The Sacredness of Family.

Practical Aspects.

Dr Macgregor gave out as a motto Rom. xvi. 17, 18, with reference to "the doctrine which ye have learned"; and intimated that, as the doctrine at present in question is being opposed by some professed believers in Bible religion, he would in the second part of this exposition deal with the Scriptural foundation of the Church's belief in the matter. The first part, with reference to practical aspects of the matter, might serve as introduction to the second, particularly through bringing into view the nature of the subject, and the importance of our knowing and believing what God has really said about it for our learning. At a later stage he said, that the subject in some respects is not a pleasant one to handle in the pulpit: but that, as it is being misrepresented, and the people misled in relation to it, the truth of God's word regarding it has to be spoken and maintained in the public place of witness-bearing for the Christian religion—where mere pleasure, whether of speaker or of hearers, is a very secondary matter. He then proceeded:

Twenty-one years ago it was said by Dr. Cairns at Melbourne, that the colonial legislation about this matter had been thoughtless; that there had been mocking and jeering, and men had not seriously studied the subject. To a colony so happily placed as this, there is a danger in its beginning life with an inheritance of civilisation; namely, that laws or constitutions should be thrown aside because their nature and value have not been learned from experience. And churches may be tempted, inwardly as well as outwardly, to countenance the ruination. It is a great duty of patriotism, in the beginnings of a nation's life, to "prove all things" and "hold fast that which is good"; and the canker, which lives on coasuming life, has in those beginnings a great opportunity.

Permission by law to marry the [unclear: sist] of a deceased wife does not make the thing right; but may make it a duty of citizens to peek a change of the law of the land in accordance with the true law of nature and of God. A church [unclear: is] a lawmaker for the nation: but only administers the law of Christ in His own house. If any citizen choose to form [unclear: th] connection, the church has no power to prevent him. Only she can tell him "You are breaking the law of Christ' and she can say to him: "If you do this at your own peril, it must be outside of our communion as a church." That is all that the church's prohibition means.

Some propose that this prohibitionist should be abandoned by the Otago and Southland Presbyterian Church. That would so far involve abandonment of this Confession of Faith (chap, xxiv, 4) which is the doctrinal basis of our connection and constitution as a Church. Nor is the doctrine,—of the sinfulness of marriage with a deceased wife's sister—a mere insular peculiarity of Westminster Presbyterianism and of the Church of England It was confessed by all the Protestant Churches of the Reformation, in common with the Romish Church,^* and with the Greek or Eastern Church; as also had been held by the undivided Primitive Church, and has ever been held by those Jews—the "Karäite"—who adhere to the ancient Scriptures as their only Rule—rejecting the "tradition" (Mark vii, 13) through which other Jews "have the the word of God of none effect." In

^* A certain shilly-shallying of Romanises in this relation does not undo the fact above stated.

page 5 [unclear: at] the doctrine,—that the marriage in [unclear: tion] is condemned in Scripture as [unclear: tuous]—has been believed by the mass believing readers of the Bible in [unclear: all] of the existence of the Bible among [unclear: kind].

This is a very strong presumptive proof at the doctrine is really Scriptur[unclear: al] why should the mass of Bible reade[unclear: rs] ages have believed that it so teach[unclear: es] reference to a plain matter, if not, [unclear: use] it does so teach in fact. Nor [unclear: is] proof met by production of opposed [unclear: ions] of individuals, which are hawked [unclear: ct,] and may (Rom. xvi., 17 and 18) [unclear: ceive] the hearts of the simple." The [unclear: uction] of such individual opinions [unclear: in] case is a fallacy or sophism, a mare'[unclear: s] perhaps hiding a trap for "t[unclear: he] "Change for Marshal Turenne!" [unclear: a] French lady when the king—as it [unclear: king], twenty shillings make a pound, [unclear: eated] a batch of new marshals [unclear: in] of that great old one. The little [unclear: er] of one great man may be worth [unclear: ns] of mere notabilities. And it [unclear: t] take a good many millions of [unclear: idual] opinions about the present [unclear: ter] of Scripture teaching to out-[unclear: er] the solemnly deliberate judgment [unclear: ch] an assembly as the Westminster, [unclear: he] most illustrious Christian council [unclear: t] ever met within the seas of Britain, [unclear: earing] witness on God's behalf to the [unclear: ches] and the world: not to speak of [unclear: s] famous historical churches which in this [unclear: ter] have adhered to its Confessi[unclear: on] of the whole catholic Church of [unclear: ist] so remarkably of one mind in [unclear: fing] this same doctrine through [unclear: all]

