The Arena. Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891

Let us, therefore, give liberty, yes, even sympathy, to these perplexed souls who are struggling with the great problems of religion.

And secondly, let us be honest with them, and not claim more certainty for religious doctrines or more precise and absolute knowledge about divine and heavenly things than we have. One of the great causes of modern doubt is, unquestionably, the excessive claims that theology has made. It has not been content with preaching the simple truths necessary to a good life; that we have a Maker to whom we are responsible,—a divine Friend to help us, a divine voice within to teach us right and wrong; that in the life that is to follow this, each shall be judged according to his deeds, and that in the apostles and prophets, especially the spotless life of Jesus, we have the noble patterns of the holy life set up before us for our imitation; a revelation of moral and religious truth all sufficient for salvation. The Church has not been content with these almost self-evident truths; but it must go on, to make most absolute assertions about God’s foreknowledge, and foreordination, and triune personality; and the eternal punishment of the wicked, and the double nature and pre-existence of Christ,—things not only vague and inconsistent, but contradictory to our sense of justice and right. It must go on to make manifold assertions about the inerrancy and verbal inspiration of the Bible and the details of the future life and the fall of human nature, which are utterly incredible to rational minds. And the worst of it is, that all these things are bound up in one great theological system, and poor, anxious inquirers are told that they must either take all or none; and so (soon coming face to face with some palpable inconsistency or incredibility) they not unnaturally give up the whole. Trace out the religious history of the great sceptics,—the Voltaires, the Bradlaughs, the Ingersolls, the Tom Paines,—and you will see that the origin of their scepticism has almost always been in a reaction from the excessive assumptions of the ecclesiastics themselves. It is too fine spun and arrogant orthodoxy that is itself responsible for half of the heterodoxy of which it complains.

Let the Church, then, be honest, and claim no more than it ought. Let it respect and encourage honesty in every man in these sacred matters. The Church itself should say to the inquirer: You are unfaithful to your God if you go not where He, by the candle of the Lord (i. e., the reason and conscience he has placed within you), leads you. And when a man in this reverent and sincere spirit pursues the path of doubt, how often does he find it circling around again toward faith and conducting him to the Mount of Zion! The true remedy for scepticism is deeper investigation. As all sincere doubt is at bottom a cry of the deeper faith that only that which is true and righteous is divine, so all earnest doubt, thought through to the end, pierces the dark cloud and comes out in the light and joy of higher convictions. It lays in the dust our philosophic and materialistic idols and brings us to the one Eternal Power, the ever-living Spirit, manifested in all, that Spirit whose name is truth, whose word is love.

You remember, perhaps, the story of the climber among the Alps, who, having stepped off a precipice, as he thought, frantically grasped, as he fell, a projecting root and held on in an agony of anticipated death, for hours, until, utterly exhausted, he at last resigned himself to destruction, and let go of his support, to fall gently on the grassy ledge beneath, only a few inches below his feet. So when we resign ourselves to God’s hand, our fall, be it little or be it great, lands us gently in the everlasting arms that are ever underneath.

Do not fear, then, to wrestle with doubt, or to follow its leadings. Out of every sincere soul-struggle, your faith shall come forth stronger and calmer. And do not hesitate to proclaim your new convictions when they have become convictions. Such is the encouragement and sympathy that the Church should give the candid questioner.

On the other hand, it may wisely caution him, not to be precipitate in publishing his doubt. Let him wait till it has become more than a doubt; till it has become a settled and well-considered conclusion, before he inflicts it upon his neighbor. The very justification for doubting the accepted opinion, the sacredness of truth, commands caution and firm conviction that our new view is something more than a passing caprice of the mind, before we publish it. But when the doubter is sure of this, then let him no longer silence his highest thoughts.

Again, the Church is justified in cautioning the doubter not to be proud of his doubt as a doubt. There is no more merit, it is well to remember, in disbelieving than in believing; and if your opinions have, as yet, only got to the negative state and you have no new positive faith or philosophy to substitute for the old, you are doing your neighbor a poor service in taking away from him any superstition, however illogical, that sustains his heart and strengthens his virtue.

