means to an end, a way of realizing
what they considered to be the true religious life. In other words, my
friend, most of the so-called free love experiments made in these
communities have been offshoots of Christianity rather than of
Socialism.

_And I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, as a fair-minded American, what you
would think of it if the Socialists charged Christianity with being
opposed to the family and the home? It would not be true of
Christianity and it is not true of Socialism._

But there is another form of argument which is sometimes resorted to.
The history of the movement is searched for examples of what is called
free love. That is to say that because from time to time there have
been individual Socialists who have refused to recognize the
ceremonial and legal aspects of marriage, believing love to be the
only real marriage bond, notwithstanding that the vast majority of
Socialists have recognized the legal and ceremonial aspects of
marriage, they have been accused of trying to do away with marriage.
Our opponents have even stooped so low as to seize upon every case
where Socialists have sought divorce as a means of undoing terrible
wrong, and then married other husbands and wives, and proclaimed it as
a fresh proof that Socialism is opposed to marriage and the family.
When I have read some of these cruel and dishonest attacks, often
written by men who know better, my soul has been sickened at the
thought of the cowardice and dishonesty to which the opponents of
Socialism resort.

Suppose that every time a prominent Christian becomes divorced, and
then remarries, the Socialists of the country were to attack the
Christian religion and the Christian churches, upon the ground that
they are opposed to marriage and the family, does anybody think that
_that_ would be fair and just? But it is the very thing which happens
whenever Socialists are divorced. It happened, not so very long ago,
that a case of the kind was made the occasion of hundreds of
editorials against Socialism and hundreds of sermons. The facts were
these: A man and his wife, both Socialists, had for a long time
realized that their marriage was an unhappy one. Failing to realize
the happiness they sought, it was mutually agreed that the wife should
apply for a divorce. They had been legally married and desired to be
legally separated. Meantime the man had come to believe that his
happiness depended upon his wedding another woman. The divorce