inevitable that the question of uniformity, serious as it is, is a very small part of the great legal problem demanding solution at our hands. This general problem, aside from its graver features in the more immediate sphere of sociology and religion, must evidently tax our publicists and statesmen severely. The old temptation to meet special evils by general legislation besets us on this subject. I think comparative and historical study of the law of the family, (the _Familienrecht_ of the Germans), especially if the movement of European law be seen, points toward the need of a pretty comprehensive and thorough examination of our specific legal problem of divorce and marriage law in this fuller light, before much legislation is undertaken. Samuel W. Dike. However much men may differ in their views of the nature and attributes of the matrimonial contract, and in their concept of the rights and obligations of the marriage state, no one will deny that these are grave questions; since upon marriage rests the family, and upon the family rest society, civilization, and the highest interests of religion and the state. Yet, strange to say, divorce, the deadly enemy of marriage, stalks abroad to-day bold and unblushing, a monster licensed by the laws of Christian states to break hearts, wreck homes and ruin souls. And passing strange is it, too, that so many, wise and far-seeing in less weighty concerns, do not appear to see in the evergrowing power of divorce a menace not only to the sacredness of the marriage institution, but even to the fair social fabric reared upon matrimony as its corner-stone. God instituted in Paradise the marriage state and sanctified it. He established its law of unity and declared its indissolubility. By divine authority Adam spoke when of his wife he said: "This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."* * Gen., ii., 23-24. But like other things on earth, marriage suffered in the fall; and little by little polygamy and divorce began to assert themselves against the law of matrimonial unity and indissolubility. Yet the ideal of the marriage institution never faded away. It survived, not only among the chosen people, but even among the nations of heathendom, disfigured much, 'tis true, but with its ancient beauty never wholly destroyed.