2. Here is the distinctive principle of Christian asceticism. If we go to India, we still find ascetics there whose asceticism is based on the oriental idea that the body is in itself an evil thing, and that to be spiritual is to be separated from material things. That is not the Christian idea. The Christian idea is that the whole of this material nature, including our bodies, is good in itself and meant to be consecrated to spiritual uses. We are never to mortify any faculty as if it were an evil thing to be got rid of. The end of all Christian self-discipline is that we may have the freedom of our whole nature. But freedom is only possible where there is rational control. Thus any sacrifice is worth making sooner than that the lower part of our nature should lord it over the higher. Next, as a sequence to this treatment of the seventh commandment, our Lord deals with the question of divorce. “It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement; but I say unto you, that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery.” The Jewish law of divorce is given in Deuteronomy xxiv. 1, 2: “When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.” This, especially as interpreted in Jewish tradition, had given a great liberty of divorce, which our Lord here abolishes or restrains. What we may truly call His legislation on this subject is repeated in St. Matthew xix. 3‒9: “And there came unto him Pharisees, tempting him, and saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh. So that they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”