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 Cl)e Huestion of 3mm 
 
 KELATIVEIiY TO 
 
 jSgarrtage toit!) ^I0ter2^ in mtttmion 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY H. DUKE 
 
 EECTOE OF BBIXTON DETEBILL, WILTS 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO FLAGE, LONDON 
 
 MDCCOIXXXIII 
 
 \_Price Si.xfei!ce.'\ 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924080373842 
 
Cl)e Hues^tton of 3nttst 
 
 BELATITELY TO 
 
 S^axxiast \Ditl) ^i0ter0 in t)ucce0js^ion 
 
 llfO'JNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 080 373 842 
 
 Br 
 
 HENRY H. DUKE 
 
 EECTOB OF BRIXTOIf DEVEEILI, WILTS 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 KIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO PLAGE, LONDON 
 
 MDOCCLXXXni 
 

 H^H^iolo 
 
Some alterations and insertions kave been made in 
 tlie earlier pages of this -pamphlet, and the con- 
 cluding part has been written almost entirely anew. 
 The former Edition was prepared under pressure 
 of haste, and at a time when the writer's powers 
 of mental application were weakened, through the 
 severe effects of a fall. 
 
 A 2 
 
THE QUESTION OF INCEST 
 
 BBLATIVELT TO 
 
 MAEEIAGE WITH SISTEES IN SUCCESSION. 
 
 In the pages which follow, the gravely important 
 question which is being dealt with will be considered 
 only in respect to that solution of it which may be 
 gathered from the Holy Scriptures, and not at all 
 with relation to other reasonings which have been, 
 or may be, employed on the one side or the other. 
 That which constitutes incest must be really deter- 
 mined by the Word of God, since it is beyond the 
 authority of man to take away from his fellows a 
 liberty which God has given, or to relax restrictions 
 which He has imposed. Although, however, the 
 decision in this matter is referred to the sacred 
 Scriptures, it is not meant that the same decision is 
 not that of nature also. The teachings of nature 
 and the Holy Scriptures will never, — may we not 
 say can never ? — be found to be really at variance. 
 
 Incest is distinguished by its peculiar character 
 from lawful intercourse between persons of different , 
 sex ; and also from fornication and adultery, un- 
 lawful as these also are in another sense and degree. 
 
6 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 The essence of incest is in the Holy Scriptures 
 ascribed to the presence in eacli of the two parties, 
 respectively, of the " remainder" of one and the 
 same flesh ; or, as the same word in the Hebrew 
 language may be taken to denote, the "leaven" in 
 the flesh of the one of them in the flesh of the 
 other. The import and meaning of the term will 
 be grasped by the mind most readily, perhaps, when 
 it is contemplating the relationship which exists 
 between parent and offspring. This particular 
 relationship, the closest of all relationships, being 
 taken as the centre of an imaginary circle, incestuous- 
 ness of connexion will be viewed as gradually shaded 
 off upon every side to a circumferential line, where 
 it will pass from that which is incest to that which 
 is not incest. The question for decision in any 
 controverted instance is this. Whether it lies within 
 the circumferential line, or outside it. 
 
 In the Divine Scriptures, in the eighteenth chap- 
 ter of the book Leviticus, is inserted a schedule 
 of marriages which lie within the boundary-line, 
 and so have in them the taint of incest. Some of 
 the specifications there given are found repeated 
 elsewhere in the Volume ; but there are no supple- 
 mentary additions, neither is there a revocation of 
 any of these statutory enactments ; that is to say, 
 there is none in express words. There is, indeed, in 
 one instance an exception apparently, if not really, 
 made ; but an opinion whether it is really so or not 
 must be reserved until after examination shall have 
 been made of the place where it is found. It will 
 have to be considered whether the catalogue is 
 meant to be complete ; that is, to contain within it 
 
Marnage with Sister^ in Succession. 7 
 
 the whole number of incestuous marriages whicli it 
 is intended to prohibit. 
 
 The teachings both of the Scriptures and of 
 nature show that the participation by two persons 
 in the same flesh may be ascribed more immediately 
 to either the one or the other of two several causes. 
 It may be so, when sameness of flesh has been 
 communicated by procreation ; or it may be so, when 
 the communication has been effected by conjugal 
 intercourse, accruing from the mystical decree of 
 nature and of God from the beginning, " They two 
 shall be one flesh." The reality and the amount of 
 the incest involved in any given instance in the 
 latter of these two cases are, essentially, the same 
 as those involved in any corresponding instance of 
 the former of them. There may possibly be a shade 
 of difference between the two, but, if so, a shade 
 only ; substantially, they are the same. Marriage 
 with a father's wife, a step-mother, or with a son's 
 wife, a daughter-in-law, is as truly forbidden by the 
 Word of God, and as truly contrary to the laws of 
 nature, as marriage with a mother would be, or with 
 a daughter. If this is so in these closer connexions, 
 then, relatively and 'pari passio, in others also less 
 or more distant, until incest shall have ceased to be 
 predicable by marriage becoming lawful ; marriage, 
 perhaps, in the cases lying nearest to incest not 
 altogether prudent and commendable, but yet lawful, 
 inasmuch as it does not involve infraction of the 
 laws which define, and restrain from, incest. 
 
 At the present time questions are not being raised 
 with regard to marriages being incestuous by reason 
 of congenital consanguinity. It is, we may hope, 
 
8 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 acknowledged universally tliat a man may not marry 
 his mother; his daughter, or grand-daughter; his 
 sister, or his half-sister, whether uterine or by his 
 father only, whether legitimate or base-born ; ^ or 
 his aunt, the sister of his father or his mother. We 
 presume it to be allowed by all that the laws for- 
 bidding incest would be transgressed by a marriage 
 with any one of these. Questions, however, have 
 been raised, and are being raised, with regard to 
 marriages made incestuous by reason of affinity, in 
 those cases in which previously to the union that 
 relationship which is popularly called consanguinity 
 was not existing. More particularly is this so with 
 regard to marriages with two or more sisters in 
 succession. It is with these, the last mentioned, 
 that we now concern ourselves. 
 
 In dealing with the matter in dispute, itis manifest 
 that our reasonings, be they on which side they may 
 be, may be made to move in one or another of three 
 channels. Of these, one will contain those reason- 
 ings which may be advanced for the lawfulness of 
 these marriages ; another, those which may be set 
 forth in abatement, or for the annulment, of the 
 force of the arguments so adduced ; the remaining 
 one, those which may fairly be stated upon the 
 opposite side, and against the legality. 
 
 Of these, the contention in favour of allowing 
 marriage with a deceased wife's sister comes the first 
 in order. It rests chiefly on these principal averments. 
 That an indisputable sanction has been given by 
 implication in a certain place in the Holy Scriptures ; 
 
 ^ Such seems to be the meaning of "born abroad." Levit. 
 xviii. 9. 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 9 
 
 that such marriage is not to be found in the index 
 expurgatorius, the list containing those which are 
 forbidden as incestuous ; and that there is a strongly- 
 corroborative argument for them from analogy, 
 grounded on the provision made in the Mosaic 
 writings for the marriage, on a certain contingency, 
 of a brother with a deceased brother's wife. 
 
 It is contended, then, that an indisputable sanction 
 has been given, by implication, to marriage with 
 sisters in succession, and that this sanction can be 
 found in a certain place in the Holy Scriptures. 
 The place referred to is that where are the words, 
 " Thou shalt not take a wife to her sister ... in 
 her lifetime." Whether we shall eventually find 
 ourselves in agreement with the contention or not, 
 for the present we have to adopt the argument, and 
 to set it fairly forth. Thus then it is. Here is 
 mention made — express mention — of a wife and her 
 sister, who are not by the same man to be had in 
 marriage contemporaneously, but in succession 
 only, the one after the decease of the other. Upon 
 search in this chapter of the Levitical statute-book, 
 we ascertain that the term sister is used elsewhere 
 throughout it in the specific sense, denoting con- 
 sanguinity through birth from the same parents, or 
 at the least from the same father or the same 
 mother, and not in a wider or generic signification. 
 It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to interpret it 
 here in the like sense, no reason being shown to the 
 contrary. But if we are to understand the term 
 wife's sister in this place in the ordinaiy, and in 
 its contextual, meaning, the argument may be con- 
 sidered as foreclosed, and the point in question to 
 
I o The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 have been proved. This summary determination 
 of the debated question is arrived at by applying a 
 maxim which is at once logical and forensic, the 
 maxim, Exceptio probat regiolam. In this case the 
 Exception is — the lifetime of the previously married 
 sister ; and the Rule, through its means inferentially 
 deduced and established, is — that, save during the 
 expressly excepted period (that is to say, the life- 
 time of the one), another sister in the same family 
 may lawfully be made a wife. 
 
 Our argument is advanced to its second stage, 
 and there strengthened, both simply and cumula- 
 tively, by drawing attention to the absence of this 
 particular marriage from the catalogue of marriages 
 proclaimed as incestuous and to be avoided. It is 
 not found therein. This is a strong point in favour 
 of its legality. If it were intended to prohibit it, 
 why should it not have been named with the others ? 
 The omission cannot be debited to inadvertence, for 
 oversights are not to be ascribed to the legislating 
 and inditing Spirit of the Most High. And, further, 
 since we must suppose all things foreknown to Him, 
 and therefore among them the uncertainties which 
 would arise 'in His Church in respect to this matter, 
 can we imagine that warning against this incestuous 
 marriage, if it were really such, would have been 
 kept back, when a few words would have sufficed 
 to give guidance, and have saved all readers of the 
 Scriptures from being led into the sin of incest 
 through misconception, if we may not say, by justi- 
 fiable mistake ? 
 