And further, let me say, I would dislike very much to have you contented with doubt. Doubt makes a very good spade to turn up the ground, but a very poor kind of spiritual food for a daily diet. It is a useful, often an indispensable half-way shelter in the journey of life; but a very cold home in which to settle down as the end of that journey.

In all our deepest hours, when our heart is truly touched, or our mind satisfied, we believe. It is each soul’s positive faith, however unconventional or perhaps unconscious that faith may be, that sustains its hope, that incites its effort, that supports it through the trials of life. Any doubt, even, that is earnest and to be respected, is really an act of faith, faith in a higher law than that of human creeds; in a more direct revelation, within ourselves, in our own sense of justice and consistency, than in any manuscript or print.

The very atheist, who in the name of truth repudiates the word God, is really manifesting (in his own different way) the belief which he cannot escape, in the divine righteousness and its lawful claim on every human soul.

She is right who sings:—

“There is no unbelief;And day by day, and night by night, unconsciouslyThe heart lives by that faith the lips deny,—God knows the why.”

Finally, and most important of all, let us not worry ourselves so much about the intellectual opinions of men; but look rather to their spiritual condition. The church ought to think less of creed and more of character. The essence of faith lies not in correct conclusions upon doctrinal points; but in righteousness, and love, and trustful submission to God’s will. No scepticism concerning dogmas touches the heart of religion. If that seems at all heretical, let me cite good orthodox authority. I might quote Bishop Thirlwall, of the Church of England, in his judgment concerning Colenso’s attack upon the accuracy of the history of the Exodus in the Pentateuch, that “this story, nay, the whole history of the Jewish people, has no more to do with our faith as Christians, than the extraction of the cube or the rule of three.” Or I might quote Canon Farrar’s weighty words, in a recent article in the Christian World, upon the true test of religion. “The real question,” he declares, “to ask about any form of religious belief, is: Does it kindle the fire of love? Does it make the life stronger, sweeter, purer, nobler? Does it run through the whole society like a cleansing flame, burning up that which is mean and base, selfish and impure? If it stands that test it is no heresy.” That answers the question as aptly as it does manfully. And to the same effect is the noble sermon of Dr. Heber Newton a few weeks ago, in which he subordinated the question of the denominational fold to the higher interests of the Christian flock; and that notable saying of Dr. MacIlvaine’s at the Presbyterian Presbytery the other day, when, quoting the admission of one evangelical minister, that it was the Unitarian Martineau who had saved his soul and kept his Christian faith from shipwreck, he added significantly, “You must first find God in your soul before you can find Him elsewhere.” Yes, the prime and essential thing is to find God in the soul; to worship him in spirit, by a pure conscience, a loyal will, a heart full of devotion to God’s righteousness and love to all our kind. This is to worship God in truth. And what have Calvin’s five points, or the composite origin of the Pentateuch, or the virgin birth of Christ to do with such worship? If a man likes to believe them, very well. But if he cannot honestly credit them, why should we shut the doors of the church against him and threaten him with excommunication? Were these the requirements that Jesus Christ laid on his disciples? Not at all. Look all through the Sermon on the Mount, study the Golden Rule, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or the conditions Jesus lays down in his picture of the last judgment as the conditions of approval by the heavenly Judge, and see if you find anything there about the infallibility of Scripture, or the Apostolic succession, or the Deity of Christ, or any other of the dogmas on account of which the ecclesiastical disciplinarians would drive out the men whom they are pursuing as heretics. How grimly we may fancy Satan (if there be any Satan) smiling to himself as he sees great Christian denominations wrought up to a white heat over such dogmas and definitions, while the practical atheism, and pauperism, and immorality of our great metropolis is passed over with indifference.

Sunday after Sunday, the Christian pulpit complains that the great masses of the people keep away from their communion tables and do not even darken their doors.

