Our Lord in these passages is represented as recognizing remarriage after divorce in no case at all. He treats marriage as strictly indissoluble. The astonishment of the disciples as expressed even in the first Gospel (St. Matt. xix. 10: “If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry”) seems to require this teaching to make it intelligible. It would not be intelligible if our Lord were only reasserting the stricter of two views about divorce already current among the Jews.[1] On the other hand, it is certain that the passages in the first Gospel upon which I have commented in the text of this book do admit an exception to the indissolubility of marriage in favour at least of the innocent husband in the case of his wife’s adultery. I must adhere to all that is said in this book in support of this conclusion; but I now find myself constrained to believe that the exception as recorded in St. Matthew, though it is an integral part of our present Gospel, represents a serious modification of our Lord’s teaching, due probably to Jewish tradition within the Church. The Jewish Christians seem to have introduced a gloss into their record of our Lord’s teaching, believing, no doubt, that they were rightly interpreting His mind; and the gloss is represented in our first Gospel. The fact that the Christian Church has accepted the first Gospel, and stamped it with the fullest authority, accounts for the teaching of the Church on the indissolubility of the marriage tie having been in certain times and places uncertain. We cannot to-day equitably ignore the appeal to the first Gospel, even though we do not believe it to represent on this point the original teaching of our Lord. My practical conclusions therefore are not different from those set out in this book, except that I should now be still more decisive than formerly in resisting any proposal to introduce any exception into the existing law of the Church in England. For the substance of this note――so far as it concerns the Gospels――I would refer to Dr. Plummer’s _Exegetical Commentary on St. Matthew_ (Elliot Stock) and Allen’s _International Critical Commentary on St. Matthew_ (T. & T. Clark), on Matt. v. 31 ff. and xix. 3 ff. Also to Dr. Salmon’s _Human Element in the Gospels_ (Murray, 1907), p. 391, and to a work of Professor Tyson’s entitled _The Teaching of our Lord as to the Indissolubility of Marriage_ (University Press of Sewanee, Tennessee, 1909). C. B. _Easter, 1910._ PREFACE