Divorce from bed and board, such as the Roman Church allows, as it does the annulment of marriage, are for the same causes, except that bigamy and conviction of crime are omitted and hopeless insanity is added. These provisions give relief to those who do not believe in or do not desire an absolute divorce.

The entire statute as drawn up is a very long and elaborate one. It describes the proper proceeding and the proper defences against a petition for divorce. It provides that trials for divorce shall not be secret, but in public; and also a very important provision-that when a divorce is granted it shall not be finally in force for a full year, which will act as a bar against hasty divorces for the sake of another marriage; and it is especially provided that marriage will not be allowed with a co-respondent. Nor can divorce be allowed in one state for an offence committed in another state in which the offence is not allowed as an occasion for divorce. The provisions for a real residence in the state are very carefully drawn. What the results will be with regard to this legislation remains to be seen.

FORT WASHINGTON, Pa.

IV.

THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR.

BY THE REV. E. E. EMHOFF.

A child studying

Historically the objects of life have been divided into two classes. There are those things which have reference to temporal as opposed to things eternal, which pertain to this life as opposed to the life to come. These are known as secular things. There is on the other hand that which is considered as spiritual and devoted to religious uses. This is what constitutes the sacred, the divine side of life. the history of his native land is studying secular, profane, history. The child studying the history of religion, the history of Israel, the history of Christianity, is studying sacred history. Ministration at the altar and at divine worship is a sacred calling. Service in other spheres of life is secular. An act of worship at the sanctuary on the Lord's day is a sacred act. Attentiveness to the duties of life in the field, shop, office, study or home is secular-good, indeed, but not entitled to the distinction of being called sacred. It is to be observed that the line of demarcation between the sacred and the secular is not identical with that drawn between good and evil.

While an historic fact deserves respect because it is history, the right of inquiry into the moral and spiritual value of such a fact can be denied no one. Inquiry into the rise of this habit of conduct labeling would be a very interesting study. No doubt the religious and cosmic views of men have been important elements in the history of its formation. Perhaps no one would challenge the statement that all things are sacred that God has, or has had, anything to do with. If this be granted it follows that the idea of God and of his relation to

the world, largely influence those who feel called upon to divide life into the sacred and the secular. The conception of God as a being whose habitation is heaven or some supermundane place, is one that is familiar. The complementary conception of the world as the handiwork of God, once belonging to Him by right of manufacture, but now chiefly owned and controlled by Satan by right of conquest, is another idea that was common. Now humanity being on the enemy's ground, the problem for God was, how to rescue the captive race. A momentous business transaction takes place between God, who has been humiliated and robbed of his creation, and Satan, who poses as a conqueror. The difficulty finally resolves itself into the movement of having humanity withdraw itself from Satan's sinful domain. The highest ambition of those aspiring to sainthood was to get out of the world. Had they lived in the enlightened age of the twentieth century, they might have committed suicide; but living in the dark ages, the only alternative was to curtail life by the religiously legitimate ways of fasting, exposure, isolation and filth and other inhuman devices. For one who substantially entertained and cherished such ideas of God and the world it was natural to reach the conclusion that all earthly life, whether political, social or domestic, is secular, not to say irreligious. Earmarks of this view of life are to be found on many of the problems of modern life. The separation between the sacred and secular affairs of life has ever centered around the idea of salvation. According as this view of life has been accepted or rejected, salvation has been looked upon in two ways. A man may be saved out of the world, that is apart from society, much as you would rescue a drowning man from a whirlpool; or salvation may include both the man and society. He may be saved in his worldly environment. The first idea implies that man must be removed from society if he would be saved. His only hope of salvation lies in ultimately getting out of a sinful world. The other idea of salvation is that men are to retire only from that which is sinful; that they are to continue

in society as saved beings and to carry with them into social, industrial and practical life the world-reforming spirit of religion. Viewed from the attitude of the saved toward God and heaven, the one may be called vertical salvation. Viewed from the attitude toward society the other may be called lateral salvation. In the former case, the chief thought that men have in mind when they are being saved is to go to heaven. In the latter case, though there is a longing for the enjoyment of the heavenly life, the chief aim is to live a saved life of service among fellow men. In the latter view, the question is not, "Lord, when shall I receive my crown?" but, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"

The former and earlier view of salvation enabled one to be very dutiful in religious exercises; but anything but moral in his associations with men. It led to a divorce between morality and religion, so aptly described by the prophet Isaiah, "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.” There was a time when men could pray like gods and at the same time live like devils, and yet at their funerals have the religious world represented eager to canonize them as saints. The historic character of the priest who was also a duke is familiar to you all. When called to account by his friend for his gross injustice and shocking immorality he replied: "When I do these wicked things, I do them as a duke, not as a priest.' But the friend retorted with the dilemma: "If the devil comes for the duke what will become of the priest?" Is it any wonder that under such a state of affairs, there should be a desire for a separation between church and state? Is it any wonder that to-day we have the anomalous study of the relation between religion and ethics? So accustomed is the world to this separation that it passes as good form for well-meaning men to sneer at the moral profession of those outside of the church. It makes

the heart of the believer in the spotless purity and matchless sublimity of the ethical life of Jesus sink in dismay to think that reason should ever have been given to doubt the essential inherence of sound morality in the religious views of Jesus.

God's method of educating the race in the kindergarten period of its moral and spiritual life, is sometimes understood to imply the bestowal of divine sanction upon a division of nations, time, place, and means, into sacred and secular. There is no higher testimonial of the greatness of God's wisdom, than the marvelous aptness of his ways and means to accomplish his ends. If people are morally too weak to endure the temptations that come to them from associations; it is a sound principle of education to regard it a contamination to mingle in domestic, social and business life with a gentile. When people have not advanced to the point of appreciation of the virtue of hallowing all times and seasons with holy living, it is wise to have them do the next best thing and so keep one day in seven. Until men could advance to the point where they could learn that all property is a God-given trust, it was good for God to teach them that a tenth belongs to the Lord. If for the brutish hardness of heart, men are morally too blind to see that monogamy is the only decent home life, it was better for the Almighty to compromise with them on a harem, than to let free-love have its hellish course. But a Christian era is capable of better things.

When a race is approaching the manhood of its spiritual life, God expects men to put away childhood expediences. We have long since learned with Saint Peter, that that which God has cleansed, no man should call common or unclean. We have been with him to the home of the distinguished Gentile and have learned with him, somewhat to our surprise, that God is no respecter of persons or nations, but that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. Through the great prototype of our salvation in the person and character of Jesus, we have learned, that there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor