FATHER VAUGHAJT ON MARRIAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 183, 1 August 1908, Page 13

FATHER VAUGHAJT ON MARRIAGE.

"TIME TO EEAD THE RIOT ACT." At Farm-street Chnrch, London, Father Bernard Vaughan delivered on Sunday, June 21, the second of a course of sermons on marriage. After- denouncing modern talk of "leasehold marriages" as "free love," and declaring that, for those wlio contemplated such marriages, the words "Till we make some other arrangement" should bo substituted for "Till death us do part" in the ' marriage service. Father Vaughan said ' that during the past week he had been > asked whether there were any circumstances ! under which it was permissible for married people to separate aud enter into : A MARRIAGE CONTRACT ] with others. To such he returned the answer 1 which was returned by Christ. There were • well-defined circumstances which made It ' perfectly right for man and wife to seek I legal separation, bnt the tie still held them; • they were man and wife, for death had not . set them free. There was no greater plague I on earth to-day than the wny in which . people were changing matrimony. God made > it a holy alliance, in which men and women r could come together, supply each other's ; deficiencies, develop their patience, exercise , virtue and noble love, and help to bear the difficulties of their state, and so be of use to fheir brethren in suffering and in sorrow. ' Those who lived for the riot of sense, for the pleasure of the hour, and to gratify ' their passions, of course, would not listen ; to God. AVhen they heard wives to-day - saying that they refused altogether the ; PRIVILEGES OF MOTHERHOOD because, forsooth, it Interfered with thoii hunting or their London season, h p«nive they could not be bored witSi a nursery, er ' because their flat was too swaU, or be- • cause they were not strong enough to bear

what they did not like—when wives spoke thus, openly and boastingly j n their boudoirs, their drawing-rooms, and the public parks, it was time to read the Riot Act, for they were profaning the laws of God and desecrating the sacredaess of motherhood. Husbands were often more, to blame. They spoke of their slender income. Had God asked them about their income? Men told them they had a right to do as they liked, but liberty did not spell license. Etc said to Christian people in a Christian land and from a Christian pulpit that God had set up marriage on an invperishable basis that by and through the family the State might Jiave a firm foundation. To loosen the TIE OP MARRIED LIFE was to undei-mine the country's wel-Care. to destroy the social fabric, and to drag into the mud the flag of the Empire. They could learn a lesson from the land of Erin yonder, where they refused to taint their soil with the plague of desecrating married life. Let them do honour to the people who had kept their home as the one spot where there was no declining birth-rate, whilst in some parts of London it had fallen to 10 per 1000. Let them save our country from desecration and decay, and let them, like their dear and noble friends across the water, live for Christ's and His Christianity and so life should be a probation and its reward exceeding great.