But suppose you are
right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous
suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian
for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to force
that particular kind on others?"
He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the bottom
of my thought.
"Surely not," he said at last, "except as ministers of God's laws."
"You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a
woman to keep her in that state of suffering--not being, of course, a
minister of God?"
He began stammering at that: "I--I----" he said. "No; that is, I think
not-not Christian. No, certainly."
"Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a
Christian, but of the husband--the reverse."
"The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: "The husband must
abstain."
"Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They would
then both suffer. But the marriage, of course, has become no marriage.
They are no longer one flesh."
He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to
enforce silence on you!
"But, suppose," I went on, "and this, you know; is the more frequent
case, the man refuses to abstain. Would you then say it was more
Christian to allow him to become daily less Christian through his
unchristian conduct, than to relieve the woman of her suffering at the
expense of the spiritual benefit she thence derives? Why, in fact, do
you favour one case more than the other?"
"All question of relief," he replied, "is a matter for Caesar; it cannot
concern me.
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