 Putting these two together, the distinctly implied 
 permission to marry the sister of a deceased wife. 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession, , 1 1 
 
 and the omission of such marriages from the schedule 
 containing those which are to be deemed incestuous, 
 we obtain a powerful argument in favour of the 
 permissibility of these marriages; just as a man 
 would obtain a reliable rope by twisting together 
 two strands, and blending and augmenting their 
 powers of tenacity. This we now proceed to convert 
 into a yet stronger, a triple, cord, by adding the 
 Divine direction, given in the legislation through 
 Moses, for a man to marry his deceased brother's 
 wife, when there should have been no issue of the 
 former marriage. Is it conceivable that, for such a 
 purpose as the bringing into existence a suppositious 
 son to inherit the property of a defunct man, God 
 would have Himself prescribed acts of incest to be 
 committed ? True, the specified cases were exemp- 
 tions from the general rule. True, the permission 
 or requirement was made applicable only to Jews, 
 and to them only with exceptional circumstances. 
 Yet the rule was made ; and it was set forth among 
 the enactments of the God of Israel, who is one 
 and the same with the God of the Christian Church. 
 Did God command incest ? If all and each will 
 shrink from this conclusion, then we claim to carry 
 the opposite inference over to the marriage with the 
 sister of a deceased wife. What would not be in- 
 cest in the one case cannot be incest in the other. 
 Therefore the logical transition from the one to the 
 other of them is easy ; and it is unassailable, and 
 secure. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs the writer of this 
 pamphlet has transformed himself into an advocate 
 for the permissibility of the marriage of a man with 
 
1 2 The Qii,estion of Incest relatively to 
 
 his deceased wife's sister. He has written down the 
 arguments honestly, and has put them forth to the ' 
 best of his ability. 
 
 The second main portion of our tripartite work 
 comes now to be entered upon, — the examination of 
 the reasonings which have been alleged, to the 
 abatement of their force, and even, if such may be 
 had, to the absolute disproof of their validity. 
 
 Bringing under synoptical view the entire assem- 
 blage of arguments to be answered, and studying 
 them, we perceive that the force of the first and of 
 the third of them can be successfully met and 
 destroyed in'no other way than by showing that the 
 Scriptures referred to are being misinterpreted ; in 
 other words, by a distinct denial of their relevancy 
 to the matter in question ; and of the intervening 
 one, by showing that absence of mention does not 
 necessarily imply recognition, and, further, by ten- 
 dering some reasonable account of the absence in 
 this particular instance. 
 
 As to the meaning, then, of the Divine saying ex- 
 pressed in our Authorized Version of the Scriptures 
 in these words, " Neither shalt thou take a wife to 
 her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, 
 beside the other in her lifetime." Freely allowing, 
 as we are constrained to do, everything that it is 
 sought to extract from them if they are really 
 relevant, we have to propound against their relevancy 
 that, upon examination, their purport is found to be 
 not the securing the wife yet living from the vexa- 
 tions which would arise from partnership in her 
 husband by one of her sisters, but the definition of 
 the rights of every woman married to a man, her 
 
Marnage witn caisiers in Succession. 1 3 
 
 rights, in respect to their extent, and also in respect 
 to their limitation ; and that, this being so, they 
 must fall altogether out of the argument, and be 
 allowed no influence upon the one side or on the 
 other. That is to say, whatever the true decision 
 of the question may be, the words upon which we 
 are engaged cannot be made to affect it either way. 
 The determination of this debated case of conscience 
 must be arrived at, if it can be arrived at, by other 
 teachings or considerations, apart from this saying. 
 So much stress is laid on this verse by those who 
 uphold the opinion that sisters-in-law are not 
 excluded from the option of a widower, and the 
 issues at stake are so momentous, that no apology is 
 offered, nor can be reasonably required, for the 
 prolixity of a minute examination of the words, — the 
 fullest, and closest, that we have it in our power to 
 make. 
 
 Before we begin our scrutiny of the words, there 
 is a consideration which suggests itself to the mind 
 preliminarily, on a 'priori grounds. It is reasonable 
 to expect that somewhere in the Mosaic Code pro- 
 hibition of polygamy is to be found. That plurality 
 of wives was not the Divine purpose from the 
 beginning we know; yet reasons there seem to have 
 been why God should have winked at the custom of 
 it, in those days of less perfect knowledge, and, 
 more particularly, while the time had not as yet 
 come for making known the mystical doctrine 
 " concerning Christ and His Church ;" we may go 
 so far, perhaps, as to add, while the time lasted for 
 disguising, and keeping from the view of men, that 
 mystery which was, as we are expressly told, hid 
 
14 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 from ages and generations, and until the time 
 should have come to make it manifest to the world. 
 The combined operation of this real disapproval 
 and this seeming allowance would be to produce a 
 clear yet clouded law ; such as would be clear to 
 the more spiritually minded, who should wish only 
 to know and do the will of God, and yet not be 
 read as certainly and imperatively prohibitive by 
 others. We should antecedently expect, therefore, 
 to find a law, and to find it ambiguously expressed. 
 And we think that we do in this very place find the 
 law, and find it so expressed, in accordance with 
 our previously formed expectations. 
 
 To proceed to the verbal analysis of the text. 
 No sooner is this entered upon, than a very remark- 
 able thing comes into view, and one corroborating 
 strongly the idea that the passage contains ascer- 
 tainable yet concealed teaching. In the Hebrew 
 words we find a phrase which was in familiar use 
 among the Jews, and which was employed by them 
 commonly when the word one followed by another 
 would in our language come in. Of these two 
 words, that for " one " would be a man, or else a 
 woman, or wife (for the Hebrew word for both these 
 is the same), according as the noun substantive 
 might be in the masculine or the feminine gender ; 
 and the Hebrew expression for " another " would 
 be, correspondingly, his brother, or otherwise, her 
 sister. The phrase seems to have been a favourite 
 one ; so much so, indeed, that it was made to apply 
 not to human or animate beings alone (as it very 
 commonly Vas) , but even to things inanimate. A 
 man towards his brother might express that two 
 
Marriage with ISjstcrs in Succession. 15 
 
 carved faces were placed in tliat position.^ If the 
 ends of a pair of wings should be brought into 
 contact, then a woman would touch her sister,^ 
 And if one curtain were to have another, a second 
 one, fastened to it, then again would a woman, or 
 wife, be coupled to her sister.* A colloquialism 
 probably in its origin, the expression had come, as 
 we have seen, to take higher rank, and is to be 
 found abundantly among the serious writings of 
 the Scriptures. Now the expression used in the 
 place under review is this very one, " Neither shalt 
 thou take a woman to her sister;" which, unless by 
 special exemption, would mean one wife or woman 
 to another. If it should be argued that the con. 
 textual use, here, of the term sinter leads the mind 
 to the more specific meaning of that word, the 
 rejoinder would be that a popular and long-continued 
 nsus loquendi had taken the words, thus grouped, 
 out from such an interpretation, and had stamped 
 upon them a peculiar meaning of their own ;• which 
 latter meaning would be conveyed immediately to 
 BYBTj Hebrew hearer, or reader, of the words. He 
 would instinctively, so to say, apply them at once in 
 the sense in which he had been accustomed to use 
 them, in his conversation or in his writings, day by 
 day, and all his life long. If it be urged further, 
 as it has been, that the Hebrew mode of speaking 
 would require the noun then being referred to to be 
 prefixed or appended in the plural number, when 
 the words are to mean one and another, and that 
 therefore in the present case we should have found 
 it written. Neither shalt thou take wives, a wife to 
 
 ' Exod. XXV. 20. ' Ezek. i. 9. < Exod. xxvi, 3. 
 
1 6 The Question of Incest relatively lo 
 
 her sister, we reply that this would necessarily be 
 so when the phrase was being applied to any other 
 than to human subjects, and that so accordingly we 
 find it in the instances just given, — faces, a man to 
 his brother ; and curtains, a woman to her sister ; 
 but that it would not be requisite when men or 
 women, whichever it might be, were being actually 
 spoken of, but rather redundant, and that as a fact 
 in such case the plural noun so placed is not to be 
 found. 
 
 Further : in the words " a wife to her sister " 
 there appears a noticeable departure from the 
 ordinary arrangement, which they might be ex- 
 pected to have, involving a somewhat singular 
 inversion of the terms introduced. We should 
 naturally have expected the existing wife to be 
 named as the wife, and the proposed addition to 
 the household as her sister, and that, so, we should 
 read, " Neither shalt thou take to thy wife her 
 sister," or, " Neither shalt thou take her sister to 
 thy wife;" but we read, "Neither shalt thou take a 
 wife to her sister." This is the usual and idiomatic 
 order of the words, if the writer meant us to under- 
 stand wife to wife, one to another ; but not so, in 
 the other case. 
 
