Christian Marriage Indissoluble: A Plain Sermon

Delivered at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel in 1857, this fiery sermon captures a moment when British law threatened to permit divorce and remarriage under narrow conditions. James Galloway Cowan mounts an impassioned defense of marriage's indissolubility, arguing from Scripture and centuries of Christian tradition that the marital bond cannot be broken by legislative act. The sermon pulses with urgency: Cowan saw his world shifting, and he would not yield quietly. He cites biblical authority, invokes the weight of church history, and pleads with his congregation to preserve what he viewed as the sacred foundation of civil society. This is not dry theology but a man wrestling with cultural change he believed would spiritual catastrophe. For readers interested in Victorian religious life, the history of marriage law, or the sermon as a literary form, Cowan's text offers a window into a world where faith and legislation were inseparable, and where a preacher's voice might still shape the moral climate of a nation.