Let us, my brethren, awake quickly and thoroughly, while there is use in so doing. Let us, priests and people, betake us to the Word of God, and speak and hear what is there written; and then let us go forth to be doers of that Word, according to our several abilities and opportunities.
Marriage, you know, was instituted in the time of man’s innocency. God judged that it was not good for man to be alone; He therefore gave him a help meet for him. That help was a creature formed, not separately and independently, but out of himself—bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. And so close and dear was the union, divinely cemented between them, intended to be, that Adam was taught by God to say—and Moses to record for future men—“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” [5] Thus was marriage, by Divine institution, made the first and closest of human relationships. And fresh, and higher, and holier honours were bestowed on it, when Christ made it the glorious type of His own never-to-be-broken union with His Church; calling Himself the bridegroom, her the bride; giving Himself for her, and loving and cherishing her as His own flesh; and providing that she should be presented to Him a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; that her espousals should be celebrated by angels, and that she should be for ever with the Lord.
The history of the institution of marriage, and this exaltation of it into a type of Christ’s eternal union with the Church (so much dwelt on in some books of the Old Testament) would teach us clearly, that no divorce, save by death, was originally contemplated in the Divine mind; and this is further incontestibly proved by Christ in the language of the text—“Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning” (He, that is, who designed what they should be and do, and has an indisputable right to exercise His will) “made them male and female,” (male and female man, this means—imperfect parts of one being—“man,”) and joined them together, “and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
This, brethren, is Christ the Word’s answer to the question of the Pharisees, “Whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause.” He refers His inquirers immediately to the original institution of marriage, as a sufficient answer, and, quoting the words then used by the Creator Himself, or dictated by His inspiration, expressive of the most entire and permanent union required between a man and his wife—words which He says make them no longer “twain, but one flesh”—He adds His own absolute, peremptory, and unqualified decree, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” In this sentence, observe He makes no exception; He allows neither adultery nor any other cause, as a justification of a breach of His prohibition. He positively forbids every human being to dissolve a union, which, as He shows, the Almighty designed to be indissoluble. [7]
His words were objected to by the Pharisees, as my interpretation of them will doubtless be by some, because in the Old Testament—in the Law given by Moses—there were distinct rules of divorce; not simply of putting away, but of marrying again. “They say unto Him, ‘Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away.’” It is to these words, contained in the 24th chapter of Deuteronomy, vv. 1, 2, that the Pharisees alluded:
“When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.”
Now this, it must be admitted, was naturally a stumbling-block to the Pharisees, preventing the easy reception of Christ’s teaching. And yet it should have presented no permanent difficulty to teachable minds. Was this, in Moses’s time (and since, till Christ’s), the law of God? What of that? God, by His prophet Jesus Christ (we can say God in His own person), now repealed that law, and reverted to His original declarations and prohibitions. Who, then, shall perceive a contradiction in the forbidding of divorce, because it had been previously allowed, when it is the same authority which exerts itself first to allow, and then to disallow? Who shall venture to say it is lawful for man to act now upon a law long since repealed by God, and replaced by a directly contrary one? But, brethren, this never was God’s law. Hear what Christ says—“Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” Moses, the civil magistrate, finding it impossible to restrain the obstinate and rebellious Israelites within the bounds originally set for them by God, attempted to regulate, in some measure, their lawless ways, and to secure some regard for public and private rights. Accordingly, as they had fallen into the practice of dismissing their wives for many frivolous reasons, and often in momentary displeasure, of which they afterwards relented, and sought them again, Moses required that when they did so dismiss their wives, they should do it deliberately, and in a formal way, writing a bill of divorcement; and with the understanding, probably as a check upon precipitancy, that no after repentance should render them able to claim their wives again, if they had availed themselves of their supposed liberty, and taken other husbands. So much of sanction and regulation of unlawful courses did Moses condescend to.
But it may be objected: “Moses was God’s deputy, what he sanctioned God therefore must have approved.” Now, truly, we do not suppose that Moses acted without Divine permission; but such permission did not amount to approval. Suppose you that God approved of the ignorance of the heathen, because we are told He “winked at it?” Was wicked Balaam’s forbidden journey approved by God, because He directed what should be said and done on it? Was the lawless divorce between the king Jehovah and His kingdom Israel, and the re-marriage of that kingdom with an earthly king, divinely approved, because regulations for the management of that adulterous kingdom were vouchsafed by God? No, brethren; God simply made the best of the evil. He set bounds to it, and so diminished it; in a measure condescending to human infirmities, and effecting through them His good and wise purposes. Thus He has ever done and still does: but not in the case of separation of man and wife for re-marriage; all sanction, all toleration of this breach of His commandment He has withdrawn for ever. “I say unto you” (they are Christ’s words) “whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery.”
But here it is objected: “This is granting the whole matter in dispute—‘Except it be for fornication.’ This is all that is proposed to the Legislature now: the putting away of an unfaithful wife, and (the vows between them being thus loosed) the removal of obstacles to a fresh marriage or marriages.” Now, I confess, brethren, that the full explanation of this apparent exception is what I cannot offer within the space of time allowed me this morning. Neither can it be given at all to those who will not bestow on it close and somewhat learned attention. I am satisfied in my own mind (and I believe I could satisfy any one who will study the passage with me), that this is no real exception to the general prohibition. But I can show you all, in few words, how little its ordinary interpretation is to be relied on. It is mentioned twice, [10] once in the hearing of the multitude, once to the Pharisees. It is found only in the Gospel of St. Matthew, written for Jewish converts. It does not occur in the Gospel of St. Mark, or in that of St. Luke, written for the Gentiles, in both of which the prohibition of putting away is absolute and without exception, and it is never once alluded to in any other part of the New Testament. Not even in the Epistles to the Corinthians, among whom the sin in question was a very common one, and to whom St. Paul gives full directions about the married state, is there the remotest hint of such a separation being lawful, though the verse of the Gospel in which it occurs is actually referred to in the seventh chapter of the 1st Epistle, (vv. 10, 11). “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord (‘Matthew xix, 6, 9,’ says the marginal reference), Let not the wife depart from her husband: but if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and let not the husband put away his wife.”
Now, when we remember that all Holy Scripture was dictated by the same Spirit; that that Spirit brought to the remembrance of the Sacred Writers, or taught them all that Christ did and said, and suggested to them all that they should write; that all the sacred writings were not at once put into the hands of each Christian disciple, but that in most cases probably only a single gospel and an epistle or two were to be found in any one church, what inference are we compelled to draw from this exception being mentioned only in the Gospel written first, and written for Jews; but that it was a parenthetical recognition of the Jewish criminal law, which put the adulterer and adulteress to death? As though Christ had begun to declare His decree, that marriage should in no case be dissolved, and then stopped short to announce in a parenthesis, that He meant not, at least in their case, at that time, to interfere with the husband’s right to deliver up a faithless wife to the officers of justice, to be dealt with by the law. The Gentiles had no such law delivered them from God: they were receiving Divine law for the first time: in writing for them, therefore, there was no need of such an allusion to the Mosaic law, and accordingly the Spirit left it out, though it had been spoken by Christ.