The present matter is not merely of [unclear: ract] doctrine, nor only of Church [unclear: ler]. It profoundly affects the Church's [unclear: rity], and consequently the character o[unclear: f] influence among mankind as a [unclear: per] leaven. It enters into all the [unclear: mon] life of man—the individual, the [unclear: ily] the whole community. For it [unclear: bes] the central fountain of all tha[unclear: t] so that moral ill-condition in respec[unclear: t] it is a poison to all human prosperity and happiness at the fountain. Relativel[unclear: y] such a matter, the Church (1 Tim. iii. [unclear: s] is peculiarly bound to faithfulness in [unclear: ness]-bearing. Especially if the Stat[unclear: e] wrong in its law, misdirecting what so touches the people's deepest life, all the more it is the Church's part, for God's honor and man's life in the truth, to bear up its banner (Jer. i. 18). And to give way at the one point of this marriage affinity question would be to abandon the defence of a city precisely where it is assailed.

The sacredness of family is the root matter in question. Whatever dims or diminishes the "honor" of family poisons the life of mankind in its fountain. Thus, as to divorce, breaking the indissolubleness which guards that sacredness,—at the first French Revolution time a statutory permission of divorce, in effect unlimited, was accompanied or followed with a boundless moral dissoluteness in the general community, not exceeded among the pampered corrupt class in the darkest times of the old monarchy; and in our own day, with reference to a society so largely Christian as that of the great American republic, America's greatest theologian since Jonathan Edwards has published, in connection with facilities for divorce in certain States, the awful declaration: "Men and women, who make the murder of infants a profession, are rolling in wealth." (Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. iii. p. 383).

On behalf of permission to marry a sister-in-law there are appeals to public sympathy, in consideration of the feelings and supposed interests of individuals desiring that connection. What if, in connection with divorce, there should be appeals to public sympathy, in consideration of the feelings and supposed interests of individuals, for statutory permission to murder "their own" (1 Tim. v. 8) infants? A French magistrate, with reference to a movement for abolition of death punishment for murder, said that he had no objection to the change if the murderers would begin. The feelings and interests of a few criminals are not to be consulted at the cost of a plague that threatens the life of all.

On behalf of the permission it is pleaded that some have done the thing. When the matter was placed before the. House of Lords in 1852, Lord Chancellor Campbell, the head of the English law, said that the agitation had been very disgraceful, first lying about the law so as to induce unlawful marriages, and now page 6 alleging these as a reason for changing the law. The existence of criminals is not usually pleaded as a reason for abolishing the law against their crime; but the contrary. And, in fact, the number of individuals really desiring this kind of connection must be extremely small. Very few persons are ever widowers; not many of them think of second marriage; of these not one in ten thousand, in a Christendom that abhors the connection as incestuous, would dream of a wife's sister as the second wife; ^* and, it is to be hoped, not one woman in ten hundred thousand would be willing to marry a brother-in-law if asked, ^†—Q.E.D. Evidently, as compared with the whole population of the country, who all have a vital interest in prevention of the plague—desecration of family—the number of would-be criminals of this class will probably be always very much smaller than the number of would-be criminals of other classes, for whom no one thinks of seeking a statutory permission or an ecclesiastical benediction—e.g., of holy water on a robber's enterprise. "Purge your mind of cant"—sentimental, screamy, rotten-hearted.

