Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/476

464 absolute for an imperfect society. But it can at least be suggested that there are yet grounds for hesitation before one admits that the spirit animating this part of the social teaching of Jesus has been materially surpassed by much of today's divorce legislation.

1 . It is characteristic of the sanity of Jesus that at this point he introduces something in the nature of an exception to this general teaching. Although marriage is thus sacred, and although in it there is one of the nucleus points of the kingdom, yet all men are not to marry. There is something pathetic as well as humorous in the anxiety shown by the disciples over his stern teaching. It seems to them that if divorce be thus forbidden it were better not to marry at all! Jesus, with characteristic tact, grants them their conclusion, but supplies it with premises of a much loftier standard, and in his treatment of the matter presents one of the fundamental teachings of his entire system, viz., that a good thing must always be sacrificed for a better thing. No man, unless like Origen he be utterly blinded by an ascetic and fanatic fervor, could ever misinterpret the intense words in which Jesus expresses this axiom. They simply form one of those characteristic additions with which he so often modifies a truth otherwise absolutely stated. While marriage is supremely good, yet if for any cause it stand in the way of accepting the blessings of the kingdom of heaven, it is to be avoided. The words are a restatement of the familiar teaching of the sacrificed eye and hand. And Jesus himself practiced this teaching.

2. But possibly another exception may be derived from the admission by Jesus that Moses had yielded to the "hardness of