the mixed society for which they legislate a lower standard of marital obligation than the ideal. The legitimacy of their action must depend on the adequacy of their plea of expediency. They do not claim to legislate for Christians as such, but for citizens, who may, or may not, be Christians. Re-marriage after divorce is so far from being disallowed by Christ that, in the only case of divorce which He contemplates, it must be assumed as permissible, since divorce apart from liberty of re-marriage was unknown to His contemporaries. Moreover, it is an abuse of language, unintentional but none the less grave, to apply to Christ's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount the name and character of "legislation" in the political sense of the word. Bishop Gore himself recognises this earlier in his book when he says that the Sermon on the Mount "teaches, not by negative enactments or by literal enactments at all, but by principles, positive and weighty principles."[1]
- ↑ Page 8.
