Chapter XXII: Influence of the Church and the Law

The view of marriage as a tie which the parties intend to enter into for their lives, and which the law holds indissoluble, has hitherto rested not so much on any abstract theory or sentiment which men and women have entertained regarding it as upon the three authorities which have formed both sentiment and opinion. These three are the Church, the State, and Tradition, that is to say the beliefs which people adopt because they have come down from the past. The attitude of the Church has in Protestant nations sensibly altered. In some countries it altered in the sixteenth century. It has everywhere altered in the nineteenth. So, too, the support given to the old view by the State has in like manner become in those same countries much weaker, and in some countries, as for example in Switzerland and many American States, has almost disappeared. Public opinion has itself been largely formed by the Church and the Law, and may, when they have ceased to form it, be no longer an effective guardian of the permanence and dignity of marriage. In such democracies as those of the United States, the wish of an active minority to procure changes in the law easily prevails, because no one cares to resist, and because abstract principles suggest that the more everybody is permitted to do as he pleases, the happier everybody will be. When the law has been changed, public opinion, that is to say the opinion of the majority who do not think seriously about the matter, soon adjusts itself to the new law, and little social blame attaches to those who use the licence which the law has granted. Seeing then how largely the law, whether of the Church or of the State, moulds the sentiment of the people on such a subject as this, and seeing that the Church no longer makes or administers law in Protestant countries, one may say that the civil law is practically left to keep their conscience. This tendency of the Church to abnegate its old functions makes the question of the way in which the Law should deal with divorce a question of critical importance[232].

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Footnote 232:

Some of the Churches in the United States have however tried to deal
with the matter. The Protestant Episcopal Church is at this moment
(1901) considering a draft canon.

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As regards America, the opinion of the wisest and best informed people, though far from unanimous in points of detail, agrees in thinking that many States have gone too far in the way of laxity.