But, indeed, human nature being as it is, there would inevitably arise, and have always arisen, many cases of strain and friction in marriage relations.  As Chesterton says, a man and a woman are, in the nature of the case, incompatible; and that underlying incommensurability of viewpoint easily results in clash where a deep-rooted affection and a habit of self-control are absent.  Innumerable couples have suffered and hated each other and made the best of it; nowadays they are deeming it better frankly to admit and end the discord.  And the problem, Which solutionis better? is by no means an easy one.  We can but make here a few general suggestions.

(1) Divorce must certainly not be so easy as to encourage hasty and unconsidered marriage, or to turn this most sacred of relationships into a mere experimental and provisional alliance.  “Trial marriage” is a palpably reprehensible scheme, involving an unwarrantable stimulus to the sex appetite; many men would enjoy taking one woman after another, until their passion in each case had exhausted its force with the lapse of novelty; women, who are not so naturally promiscuous, would suffer most.  What would become of the children is a question whose very posing condemns the proposal.  But a lax divorce law provides practically for trial marriage; one or the other party may enter into the contract and pronounce the solemn vows without any intention of keeping them when it shall cease to be for his or her pleasure.  Not in this way is to be got the real worth of marriage; the conscious and earnest effort, at least, must be to keep to it for life.  An easy short cut to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but nobler way of compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination.  If one is weak and erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection.  There is a fine disciplinary value in these forbearances, and much opportunity for spiritual growth in the persevering endeavor toward harmony and mutual understanding.  Many a man and woman who might have been lost if divorced, has been saved for a better life by the unwillingness of wife or husband to desert under grievous provocation.  There comes an ebb to most conjugal disputes; men and women grow wiser, and often gentler, with age; while there is any hope for readjustment and revival of love it is wrong to break marital vows.  Many a divorce has been as hasty and ill considered as the marriage it ended, and has left the couple in the end less happy and useful members of the community.  Particularly when there are children should the parents sacrifice much for the sake of giving them a real home, with both mother- and father-love.