social crime, next to murder, which any one can com- mit, is to seduce the affections of a wife from her hus- band, or of a husband from his wife. And one of the greatest evils which civil authorities can inflict on society, is the dissolution of the marriage contract (so far as it is a civil contract, for further the civil author- ity cannot go), on other than scriptural grounds. The same remark may be made in reference to all laws which tend to make those two whom God has pro- nounced one, by giving to the wife the right to carry on business, contract debts, hold property, sue and be sued, in her ownname. This is attempting to correct one class of evils at the cost of incurring others a hundred-fold greater. The word of God is the only sure guide of legislative action as well as of individual conduct.
If, as the Scriptures teach, husband and wife are one, he that loveth his wife loveth himself, for she is himself. This is the language of God, originally re- corded in Gen. 2, 24, and repeated by our Lord, Matt. 19, 4-6, who after citing the passage in Genesis, adds, “ Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.” Calvin, in his comment on the passage in Matthew, says, Hoc autem axioma sumit Christus, Ab initio Deus marem adjunxit feminae, ut duo efficerent inte- grum hominem. Ergo qui uxorem repudiat, quasi dimidiam sui partem a seipso avellit. Hoc autem minime patitur natura, ut corpus suum quispiam dis- cerpat. Neither God by the mouth of Moses, nor our Lord says simply that husband and wife ought to be,