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RECONCILIATION.
1037
(for as to them they shall be blameless; but whoever coveteth any woman besides these, they are transgressors)."
The unrestricted power of divorce which the husband enjoys under the Mahomedan Law is also the outcome of the notion that marriage is merely a civil contract. Religion has, as a matter of fact, been always hostile to the very idea of divorce, not on the ground, as some might suppose, of its being a violation of the commandment of a super-human god, but for the reason that all relaxations of restrictions on libertinism and sensuality interfere with the spiritual advancement of the soul, retarding its progress and leading it to regions of suffering and pain after death. Even the re-marriage of widows is forbidden by religion, on this ground. Hard as this rule may seem in certain cases, it is nevertheless one framed in the interests of these individuals themselves, for those who aspire to the attainment of Nirvana have to practise much severer types of self-denial than abstention from marrying a second time. Sexual passion is a powerful foe of the soul, and has to be overpowered before it becomes too strong for control.
Our observations against the re-marriage of widows have, however, no application to the cases of those unfortunate victims of social tyranny who are known as virgin-widows. In the eye of Religion they are still unmarried though forced to drape themselves in a widow's weeds. Religion would be a nuisance if it ever countenanced the perpetuation of the cruel injustice of forcing little children into matrimony, by enjoining a life-long mourning on an unfortunate child whom an unholy, inhuman custom declares to be a
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