The purpose of my previous booklet,  entitled “ DIVORCE: What _did_ the Lord say about it? ” was to demonstrate that when the Master gave fornication as the sole ground upon which He permitted a marriage to be annulled, He had in mind the ancient but still preva- lent Oriental custom referred to in Deut. 22, of seeking, upon the consummation of a marriage, for visible evi- dence of the bride ’s virginity, (See “ DIVORCE “, P. 2.) failure to discover which led, _and in the East still leads, to_ her immediate rejection. Here, then, we have an issue of the gravest import, and an issue, moreover, which turns on the meaning of one **_single_** _word,_ for if by ‘ fornication ’ the Lord meant *pre-marital unchastity, and not just any kind of unchastity, then for those (including ourselves) who do not follow the custom of which we have spoken, His prohibition of divorce is absolute and final, and persons who have contracted marriage in defiance of it are not married, but in God ’s sight are living in adultery. The great majority of my correspondents, (and they have been many, including some very well known ones) consider the proofs advanced in my brochure to be con- clusive. Some, on the other hand,-perhaps because I kept strictly within the limits of my sub-title, “. . . what did the LORD say about it?“-have questioned whether the manner in which the words ‘ fornication ’ and ‘ adul- tery ’ are employed in other parts of Scripture, (e.g. Judges 19 : 2, passages in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea, and particularly in 1 Cor. 5 : 1.) does not show them to be virtually interchangeable, for should this be the case, then any conclusions based on supposed differences between their meanings would be futile and invalid. * It cannot be pointed out too early that ‘pre-marital unchastity ’, **_ie., immorality between unmarried persons,_** is **_not_** the deti- nition of ‘fornication ‘. Many, supposing it to be so, and then finding the word used in circumstances which show such a ddfinition to be Inadequate, attempt to solve the difficulty by embracing the still more erroneous supposition that the word is sometimes used to mean ‘ general immorality ‘, which in Scripture at least, is never the case. Exactly why the Lord here used it in the sense indicated should be clear before the end of the second chapter of this booklet is reached. A little study, however, of the customs, atmosphere and social order prevailing at the time the Scriptures were being written will show that for the people of those days, whether Jew or Gentile by birth, there could never have been the slightest confusion about their meanings, and an examination of the words themselves will confirm that they are capable of precise definition, having boundaries which, in Scripture, are never overstepped. It is the purpose of this booklet so to explore and establish these boundaries that, with God ’s help, we may know with certainty what the Lord permitted, and what He forbade when He employed these words in the criti- cal passages in the Gospel by Matthew. The first four sections of the booklet will deal with this, and the latter three with points or problems that have cropped up in correspondence, or in articles on the subject. I want at this point to express my sincerest thanks to Mr. H. L. Ellison, B.D., B.A., and Mr. E. W. Rogers, for their advice, information and constructive criticism, which have proved invaluable. F. **Aylwyn Adams .**