 Again : there is a reason assigned for the re- 
 striction of which it is diflScult to discern that it 
 derives any of its force from the sisterly relation- 
 ship, strictly so called, of the additional wife, — that 
 is, the annoyance which would be caused to the 
 wife already married. The advocate of the mar- 
 riages we are considering may fairly be reminded 
 here of a usual pleading upon his side of the ques- 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 1 7 
 
 tion, to tte effect that a wife, in declining health, 
 and as her own decease comes into view, prefers 
 by a natural preference to be succeeded by a sister 
 rather than by a stranger ; and that this preference, 
 so reasonable in itself, should not be interfered with 
 by legislation. If this be at all a true statement of 
 the case, it may be asked, How comes it that, at a 
 somewhat earlier than the supposed time previously 
 to the wife's decease, a sister alone was debarred 
 from partnership with her on this ground, that her 
 being chosen as the second wife would " vex," 
 implying that a like vexation would not be caused 
 by the selection of any other, upon whom her 
 husband might set his affections ? We may take 
 leave to call to our aid on this side of the question 
 the powerful testing of the Exceptio probat regulam 
 which has been already invoked on the other. In 
 making provision for the protection of a wife from 
 undue vexation, her husband was restrained from 
 one, and but from one, particular marriage, — 
 namely, marriage with any sister she might chance 
 to have. This is the Exception. The Rule, out of 
 which it must be taken to have emerged and in 
 turn to have established, may be thus read, — that 
 the wife's feelings could not claim to have regard 
 paid to them, however strong they might be, pro- 
 vided only that no one of her sisters was to be the 
 new wife proposed. Her cousin, her next-door 
 neighbour, her rival from childhood upwards, or a 
 pert uncongenial stranger not in the neighbourhood 
 a fortnight before, might, any one of them, be 
 legally imposed on the vexed and unhappy wife, 
 her repugnance and earnest remonstrance notwith- 
 
1 8 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 standing. The cruelty of assigning her a sister as 
 a partner was alone forbidden. There is, at the 
 least, a seeming unreasonableness or unlikeliness in 
 such legislation as this would be, which may fairly 
 cause us to pause, before we accept it as truly 
 interpreted. 
 
 Again : it is written, " Neither shalt thou take a 
 wife to her sister ... to uncover her nakedness." 
 Assuming, as we may reasonably assume, that each 
 one of these constituent clauses has its independent 
 meaning and purpose, contributing to make up the 
 aggregate value of the whole, inquiry has to be made 
 as to the meaning and the purpose of this par- 
 ticular one. It is required to know what bearing, if 
 any, direct or indirect, it has on the question which 
 we are seeking to solve. Now we claim for it not 
 only that it has a bearing of some sort, but, further, 
 that its bearing is against the application of this 
 verse to the marriage in succession with sisters 
 strictly so called. It will conduce to the clearness 
 of the proof which we are endeavouring to estabhsh, 
 that attention should be called to some statements 
 which may, with leave or without it, be put into the 
 mouths of the upholders of the debated marriages. 
 They are these. That there is implied a tacit 
 recognition that plural wives were among the 
 things not absolutely forbidden to the Jews : That 
 marriages with sisters in the same family are not in 
 their own nature incestuous : and, following upon the 
 two foregoing. That contemporary marriages with 
 women having the relationship of sisters either to 
 other would not, and could not, in the Mosaic 
 Dispensation have been described as an immorality, 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 19 
 
 in the full and usual sense of that word. The first 
 of these is necessarily concluded because the ex- 
 ception is made of the former wife's life-period, not 
 at all upon the ground of bigamy being involved, 
 but exclusively for another reason assigned. The 
 second of them, because, if they had been incestuous, 
 the reason for the restraint would not have termi- 
 nated with the lifetime of the preceding wife, but 
 would have continued to operate as forcibly after 
 her decease as previously to it. The remaining one, 
 because, if plural wives were allowed to the Jews, 
 and marriage with two or more sisters is not in itself 
 incestuous, such co-existent marriages would have 
 been nothing more than infringements of an edict 
 having for its final cause the protection of a wife 
 from discomfort. They would not have drawn with 
 them infringement of an edict issuing from the much 
 graver considerations of adultery or incest. This 
 being so, they could not have been set forth, with 
 truth, as constituting serious moral ofiences ; cer- 
 tainly not, as crimes of grave moral turpitude. 
 
 It is important to our argument that these 
 positions, which the advocates of the marriages may 
 be constrained to hold and to acknowledge, should 
 be borne in memory. It is important, because we 
 contend that the expression about uncovering naked- 
 ness did, and does, imply serious moral offence, 
 even grave moral turpitude ; and that it would have 
 had no place here in the wording of the law but in 
 view of such. We think that it can be shown that 
 in the Scriptures it was most commonly used when 
 incest was being dealt with ; and that, although 
 incest is not being spoken of in the present instance, 
 
 B 2 
 
20 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 yet that its import is such that nothing less than 
 adultery, also a grave moral offence, can have been 
 intended. We have it to allege, as a fact, that the 
 expression is nowhere to be found in the sacred 
 books employed in its simple, primary, and patent, 
 what may be called its physical, signification. It is 
 nowhere used in them to denote, for instance, what 
 may lawfully be between a man and a woman, his 
 wife, to whom he was truly and blamelessly married. 
 This is not all we have to say. There is a very 
 peculiar employment of the phrase, which we find 
 once and again, whereby the nakedness uncovered 
 is set forth as that of a third and absent person, and 
 not that of either of the parties to the sexual inter- 
 course themselves. Before the argument against 
 marriage with a sister-in-law is closed finally, it may 
 be that we shall take occasion to turn this peculiarity 
 of use to account, and find in it an important link 
 of our chain, as we go on in our proof of the incest. 
 For the present, however, we are engaged in seeking 
 to show that the enactment before us has nothing 
 to do with any specialty in marriage, — as with mar- 
 riage with sisters in succession, — but that its true 
 scope is the withholding any and every man from 
 marrying a second wife, whosoever she may be, 
 during the lifetime of the one previously taken ; 
 together with the giving liberty to him to marry 
 another after her decease. "We think it to have 
 been intended to disclose to the Jews, to such of 
 them as would read it aright, and not to them only 
 but to ourselves also, that polygamy and the custom 
 of concubinage did really involve both adultery in 
 the sight of God and grievous wrong to the woman 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 21 
 
 first married; who -would possess her conjugal 
 rights entire to the end of her existence here, and, 
 for so long a time, could be the only lawful cohabitor 
 of her husband; although she could not claim to 
 retain them in continuance, when she herself should 
 be no longer alive. 
 
 The nakedness unwarrantably uncovered by the 
 joint action of the man and his new wife or concu- 
 bine was that of the wife already married, and the 
 uncovering it by them was to be, on their part, a sin ; 
 and more especially, we must infer, on the part 
 of the man, the husband. By connexion with a 
 father's wife, a father's nakedness was held to be 
 uncovered. By connexion with an uncle's wife, an 
 uncle's nakedness was held to be uncovered. 
 By connexion with a brother's wife, a brother's 
 nakedness was held to be uncovered. And by con- 
 nexion with offspring, or descendent in direct line, 
 a daughter or grand-daughter, the nakedness of a 
 man, himself the perpetrator of the incest, was held 
 to be uncovered. By the connexion of a woman's 
 lawful husband with another woman than herself, 
 her, the wife's nakedness was held, in like manner, 
 to be uncovered ; ' and the commandment to the 
 husband was, — " This thou shalt not do." This 
 was in effect as if it had been said, — " Thy doing 
 so will be equivalent to adultery committed with 
 thine own wife." The guilt which would have been 
 incurred by her and that other man would, according 
 to this, be incurred by the husband and that other 
 woman. The two, so to speak, go side by side, and 
 in the graduations of crime they are of the same 
 ' See Levit. xviii. 8, 10, 14, 16, 18. 
 
2 2 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 grade. If the wife, committing adultery against the 
 husband, does thereby uncover his nakedness, the 
 husband committing adultery against the wife 
 does, in like manner, with moral iniquity, uncover 
 her nakedness. If we are right in these interpre- 
 tations, and in these deductions from them, then 
 the whole paragraph in question is withdrawn from 
 all relationship, specially, to marriage with the 
 sisters of deceased wives, and is to have an entirely 
 different meaning put upon it; contrary to the 
 wish, and opposite to the contention, of the advocates 
 of such marriage. More might be urged on this 
 point. There is that, however, in this part of our 
 inquiry which impels us to hasten onwards, and to 
 move away from it as quickly as we can. 
 
 One remark only on this head shall be further 
 made, and it is this, that the construction of the 
 sentence lends itself to our aid upon the occasion. 
 The Hebrews were wont to express the pronoun 
 Iner, whether used in its personal or possessive signi- 
 fication, most generally by a certain letter of their 
 alphabet, appended to a verb, noun, or particle, as 
 the case might happen to require. Now we have 
 here this same appended letter in all and several of 
 the three sub-clauses ; and the whole paragraph may 
 be translated accurately — it is not said elegantly — 
 thus : " Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister ; 
 to vex [her] ; to uncover the nakedness of her ; 
 beside her; in the lifetime of her." There would 
 seem to be no reason why the natural onflow of the 
 sentence should be destroyed ; why the same letter 
 having pronominal force which, as grammarians 
 speak, subauditur, is understood, in the clause imme- 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 23 
 
 diately preceding this, and in the two which follow is 
 expressed, should in this be attributed to a different 
 person than is intended in any one of the others. 
 But if the letter constituting the pronoun is to have 
 the same reference in each of the several cases, then, 
 the person whose nakedness would be uncovered is 
 the same as she who would be vexed, and the same 
 also as she beside whom, and in whdse lifetime, 
 the new wife would have been taken, and was not 
 to have been taken. 
 
