traditional teaching of Christianity on the subject of divorce and the laws of the modern State, that is primâ facie a reason for carefully reexamining the traditional teaching of Christianity: and it is this because the laws of the modern State must be supposed to represent the deliberate decisions of citizens taken with full knowledge of all the circumstances of society at the present time, and therefore presumably expressing the latest testimony of human experience.
It is not maintained that a careful reexamination of Christian traditional teaching will necessarily lead to an endorsement of the legislation of the modern State; for it does not admit of doubt that such legislation may be determined by some wave of licentious opinion sweeping across a community, and for the moment carrying all before it, and the traditional doctrine of Christianity, with which it comes into opposition, may represent the true conclusions of human experience. It may do this, but it may not; and therefore the
