Sec. 4.  No divorce shall be granted solely upon default nor solely upon admissions by the pleadings, nor except upon hearing before the court in open session.

Sec. 5.  After divorce either party may marry again, but in cases where notice has been given by publication only, and the defendant has not appeared, no decree or judgment for divorce shall become final or operative until six months after hearing and decision.

Sec. 6.  Wherever the word “divorce” occurs in this act, it shall be deemed to mean divorce from the bond of marriage.

Sec, 7.  All acts and parts of acts inconsistent herewith are hereby repealed.]

It is always to be remembered that the law of marriage, and divorce as well, was originally administered by the church.  Marriage was a sacrament; it brought about a status; it was not a mere secular contract, as is growing to be more and more the modern view.  Indeed, the whole matter of sexual relations was left to the church, and was consequently matter of sin and virtue, not of crime and innocence.  Modern legislation has, perhaps, too far departed from this distinction.  Unquestionably, many matters of which the State now takes jurisdiction were better left to the conscience and to the church, so long as they offend no third party nor the public.  Very few lawyers doubt that most of the causes of action based on them, such as the familiar one for alienation of the affections, are only of use to the blackmailer and the adventurer.  They are very seldom availed of by honest women.

Nevertheless, it is not questionable that modern American legislation, particularly in the code States, in California, New York, and the West generally, is based upon the view that marriage is a simple contract, whence results the obvious corollary that it may be dissolved at any time by mutual consent.  No State has thus far followed the decision to this logical end, on the pretended assumption that the rights of children are concerned; but the rights of children might as well be conserved upon a voluntary divorce as after a scandalous court proceeding.  One possible view is that the church should set its own standard, and the state its own standard, even to the extreme of not regulating the matter at all except by ordinary laws of contract and laws for the record of marriages and divorces and for the custody, guardianship, support, and education of children, which would include the presumption of paternity pending an undissolved marriage, but all divorces to be by mutual consent.  It is evident to any careful student of our legislation that we would be rapidly approaching this view but for the conservative influence of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the South, and but for the efforts of most of the churches and the divorce reform societies.  Which influence will prove more powerful in the end it is not possible to predict.