Noe's No (Cont'd)

In a Memphis courtroom last week stood Very Rev. Israel Harding Noe, popular dean of smart St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. Pallid and ascetic, Dean Noe was painfully embarrassed. All Memphis was privy to the domestic secrets of the deanery in the Cathedral's shadow. Mrs. Ellen Morris Camblox Noe began a divorce suit against her husband last year, charging that for three years he had lived a separate life in their house (TIME, May 11 et seq.).

Postponed last October because a reconciliation seemed possible, the Noe divorce suit took two days to try last week. Dean Noe said he had not left his wife's bed without "great struggle of mind." He loved her. But the marriage relationship, he declared, had to be reconciled with the teachings of the Bible. With a colleague he had debated long and solemnly these words of St. Paul:

I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.

Against them Dean Noe and his theological friend set these other words of the Apostle :

. . . Every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God.

Was there a contradiction between the two statements? Dean Noe did not think so. St. Paul meant that marriage is "one of the most sacred and important social questions of the times." And Dean Noe found that "misuse of the wonderful gifts of procreation for self-gratification was the cause of the original fall of man."

Ruled the court: "Case dismissed."

Packed with women, the courtroom buzzed. Mrs. Noe fainted. Dean Noe rushed to her side with a glass of water. Quickly revived, she cried:

"Stay away from me, Israel. I don't want anything from you now or ever. You have done enough to me!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.