On a vast social subject—that of divorce—he pronounced an opinion which gives us a little insight into his mode of regarding that most important of all topics, the relations of the sexes. The Pharisees, it appears, came to him and asked him whether it was permissible for a man to put away his wife, Moses having allowed it. Jesus explained that this precept had been given for the hardness of their hearts. His own view was, that man and wife are one flesh, and that if either should leave the other, except on account of unfaithfulness, and marry again, that one would be guilty of adultery. This severe doctrine he supported by one of his short sayings: "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mk. x. 1-12; Mt. xix. 1-12, and v. 31, 32). But surely this judgment assumes the very point at issue. The joining together in wedlock is ascribed to God; the putting asunder to man. But granting the sacredness of the marriage tie, it would still be no less possible to invoke the divine sanction for its dissolution than for its original formation. And in many instances the maxim might be exactly reversed. So unfortunate is the result of many marriages, that it would be easy for a religious reformer to say of them, with perfect sincerity, "What man hath joined together, let God put asunder." There is, in fact, almost as much to be said on moral grounds for the divorce of unhappy couples as for the marriage of happy ones. Nor does Jesus by any means face the real difficulties of the question by allowing divorce where either of the parties has been guilty of adultery. This, no doubt, is the extreme case, and if divorce is not to be given here, it can be given nowhere. But why is adultery to be the sole ground of separation? Why is an institution which may bring so much happiness to mankind to be converted into one of the most fertile sources of human misery? Why, when both parties to the contract desire separation, is an external authority, whether that of opinion or of law, to enforce union? None of these questions appear to have presented themselves to the mind of Jesus. Supposing even that his decision were right, he assigns no reasons for it, but simply lays down the law in a trenchant manner, without giving us the least clue to the process by which he arrived at so strange a conclusion. Nor is it in the least likely that the many perplexities encompassing this, and all other questions affecting the morals of sex, had ever troubled him. His mind was not sufficiently subtle to enter into them; and thus it is that, throughout the whole course of his career, he lays down no single doctrine (if we except this one on divorce) which can be of the smallest service to his disciples in the many practical troubles that must beset their lives from the existence of a natural passion of which he takes no account.