"Yet the American Episcopal Church follows its English parent and the Roman Catholic in maintaining that the woman whose husband is an inveterate drunkard, is convicted of murder or embezzlement, kicks and beats her shamefully, or deserts her utterly in cold blood, is guilty of a crime against heaven and against society if she breaks the bond and marries again. Progressive democracy in the person of the State is more lenient, more merciful. It refuses to believe that one relentless, arbitrary rule is adapted to the exigencies of human society. It insists that each case should be judged on its merits, and both relief afforded and fresh happiness permitted when justice so demands. Think of the many poor creatures in the lower ranks condemned by your inexorable doctrine to miserable, lonely lives, who might otherwise be happy!" Mr. Prentiss's brow contracted as though he were a little troubled by the appeal to his sympathy with the toiling mass. "One wearies of this ever-lasting demand for happiness in this life," he murmured. "Was Christ happy? They are free to disregard the authority of the Church if they see fit," he added. "I for one should not feel justified in refusing the communion to a divorced woman who had remarried." "But the Catholic Church would and does uniformly; and the high church party in your own church would disapprove of your leniency. The vital point is that both churches and you yourself brand those who disobey as spiritually impure, or at least inferior, a stigma which appalls the best women. And so they are held as in a cruel vice, so you have held her who was to be my wife." The reversion to the personal equation reminded the rector that this was no academic discussion.