What is to be done? What is the duty of Christians, and how shall they
combat this evil? Unless it is to spread and spread till every part of
our natural life is infected, something must be done. The
Neo-Malthusians are not only teaching married people how to avoid the
responsibilities of marriage, but they are teaching unmarried people
to do so as well. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of, as
more than one clergyman has pointed out. If fear of consequences is
removed chastity becomes more than ever threatened. If there is the
wish and inclination to sin, and that wish is only not gratified
because inconvenient results may lead to discovery, it is true that
the moral value of people in such a case is small. But a general
recognition of the fact that it is easy to sin will have incalculable
influence for harm on those who are as yet on the border-line between
the claims of self-gratification and control. Public sentiment becomes
lax and unstrung. Simultaneously with the decline of the birth-rate
the newspapers show every day that the old ideal, the sacred English
ideal of the family is departing. Our greatest living novelist says
openly, “Certainly one day the conditions of marriage will be changed.
Marriage will be allowed for a certain period, say ten years.” In
many parts of America, where the President is ceaselessly urging his
countrymen to denounce and give up Neo-Malthusian practices, the home
has already disappeared. From a large collection of information and
statistics I take only one example, quoted in a leading English
newspaper. There is no need for a single word of comment, save that I
do not vouch for the truth of the newspaper report which, in its very
appearance, proves my point.
“Mrs. Le Page, a New York lady who has just married her eighth
husband, crystallizes her experience in life.
“Five of her seven former husbands are still alive, and they
have just sent messages of encouragement to the new incumbent.
The other two have died.
“Mrs. Le Page’s maiden name was Mary Johnson, and she was the
daughter of a Connecticut farmer. She was only fourteen, but
well grown for her age, when she contracted a runaway marriage
with a seventeen-year-old Danbury clerk named William Wakeman.
In accordance with the American practice of hyphenating family
names, she became Mrs. William Johnson-Wakeman. It was a happy
marriage for three days, and then her family interfered, and
the marriage was annulled.
“Two years later, while in a New York elevated train, she made
the acquaintance of Mr. Harry Saunders, a rich contractor’s son
and a commercial traveller. After two days’ courtship she
became Mrs. Henry Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders, and lived in
perfect happiness, accompanying her husband on his travels for
three years, until he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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