 Again : it is written, " Neither shalt thou take a 
 wife to her sister . . . beside the other;" that is, 
 additionally to her, the wife already married, so as 
 to have at one time more wives than one. It will 
 be seen that plurality of wives is the special inter- 
 diction contained in this clause, the adding wife to 
 wife, not the vexing sister by sister. The inter- 
 diction is conveyed, succinctly, by a preposition and 
 a pronoun. The appended pronoun is, as has been 
 already said, her ; translated paraphrastically, in 
 our version of the Scriptures, as " the other." The 
 preposition employed in this place is used elsewhere 
 to express the same thing, the adding wife to wife. 
 It is so used, for instance, when the author of the 
 book Genesis would inform us that Esau took Ma- 
 halath beside, or additionally to, the wives which he 
 already had ; and again, when he would tell us that 
 Laban adjured his son-in-law not to take other wives 
 beside, or additionally to, Leah and Eachel. The 
 scope of our contention here can hardly be missed. 
 We are meaning to argue that the clause, if it were 
 not designedly framed for the drawing attention to 
 the general object, the main import, of the entire 
 
24 The Qtiesiion of Incest relatively to 
 
 paragraph, and thereby the strengthening and em- 
 phasizing it, must be regarded, so far as we can 
 judge, as pleonastic and redundant; its substance 
 being already contained in the expression, " Neither 
 shalt thou take a wife to her sister." "We are, 
 therefore, reasoning that it was so designed ; in 
 other words, that it tends to show the whole enact- 
 ment to be launched against plurality of wives, and 
 not against the vexation of a wife by means of her 
 sister. 
 
 Again, and now under this head lastly : it is 
 written, " Neither shalt thou take a wife to her 
 sister ... in her lifetime." From these con- 
 cluding words it is that the commonly received 
 interpretation has been mainly extracted. From 
 them has been educed the opinion that sisters may 
 be lawfully married in succession, one after the 
 decease of another. They are regarded as the clue, 
 guiding the mind up to the central purpose of the 
 edict. It is, therefore, necessary that the opponent 
 of the interpretation should, from his point of view, 
 be able to assign some probable reason for their 
 introduction. To do this is not difficult. An 
 adequate theory of explanation may be found, and 
 one which, as we venture to claim, will be open to 
 the charges neither of being far-fetched nor of being 
 strained. If our exegesis be accepted as fairly true, 
 to the effect, naijiely, that the conjugal rights of 
 every woman married to a man are here set out and 
 protected, the questions in due course emerge. 
 What limitation, if any, was there given to these 
 rights ? How far are they made to extend ? and. 
 Has the husband any rights which, on his side, are 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 25 
 
 in like manner to be set out and protected ? That 
 is to say, Does the original conjugal bond still 
 retain its restrictive force if the husband shall have 
 become a widower ? Will the nakedness of the 
 former wife have been uncovered by the marriage 
 of the husband with another after her decease ? We 
 are familiar now with the rule allowing re-marriage 
 in such event ; and for that reason we may easily 
 lose sight of the extreme importance of the question. 
 We may fail to bethink ourselves of the uneasiness 
 which scrupulous and upright minds would have 
 felt if the question had been left unsettled, and the 
 consequent great necessity that there was for its 
 being set at rest. Accordingly it is settled, and, as 
 we contend, settled in the very place we are engaged 
 upon, that the wife's rights restricting the liberty 
 of her husband determine, and come to end, with 
 the close of her own lifetime. She cannot claim to 
 assert them beyond the time of her decease. If we 
 are rigbt in alleging that no place other than this 
 one can be pointed out in the Old Testament where 
 the distinct right of the widower to marry again is 
 direqtly or inferentially established, then we have 
 proof positive and conclusive to tender that we shall, 
 by this interpretation, have arrived at the true 
 meaning of the text under review. The New Tes- 
 tament explicitly declares that this very thing — the 
 right of the widower or widow to marry again — is 
 in some place to be found in the Scriptures which 
 had gone before.^ It distinctly asserts it to be 
 within the knowledge of " them that know the law," 
 of every one cognisant of the contents of the Old 
 " See Epistle to the Romans, chapter vii. 
 
/ 
 26 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 Testament, tliat tlie relative law of husband and 
 wife lield dominion so long, and only so long, as 
 the husband and wife were, both of them, living, 
 and that, consequent on the decease of either of 
 them, there was a loosing of the survivor from the 
 law of restriction. In the place referred to the 
 application of the rule is given, indeed, with refer- 
 ence to the widow only. This was to suit the 
 doctrinal illustration which it was employed to 
 furnish. It is evident, however, to every reader 
 that it -W-as meant to apply equally to both widower 
 and widow. 
 
 We close at the point at which we have arrived 
 our criticisms of the argument founded on the 
 paragraph in the book of Leviticus, and our counter- 
 pleas, favouring another interpretation drawn from 
 the same words. 
 
 It follows, now, that consideration should be 
 given to that plea in favour of the legality of 
 successive marriages with sisters which has been 
 raised upon- the absence of all mention of them 
 from the list of marriages prohibited as incestuous. 
 It is argued that they are not to be found in the 
 schedule ; that the omission of them cannot be 
 ascribed to unintentional oversight ; also, that they 
 would have appeared in the catalogue, if it had not 
 been meant to exempt them ; and this, if for no 
 other reason, because multiplied sins of innocent 
 incest (if we may so speak) would have been 
 averted, had the law, supposing it to be such, been 
 clearly declared. 
 
 It is a feat in argumentation, frequently resorted 
 to and quite fair, to cause an opponent's argument 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 2 7 
 
 to effect its own destiniction, by making it take its 
 full swing and sway. In such case, if it is found to 
 go too far, it will prove too mucli, and so virtually 
 be useless and prove nothing. The argument in 
 the present instance is, that a certain marriage 
 between persons closely allied in aflS.nity is not in- 
 cluded, by the mention of it, in the roll of incestuous 
 marriages, and that therefore it is not incestuous. 
 The reply is, — By this reasoning fathers may without 
 incest marry their own daughters, such marriage 
 not being in the list; and, although a nephew may 
 not marry his aunt, whether on the side of his father 
 or mother, on account of the leaven or remainder of 
 flesh which is shared by them through consanguinity, 
 yet a niece may be married to an uncle, the brother 
 of her father or the brother of her mother, the like 
 leaven or remainder of flesh notwithstanding, and 
 no incest be chargeable against uncle or niece on 
 account of the marriage. The reasoning then would 
 prove greatly too much, and is consequently unsound 
 and profitless for the purpose with which it is being 
 used. 
 
 There is an a priori argument, in itself distinct, 
 although attached to this more direct one, — this, 
 namely, that it is reasonable to suppose that a fore- 
 seeing legislator would provide against the foreseen 
 misconception of his law, and its accruing evils, by 
 making the law more explicit and clear; and the 
 fact that this has not been done in this' case must be 
 taken as a proof that there was not an intention to 
 legislate against marriage with sisters of deceased 
 wives. The profiering of this argument requires a 
 distinction to be made between ordinary human law 
 
2 8 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 and the law wliich we have . received from God ; 
 since in this distinction our answer will lie. Laws 
 made by men are, for the most part, made for the 
 maintenance of good order in society, for the 
 protection of person or property from injury by 
 violence or fraud, within the boundaries of their 
 jurisdiction. Next, therefore, to well-measured 
 justice, precision and clearness of expression will 
 be the glory of such laws; and acts of legislation 
 are condemned or praised in proportion as they fail 
 or are successful in this respect. Divine legislation 
 has another scope and purpose, lying, perhaps, 
 beyond this, yet more immediately in view than 
 this. It has to be made instrumental to a great 
 spiritual object. It is to be made of service for the 
 probation of souls, and for the training and disci- 
 plining human creatures in the observance of a 
 royal law of obedience for conscience' and for love's 
 sake. Now it is ancillary to this end that oppor- 
 tunities of misconception should be abundantly sup- 
 plied, while yet certainty of interpretation should, 
 in all cases, be within, not perhaps the easy reach, 
 but still within, the reach of all those whose desire 
 it is simply to know the legislator's will in order 
 that they may do it. For this high end " it must 
 needs be " that there should be " offences," — that is, 
 things put in the path for occasions of falling. The 
 Scriptures themselves are full of cautions, monitions, 
 and declarations, to this very effect. The extent of 
 heterodoxies and malpractices in the world, for each 
 and all of which appeal is made, and made plausibly 
 and with apparent sincerity, for sanction or more 
 than sanction, to the Word of God, is a sufficient 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession, 29 
 
 exemplification of the corresponding extent to wHch 
 the sacred writings are liable to be misunderstood, 
 and perverted from their true meaning. We pro- 
 pound that the case in hand may be, — if we may 
 not go farther and say that it is, — a very special, 
 and typical, instance. The text, " Neither shalt 
 thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to 
 uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her 
 lifetime," certainly does appear, upon the surface 
 of it, to sanction marriage with a wife's sister when 
 the wife's lifetime is over. Many in all parts of 
 Christendom justify by it the marriages which they 
 have made; and many more, carried away in part 
 by sympathy with them in their position, have 
 found for them a justification of their conduct, by 
 a like appeal to the same Scripture. It does not 
 come within the province of our argument, in this 
 department of it, to say that this their appeal is 
 being erroneously made, either wilfully so, or through 
 unintended mistake. Our plea on this behalf is 
 restricted to this, — that misconception of the true 
 intent of the Scriptures is abundantly exemplified in 
 the world ; that God has selected the easy possibility 
 of such misconceivings as an element in those pro- 
 bationary means which He employs in the education 
 of His children ; and that this matter of the debated 
 marriages may be, among other examples, designed 
 to be an instance of it. Further than to this point 
 this portion of our reasoning cannot be safely led. 
 
