Divorce

Extract
Divorce – A. W. Pink

Part One

One of the most unmistakable and tragic evidences of the moral decadence of our generation is the enormous increase in the number of divorces. During the last few decades, they have literally multiplied. They are common to every strata of society, rich and poor, educated and illiterate alike. They are not confined to the young and immature, the more-experienced and middle-aged, or the elderly; nor is this pernicious phenomenon peculiar to the British Isles, but obtains just as extensively―and in the U.S.A., even more alarmingly―throughout the whole of Christendom. Such a widespread epidemic is proof of the ethical laxity and emotional instability which is now so rife, and it augurs ill for the near future. It is nothing less than a dishonest evasion, a refusal to face facts, which attributes this social scourge unto the last two wars―for any one who examines statistics knows that this malady was eating away at the roots of the nation long before 1914, though like many other diseases, it has continued to spread through the body politic and is now “coming to a head.”
Like many another social and physical evil which the world is now plagued with, this one is but the shadowing forth of what first obtained in the religious sphere. It is not sufficiently recognized that conditions in the ecclesiastical realm are quickly reflected in the secular and social, that what marks the latter, first characterized the former. Those bearing the name of Christ are “the salt of the earth,” but when the salt has lost its savour, not only is it “thenceforth good for nothing” (Matt. 5:13), but there is no longer anything left to stay the unregenerate carcass from complete putrefaction. When the churches keep to the divine Rule, and its members walk in the path of God’s precepts, a powerful influence for good―for morality and respectability, for law and order―is engendered by them; but when the divine Law is flouted, then lawlessness prevails in the community. When the churches degenerate into social clubs, and their members are naught but empty professors―preferring the movies, the dance, and the card-party above the prayer …