Timely Warning.-But, in spite of chaste surroundings and all other favorable circumstances, if the child is left in ignorance of his danger, he may y… - John Harvey Kellogg

Another of the crying evils of the day, and one which menaces in a most alarming manner the most sacred interests of society, is the facility with which divorces may be obtained. In some States the laws regulating divorce are so notoriously loose that scores and even hundreds of people visit the States referred to every year with no other object than to obtain a dissolution of the bonds of matrimony. The effect of this looseness in the laws is to encourage hasty, inconsiderate marriages, and to make escape from an uncongenial partner so easy that the obligation to cultivate forbearance and to acquire mutual adaptation which may not at first exist, is wholly overlooked. The Bible rule for divorce, laid down by the Great Teacher, is little regarded in these degenerate days. He made adultery the only legitimate cause for divorce; yet we now see married people breaking asunder their solemn marriage ties on the occurrence of the most trivial difficulties. If a couple become tired of each other and desire a change, all they have to do is to forward the fee to a New York or Chicago lawyer, and they will receive back in a short time the legal papers duly signed, ranting them the desired annulment of their vows. Although countenanced by human laws, there can be no doubt that this is shameless trifling with a divine institution is regarded by High Heaven as the vilest abomination. In no direction is there greater need of reformatory legislation than in this. The marriage contract should be recognized in our laws as one which cannot be made and broken so lightly as it now is. It should be annulled only or the most serious offenses. The contrary course now pursued so frequently is most detrimental to morals. Our divorce laws virtually offer a premium for unchastity.

Said the great Teacher, “If your son asks for bread, will you give him a stone?” The body calls for bread, for life-giving food, but how often we supply, instead, such indigestible, unwholesome rubbish as pickles, green olives, fried foods, and various abominable mixtures which bring into the body death rather than life. How often, too, the voice which calls for pure, life-giving water is insanely answered by such disease-producing drinks as beer, whisky, wine, tea, or coffee, and the like.

Not a Modern Crime.—Although this crime has attained remarkable proportions in modern times, it is not a new one by any means, as the following paragraph will suffice to show:— "Infanticide and exposure were also the custom among the Romans, Medes, Canaanites, Babylonians, and other Eastern nations, with the exception of the Israelites and Egyptians. The Scandinavians killed their offspring from pure fantasy. The Norwegians, after having carefully swaddled their children, put some food into their mouths, placed them under the roots of trees or under the rocks to preserve them from ferocious beasts. Infanticide was also permitted among the Chinese, and we saw, during the last century, vehicles going round the streets of Pekin daily to collect the bodies of the dead infants. To-day there exist foundling hospitals to receive children abandoned by their parents. The same custom is also observed in Japan, in the isles of the Southern Ocean, at Otaheite, and among several savage nations of North America. It is related to the Jaggers of Guinea that they devour their own children.” The Greeks practiced infanticide systematically, their laws at one time requiring the destruction of crippled or weakly children. Among all the various nations, the general object of the crime seems to have been to avoid the trouble of rearing the children, or to avoid a surplus, objects not far different from those had in view by those who practice the same crimes at the present time. The destruction of the child after the mother has felt its movements is termed infanticide; before that time it is commonly known as abortion. It is a modern notion that the child possesses no soul or individual life until the period of quickening, an error which we have already sufficiently exposed. The ancients, with just as much reason, contended that no distinct life was present until after birth. Hence it was that they could practice without scruple the crime of infanticide to prevent too great increase of population. "Plato and Aristotle were advocates of this practice, and these Stoics justified this monstrous practice by alleging that the child only acquired a soul at the moment when it ceased to have uterine life and commenced to respire. From hence it resulted that, the child not being animated, its destruction was no murder."