to give an unlimited liberty to the husband. He was himself judge of what should constitute an adequate justification for divorce. He might, in the phrase of our Lord's questioners, "put away his wife for every cause." The opposing school of Shammai took a stricter and worthier view. The words could not possibly carry so scandalous a sense. They must be supposed to restrict the causes of lawful divorce to one—the act of adultery.
Our Lord decides on the question of interpretation in favour of the laxer school; on the main question He emphatically endorses the view of the stricter moralists, who had read into the statute the nobler teaching of the prophets. Challenged by the Pharisees how He could reconcile these decisions, He declared the essentially contingent, and therefore transitory, character of the Mosaic legislation, and pointed to the true nature of the marriage union as declared in the record of Creation. Marriage is indissoluble save for one fact which destroys its presupposition. Divorce for any
