heart" on the part of the Jews,[1] and had allowed divorce on such grounds as might easily be made to permit no small latitude. In the light of this recognition of an adjustment of legislation to a people's capacity, may we not have a modifying clause of the ideal legislation?
The objection is weighty, but, disregarding the advisability of admitting such an accommodation in case of reformatory legislation, as a modification of an actual ideal of family life set forth by Jesus, it is not to be admitted. Jesus is here confessedly setting forth a social ideal for the present age and for the very people he addressed. By his own statements it cannot possibly apply to the perfect society of the age to come, since then divorce like marriage will be a question outgrown. To admit this modification would be to destroy his social ideal of mutual fraternity. It would make him in the same breath with which he declares the indissoluble union of two persons to be the divine plan of creation, also declare that after all such a union is not essential in all cases, but may be replaced by more or less indiscriminate multiplication of partners. Such a contradiction, it must be remembered, does not confront the man who regards marriage as simply a contract which guarantees certain peculiar rights to the two consenting parties. In such a conception law makes and law can unmake the union. But with Jesus marriage is a fact, not a definition. God and nature join; man and law cannot separate. He may be a dreamer. He certainly is not inconsistent.[2]
3. Two further questions are, however, not answered: (1) Would not this position of Jesus admit divorce in case the marriage were broken in its psychical side, though not on its physical; that is, in case of an utter destruction of conjugal love, although neither husband and wife had otherwise broken marital obligations? (2) Would not the spirit if, indeed, not the letter of Jesus be met in case of a divorce granted for an
