On clinical education : the introductory address to the clinical session, 1871-72, at the Queens Hospital.

  • Jordan, Furneaux.
Date:
[1872]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On clinical education : the introductory address to the clinical session, 1871-72, at the Queens Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    done in the legal tribunals of our country, to the scandal of good Christians, and the general tone of the world around us in connection with this subject, is necessarily tending to strip the sacrament of Matrimony of the sacred character with which it has been clothed since the Son of God forbade man to put asunder those whom God had joined. Hence many are found to enter recklessly on this holy state ignorant of its obligations, and perfectly regardless of its responsibilities. Many who have been careless of all religious duties since their youth up, ignorant perhaps of Christian doctrine, rear up children to be a curse to themselves and a burden on outraged society. There are even to be found some who have so far lost sight of the sacramental nature of Marriage, that they have profaned the Christian institution, by seeking an unholy union at the hands of a civil functionary. What other results could be looked for than those we unhappily see 1 Misery at home, strife, want—all religious practices abandoned —hope of a better future extinguished. Drunkenness, we need not say, holds a foremost place among the woes brought on by imprudent and ill-assorted marriages. But the merited misery of the parents is not to be compared with the inheritance of suffering entailed on their innocent children. Often there is before them only the terrible prospect of the loss of faith, or a life of crime. It is far more from causes such as these than from honest poverty that the store-houses of proselytising agents are filled. For intemperance and improvidence, resulting from imprudent marriages, extinguish, it seems to us, the natural love of the mother for her offspring, and she purchases relief from the sacred obligations of maternity at the cost of her children’s Faith. Scarcely less to be deplored are the sad consequences of mixed marriages. Against those unions the voice of your clergy has often been lifted up in earnest warning. We need not here enter at length on the consideration of this matter, or point out to you in detail the unhappy results that so often flow from those marriages. We deem it sufficient to renew, with all the solemnity and weight that this our united voice can convey, our warnings and entreaties to avoid the dangers, and save yourselves from the tremendous responsibility which those incur