them is perfect enough in its nature and results to be attributed to the Divine Mind.

I will however pursue this question no further. Read the History of Marriage, and then when reading what Christ and the apostles said upon marriage and divorce, keep constantly in mind that it was mainly the exposi tion of the then existing Roman and Jewish laws regarding those matters; familiarity with those laws must lead to this conclusion in every intelligent mind. Adultery, however, being in nearly, if not all cases, a violation of good faith between the married couple, receives moral as well as legal condemnation in the New Testament.

Some one may good-naturedly whisper in my ear that "what God has joined together man must not put asunder." I must laugh; it is too comical for any thing! Not the command, but the suggestion of it in this connection. How many in any age of the world has God joined together? In early times men used to buy their wives; in later times children were betrothed by their parents in some cases before they were born; in all ages parental prejudice, money, expediency, and all sorts of unnatural influences, have prevented God from joining men and women together according to physiological law, which is His law, and consequently these joinings have been mainly man's work-not God's. If you can show me in all Nature any analogous botch-work, I may recede from this position. The truth is, man has been constantly violating this very command, because he has practically put asunder, or at least kept asunder, those whom God fitted to make life's journey happily together. "The world," remarks a sensible writer, "is besotted with marriage, just as the South was by slavery; in fact, it is just as common to hear marriage called a divine institution here, as it was before the war to hear slavery called a divine institution in New Orleans!"

Demerits of Polygamy.

One of these, and perhaps the greatest is the inequality which must necessarily exist between the sexes living under this system. It makes a kind of a king of the man, and servile subjects of the women composing its household. Secondly, if polygamy were to be universally adopted, the female element would be monopolized by the rich, so that the poor would have to practise polyandry, and patronize prostitution, or do without women altogether. Such was the result in early ages when this system of marriage was almost, if not quite universal; and the same evil might occur again if this system were forced upon the civilized world. It possesses other demerits which are equally chargeable against monogamy, and these may be observed and applied by the reader while perusing the next essay. I will not consume space with their exposition here.

Demerits of Monogamy.

It looks like cruelty for one to strike his parent; the writer was born under the system of monogamy; how can he summon the courage and ingratitude to level a blow at this venerated institution? It is a painful task I must confess. So it is painful to tell a dear friend his faults, and it is still more harrowing to drag an erring father from the ditch, into which his inebriety has plunged him. But there are duties which we must dis charge, if we would be manly and look heavenward for applause. It is with feelings such as these I must exhibit some of the evils of monog amy.

1st. It leads to either selfish idolatry or to selfish indifference; if not to these, then, what is worse, to matrimonial quarreling. The marriage of one man to one woman, if it indeed be a happy union, leads the wife to idolize her husband and the latter to idolize his wife. In all such unions the love is so exclusive that there is hardly a liking for good neighbors, and scarcely any love at all of God. The two are enrapt in mutual affection, and live mainly for themselves, and within themselves. They are blind to the woes of those around them, and though they may profess Christianity, they do not live consistently with its spirit. They are content to leave unfortunate people without their gates to the care of old maids and widows. Then if the wife of such a union is taken away, the other forgets the great work assigned him by his Maker, and hesitates not to tell his friends, he has nothing to live for, and would gladly be buried with her. If the husband be stricken down, the widow envelops her body in garments of black, secludes herself too long, perhaps forever, from her duties to the living, and though the one that is left may ultimately find consolation, he or she has failed to develop in the narrow atmosphere of the home, that broad generosity, which, when cultivated, places one in close sympathy with all the children of our Father. The beautiful, pathetic, and popular song, "Do they miss me at home," breathes a spirit of selfishness, self-love, and idolatry, that vibrates harmoniously in the atmosphere of such a household as this. It also accords with the popular sentiment of the times. 1 will quote one verse:

"Do they set me a chair near the table

When ev'ning's home pleasures are nigh,
When the candles are lit in the parlor
And the stars in the calm azure sky?
And when the 'good-nights are repeated
And all lay them down to their sleep,
Do they think of the absent, and waft me
A whispered good-night while they weep ?"

This is certainly delightful food for vanity, but is it the natural sentiment of generous and unalloyed affection? If we entertain for any one

unselfish affection, will we not be happier to know that that person is happy? Would it not make us feel miserable to suspect that that person is wretched, even though that wretchedness be caused by our absence? It is impossible for us to love any one truly, unselfishly, and generously, without feeling happier to know that that one is happy.

The foregoing pictures one of the idolatrous kind of marriages. If the union be of that milk-and-water kind which develops no attraction between the pair, you will almost invariably find them seeking separately individual pleasure, often at the cost of the happiness of others. Each one lives for him and herself, and having little true enjoyment at home, too much time is devoted to nursing the "blues," to reflections upon real or imaginary matrimonial ills, or the seeking of pleasure, not easily found, away from home. They seldom have contentment, and are consequently never in spirit prepared for the practical and humanitarian duties of life.

The union of incompatible natures leads to discord, and overlooking in this place the effect upon offspring, the bickerings of such a couple not only ruin their own dispositions, but often make themselves felt upon the peace of mind of their more fortunate neighbors. Everybody stands in awe of a matrimonial fracas! The cat on the hearth involuntarily raises her back in sympathy with the belligerents! Of course they feel under no moral con. straint to be faithful to their marriage vow, yet, jealousy and idolatry sometimes spasmodically exist in this kind of mating. I recollect reading some. where of one instance of a husband in New York during a religious revival becoming jealous of his wife's love for Christ, and so great was his insane rage he blasphemously exclaimed that he would avenge the wrong if he could get hold of him. But as he could not do this, he being a devil carnate, instead of incarnate, he turned his wife from his door forever!

