read. Divorce is a creature of the law,
and divorce opens the door to concubinage, legalized if you will, but
concubinage just the same. The marriage tie is intact after as well as
before the decree of divorce; no human power can break that bond. The
permission therefore to re-marry is permission to live in adultery, and
that permission is, of its very nature, null and void. They who avail
themselves of such a permission and live in sin, may count on the
protection of the law, but the law will not protect them against the
wrath of the Almighty who condemns their immoral living.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.
WHEREIN NATURE IS OPPOSED.

CERTAIN excesses, such as we have already alluded to, however base and
abominable in themselves and their effects, have nevertheless this to
their credit that, while violating the positive law of God, they
respect at least the fundamental laws of nature, according to which the
universe is constructed and ordered. To satisfy one's depraved
appetites along forbidden but natural lines, is certainly criminal; but
an unnatural and beastly instinct is sometimes not-satisfied with such
abuse and excess; the passion becomes so blinded as to ignore the
difference of sex, runs even lower, to the inferior order of brutes.
This is the very acme of ungodliness.

There are laws on the statute books against abominations of this sort;
and be it said to the shame of a Christian community, said laws find an
only too frequent application. Severe as are the penalties, they are
less an adequate punishment than a public expression of the common
horror inspired by the very mention of crimes they are destined to
chastise. To attain this depth of infamy is at one and the same time to
sin and to receive the penalty of sin. Here culminates repeated
violence to the moral law. When one is sated with ordinary lusts and is
bent on sweeping the whole gamut of mundane experiences and
excitations, that one invariably descends to the unnatural and
extraordinary, and lives a life of protest against nature.

St. Paul confirms this. According to him, God, in punishment for sin
delivers over people to shameful affections, to a reprobate sense; he
suffers them to be a hell unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to
avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease
and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the
verge of the grave, often to the yawning pit of hell.

People shudder at t