Then, as to the real benefit to be expected for those individuals from the connection. Is it, like "godliness with contentment, great gain?" Let us look at the thing in the light of what Christendom as a whole believes to be the law of nature and of God's Word. The following picture, then, is not drawn by me, but given to me by Christendom:—The widower binds himself in a lifelong in-cestuousness, with one whom he was bound to love in honor as a sister. His orphans have in her, instead of an honored aunt, an incestuous stepmother, of whose ineffaceable dishonor they are monumental proofs. His house is a hom[unclear: e] lamentable "confusion" which is [unclear: poltion] (Lev. xx. 12, cp. xviii. 23) [unclear: whe] husband and wife are brother and [unclear: sis] whose children are their nephew[unclear: s] nieces, while these are one another cousins as well as brothers and [unclear: sist] The condition is looked on with horro[unclear: r] friends and neighbors who honor God law of nature as declared in his [unclear: H] Word; and who can hope for no [unclear: ra] blessing in a household where [unclear: the]" riage" is the opposite of "honorable (Heb. xiii, 4), and its seems impossible that children should really "honor" father and mother, or (1 Peter [unclear: iii.] husband "honor" wife. Surely the sympathy (!) that would [unclear: smo] men's way down to such an abys[unclear: s] "cruel," like "the tender mercies of the wicked." The true kindness, toward a deluded few desiring that connection surely is not permission, but [unclear: ster] prohibition, in faithfulness lik[unclear: e] wounds of a friend.

The interest of the whole communing demands, "if thy right hand offend then, cut it off." The rotten sentimentalise begins even to threaten liberty of speech (2 Cor., iii, 12 17). That is, with reference to use of the word "incestuous," which our Confession of Faith (chap, xxiv., sec employs for statement of the [unclear: doctr] of God's Word regarding marriage within forbidden degrees of consanguinity (blood relationship) and affinity (relationship through marriage). Whether marriage with a sister-in-law falls within these degrees, is a question about which men may differ from this Confession, and from the judgment (as we already have sees) of the Christian world as a whole, But the question what name to give to such connections is settled, beyond appeal, by use and want of speech among mankind. ^‡ To shrink from employing the

^* The Bible nowhere has a man's "widow." Be he living or dead, it is always his "wife." "Widow" in Scripture means "desolate in condition."

^† It is needless here to raise any question about the propriety of speaking of incestuous connection as "marriage"—an elastic expression, which does not occur at Lev. xviii., 6.18. To raise any such question here is to withdraw attention from the essential point, of incest, unnatural connection, vile and abominable by reason of "nearness of kin."

^‡ Thus, for common English, Johnson's Dictionary defines, "Incest, Unnatural and criminal conjunction of persons within degrees prohibited;" similarly Webster's Distionary. They give no other meaning; but Webster gives a sample of metaphorical use ("spiritual incest")—often paralleled is Scripture. For technicality of theology and law, Beza defines, Incestuosa sunt quae can cognatis et affinibus conjunguntur; (Opp., vol. iii., p. 52, De Divortiis.)

page 7 cognised historical word ("incest") would be (cp. Ga. ii, 13) to "dissemble" the nature of the thing, as if one should give to murder only the colorless same of "killing."^* On the part of a public witness, who professedly believes "the whole doctrine of our Confession, the dissembling is betrayal of the public interest in truthfulness of witness-bearing perhaps (Jer. vi, 14) at the impulse of a hypocritical man-pleasing worldliness or unmanly selfish cowardice. And if the doctrine of the Christian world as to this matter be true, then (Ezek. xxxiii, 6-8) the treason is most peculiarly a cruelty—like tender mercies of the wicked—to those individuals whose conscience, if things were called by their true names, might be timely alarmed into avoidance of this thing, or subdued into penitence and reformation: instead of transgressors' being countenanced and comforted in what is condemned by God's law of nature in His word.

Charles Lamb, writing to a friend at a penal settlement, quizzingly inquired about language of genteel society there,—Wether, e.g.. they avoided the word "hemp." The sensativeness, occasionally appearing in connection with employment of the proper historical name of this thing, the only available word for it, may indicate something quite different from delicacy of feeling: a sensuousness ready to take fire where "To the pure all things are pure;" or a spiritual deadness, which in relation to the family sacredness has nournfully grown upon society—partly, perhaps, in consequence of men's making light of it in the present matter, as "fools sake a mock at sin:" partly through grave perversity of moral judgment, as when the merciful dealing of Christ with a case of adultery is perverted into apology for coprincipled abandonment of the divine law of incest at the foundation of the doctrinal constitution of Christ's Church, Were it only for the sake of would-be sinners thus invited to crime, there is all the greater cause for unshrinking free use of speech, which is faithfulness in witness-bearing on behalf of man's life in God's truth: "By thy words thou shalt be Unified." (Mat, xii, 37).