 If the argument from the absence of this marriage 
 from those proclaimed as incestuous defeats itself 
 by sweeping with too far a reach, and if the a priori 
 reasoning in support of it can be not unsuccessfully 
 
30 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 met, there remains to be brought forward a refuta- 
 tion still more direct and complete. No court of 
 assize, carrying into effect the laws of a land, and 
 making inquiry into the cases brought before it, 
 would for a moment admit the adequacy of a similar 
 plea. If it were to do so, a very large proportion 
 of criminals would escape all ' punishment for their 
 acts, upon the ground that their own particular 
 act of theft, fraud, violence, or so forth, was not 
 found anywhere specified in the volumes of the 
 statutes at large. The method of proceeding in our 
 courts of law is to bring the particular criminaUty, 
 if not found to be specially mentioned, under some 
 general description of crime within which it is prac- 
 tically included, which, the whole with all its included 
 parts, is by statute made punishable. Another way 
 of proceeding in common use is the adduction of 
 some other criminal act which has been distinctly 
 and specifically named, and the showing that there 
 is analogy between that and the one on trial before 
 the court, — analogy so close, and so demonstrable, 
 that the condemnation and penalty attached to the 
 one may, both logically and practically, be trans- 
 ferred to the other. 
 
 Borrowing, then, from the sensible, indeed the 
 necessary, custom of our courts of law, we may 
 apply these serviceable rules of procedure to the 
 case of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife. 
 Let it be granted, as it must be, that such marriage 
 is not mentioned by name in the great Statute Book. 
 Yet there is this general enactment contained 
 therein, "None of you shall approach to any that is 
 near of kin to him (remainder of his flesh), to un- 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 3 1 
 
 cover nakedness. I am the Lord." If proof can be 
 made out that a sister-in-law has nearness of kin, 
 or remainder of flesh, within the meaning of the 
 statute, then the brother-in-law's marriage with her 
 must be included among those prohibited, and it 
 must be regarded as interdicted by the law, although 
 it has not been specified by distinct enumeration of 
 it. Again : certain marriages are found prohibited 
 and made unlawful, the circumstances of which mar- 
 riages can, it is claimed, be shown to be analogous, 
 and exactly analogous, with those now, as it were, on 
 their trial. If this therefore be so, if those marriages 
 are really declared incestuous, and if the analogy 
 asserted is not falsely conceived but demonstrably 
 true, then the condemnation of marriage with sisters- 
 in-law is arrived at in this way also, and may be set 
 forth as incontrovertible. The proof of these two 
 facts, — that marriage with a wife's sister comes 
 within the intent of the statute prohibiting marriage 
 between persons near of kin, and that such marriage 
 corresponds by a strict and logical analogy with 
 other marriages named as unlawful by reason of the 
 incest which they involve, — -belongs to the third and 
 last of the main streams of our assigned reasonings, 
 containing the arguments which may be advanced on 
 the fer contra, or opposite side — that is, against the 
 legality of the marriage brought into controversy. 
 For that, therefore, we reserve the investigation 
 of their sufficiency. 
 
 There is an argument yet remaining, claiming too 
 to be from analogy, on the other side, which we 
 have now, in turn, to examine. It is contended 
 that marriage with a wife's sister can be no worse 
 
32 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 than marriage with a brother's wife, and that this 
 last was to the Jews commanded by God in a certain 
 contingency. 
 
 There are three courses, one or another of* which 
 must needs be taken by every participant in this 
 discussion. It is open to him to deny, if he shall 
 think fit to do so, that marriage with a brother's 
 widow would, in any instance of it, involve incest ; 
 or he may, if he prefer it, argue that, although such 
 marriage would in any other example of it be rightly 
 regarded as incestuous, the supreme Lawgiver did 
 for the Jews exercise His dispensing power in this 
 particular case, and do away with or condone the 
 incest, in order to bring about the object held in 
 view ; or, lastly, he may propound, and set himself 
 to work out his argument, that the Jewish Church 
 and nation, intentionally or ignorantly, or partly the 
 one and partly the other, perverted their Scriptures, 
 and founded upon them an unhallowed usage, con- 
 trary alike to the will and the commandment of 
 God. Against giving assent to the first of these 
 there are strong reasons ; and there are reasons not 
 less strong, or even stronger, against giving assent 
 to the second of them. There remains, therefore, 
 but to take what to some may seem the least 
 practicable of the courses, namely, on the one hand 
 to accept the fact that levirate marriages, as they 
 are called from the Latin word for a brother-in-law, 
 were all but universally recognized by the Jews, and 
 common among them, as 'being supposed, or at the 
 least alleged, by them to have been authorized and 
 enjoined by the Word of God ; and, upon the other 
 hand, to maintain that these marriages were contrary. 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 33 
 
 nevertLeless, to the will and commandment of tbe 
 Most Higli ; that they did supply, in fact, in those 
 days and in that nation, an instance precisely 
 parallel to what would find place amongst ourselves, 
 supposing that marriages with wives' sisters were 
 assumed to be sanctioned by the words in Leviticus 
 (not being so), and were consequently to be authorized 
 by th.e legislature, and were eventually to become 
 common. The reasonableness of this contention 
 we proceed to show. 
 
 The places in Holy Scripture to which reference 
 has to be made are but few; which is, so far, an 
 advantage in the handling of our argument. They 
 are four only ; three of them being in the older, and 
 one in the newer, Scriptures. Among these the 
 central place must be given, of course, to the 
 well-known words in Deuteronomy. The received 
 interpretation of these words is supported, or 
 supposed to be supported, by a narrative in the 
 book Genesis, into which we shall therefore have to 
 look. In proof of the existence of the custom, that 
 is, as a custom merely, and apart from the question 
 of the allowance of God, and from the moral propriety 
 or impropriety of it, appeal can successfully be made 
 to certain expressions in the history of Ruth, and to 
 a dialogue in the New Testament. For the clearance 
 of our argument let the two last-named be briefly 
 touched first ; in order that their worth, in respect 
 to the use made of them, be it less or more, having 
 been appraised, they may be laid apart. 
 
 There was an occasion when certain Sadducees 
 came to the great Teacher, and sought to overthrow 
 the doctrines of resurrection and future life by the 
 
 c 
 
34 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 objection to Him of a difficulty made to emerge out 
 of the law of levirate marriage. The case put by 
 tbese sceptics must, doubtless, be taken to demon- 
 strate the prevalence, and the public recognition, of 
 the custom. Beyond this, however, it may be denied 
 that it does anything; rather the contrary is the 
 fact. It may be reasoned that that imagined 
 instance of theirs bears cognizable marks of the 
 blinding and baffling Spirit of the Holy One. A case 
 of two brothers who should have followed one 
 another in marriage with the same woman would 
 equally have supplied the whole essence of their 
 argument ; or, even, consecutive marriages with 
 the same woman by two husbands having no rela- 
 tionship whatever either to the other. When we 
 read, therefore, of no less than seven men, seven 
 brothers, sharing among themselves one and the 
 same leaven, one and the same remainder, of flesh, 
 having, one after another, sexual intercourse as 
 husbands with one and the same woman, we may, 
 from the very grossness of the imagined case, which 
 was as unnecessary as it is repulsive, conceive our- 
 selves to be receiving a caveat, intended to place us 
 on our guard as to that interpretation of the Holy 
 Scriptures upon which such an occurrence could 
 profess itself to be founded. The thought is 
 prompted, almost instinctively. Could a tree bearing 
 such fruits have been really planted of Grod ? Nor 
 is this all. The statement of the objectors' case 
 had a preface, in the words "Moses wrote;" and 
 the answer in rejoinder which they received was, in 
 turn, prefaced by words referring to these, "Ye do 
 err, not knowing the writings;" that is, miscon- 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 35 
 
 ceiving them. It is to be observed, and carried in 
 mind, then, that marriage with deceased brothers' 
 wives, however common it may have been, and how- 
 ever generally supposed to have rested on the 
 warrant of Holy Writ, did not obtain the recogni- 
 tion of Him who must have best known the mind of 
 the true Author of the Mosaic laws. 
 
 On the language of Naomi in the historical book 
 known by the name of Ruth we need not dwell. 
 All but two centuries had passed since the promul- 
 gation of the ambiguous words recorded in the 
 Deuteronomic law-book, and ample time had been 
 given for an interpretation of them to have become 
 general and unquestioned ; just as a meaning put 
 on a law passed by our own Legislature in the 
 present session of Parliament, whether that meaning 
 were a right or a wrong one, would have grown to 
 be generally received and unquestioned two cen- 
 turies hence, if the world and the law should so 
 long last. It is evident that the speaker was 
 framing her language in accordance with what she 
 supposed to be the Divine law, and what she knew 
 to be a generally accepted opinion and usage, when 
 she said to the young widows, her daughters-in-law, 
 " Turn again, my daughters. Why will ye go with 
 me ? Are there yet any more sons in my womb, 
 that they may be your husbands ? If I should also 
 bear sons, would ye tarry for them till they were 
 grown? Would ye stay for them from having 
 husbands?" This, and no more than this, can be 
 deduced from the passionate language of this tender 
 remonstrance. 
 
 Leaving these, therefore, we pass on to the place of 
 
 2~ 
 
36 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 greater difficulty, and witli which we have moi'e im- 
 mediate concern. It is to be read in the twenty-fifth 
 chapter of the book Deuteronomy : " If brethren 
 dwell together, and one of them die, and have no 
 child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without 
 unto a stranger : her husband's brother shall go in 
 unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform 
 the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it 
 shall be that the first-born which she beareth shall 
 succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, 
 that his name be not put out of Israel. And if the 
 man like not to take his brother's wife, then let his 
 brother's wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and 
 say. My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto 
 his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform 
 the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders 
 of his city shall call him, and speak unto him : and 
 if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her : 
 Then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the 
 presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off 
 his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer, and 
 say. So shall it be done unto that man that will not 
 build up his brother's house." 
 
