MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

Putaruru Press, Volume V, Issue 177, 24 March 1927, Page 2

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

CLERGYMAN’S STRONG REMARKS. “South African society is simply being gummed together instead of being solidly built up,” said the Dean of Johannesburg, the Verv Reverend W. Palmer, in a striking sermon on the divorce question. “Some contracting parties to marriage have not the slightest intention of making their marriage permanent if things do not turn out well. We cannot build up a nation unless we have a solid home life. Home life is the backbone of the nation.” Many present day marriages, said the preacher, were merely leasehold marriages. Till death do us part was ”ot a pledge by which the parties meant to stand. The white people of South Africa were getting back to the polygamy of the natives. The only difference was that the natives’ polygamy was concurrent, whereas the white man was drifting toward the state where he had two or three wives, not concurrently, but consecutively. “The time has come when the clergy should refuse to marry those who do not accept tin?' ideals of tie Church—the standard of Christ,” said'the Doan. “There has been a lot of sentimental twaddle about divorce; I have not yet heard one sound argument for it. What is to become of the children of divorced parents? The Church in central Johannesburg is rapidly degenerating into registry offices for lost husbands.” They had to fight against any legislation that was going to make divorce easier, Dean Palmer continued. Such legislation must be bad. Why? Because in order to make things easier for the individual it would upset that upon which the welfare of so many depended. If anything, the existing laws should be tightened up. There was an unholy amount of lying and-collusion going on to bring about divorce and with it the abandonment of the child.