Does not the fault really lie in the folly—I may almost say sin,—of demanding of men to believe so many things that neither reason nor enlightened moral sense can accept, and making of these dogmas five-barred gates through which alone there is any admission to heaven?

If we wish the Church to regain its hold on thinking men it must simplify and curtail its creeds; it must recognize that the love of God is not measured by the narrowness of human prejudice, and that God’s arms are open to receive every honest searcher after truth. Let him come with all his doubts, provided he comes with a pure heart and brings forth the fruits of righteousness. Let us no longer pretend that it is necessary for a Christian life to know all the mysteries of God. Let it no longer be thought a mark of wickedness for a man honestly to hold a conviction different from the conventional standard; but let us respect one another’s independent search and judgment of truth. True faith consists not in any special theory of God or His ways, but in the uplifting of our spirit to touch His spirit, and the diffusing of whatever grace or gift we have received from Him in generous good-will amongst our fellows.

If the Christian Church is to go forward successfully again in the power and spirit of that Master whom it constantly invokes as “the way, the truth, and the life,” it must make that way and life its guiding truth. It must aim constantly at greater simplicity in its teaching, and a broader, more fraternal co-operation in Christian work. Its motto should be the motto of the early Church, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Then shall a new and grander career open before its upward footsteps.

THE SIOUX FALLS DIVORCE COLONY AND SOME NOTED COLONISTS

BY JAMES REALF, JR

The thriving city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has recently been pitchforked into unjust notoriety by certain irresponsible correspondents of certain sensational and habitually inveracious newspapers that infest New York and Chicago. It has been represented as having an easy divorce mill that constantly grinds out divorces of a more or less bogus nature. This is fundamentally false. The laws of South Dakota are liberal, but they are strictly interpreted. These unscrupulous newspapers, whom it is unnecessary to name, have gone still further in their distortion of truth, dissemination of error and attempted degradation of the high and noble calling of journalism. They have made false and unwarranted statements about the laws of the Dakotas and of the United States generally on the subject of divorce. Nor is this all in their race for a temporary and unsubstantial circulation,—they have maligned certain unfortunate and meritorious women and men, and added insult to injury by publishing bogus portraits of beautiful ladies whose misfortunes should have provoked respectful sympathy rather than coarse insinuation and vulgar ridicule. Because these women were prominent in what has been termed the Divorce Colony of Sioux Falls, either from social rank in their former spheres, or by reason of the legal peculiarities enmeshing their cases, they are legitimate subjects for honest journalistic treatment, and some of them, triumphing over the natural shrinkingness of their sex, for the sake of truth and for the sake of other women who may need examples and incitements to achieve freedom from dishonoring marriages, are perfectly willing to sacrifice their own personal desires for obscurity and have their lives and their cases properly presented. I have even prevailed on a few to permit the use of their photographs to add to the personal interest of this article.

The case of greatest interest, perhaps, because it has a transatlantic notoriety, is that of Eva Lylyan Lynch-Blosse, an English lady, who came to Sioux Falls early last winter and attracted almost instantly the respectful attention of the citizens. Not because she was a strikingly beautiful woman, for a student of statues might find some faults in her features, but because out of the shy, violet eyes a high, indomitable spirit occasionally gleamed and a stray flash from them, combined with her radiant freshness of complexion and perfect grace of figure and of carriage, would light up the common sordid streets of the common masculine mind and turn them, for the nonce, into vistas of imagination.

Some persons, passing us, inspire the thought: There goes a being with a strange life-history, or full of great capacities, moral or mental. Such was, undoubtedly, the chief component of her charm, felt equally by the grave and learned lawyer, ex-Judge Garland, who conducted her case, and by the street-loungers who respectfully hastened to make way for her passage. It was the high character that radiated from her, scorning the conventionalities that conspire to belittle her sex, determined to be free and not afraid of being a pioneer in baffling the barbarism of her native laws. A singular story hers, that demands to be told in full, since it is full of inspiration to oppressed womanhood everywhere.

