of the New Testament touching on divorce and the questions to which they naturally give rise. Then, if it is permitted to us to continue our inquiries, we shall treat of the practice and views of the early Christians, and of the state of opinion and law in Catholic and Protestant countries. Finally, we shall ask what ought to be the aim of legislation among us, and how the Christian Church ought to act in endeavoring to enforce the coinmands of Christ within its own pale. Our aim is to do good and to serve the truth. We are not indeed so conceited as to hope to produce a great effect of ourselves, but believing that an irreligious liberty is creeping even into the church with regard to the marriage tie, believing also that nothing more helps on, and is helped on by, general laxity of morals than undue freedom in regard to divorce, we feel con

strained to contribute our mite to the correction of a public opinion and practice which are threatening serious evils both to Church and to State.

DIVORCE AMONG THE HEBREWS.

The ideal of marriage, as we find it in the first records of the Hebrews, is a peculiarly beautiful cne. "For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh." Here the union of one man with only one woman is thought of, and polygamy in fact is inconceivable, for how can so close a union as the being one flesh with a wife admit of the same union with another. It is again an indissoluble union; for if the parties are one flesh, nothing but a violent process of nature or of crime, something like amputation, can separate them. And what is deserving of equal notice, is the separation of the man from his father and mother contemplated in this text. A patriarchal age would naturally regard the filial and parental as the closest of all ties. Here is a still closer tie, involving a greater "cleaving" to the wife, a formation of a new family with new rights and interests, an emancipation from parental control.

The ideal presented in these words remained in the Hebrew mind until Christ came into the world. Polygamy and freedom of divorce obscured, but could not obliterate it. Polyg amy was permitted, or rather endured, under some restrictions, but one wife was the rule, as shown by various passages of Scriptures. In the Psalms, and in the Prophets, only one wife is spoken of; the prophets are nowhere mentioned as having more than one; the same is true of Moses and of Isaac; even Abraham looks forward to the necessity of having a servant for an heir, until at the instigation of Sarah he takes Hagar as a kind of substitute for her; wealthy men, like Nabai and the Shunamitish woman's husband, are monogamists; and perhaps the law laid down a similar rule for the high priest. Probably a great part of the private persons among the Jews had but one wife, and polygamy was chiefly confined

This opinion, thrown out by Saalschütz (Mos. Recht., p. 748, ed. 2), will not bear much weight.

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to the king and a few others. Even the kings were forbidden to multiply wives greatly, and Jehoida, the high priest, must have intended to restrict King Joash, when he furnished him with only two. Still polygamy existed legally, and was not put down by the moral sense of the nation. It took, we may add, through the prevalence of slavery, the form of a looser connexion with a woman of inferior condition, a form between concubinage and marriage. The woman in Judges, chapters xix., xx., is constantly called a pillegesch or concubine, and yet the Levite is spoken of as her husband, and her father as his father-in-law. She was a Hebrew free woman apparently, but that relation, for the most part, was entered into with a domestic or a slave.

Marriage began with the betrothal, but no covenant or formality is known to have existed. The condition of marriage, however, is spoken of as a covenant. Thus Malachi says: "Yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant;" and Ezekiel: "I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine." In numberless instances the word zanah, to play the whore, is transferred to signify a breach of the covenant-relation between God and the people by the crime of idolatry. Closeness of union and tender care, conditioned by fidelity, belong to both relations, that between husband and wife, and that between God and the people. Did the notion of a covenant belong to both independently, or was it transferred from the theocracy to family life? We are unable to give a satisfactory answer, but apparently it originated in the theocratic union, and passed to the conjugal. However this may be, there is a sanctity thrown around mariage by this manner of speech and thought, such as few other expressions could give forth. If adultery is on a level with apostasy from God, how great must be its guilt; and if the man is to the woman as God to the people, what but a breach of that covenant in one vital respect should dissolve the union. To which we may add that as God had but one people, the standing simile would be apposite only if, as a general thing, one man had but one wife; and that the relentless severity of the Jewish law towards the adulteress corresponds to the penalties

it denounces against going away from Jehovah to the worship of a false god.

In Hebrew marriage, gifts were given or a price was paid by the bridegroom, and this corresponds to the purchase of the wife, which was practised over a large part of the world in ancient times, as in Greece, among the Hindoos, and among the Germans, and of which many instances are still to be met with in barbarous or half civilized tribes. In the first case where these presents are spoken of, the largest share went to the bride, Rebekah, her mother and brother also receiving "precious things." In the case of Jacob, as he had nothing to pay, service was rendered as an equivalent. The other references to this usage are few; fewer, we conceive, than they would have been, if it had played the same important part which belonged to it in the marriage usages of other nations. A distinguished writer on Jewish antiquities tries to show that the custom among the Jews amounted to nothing more than the giving of presents for a favor received, which presents went in good measure to the bride; but the prevailing opinion is against him, and the analogy of other nations is able to show a softening down of an original purchase from the father into a portion conferred upon the bride herself.

Hebrew marriage, thus far, appars quite informal and primitive, but yet penetrated with a religions spirit, and placed, as it were, under the especial protection of the covenant-keeping God. Nevertheless as the bad usages of polygamy, slavery, and blood revenge were endured among the people, so when it received the law, a freedom of divorce prevailed which could not be corrected without hazarding the overthrow of the polity. It was therefore endured, and in some degree restricted.

The leading passage relating to divorce is found in Deut. xxiv. 1-4. It assumes a certain loose practice in regard to divorce, and tries to reduce it to a formal shape, precisely as the Emperor Augustus attempted to give legal form to divorce among the Romans by his legislation. Let us notice the parts of the passage in their order.

1. It is supposed, as the basis of the law now given out, that husbands who had found some uncleanness" in their wives had been in the habit of putting them away without ceremony,