2d. It practically leads to a disregard of Nature's institutes, on the part of a very large class, embracing children above the age of puberty, but under the age for marriage; men who cannot afford to marry; women who are not sought in marriage; husbands with infirm wives; wives with impotent busbands; widows and widowers. Perfect physical health and mental content and cheerfulness are not, nor can they be, possessed by those who do not live naturally. To live naturally, is not simply to eat and drink to a temperate extent, but in all respects to moderately indulge all the natural appetites. The rule of abstinence applied to any one of them is hurtful, and if, like many other violations of the laws of life, the injury is not sufficiently immediate to be traced to its true cause, depend upon it, it will nevertheless sometime make itself felt. It is our duty to guard equally against abstinence and excess, and if the latter be more prevalent in one sex, the former is no less so in the other, owing to the inequalities of our social regulations. For a more extended treatise on this subject read the

essay-“Influence of the Sexual Organs on Health," commencing on page 616.

One word more about widows: Under the monegamic system, a widow, unless left with property, is not only bowed down with grief in consequence of the loss of her husband, but her mind is overburdened with anxiety and cire, because her staff is taken away from her. Society has made her a cipher without a man, and, by the death of one man, she is reduced to that cipher. If alone, and her strong masculine competitors will give her a chance, she may make out to earn her subsistence, but if trammeled with the care of a growing family, or if her hands are bound to the helpless body of an infant, her load is more than one poor mortal can carry, and many a heart like this has been crushed beneath the commercial juggernaut that rolls out, with only selfish hands to guide it, from the world's great marts. The river of her joys is frozen; its crust is broken; and as on the ice cake she floats down the stream of life, she encounters the spoken, more than the heart, sympathy of the world.

3d. It leads to selfishness. My wife-my husband-leads to my housemy children—and finally to my loaf of bread, and a beggar at the door. The man's interests are at that instant separated from those of his fellow-beings, and from the moment he assumes these relations, if husband and wife pull together-and they do in property manners usually-the main efforts of the two people are directed to filling their own laps at the expense, if necessary, of starving mouths around them, open like so many bills of hungry robins, and the scant crumbs that are dropped into these famishing lips, are not in any wise generous enough to enable these two people to creep under their sheets at night, with the happy consciousness of having complied with the golden rule. Nor can they be justly blamed for it. They must do as they do in self-defence. They are surrounded by separate families each working blindly for itself. The most generous people in the world grow less generous after marriage; this is axiomatic; and consequently, this relation, instead of enlarging the human soul, shrinks it away, and the old man looking out from under his time-whitened brows watches jealously the rising world about him lest all that he have be filched from his grasp, leaving him to die in indigency, or, it fail to descend undiminished to his posterity. Perhaps his children have formed matrimonial associations, and if so of course outside of the family, with divers families; then there is found a new crop of couples, each pair mainly engrossed with its own aggrandizement and happiness. Next usually follow the wars of mothers-in-law with their sons-in-law, etc., with the prospect of a grand family tempest for the spoils at the decease of the old people. Now, reader, is this picture overdrawn? Is it not the rule, rather than the exception? I wish you might prove me to be in error, but with all the pride of family,

universally entertained, leading people to conceal these disgraceful quarrels if possible, we encounter them everywhere. The records of probate courts and of surrogates teem with them.

4th. It interferes arbitrarily with woman's God-given right to maternity. Many women unsuited to become wives; many more who are never proffered marriage; still others too few-who have declined the offers of those they could not love; childless widows, and the wives of sterile husbands, no matter how great may be their love of offspring, must, if the monogamic rule and the social custom it maintains be observed, go through life without once using the reproductive function with which their Creator has endowed them. Here man's rule conflicts glaringly with the edict our Great Ruter has indelibly stamped upon our very being; He has implanted within woman an irrepressible desire for offspring, but he has not befooled her, by keeping from her the organs which are capable of receiving a germ and developing a child. He has created man with organs capable of producing the necessary germ, and, if the story in Genesis is accepted, he commanded unreservedly men and women to increase and multiply. But the immoral spectacle presented to-day is,-many an unnatural or disappointed woman in marriage is destroying the baby in her womb, and many a high-minded woman, out of marriage, is almost distracted, because she cannot have at least one child. You men who are handling gold in Wall Street, and the thousands absorbed in the world's business, and you women whose unsympathetic hearts do not draw out the secrets of your wretched sisters, may question this; or, rather, while not unaware of the former, you may question the truth of the latter. But, friends, only yesterday a middle-aged woman in my presence, not a weak-minded one, nor yet what the world calls "stroug minded," but an accomplished representative of her sex, wept in view of the fact that she might never have a child. Personally she was not incapable, at least there was no reason to think so, but as she had passed the marriageable age she was oppressed with the idea that she might go through life without once experiencing the happiness of becoming a mother. If this was the only case, I would not intrude this radical paragraph upcu the attention of the reader. I have been told this by women passing or past the usual age for matrimony many times, and some of them, approaching that age when maternity is impossible, have appeared almost frantic with disappointment and sorrow. I am personally acquainted with some who have had what the world would regard as attractive offers, and who dare not marry or do not care to, and yet feel that they can hardly endure the idea of going through life without at least one child to be a friend and companion—an earth-object to love in the cold, selfish world moving about them-when their parents shall be called away from earth. If so many cases of this kind come to the knowledge of the writer, and 1