The Bishop of Durham contributed an able and timely letter
to Thursday's Times on Divorce Reform. He says most wisely that what we should look for in Christ's sayings on Divorce is the intention. Before we can show the "simple loyalty" to Christ's judgment for which the Bishop of Ely pleads, we must know what that judgment was. The Bishop of Durham goes on to show the diffi- culties of this task, but does so in no casuistical spirit. He notes that there are other things quite as destructive to "the primary intention of marriage" as adultery. Here is the essential point in the problem. Those who, like ourselves, agree with the Bishop of Durham, are deeply and earnestly impressed by the fact that marriage is "the basis of society." But we desire to see that basis firm and secure, and not undermined by a loyalty to the words rather than to the inner spirit. If we allow the doctors and the lawyers and those who love ritual more than grace to put their seals and bindings on the spirit that quiekeneth, Christianity will become as dead and as formal as the faith of the Moslem. We have no fears, however. The spirit of Christianity will, in the end, break through all the man-devised bars. It is a living, not a dead faith. Resurrection or Revival is its essential element, the law of its being.
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