acceptance of the people. Laws, as Burke said, follow manners, not manners laws, in democracies.
Never in the history of mankind has there been such a situation as exists today, a situation in which the dream of the self-forgetting legislator of Israel seems to be taking practical shape and "all the Lord's people are prophets," a situation which does plainly lend itself to fearful departures from righteousness, but none the less implies grander possibilities of social excellence than any hitherto accessible to the race. Everything turns on the standard of sexual purity which shall be accepted by the people; let that be high, and the marriage law will, in the very first place, reveal the fact; let it be degraded, and the earliest victim to its depraving influence will be the covenant of marriage.
The Christian Church, then, is charged with the most solemn and perplexing obligation, viz.: to take frankly into consideration all the
