X. LAW AND SUFFERING The resistance to sin nearly always involves some degree of suffering: in some cases it involves terrible suffering. And there are those who would relax the moral law when the suQering caused by obedience to it appears to be extreme. Now, no one can alter God’s law. Even the Church cannot do that: within the homework of His law she may make what we call by-laws, binding upon her members, but these must be in accord with God’s law, which she cannot change. This point is not always grasped. The Church has received from God the power to make laws binding upon her members. But this power, as I have said, is subordinate to the laws stated by God ffimself as binding upon men. The distinction may be illustrated in the case of marriage. The Church cannot grant any of her children a divorce because when they make the contract of marriage (that is to say, agree to take each other as husband and wife for life) God brings into being a new relationship. Now, by God’s act consequent upon their contract, they are man and wife. This new relationship, though it follows upon their contract, is not created by their contract, but by God. The Church can no more lOO