 That the statute, whatsoever its meaning may 
 have been, was published to the Jews in the ancient 
 Hebrew language, and not in the modern English, 
 needs not to be remarked, nor need we to be re- 
 minded that versions, however generally accurate 
 and entitled to our respect, are not to be read 
 as if they were original documents, but are to be 
 accepted as subject to the liability of error im- 
 ported in the process of translation. The passage 
 before us is, to say the least, a possible instance of 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 2>7 
 
 this. The compilers of the version could fix no 
 definite meaning, word for word, on the expressions 
 which they had before them. Their knowledge of 
 the Jewish gloss, as evidenced by the custom of 
 levirate marriage, led them in their perplexity to 
 the bold course of substituting a paraphrase, and 
 that a very loosely worded paraphrase too, to 
 express the fancied import of the words at the 
 true meaning of which they could only guess. 
 Our contention, therefore, is this, — that levirate 
 marriages ought never to have taken place ; that 
 they were not sanctioned by the text in Deuteronomy; 
 and that they are contrary not to nature only, but 
 to other Scriptures also, and some of these very 
 clearly and distinctly written. 
 
 In proof of the assertion just made, we call 
 for reference to be made to the eighteenth chapter 
 of the earlier book, Leviticus. It will be found 
 commanded there, " Thou shalfc not uncover the 
 nakedness of thy brother's wife. It is thy brother's 
 nakedness;" whereby, if we interpret rightly, the 
 incest is made parallel and equal with that which 
 would ensue on the marriage of a sister by a brother. 
 We call again for reference to the twentieth chap- 
 ter of the same book : " If a man shall take his 
 brother's wife, it is an unclean thing. He hath 
 uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be 
 childless." This is strong language. Marriage 
 with a brother's wife was to be an unclean thing; a 
 separation, as it is expressed more exactly in the 
 marginal translation. Such, and so evil, was it to 
 be held, that the parties to it were to be cut off from 
 Israel, and not to be numbered among the people. 
 
38 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 The penalty attached, moreover, is very noticeable 
 when read in juxtaposition with the interpretation 
 assigned to the passage in Deuteronomy : " They 
 shall be childless." It is as if error was foreseen, 
 and forewarned, when childlessness was made the 
 selected and appropriate punishment for that very 
 thing which was to have the procreation of a chUd 
 for its specially designed object. Nor could it be 
 made to affect in any wise our argument, although 
 an opinion advanced by some could be substantiated, 
 to the effect, that the childlessness spoken of should 
 be taken to denote the legal bastardy of the issue 
 of such union. It could not affect it ; because the 
 declared end of the prescribed marriage was the 
 bringing into existence of a son, one who might 
 inherit an estate, and not only so, but who might 
 inherit as the true, and the lawfully-begotten, heir. 
 Now it is an acknowledged principle in all legis- 
 lation, and a most necessary one, that a statute once 
 enacted shall be in force until such time as it shall 
 have been abrogated or modified in some subsequent 
 publication of law, in which publication distinct 
 reference shall have been made to those earlier pro- 
 visions which it is intended to abolish. If this 
 were not so, it would come to pass, not infre- 
 quently, that statutes would be found in the 
 same code containing mutually opposed and irre- 
 concilable enactments, co-existent, and of equal 
 authority and force. But if we are to accept as 
 true that construing of the later edict in Deutero- 
 nomy which is now commonly given, and was by 
 the Jews of old acted upon, this universal rule in 
 legislation will have been set at nought. In such 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 39 
 
 event two absolutely contrariant edicts are left to 
 stand together, ranged side by side in one and the 
 same statute-book; the earlier of them unnoticed 
 by the later, and therefore by it neither abrogated 
 nor modified. It is difficult to suppose that this 
 was really the case in a code which we are to 
 regard as more accurate, more perfect, than any 
 merely human emanation could possibly be. 
 
 Further : if it be, as it has been shown that it 
 is, inconsistent with published positive enactments 
 that a brother should take his brother's wife, so, 
 also, is it to be observed that there is nothing 
 whatsoever in the scope itself of the law, the law 
 made touching the re-marriage of childless widows, 
 which would make it requisite, in the least degree, 
 for the brother-in-law to become the new husband. 
 The scope of the law — -we speak deferentially and 
 not dogmatically — might have been attained, and 
 its several objects provided for, equally well, with- 
 out recourse being had to the invasion of 
 the instincts and statutory enactments which re- 
 strain from incest. The general purport of the 
 institution had what may be called a feudal cha- 
 racter and flavour. Restraint as to the ahenation 
 of land from the tribe or family to ' which it was 
 originally assigned, and the prevention, so far as 
 might be, of any name from being " put out of 
 Israel," these were its chief objects. To compass 
 these objects a special kind of marriage, drawing 
 with it peculiar and indeed unique consequential 
 arrangements, was devised. The first-born male 
 issue was to be counted as the son, and was to take 
 the name of the deceased owner of the property. 
 
40 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 the mother's former Inasband, and not of his own 
 father. To him, on his birth, the real estate was to 
 pass, and in him it was to remain vested. Nor was 
 this the only provision made in view of the contem- 
 plated object. A restriction was put upon the liberty 
 of the heiress widow in certain respects. A second 
 marriage could apparently be forced upon her; and, 
 in consideration of her property having belonged to 
 her late husband, the selection of the new husband 
 was claimed by the legislature, in place of being left 
 to her own choice. This power was exercised in 
 prescribing that the new husband might not be " a 
 stranger," one, that is, of another tribal community ; 
 and, also, in the selection and pointing out of the 
 individual person ; who, so far as we can judge, was 
 to be the nearest relative of the deceased husband, 
 not being disqualified by the laws of incest, nor by 
 previous marriage with a wife still surviving, nor 
 himself having it in his power to demand exemption, 
 upon the ground of the too great distance of his 
 own property and residence for the due and pro- 
 fitable management of the estate, which together 
 with the widow whom he would otherwise have 
 been called upon to marry, was to be consigned to 
 his care. If not forbidden by one of the disquali- 
 fications above noted, and if, also, not able l^o show 
 sufficient legal cause for claiming exemption, he 
 could extricate himself from the marriage, supposing 
 it to be unwelcome, only by incurring and under- 
 going the penalty in such case prescribed — namely, 
 thathe should be subjected to contemptuous language 
 and usage, and that publicly, and in the presence of 
 the elders of his city. On repudiation by the man 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession, 41 
 
 first indicated and called upon, the legal duty would 
 come to be transferred to another standing next in 
 drder ; and, again, in the event of his refusal also 
 and submission to the penalty, to a third ; and so 
 onwards, until a marriage should have been effected. 
 These, then, being the notified purposes of this 
 peculiar law, and the provisions set forth for 
 effectuating them, the mind, applied to the discovery 
 with whatever penetration, will find nothing, such 
 is our contention, which tends to isolate the deceased 
 husband's brother, and to make him the sole person 
 by and , through whom the scope of this marriage 
 law could be attained. If need were, we might go, 
 indeed, further than this. We might fairly point 
 out that this close and absolute restriction to the 
 brother-in-law, supposing it to have been recognized 
 and commonly enforced, must have operated, in no 
 small percentage of cases, to the defeat of the 
 intentions held in view by the legislation. It is 
 clear that any widow chancing to have no brother 
 of her late husband surviving, or to have none who 
 both could and would defer to the claim made upon 
 him, would have been liberated thereby from all 
 restraint upon her action. So land might often 
 have passed to alien families, and names have been 
 lost continually from the call-roll of Israel. That is 
 to say, the result would have come out other than, 
 and opposite to, the scope and the intent of this 
 legal device, seeming to have been constructed with 
 so much care. In all such cases as we have adverted 
 to, moreover, the law would have perished suicidally ; 
 by its own contents, through the principal provision 
 contained within itself. 
 
42 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 Further : there is a provision in the law which 
 limits the application of it to persons living in the 
 same vicinage. It was not to be put into force as 
 against any one residing at a remoter distance. 
 Clearly, the exemption was granted on account of 
 inconveniences which might else have arisen. It 
 is important that this should be noted, for the 
 guidance it affords to the judgment. If a sole 
 and special relationship, the relationship namely of 
 brother to the widow's former husband, had for any 
 reason been held to enter into the essence of the law 
 (as the interpreters of the supposed levirate law would 
 say it did), then it seems scarcely explicable why 
 this essential element should be set aside so readily, 
 on account of a few miles more or less of local 
 distance. That it was to be so set aside would 
 seem to admit of no dispute. Let it be supposed a 
 matter of English law, that some burthen or duty 
 was laid on persons living in a specified place or in 
 its immediate neighbourhood, — say, for instance, a 
 pecuniary mulct, to be levied by assessment, on 
 occasion of the murder of some public functionary in 
 Ireland, upon the inhabitants of a district, — and let 
 it be supposed that it was sought by the collectors 
 of the fine to include as contributories persons out- 
 side the said district, that is, residing at a greater 
 than the intended distance, the lawyer appearing in a 
 court to resist such levy would plead, irresistibly 
 and successfully, exemption on this ground. It would 
 be clear that although a proportionate share of the 
 sum leviable could be exacted from those living 
 within the boundary-lines of the neighbourhood, 
 nothing could be demanded lawfully from other 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 43 
 
 persons. Tke duty of contracting a marriage with 
 a childless widow, a marriage burthened with these 
 unusual and peculiar conditions, could be enforced 
 on men (being neither excluded nor exempted) re- 
 siding within a definable area, and that, a district of 
 such moderate dimensions that persons having their 
 homes within it might be spoken of as dwelling 
 " together ;" and on them only. It would be a 
 needless iteration to set out afresh the bearing 
 which this limiting clause has upon the argument 
 in which we are engaged. 
 