The moral feeling, that is represented by the word "incest," was not imported into men's minds by it. It grew into possession of this common word from men's view of the nature of the thing. And in the Bible (Lev. xviii, 6-18) a common word, of painful expressiveness, is chosen and set apart for expression of the feeling, of moral vileness, "abomination" in the thing. The author of that Book knew that "words, which we deem the servants of our thought, are its masters," and of our heart and life. The appropriate word here, familiar in men's mouth and mind, is a habitual guard on the sacredness of family at the gateway of the common heart of social life. And the outcry against the word is an assault upon that guard: To shrink from use of the expression is to abandon the defence of that sacredness where it is assailed, by sap and mine if not "in the imminent deadly breach." Persistent faithfulness of testimony, in this and other modes, exemplified in the present matter by the Church of England and by the mother-Churches of Presbyterianism in Scotland, has hitherto, with one small exception, been exhibited by descendant Presbyterian Churches in the colonies, "witnessing a good confession" (1 Tim. vi, 13). It is fitted to do great good even where the thing witnessed against on God's behalf is legalised by the State. Men will be deterred from the crime by such testimony of God's professed people, and others will be strengthened in their salutary horror of it. Faithlessness, on the other hand, on a Church's part, the shepherd fleeing when the wolf is visibly coming, perhaps because faithfulness might in some respects be in convenient or costly, tends to corruption of society through effacement of a moral feeling (see the "wolves," Acts xx, 29), while it works for unbelief in a religion that is thus forsaken by its public witness at the Gethsemane point of real trial. And it is darkly ominous for a Church if those, who cannot so be shaken in their faith, be in their hearts reminded by her unfaithfulness of "Curse ye Meroz; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty" (Judges v., 28.)

The natural feeling, which is an indication of there being a law of nature in this Blatter, and may guide to ascertainment

^* "Killing no Murder," on the title-page of Colonel Titus, was intended to smooth the way to the or time.

page 8 of the law in some details, is yet not to be relied upon instead of the revealed law of God, the supernatural declaration of His natural law of marriage. Experience in history shows—relatively to this law as to the moral law—that such reliance on mere natural feeling is a foolish wickedness of leaning on a broken reed. Without the strength of principle, firmly held because clearly and authoritatively declared, that feeling, in opposition to human passions and worldly interests, is only a vapor wall in opposition to a glacier or an avalanche; while, as we have observed, in this case the vapor itself tends to "vanish away" through deadening influence of tolerating evil (James i., 15), "First endure, then pity, then embrace." Hence the great importance of the Church's testimony for the true law of marriage as to be sought in "the Word." For, vitally important for all mankind though it be, that law is nowhere else to be found, so as to be an effectual rule of life.

The Israelites knew this from experience. In Egypt, the school of their infancy as a people, at the front of natural civilisation, natural feeling did not prevent permission of marriage of brothers and sisters in blood. Nor did it among the Persians. Israel's best friends in the heathen world before Malachi, in their second school of captivity. It did not even prevent the Jews themselves, who had the revealed law in this matter, from corrupting it by their tradition. It did not, in the highest civilisation of Greece, prevent, in their highest philosophic mind, that of Plato "the divine," an ideal of society where promiscuous intercourse comes into the place of family: even as in our own time there is a socialism, of stirring practical politicians, which, through one of its prophets, can speak of the family," along with "patriotism and religion," as "the obstacles" to be got rid of. In the pristine true greatness of the Roman Republic, natural feeling showed itself nobly: there was not one case of divorce in the first 500 years of Roman history; and the old Roman law of marriage was so nearly coincident with the Levitical, that, Beza says, it might seem to be a transcript of it. But before Christ came, in the "ice age" of moral degeneracy that natural feeling had proved to be only a vapor wall against avalanches or [unclear: gh] as also it is proving in those [unclear: Au] and European continental state[unclear: s] they are experimenting with [unclear: per] of divorce.

