But the misrepresentation of Roman morals is light in comparison with the misrepresentation of later Christian morals. Christianity took its ideal from the Jews. Amongst this partially civilised people marriage had been made easy for the male by the retention of polygamy, and it was not customary to consult the feelings of the woman. In the course of time Greek influence entered Judæa, and the Rabbis held learned debates on marriage and divorce. Both the stricter and the laxer view found expression in the New Testament and in early Christian literature, but a celibate priesthood obtained supreme power in Europe and the stricter view was enforced. The moral consequences were disastrous. While the Roman _Curia_, which could always find a flaw in the marriage of a wealthy man, was enriched, Europe was degraded, and sexual immorality became general. It is enough to recall that a tradition of looseness, in strict correspondence with the law of indissoluble marriage, survives from the ages of faith to our own time in the Latin countries. Some have spoken of "the hot southern blood" and cast the blame on the climate. I would invite the informed moralist to run his eye over the map of the earth, and ask himself whether chastity increases, or the sex-organs lose vitality, in proportion as nations are removed from the Equator. It is a ludicrous effort of Catholics to conceal the evils of indissoluble marriage. Until the Reformation sexual laxity was the same all over Europe. In England the old priest-made law was retained after the Reformation, and laxity of morals was general. Except for a very few wealthy people, divorce was impossible until 1857, when a slender measure of reform was wrested from the clergy. This, the present law of England, a miserable compromise with religious prejudice and a permanent source of vice and misery, puts English legislation on an important aspect of "the foundation of the State" below that of any other civilised community. Instead of ridding themselves entirely of clerical influence, and directing civic life on civic grounds, our legislators looked still to ancient Judæa, and substituted the less stringent view of the Rabbis for the more stringent. The legendary leader of a rude Arab tribe had granted divorce for adultery, and the English nation of the nineteenth century followed his example. The result was the most stupid and mischievous law of marriage outside the sphere of the Holy Catholic Church.