 Further yet : if levirate marriages were, so far as 
 we are able to see, incompatible with the observance 
 of the laws of incest, and if they were not in any 
 wise made requisite by the scope of the law providing 
 for the re-marriage of a childless widow, and if the 
 probability of their being intended is diminished by 
 the application of the law being limited to contiguous 
 residents, so, neither were they really made impera- 
 tive, or even pointed to, by any expressions or 
 expression contained in the regulations themselves 
 for such re-marriages. In order to perceive the 
 force of this observation, the mind must have been 
 previously divested of the old and familiar associa- 
 tion of certain ideas with certain words, when it is 
 turned to study afresh the paragraph under review. 
 In the original or Hebrew text, the phrases. 
 Husband's brother, Perform the duty of a husband's 
 brother, and Brother's wife, read in the English 
 translation, are, simply, not represeTited. The mean- 
 ings assigned have been, each of them, arbitrarily 
 imposed, and are but expressive of the preconceived 
 thought of the translators. The group of words in 
 
44 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 debate consists of a verb and of two substantive 
 nouns, tlie one masculine and the other feminine, 
 framed from that verb. Lexicographers have been 
 able to find no sure, or even probable, lingual affinities 
 for these words. They seem to stand singularly 
 unrelated and alone. Certain it is that no cognate 
 words can be found which may be held to have 
 introduced into the group a reference to husband's 
 brother, or to brother's wife, or to the performance 
 of duty owed by the one to the other of these. The 
 difficulty of affixing a precise meaning is increased 
 by the rarity with which the phrases have been used. 
 Here only in Deuteronomy, and in the places adverted 
 to in Genesis and Ruth, are they to be found. Upon 
 the whole, they would seem to belong to what might 
 perhaps, in our days, be called the special phraseology 
 of the lawyers. The words or phrases seem to have 
 been employed to denote, distinctively, a marriage 
 of a particular kind, the sort above described, — a 
 marriage, of which the eldest son was, as it were, 
 detached from his parents, and made to belong, as 
 well by name as by rights of inheritance, to a 
 deceased man. The verb (which in the Hebrew 
 language, as is well known, is always fhe root, from 
 which are derived, by slight literal change, nouns 
 substantive and adjective, particles, and the like), — 
 the verb denotes a certain peculiar marriage trans- 
 action, the parties thereunto taking their descriptive 
 titles accordingly, that is, by names or words de- 
 rived from the marriage contract itself. Now this 
 being so, there is nothing here in the words to make 
 the contractor of the marriage a brother-in-law, 
 any more than there is to make him the father, or the 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 45 
 
 actual or own brother, of the widow about to be 
 married. These, also, would have been both of 
 them near kinsmen ; and might, either of them, have 
 been made use of, as we may say, to beget a son, in 
 the place of him who should have been the father, 
 the deceased man. If these near kinsmen were 
 excluded, as we shall all feel that they were ex- 
 cluded, they were excluded not by express mention 
 of them in the law, but by the general teaching of 
 nature, and by the law of incest elsewhere expressed; 
 and so likewise, it is competent to us to argue, 
 marriages of brothers with brothers' wives, if they 
 were not made the subject of special exemption, as 
 we cannot find that they were, must be held in hke 
 manner to be excluded by the general teaching of 
 nature, and by the law of incest elsewhere expressed. 
 It has come therefore to this, that the sole 
 vindication of the practice, whether as supposably 
 profiered by Jews in ancient times, or given by 
 modern interpreters, must be extracted from the 
 provisionary expression, " If brethren dwell together, 
 and one of them die. ..." A plea must be raised 
 from these words, to the effect that the law was made 
 with reference to brothers. The counter-plea, of 
 course, is that the word brethren here, as the word 
 sister in Leviticus, may have had, if we may not say, 
 has had, corruptly, or mistakenly, a strict and 
 specific meaning imposed upon it, which it was not 
 meant to bear ; and that the foundation is too small, 
 and too insecure, to sustain the superstructure which 
 has been built upon it, — such a superstructure as 
 that a permission, nay, that an injunction, has been 
 given by Grod to commit what would otherwise have 
 
46 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 been incest, in order that a brother might raise up 
 seed to his brother. It must be known to every 
 reader of the Bible that in it the word brother had 
 frequently, most frequently, that wider and generic 
 meaning which from the Hebrew has been conveyed, 
 though with somewhat less profuseness perhaps, to 
 the languages of all, or almost all, the nations of 
 the earth. The members of the same polity, more 
 especially those of the same tribe or group of 
 families, were brethren all of them together, and 
 were constantly so spoken of where the closer, 
 or more accurate, meaning would be clearly inadmis- 
 sible. Of places in illustration of this it will be 
 sufficient that one only be quoted; that particular 
 one being selected, because it happens to have in the 
 Hebrew text, as well as in the English, the very same 
 three words, and those arranged in same relative 
 order of position. The lawgiver says. If " brethren 
 dwell together,'" and one die, such and such shall 
 take place. The Psalmist, How sweet it is when 
 " brethren dwell together ;"' doing so in unity. 
 It is presumed that no one would limit the latter 
 of these sayings to brothers in the stricter sense ; 
 and it is for those whose interest it is to point 
 out, if they can, why, and on what grounds, the 
 phrase should have the closer signification in the 
 one which is denied to it in the other of those places. 
 It will be recalled that it was said that the 
 commonly received interpretation of the words in 
 Deuteronomy is supposed to be supported by a nar- 
 rative in the book Genesis. To the examination 
 of this, therefore, we have now to proceed. The 
 event referred to forms part of the history of Judah, 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 47 
 
 the third in descent from Abraham, The eldest son 
 of the family, through some unexplained cause of 
 offence against God, had died, prematurely and 
 without issue ; his estate in cattle and other effects 
 becoming thereupon, we are to suppose, the property 
 of his youthful widow. In these circumstances it was 
 that the father, by whatsoever motives moved, 
 addressed himself to his second son, in words to this 
 effect, "Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry 
 her, and raise up seed unto thy brother;" using for 
 the word marry the peculiar Hebrew term which 
 has been already under our consideration — a term 
 nowhere used with relation to ordinary marriages, 
 but reserved for this particular marriage, — a mar- 
 riage with a widow, without children, and in 
 possession of the property of her late husband, 
 carrying with it, as the legally prescribed con- 
 sequence, the transference of the estate from the 
 husband and wife to the first-born son. The young 
 man appears to have been restrained from obedience 
 to the parental injunction not at all by moral 
 considerations, and to have gone on so far as to 
 have become guilty of virtual incest, of actual incest 
 we may say in the sight of God ; but other considera- 
 tions of a lower and selfish character intervening, he 
 evaded the consummation of the marriage, " lest that 
 he should give seed to his brother;" "for he knew 
 that the seed should not be his." As we may readily 
 have supposed, such conduct could not obtain the 
 approval of a God who knows the motives of the 
 heart. " The thing which he did displeased the 
 Lord; wherefore He slew him." "We are left to 
 decide for ourselves whether the displeasure given 
 
48 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 was caused by what lie did, or by Lis not doing 
 more than he did. The former supposition is, to say 
 the least, as reasonable as the latter, and no less 
 consonant with either the teaching generally of the 
 Scriptures, or with the teaching of this narrative in 
 particular. The restraint put upon himself through 
 motives of self-interest alone could not be permitted 
 to stay the avenging hand, and would, rather than 
 otherwise, have enhanced the guilt. That this was 
 the father's perception of the true state of the case 
 will seem probable, when the record of the whole 
 event is closely studied. Unwilling, on the one hand, 
 that the estate should pass away by the marriage of 
 his daughter-in-law into another family, and, on the 
 other, unwilling to expose to peril of destruction the 
 life of a third son, he seems meanly to have prevailed 
 with the young woman to decline other suitors, and 
 to remain a widow in her father's housp ; alleging 
 the youthfulness of the next brother as a reason for 
 delay. When, however, this pretext could no longer 
 be pleaded, through lapse of time, he still shrunk back 
 from forwarding the marriage of the young man, 
 " for he said. Lest peradventure he die also, as his 
 brethren died." Again, as before, it is left to us to 
 judge for ourselves as to the meaning and motive of' 
 the utterance. This being so, we cannot but reflect 
 that the withholding his son from the marriage (on 
 the supposition that it was required by the Divine 
 will) would of the two perils seem to be the greater, 
 and that so it must have presented itself to the 
 father, if he did really believe that his second son 
 had died because of a wrong done to his elder 
 brother, through the not having a seed raised up to 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Sticcession. 49 
 
 him, to inherit his name and estate. We may 
 reasonably think that cautions and counsels on the 
 matter, frankly and pointedly given, would have 
 been a way more likely to preserve the life of the 
 third son than the suffering him to become charge- 
 able with perseverance in the wrong. It seems 
 probable, therefore, that he saw reason to infer that 
 to the incest, or to the near approach to it, and the 
 virtual perpetration of it, was due the death of the 
 second of his sons who had died. However this 
 may have been, the narrative framed as we have it 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit cannot be 
 said to prove, if it can be said to give even a colour- 
 able probabihty to, the doctrine of levirate marriage, 
 as an institution emanating from God and ordained 
 by Him. Nor does it derogate from the force of 
 our reasoning that the father is reported to have 
 said, after his own unconscious incest with his 
 daughter-in-law at a later time, " She hath been 
 more righteous than I ; because I gave her not to 
 Shelah my son." Unfaithfulness to his undertaking, 
 the result of covetousness, and injury done to the 
 young woman's prospects in life by detaining her in 
 protracted widowhood, will give sufl&cient meaning 
 to the expression, pointing as it does to the con- 
 demnation of the line of conduct of which he was 
 conscious, in that he had promised a husband to the 
 young woman, and had found her none. 
 