Some years ago a Germa[unclear: n] lamenting the social and moral [unclear: evil] result from vulgarising and [unclear: matri] men's conceptions of marriage, [unclear: sta] urged by way of antidote, that the [unclear: cl] through her discipline in exemplification of her doctrine—e. g., in her [unclear: prescri] for celebration of marriage—should the sacredness of it with fulness of distinctness into view. But wha[unclear: t] church abandon the doctrine fo[unclear: r] venience of evading the disciplin[unclear: e], haps professedly handing the matt[unclear: e] to natural feeling?

Natural feeling did not prevent placing^† of niece-in-law alon[unclear: g] sister in the Bill originally laid before British Parliament. It was the[unclear: n] drawn, because the adverse feelin[unclear: g] reference to niece was found t[unclear: o] stronger than with reference to [unclear: sis] But the adverse reason is the stron[unclear: g] the sister's case, since the kin i[unclear: s] And a century before that time [unclear: Je] Holland had obtained permissio[unclear: n] marry a niece-in-law as well as [unclear: sis] law; to which, it has been [unclear: sug] they may have been moved by fear extinction of their visible [unclear: nation] there, where they were only an [unclear: infiuitmally] small proportion of the whole [unclear: polation]. But apart from that, [unclear: unbelhie] Judaism seems to resemble Romani[unclear: a] this respect as in some others, e.g. [unclear: tively] to laws of God, an arrogatio[unclear: n] man of a dispensing office, which is patient to the Lawgiver (Mat. xii. 9) any case it is understood^‡ that [unclear: marr] with a niece-in-law is not very [unclear: unco] among Continental Jews. If the [unclear: pris] be abandoned, that alone is effectual prevention of movement, the natural [unclear: ings] of those who through that [unclear: aband]

[unclear: nt] set the stone a-rolling will not be [unclear: sulted] about the stopping of it, even though their feeling should not "vanish way" like a vapour; and they are responsible for all the rolling, though it would be to the foot of the hill.^*

The most formidable consequence is no[unclear: t] the destruction that wasteth at noon-[unclear: but] "the pestilence that walketh in [unclear: kness]." What Hodge pointed out is [unclear: nly] a plague-spot indicative of a moral [unclear: dition] partly represented by the [unclear: stolic] "without natural affection" [unclear: om]. i, 31). ^† This is near the head of Paul's black list (verses 29-31) of [unclear: enormi] of heathens whom God (verses 21-28) [unclear: p] punishment of godlessness, gave ove[unclear: r] "uncleanness" of heart, "vileness" in [unclear: ections] a "reprobate mind" that fit[unclear: s] indecencies. A condition thus resulting from judicial abandonment may (E[unclear: ph]. 18-19) result also from a self-abandon-[unclear: ent] ^‡the immediate consequence of men's being "past feeling." The feelinglessnes[unclear: s] absence of a guard—like a sluice gate—[unclear: ainst] outbreaking of corruption in [unclear: rmities,], monstrosities of wickedness [unclear: volting] to the ordinary feelings of even [unclear: dless] men. In a community it [unclear: conti] an inward condition like that [unclear: pearing] in Isaiah's terrific representation (Is. i, 4-6) of spiritual deadness in a [unclear: dy] politic. And that condition is thought into the heart of social life through the kind of connections that is represente[unclear: d] prosperity of child murder as a [unclear: profes] (see Heb. xii, 15-16). A more [unclear: laring] aspect of the condition is pointed not by a recent writer in the Contemporary Review, who, under the very title of "plague-spot," proves that adult murder is far more frequent in the great Republic than in the sister civilised states. But really more formidable is what lies behind such plague-spots—that is, the plague, the moral corruption, occasionally appearing in such a breaking out of waters of death. In a community it is a spreading plague, the cause and the effect of such connections as that now in question.

It may be well thus to count the cost to the community of permission of incest to a very small number of individuals. A part of that cost which directly concerns us at present is, abolition of affinity as a living reality. And here we call to mind a class of women who seem to be quite forgotten by the zealots for permission of crime to that one woman in a million who would be willing to marry her brother-in-law: namely, all other marriageable women, including not only other sisters-in-law, but nieces and aunts-in-law—those who are by affinity within the family circle. At present this relationship opens to many women a career, full of happy interest and profitableness for them and the families, making life "worth living" as well as honorably pleasant. This for woman is peculiarly important; because woman's career is peculiarly domestic by nature,—of the affections and the home: as compared with man's career, of campaigning out of doors. And all this for womankind is to be simply destroyed as a reality in order that one in a million may have a chance of incest with a brother-in-law. That we now shall see.

