The case was well put a short time ago by Rabbi Silverman, at the great Temple Emanu-El, in New York, when he said, “The real cause for divorce is that there is nothing behind the civil contract that cements the marriage union and so welds it that nothing can tear it asunder. The real cause for divorce is that the marriage was a failure because it was not a marriage in fact, but merely in name. It was not a union of hearts for mutual happiness, but merely a partnership for vain pleasure and profit.” So long as we allow divorce to be easy, do we not encourage such marriages? Any divorce except for the one cause recognized by the founder of Christianity is more injurious to society at large than any other crime, murder not excepted. Most crimes may have a good reflex influence by persuading men to be more watchful of their own impulses and lives, but the men or women who obtain divorces for any but the gravest cause are sure, aside from the effect upon themselves, to increase the discontent of acquaintances whose married life is not all that had been hoped or wished. One condition absolutely necessary to a pure and happy married life is the belief from the beginning that wedlock is to last as long as life itself. Without the stimulus of this tremendous sense of responsibility no person will unmake and remake himself so as to be the fit companion of another. Even with this impulse the effort often fails, as all of us know from observation of our own acquaintances. To admit the possibility of a cessation of relations or, worse still, a change of marital relations, is to relax effort and to become a selfish time-server--to become a confidence man instead of a partner.