Lucifer Matches

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, 25 January 1906, Page 1

Lucifer Matches

A northern contemporary" is decidedly ' onaisy in its mind ' about the growing magnitude of the divorce evil. It sets forth defective training and the lack of good home influences as the fons et origo, the primal source,, from which has sprung all that is a .social menace in the 'growing business of the divorce mills. Surely, this is a purblind view of the situation. Why leave out of sight and out of mind such important contributing causes as the following— education without religion ; the lessening hold of Christian faith upon a section of the people ; the too great proneness of young people to enter lightly into the wedded condition without the equipment of the necessary qualities of mind and heart and soul to make it a success, or without any true conception of its duties, its sacrifices, and its responsibilities ; and, above all, the lax teaching of all the Reformed denominations regarding the permanency of the marrliage tie ? Heaven is not the match-maker that a familiar wedding-day saying assumes it to be. Says Samuel Lover in one of his epigrams :— ' Though matches are all made fin heaven, they say, Yet Hymen (who mischief oft hatches) Sometimes deals with the house t'other side of the way,, And there they make Lucifer matches.' There is no sense in making heaven responsible for the culpable mistakes of earth. The first step towards a remedy of the divorce evil is this : Let the Reformed denominations experience a change of heart and return to the old Catholic teaching regarding the unity, sanctity, and inviolability of the marriage bond.