What we have to consider is the native tendency of a regime of the permission. Individual cases now appealed to, of persons married within the first degree of affinity, whose life is pure as a sunbeam in a sepulchre, really are out of the present question. The appeal to them is further illustration of the deadening tendency of disregard of God's law and nature's: apparently it makes men unconscious of the fact, that in the judgment of Christendom the self-made and self-maintained condition in the case appealed to is—sepulchre, essential impurity, abominable sin. But more perilous to sound practical reasoning here is men's forgetting that the character of those individuals has been formed under a regime of prohibition, and that now

^* professor Douglas (A.D. 1858) mention that, on the night on which the Marriage Affinity Bill was brought into the House of Commons, there was presented to that House a petition for statutory permission of polygamy.

^† Where the "affection Or. storgé—that specific affection which (1 Tim. v., 8) man by nature has for "his own, and especially those of his own house": whence name of the "stork," proverbial for parental tenderness

^‡ At all the four places, Eph. iv. 19, [unclear: and] i. 24, 26, 28, the Greek for "giving up" and "giving over" is the same: whether the consequence be penal or simply natural.

page 10 their life Is environed in influences of that regime. So it will continue to be in the measure in which, no matter what the statute law may say, there continues among men the habit of feeling about this matter which has hitherto prevailed in Christendom and some parts of heathendom. What we have to consider is the native tendency of absence of that habit of feeling; for this is what the permission, so far as it goes, involves both as cause and as effect. And so I repeat, the native tendency, the inevitable result so far as permissionism really operates, is abolition of affinity.

The Mosaic permission of divorce (Matt. XIX, 9.) had reference to an exceptional condition, of mental and moral crudeness (Heb. V., 12, IX., 10.) in a people that was only beginning to be educated into moral civilisation (Gal. III., 24.). And the native evil tendency of so far suspending the primal constitution of the indissolubleness of marriage, might be counteracted by compensating influences arising out of that same condition: as an infant is saved by "unconsciousness" from what might be contamination in riper years. But now, in the Church's maturity, with a more advanced civilisation involving a more distinct unfolding of the natural affections, the evil tendency, unimpeded, will come into full effect: with aggravation of its virulence through consciousness of antagonism to nature and God's law. Exceptional cases do not count here, where the question is about the rule, the ordinary operation of a principle.

But now let us lock directly at the present cases. Abolition of affinity (!) with all the countless blessings which that relation involves—to individuals, families, the whole community—that is, of affinity as a living reality, such as it now is in experience of innumerable households, whose common life it daily enriches, strengthens, and adorns. It is as it were a second and more purely spiritual half of the family tree, or a more ethereal counterpart of the primal family with its appropriate affections. And permissionism goes directly, not only to defile, but to destroy it, yea rather to make its existence impossible. No wonder that some zealots for permission say that affinity is reayll nothing. They have to say so, if they will reason the matter ou[unclear: t] whether they reason coherently o[unclear: r] we can see that in fact affinity is [unclear: re] nothing wherever, and so far as, [unclear: per] mission is a regime, in command of [unclear: ma] habit of feeling.

The widower, for instance, unde[unclear: r] regime, will not have, available for [unclear: sec] wife, the sister-in-law about who[unclear: m] great things are said on his accoun[unclear: t] his orphans'. He can have only th[unclear: e] law," or formality of that relati[unclear: on] reality, the "sister" in it ("good-sisterly says the kindly Scottish tong[unclear: ue]), destroyed, or made impossible, b[unclear: y] permission which patronised [unclear: him] the reality of sister is constituted, no[unclear: t] mere legal form of a man's marrying woman who has a sister, or of a [unclear: wom] marrying a man who has a brother, but by a "natural affection" correspondin[unclear: g] the nature of this relationship: a specifically fraternal affection, or brother and-sisterly habit of feeling, [unclear: esstially] different from the tenderes[unclear: t] closest friendship of a Davi[unclear: d] Jonathan, who are not within the [unclear: sa] circle of one family. And that brother and-sisterly feeling cannot come into existence, and continue to exist, without a kind of intercourse that is impossible morally and even physically, where permission is the regime: as a tree cannot live and thrive apart from the nourishing and sustaining root, or apart from the sunshine and "the gracious rain."

