going to be. As early as 1235 the secular courts interfered with the
marriage relation; and the importance of that is here: there is one
great school to-day, including largely clergymen and the divorce
reformers, so-called, who hold substantially that marriage is a
sacrament, or at least a status; that the secular law has nothing to
do with it and should not be allowed to grant a divorce except for
canonical causes, _i.e._, causes recognized by the church; that it
is not like any other contract, which can be set aside with mutual
consent; when a marriage takes place, they say, it is a sacrament,
or, at least, a status ensues which cannot in future be altered.
Consequently, it is not like a contract; for all contracts can be
abrogated by mutual consent. On the other hand, the most radical
people go to the other extreme, and say that marriage _is_ like any
other contract; it is purely a civil contract, not a sacrament, not
a status; just like any other, and some of them go to what is the
logical conclusion of that position and say that therefore marriage,
like any other contract, ought to be ended at any time by the consent
of both parties. The extreme radical view leads to the conclusion that
a man and woman ought to be divorced any time by merely saying that
they want to be; and some States have almost got to this position in
their statutes. This may seem a very far cry from this early statute,
which does not directly concern marriage but the status of children;
nevertheless it has this bearing--it is an interference by Parliament,
by the secular, legislative branch of government, with a relation
which the church believed to belong only to the church. It so happens
that in this instance the secular law instead of being liberal and
kindly was extremely cruel and the reverse of liberal. Under the
church law, when a man married a woman by whom he already had
children, all those children were thereby made legitimate, and that
certainly seems the kindly and the Christian law. But the secular