CHRISTIANITY AND CONDUCT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,--I have read the articles of Canon Barry in your recent issues. May I offer a few remarks as an outsider ?
Canon Barry seems to suggest that the English divorce law is opposed to the Christian ideal of family life. So far as I know the English law allows a husband to seek divorce by proving the wife's adultery and vice versa. This appears to be based upon the words of Christ himself : " Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, eauseth her to commit adultery." Canon Barry cannot call it an " appallingly obscurantist utterance by one of its least qualified exponents." Neither can he reasonably say that it is against the spirit of Christ, because the general trend of his teachings does not point to any reform of the divorce taw as perhaps desired by Canon Barry.. Luke 16-18 and Mark 10-11 do not allow divorce at all, and that is why the Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, declared that the marriage bond was not dissoluble, even by adultery, and that neither party could marry during the life-time of the other.
If all that is permanent is only the spirit of Christ and not his words, and his spirit can be thus distorted, I am afraid there would be left nothing at all of a permanent character in Christianity. I agree, however, entirely with Mr. Mullins when he says that "nothing is God's will unless the best use is made of God's greatest gift to man—his intelligence" ; though I fail to understand how human intelligence can ever allow such a cruel ethic as taught by Christianity regarding divorce.
The teaching of non-resistance put forward by Canon Barry resembles the passive resistance of Mr. Gandhi which tends to express itself only in aggression and Violence in actual practice. I think Christian teachings are beautifully expressed by Christ himself. A personal injury must he for- given, no justice should be sought for it. "Resist not evil," says Christ,. "if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy crOke also." I doubt, however, whether any Christian individual or nation would seriously be prepared to act up to these -teachings. An:- excellent ideal perhaps, hut certainly not fit for. practical
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