This we can see in the case of brother and sisters by birth. In communities-e.g., the old Persian or Egyptian—where these may marry, their fraternal relation can hardly be more than a legal form, perhaps along with a vague natural sentiment, here unnaturally trodden under foot. For there can hardly be the kind of intercourse—the literal "familiarity"—the unreserved free tenderness of domestic intimacy, out of which alone the brother-and-sisterly habit of feeling, the properly fraternal affection, can arise, perhaps on that natural sentiment as a foundation soil. The affection, so great a part of the young lives in our families, so precious an investment for future strength of unity in sunshine and in storms, is made impossible or killed in its root, by the known possibility of marriage of brother and sister. Young people page 11 simply cannot be together in that [unclear: unreved] intimacy if it be possible for the[unclear: m] become husband and wife. Though the [unclear: tward] form of the familiarity shoul[unclear: d] allowed, the inward fact of real maternity could not exist: fraternal [unclear: eling], brotherly or sisterly, would be [unclear: stantly] extinguished in the heart the very thought of possible conjugal [unclear: lation], and still more by any rising o[unclear: f] natural affection that is connected with such a thought; or, rather, there would be precluded all inward reality o[unclear: f] unreservedly free tender intimacy, which to brother-and-sisterly feeling i[unclear: s] rain and the sunshine, the nourishing [unclear: d] sustaining root. What saves the brother and sister to one another, to [unclear: eir] homes, to all human society, is [unclear: lute] prohibition of marriage, so tha[unclear: t] thought of such a thing never enter[unclear: s] mind. In this way the sacredness of [unclear: nily], and the happy fulness of domesti[unclear: c] in purity and honorableness, are [unclear: rded] against "confusion" that woul[unclear: d] fatal as a choke damp: guarded effectually, without sense of pressure, at the [unclear: ways] of the heart and mind, as our [unclear: trual] life is effectually shielded by the [unclear: al] air and by life's guardian sweetnes[unclear: s] the light.

So as to brothers and sisters-in-law. [unclear: re], instead of a common parentage, [unclear: ere] is a something of physical basis of [unclear: nection] in the oneness of the twain [unclear: ough] whom the affinity is formed, [unclear: ging] their brothers and sisters withi[unclear: n] new family circle. In the new [unclear: ede] the vitally important thing is the [unclear: ed] of intercourse—brother-and-sisterly, which is guarded by the prohibition, and [unclear: laded] by the permission, of marriage, [unclear: ter] a wife's decease, her sister cannot [unclear: ter] and occupy as a sister the house o[unclear: f] who can be her lover. And the [unclear: unsased] wife must not be wholly ignore[unclear: d], if her only mission had been to "decea[unclear: se]" daring a sister's way to marriage wit[unclear: h] husband. The wife, in a measure [unclear: luded] through domestic occupations, is compensated under a regime of prohibition by greatly-enriched fraternity within her own home circle. Her husband's brothers and sisters are hers now, whole hers are his. Her sisters in [unclear: ular] may be resident with him an[unclear: d] in highest honor as "auntie"; and it is comforting, in the foreseen possibility of her own decease, to look forward in the assurance that her orphans may have, resident with him in the same honor as their aunt, one who perhaps has been as a second mother to them ever since they were born.

But, again, all this is destroyed, or made impossible, by the Pandora's box of permission. It keeps brothers and sisters-in-law from being brothers and sisters in reality of fact. There cannot exist between them the unreserve of intercourse which lives only in real fraternal affection as its atmosphere. For there is an invisible barrier between them and the sacred intimacy of brotherly and sisterly feeling. Thus far, though they should be in one house, they at heart are strangers, or, say, intimate friends peculiarly connected by a formality of kin. (It would introduce needless confusion here to dwell upon the point that there is no call for prohibition in the case of cousins; since they in ordinary life are not personally in the close connection out of which brother-and sisterly feelings arise.)