The daughter of an English clergyman, she married at seventeen Lieut. Edward Falconer Lynch-Blosse, an Irishman of good family, but bad habits. In a few months this girl-wife discovered not only that she had mistaken for affection what was merely the gratified vanity of a boarding-school miss when wooed by a good-looking uniform, but that there was absolutely nothing in the nature of the animated uniform on which even respect could be built. Active brutality was soon begun by the lieutenant. Simple adultery not being a sufficient amusement for his hours of ease, he tried to compel his refined and delicate wife to receive his paid paramours as her associates; and on her demurring, he became mad with indignation and proceeded to discipline her, according to the Englishman’s time-honored right of violence. As a minor but very embarrassing matter to a sensitive woman, he plunged into debt and forced her to contend with and pacify his duns out of her private fortune, and even worried her into an attempt to raise money for him by pledging her annuity, though, luckily, no Jew in London was plucky enough to take a long risk on the life of the wife of so brutal a husband. This daily inferno of disgust and terror the woman endured for three years, for the barbarous English law requires the woman, not the man, to prove extreme cruelty besides adultery; and cruelty is often not so easy to prove, for Englishmen, as a rule, do not beat their wives on the housetops. It is generally a strictly boudoir performance, with locked doors and the rabble excluded, as befits the solemnity of such a marital right. At last, owing to the lieutenant’s culpable carelessness in castigation, she was able to go to court with plenty of provable cruelty. But here again the barbarous English law stepped in and said: “This is all very true, but wait a bit. You shall have a decree nisi,” which meant that she must wait six months and then a certain musty, overpaid, and underworked humbug, styled the Queen’s Proctor, after hobnobbing with an attorney-general, would, if his dinner agreed with him, confirm the decree and make it final. During this suspense the ineffably mean uniform that had been masquerading as a man was visited by an idea, and wrote a letter to Mrs. Lynch-Blosse depicting himself as on the brink of starvation and consumption, and begging for some money. The woman’s pity was aroused. She had once fancied for a brief while, with the undeveloped heart of girlhood, that she liked this empty, tinkling symbol of a man. She wrote him a kind letter enclosing the money. It takes but little imagination to understand what such a creature would do with the cash; that he would hasten to celebrate the success of his cunning by a revel at which he could brag to some loose companion how neatly he had cheated a generous and noble woman. But he did something more, almost inconceivable in its baseness; he took that letter to the Queen’s Proctor and showed it to that archive of centuried insapience as a proof that there had been collusion in the case, that his wife and he were really on good terms, and that he was anxious to regain her. The Proctor took his word, and without going into the case further, when the six months were up, refused to confirm the decree. And then her friends said: “You had better give up. England has decided that you cannot be free.” And her lawyers said: “Even with fresh evidence it would be foolish to re-open the fight. The action of the Queen’s Proctor is so insurmountable.” But the woman said to herself: “Though England has decided that I must be a slave, nevertheless I will be free.” Meantime Lieutenant Lynch-Blosse, after endeavoring to blacken his wife’s character in his regiment, and getting soundly thrashed for his pains, eloped with a light-headed Scotch peeress whose husband, Lord Torphichen, promptly obtained a divorce, with the custody of his children, and the elopers fled the kingdom, leaving a small army of swindled tradesmen who are still exceedingly anxious to discover their whereabouts. When last heard of, the ex-uniform was living in Chicago under an alias, and he will probably remain one of the many English ornaments of this country, for the same English law that permits a man to castigate his wife in moderation is excessively severe if he swindles tradesmen.

