A BISHOP ON DIVORCE.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12767, 8 February 1910, Page 1

A BISHOP ON DIVORCE.

i _ Preaching in Wellington on Sunday, the Bishop of Waiapu (Right Rev. A. W. Averill) spoke in a striking manner on divorce. "Does it not often seem to be the way of the world," he said, "that men and women make suffering for themselves by trying to avoid the sufferings which it is tlieir duty to face and bearJLook at the tendency throughout the world to relax the binding nature oi the marriage bond — the increasing facilities for divorce. Men and women are being encouraged to make a thoughtless choice—^encouraged to treat lightly a matter of the most i vital importance, not only to men and empires — by offering to them a supposed remedy for suffering occasioned by a wrong ohoice. We are verj- short-sighted as a rule in judging of these matters, and politicians are sometimes only an echo of those who mako the most noise. If divorce laws relieve a small amount of suffer- ' ing they increase suffering tenfold, perhaps a hundredfold. In many cases they are the incentive to sin aud consequent suffering; they are certainly tho incentive to the degradation of the sacred duty of choice, and they are certainly teaching that duty is all very well as long as it is pleas--ant, but as soon as suffering comes and duty becomes hard, then fling duty and conscience to the winds and escape suffering at all costs, iney are certainly lowering tho standard of morals in. -fcho world."