In this way, all the circles of near affinity are reduced into shadowy unrealities. Let us, e.g., look at the case of niece-in-law, with correlative uncle-in-law, which, it would appear, is in some places waiting for the sister's precedence as the small end of the wedge. There may be many men—perhaps childless—to whom resident niece or nieces-in-law, in honor as daughter, might be a blessing as well as a pleasure, putting home in place of homelessness; and there may be not a few nieces-in-law—perhaps otherwise destitute orphans—to whom such a home would be the greatest conceivable earthly boon. Or, the connection may be desirable and much desired on both sides though there should be no such pressure of need of it on either side. But here nature's provision for enriching so many lives is abolished by permission to marry. A niece cannot inhabit as a daughter the home of a man who can be her husband. And an uncle cannot, in the early life of his nieces-in-law, under a regime of the permission place himself toward them in that kind of intercourse, of free, familiar, tender unreserve of intimacy, out of which alone the distinctively uncle-and-niece affection can page 12 arise. Similarly aunts and nephews-in-law are abolished, along with brothers and sisters-in-law on both sides. For whom? and for what? That a Herod may have a Herodias? Abolition of affinity would be a perpetual massacre of innocents, everywhere, all through every human life.

Society, while its moral quarantine is removed, loses an important element in moral civilisation. The influence of affinity is in the social system an enriching ornament and a refining strength. Through cousinhood it reaches out far beyond the first degree: as the angel's descending for man's healing into the pool made not only one central circle, but a system of expanding circle beyond circle that extended over its whole area. It counteracts a tendency of the primal family to a self-concentration, which for the community may be isolation of parts into disintegration of the whole. This more ethereal relationship, reaching outward, tends to re-union and redintegration of society, drawing the community together again, binding mankind into one, as with a new golden chain of love. And of course the whole community gains whatever affinity contributes to the inner life of its individual families, as an element of "health, and innocence, and sweet content."

A regime of permission, on the other hand, apart from its directly moral quality, is distinctly a lapse from high, true civilisation through its introducing what Röden-beck might represent as moral vulgarisation of society; if not, like the Esau "profaning" (Heb. xii. 15, 16), poisoning the social atmosphere, causing decadence of the moral bloom and beauty, the inward health and sweetness, of the life of mankind. Churches are taught of God to descry the beginnings of such profanation of a sacred thing; and to meet invasion or intrusion of it, as from the heart of a religion of the Holy One, with an "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo" (Ezek. ix., 4.)

But they need to be intelligent, [unclear: und] standing the subject, knowing the [unclear: fa] For long after the Reformatio[unclear: n] Christian peoples conformed in the marriage law to the immemorially [unclear: unmous] belief of the historical [unclear: Chris] Church. The earliest notable [unclear: depar] from this consensus of universal Christ dom was, at a time of deep [unclear: degene] from Reformation attainment [unclear: spiritua] in Holland about the beginning o[unclear: f] century, when Jews obtained the [unclear: persion] I have spoken of. And [unclear: cou] nearer to ourselves, in Britain, [unclear: al] since the opening of the present [unclear: tury], there has been incessant [unclear: tion] for a statutory change of law, primarily on the part of [unclear: wea] and powerful individuals desiring [unclear: punity] of breaking the law. Th[unclear: e] Chancellor told them in the Chamber Peers that the agitation had buil[unclear: t] foundation of lying about the [unclear: Ea] law. It has labored much in the [unclear: end] to bring men to a new interpretations God's law in Scripture. There ha[unclear: s] great expense of money and labor obtaining, laying before authoritie[unclear: s], scattering broadcast over the [unclear: enc] individual opinions regarding the [unclear: teac] of Scripture from theologians and [unclear: sc] opposed to the generally received [unclear: ctian] view. And such opinions it is difficult to obtain, so numerously perhaps to "deceive the hearts o[unclear: f] simple," who may be unable to [unclear: gu] their innocence by the principl[unclear: e] judgment, "that opinions are not to the numbered, but weighed," or to [unclear: jus] weigh the nothingness of such [unclear: indiri] opinions, with reference to a plain [unclear: mar] of God's Word, in comparison with the evidential value as well as moral imperativeness of that remarkable unanimity of judgment which appears all through the history of the whole "Chutch of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii., 15).