Mrs. Lynch-Blosse obtained her Dakotan divorce on the ground of adultery, the evidence being the record of the Scotch suit of Lord Torphichen against Lady Torphichen, otherwise styled the Right Hon. Ellen Frances Gordon, and apart from the wrongs, the beauty, and the pioneer courage of Mrs. Lynch-Blosse, picturesque as they made it, her case possesses profound interest to the legal mind. It adds to the weight of such cases as except to the old rule of domicile (Ditson v. Ditson, 4 R. I., 87; Harding v. Alden, 9 Mo. 140; Hollister v. Hollister, 6 Pa. St., 449; Derby v. Derby, 14 Ill. App., 645) by showing that where a husband is guilty of such conduct as would entitle even to a limited divorce, the wife is at liberty to establish a separate jurisdictional domicile. Moreover, Mrs. Lynch-Blosse might have obtained a divorce on grounds less strong than she did, for a divorce good at the place of domicile will be sustained in England, though the same grounds would have been insufficient to obtain it there. (Harvey v. Farnie, L. R. 8 App. Cas. 43; Turner v. Thompson, L. R., 13 P. D. 37.) Of this law, probably, comity of nations is the chief component. Those who admire moral courage and feel a glow of indignation at the fact that, in order to secure her natural right to own herself, a woman in the closing years of the nineteenth century has to spend thousands of dollars, travel thousands of miles, and sojourn among strangers, may be glad to know that since her freedom she has married an English gentleman of high character, and is living restfully in a charming little cottage on the banks of what Macaulay calls, in his picturesque way, “the river of the ten thousand masts.” The great, feverous heart of London throbs near.

Another very interesting personage in the Sioux Falls Divorce Colony, is Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr., now living in a cosy cottage on the fashionable avenue with her sister, Miss Nevins, her son, James G. Blaine, 3d, and her maids. When Marie Nevins, piquantly pretty, witty, and accomplished, made a stolen match with the ungreat son of one of America’s greatest political figures, she little dreamed what the hands of the Fates—who are sometimes the Furies—were spinning for her; yet she wears her robes of sorrow with some of that grace of patience which comes to her sex like an instinct born of centuried servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman’s heart? Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident. The true story of Mrs. Blaine’s infelicities has been carefully hidden from the public, although some superserviceable, would-be friends have now and then busied themselves with starting absurd rumors, as if for the fun of contradicting them; for instance, a precious yarn spun lately to the effect that Mrs. Blaine, senior, looked down on her daughter-in-law as not aristocratic enough to have married a Blaine. How intrinsically absurd is such an idea in connection with a family as close to what Lincoln called “the plain people”—and as really proud of so being—as that of the famous Republican leader! Blaine is a man so thoroughly democratic that only a very stupid enemy of his could have invented such a piece of self-convicting nonsense; for if aristocracy entered into the question, Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr., could make a better showing than her spouse, since, if it confers any quasi-patent of nobility in this country to have a distinguished father, it must give a larger halo of social splendor to have a distinguished grandfather, etc., etc. Now, Mrs. Blaine, Jr., had a grandsire who was a power in his day, a forceful, brilliant man, Samuel Medary, who was successively governor of three States, Ohio, Kansas, and Minnesota. Mrs. Blaine, Jr., apart from her marital misfortunes, deserves much sympathy for her physical fate. Just lately her leg was broken again and her surgeons fear that her lameness must be perpetual. Yet the talk about her going on the stage has some basis, and no one who ever talked with her, and enjoyed the prismatic play of her facial expression and the flexions of her vibrant voice, could doubt her fitness for certain popular rôles. Nor need her lameness defeat her of success. A play of mingled pathos and humor could be written for a lame heroine. One excellent writer has offered to do it, and Hamlin Garland could do it excellently. Balzac in his marvellous book, “The Alkahest,” declares that she is blest among women, who, having some great bodily defect, nevertheless wins a man’s affections, for she never loses her hold on them, and it might very easily be the same with a lame actress and the affections of the public.

As to Mrs. Blaine’s case an immense interest is felt, an interest which lies not alone in the points of law. Mrs. Blaine, Jr., is a Catholic, and her example in taking this step contrary to the custom of her church is likely to be fruitful. It is a pretty safe prophecy that the next Pope will see the advisability of returning to the policy of the church prevalent before the Council of Trent, and will allow a wiser freedom to his spiritual subjects in this matter of divorce. Hearts were created before creeds, and the primal laws of God still possess, and exert in emergencies, their ancient vigor of eminent domain.