Jim was stupefied to find himself once more pilloried and portraited
and ballyhooed in the newspapers. But he tightened his jaws and
refused to be howled from his path by any coyote pursuit.
His next thought was of the New Jersey clergyman who had married
him to Kedzie. He motored over to him.
Jim had told Dr. Mosely that clergymen ought to keep up with the
news. He found, to his regret, that the New Jersey dominie did.
He remembered Jim well and heard him out, but shook his head.
He explained why, patiently. He had been greatly impressed by the
action of the House of Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church
convened at St. Louis in October, 1916. A new canon had been proposed
declaring that "no marriage shall be solemnized in this Church
between parties, either of whom has a husband or wife still living,
who has been divorced for any cause arising after marriage."
This meant that the innocent party, as well as the guilty, should
be denied another chance. The canon had been hotly debated--so hotly
that one preacher referred to any wedding of divorced persons as
"filth marriage," and others were heard insisting that even Christ's
acceptance of adultery as a cause for divorce was an interpolation
in the text, and that the whole passage concerning the woman taken in
adultery was absent from some ancient manuscripts. A halt was called
to this dangerous line of argument, and one clergyman protested that
"the question of the integrity of the Scriptures is more important
than the question of marriage and divorce.
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