 With this we close our examination of the cor- 
 roborative argument, or what is advanced as such, 
 framed from the usage among the Jews, known and 
 acknowledged, of marriage with deceased brothers' 
 wives. If to any student of our argument it should 
 
 D 
 
50 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 seem that undue space has been allotted to this 
 portion of it, the answer is this, — that such accuracy, 
 or, if it must be so spoken of, such lengthiness, of 
 treatment has been made necessary to us by the 
 conviction we have of the extent to which the 
 knowledge of levirate marriage has been allowed to' 
 prepossess the minds of not a few. It is thought 
 that, although but rarely, or scarcely ever, brought 
 to the front in the contention, it has throughout 
 exercised a powerful, though an unacknowledged, 
 influence in the formation of a judgment in favour 
 of marriage with deceased wives' sisters. Rather 
 than protruded (against which protrusion there 
 have been some evident reasons), it has been held, as 
 it were, in reserve for men to fall back upon, for 
 their justification at the least in their own sight, 
 in the event of their being foiled in the struggle 
 of argument upon other points. Again and again, 
 doubtless, to those who welcome such thoughts has 
 come the wholly or half formed reflection, — " Grod 
 directed His people of old to marry brothers' wives : 
 and can He, therefore, count as incest in me the 
 indulging my wish by marrying my wife's sister?" 
 It is against such a thought that we have contended 
 at so great length. 
 
 We have now arrived at the third and concluding 
 part of our programme. Having in the first part 
 set forth, to the best of our power, whether con- 
 vinced by them or not, the arguments which may 
 be proffered for the legality of these marriages ; and, 
 in the second, endeavoured to test the sufficiency of 
 these arguments, and show where, in our judgment, 
 they are found fairly controvertible ; wanting, or, to 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 51. 
 
 speak more strictly, incorrect; it comes now, in 
 turn, tliat we should put forth such as may seem 
 the most deserving of notice upon the opposite side, 
 that is to say, on the side of the unlawfulness of 
 marriages with deceased wives' sisters, — of their 
 unlawfulness, because of incest attributable to them 
 by the teachings alike of nature and of the written 
 Word of God. We are to maintain that these 
 marriages, although not specifically enumerated in 
 the list of those condemned, are nevertheless in- 
 cluded within the general terms of the prohibition 
 of incest, and that they can be shown to be exactly 
 analogous to other marriages which have had specific 
 mention made of them, and which are condemned. 
 
 If illegality in these marriages there is, that 
 illegality must be due to their being contrary to the 
 provisions of published law; which contrariety 
 must admit of proof, either by the language of the 
 law taken by itself, or else by this taken together 
 with deductions from it, having like force as express 
 words themselves would have had. The language 
 of the law before us is comprehensive and brief; so 
 brief, indeed, that it may be cited in extenso here. 
 Thus, then, it runs, " None of you shall approach to 
 any that is near of kin to him." The signature 
 and attestation of the Legislator have been appended, 
 for the greater inforcement of it upon those whom 
 it may concern, " I am the Lord." The whole law 
 of marriage, as far as it touches incest, is contained 
 in this one clause. If therefore the sister-in-law, 
 the wife's sister, is not near of kin to him in the 
 sense intended, the man who is purposing to marry 
 her, his former wife having deceased, is free to carry 
 
 D 2 
 
52 The Questio7i of Incest relatively to 
 
 out his purpose. She is not within the prohibition 
 of the statute. If, on the other hand, she is among 
 those who are his near of kin in the assignments of 
 incest, then, the law withholds the contracting of the 
 marriage from him. If entered upon, the union 
 will be an incestuous one. This much will be, as 
 indeed it must be, accepted by controversialists on 
 either side. 
 
 We have then a law, None shall approach to near 
 of kin ; and we have a relative by marriage, a wife's 
 sister. Are we to bring her within the law, or, can 
 we not bring her within the law ? Herein is issue 
 joined. 
 
 Now since in this statute we are not supplied 
 with definitions prefixed, such as we commonly 
 have in the acts of our own legislature, we have to 
 find out for ourselves, JDy whatever helps may be 
 afforded us, the statutable meaning of the terms 
 employed, the meaning of the words which, in our 
 English version, are represented by the phrase near 
 of Idn. As these are, and are admitted to be, a 
 paraphrase, and not a verbal translation, we must 
 render back the language to as near a proximity to 
 the original as we can make it attain. There are 
 two words to be dealt with. The latter of these 
 unquestionably means flesh, and with the pronoun 
 which is attached to it his, his own, flesh. The 
 other, however, may have no less than three several 
 meanings assigned, and in accordance with these 
 we may read None shall approach to any remainder 
 of his flesh, to any leaven of his flesh, to any flesh 
 of his flesh. This raises the question whether this 
 grouping of meanings in one word is casual, or 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 53 
 
 whetlier it was designed, and, in that case, designed 
 with the intention of expounding the law, through 
 this introduction of a word having a conglomerate 
 interpretation. It is certainly remarkable and 
 attractive of attention, when we note the relevancy 
 to our subject of each of the meanings severally, 
 and go on to observe the developed and full meaning 
 which is obtained by giving them convergence, and 
 uniting them in one comprehensive import. If 
 inoestuousness is to be considered as gradually 
 shaded off from a centre to a circumferential line, 
 then, so long as a sufficient amount of flesh, in the 
 sense intended in the law, remains, incest ensues on 
 sexual intercourse ; and when the remainder no 
 more exists, when the flesh (in whatsoever sense) 
 has become so attenuated in quantity or quality, or 
 in both, as to be no longer a sufficient remainder, 
 then, incest ceases to be predicable. The remainder 
 of his flesh has, therefore, a relevant meaning. 
 Again : leaven is relevant ; for the oneness of the 
 two persons within the bounding-line is essentially 
 zymotic. In either person respectively there is a 
 pervading of that one by the other, an interpene- 
 tration of being, which although mysterious, as in 
 the Scriptures it is declared to be, is yet real and 
 provable. And once more : ^esh is relevant, and 
 indeed is etymologically pointed to, two-thirds of 
 its letters being incorporated in the word which 
 follows, and with which it is linked ; and this 
 rendering, moreover, carries us back to the expres- 
 sion put into the mouth of Adam by God, " This is 
 now flesh of my flesh." If this accumulation of 
 meanings in one word is but casual, time has been 
 
54 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 wasted in adverting to it ; but if it was designed, 
 it demands notice, not only for the support whicli it 
 gives to the argument which is being maintained, 
 but also for the rays of light which it throws on 
 what, to say the least, is partially obscure. Whether 
 it was, or was not, intentional must be left to each 
 several judgment to decide; and, if one only is to 
 be taken, then, which of the meanings it shall be. 
 In any case the word must not be regarded as a 
 meaningless superfluity in the clause in which it 
 occurs. 
 
 The entire and full meaning of the aggregate of 
 the words has now to be traced, so far as we may 
 be able to trace it, — the words None of you shall 
 approach to any which is near of kin to him ; 
 which we interpret to mean — to any one that hath 
 remainder, or leaven, or flesh, of his flesh, all, or 
 any one of these. 
 
 One or two thoughts present themselves, stand- 
 ing as it were on the threshold of the inquiry. A 
 man, according to this -prohibition, must, in some 
 sense, in the sense contemplated by the law, have 
 flesh, flesh of his own, existing apart from himself, 
 in other persons, in persons besides his personal 
 Self. This must necessarily be true, paradoxical 
 as it may seem, since none could, with any intelli- 
 gible use of words, be said to approach to that 
 which is already in himself, inherent within his own 
 personal or corporeal frame. Again. Incest can 
 be perpetrated with no one with whom there is not 
 a previously existing consanguinity. This also 
 comes from the language of the law, inasmuch as 
 consanguinity and participation in flesh are, in this 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 55 
 
 context, convertible terms. Where there is mutual 
 flesh, in any meaning of those words, in that 
 meaning, there must be mutual blood also; and 
 "wherever the same blood is in two persons there' is 
 also in them the ^ame flesh. The inhibition to a 
 man to approach, by conjugal intercourse, his own 
 flesh, conveys to him a commandment to refrain 
 from such intercourse with any related to him by 
 the relationship of consanguinity. It cannot be 
 made to apply to any other than to these. Leave 
 must be given to dwell upon this thought for a 
 further moment or two, since it may have relevant, 
 and important, issues. A popular and all but 
 universal usage distinguishes between relationship 
 by consanguinity and relationship by affinity, in 
 respect to marriages against which incest, rightly 
 or wrongly, is being charged, and there is, at the 
 very least, a general feeling that the two cannot 
 pretend to parity of claim. But it appears from 
 the law that this judgment is technically erroneous. 
 We find by direct inference from the decree None 
 shall approach to his own flesh that, in order to the 
 violation of it, consanguinity must in every case 
 have intervened, as well as affinity ; that incest is 
 in effect produced, and always and solely produced, 
 by the unperrnitted addition of the one of these to 
 the other of them. We find, moreover, from the 
 fratning of this legal dictum, that incest comes 
 through the concurrence of an antecedent consan- 
 guinity with a subsequent affinity ; that the relative 
 order of this precession and sequence is never, can 
 never, be varied. It follows, unless these thoughts 
 are baseless, that if marriage with a former wife's 
 
56 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 sister is incestuous, then, the man, before the 
 commencement of sexual intercourse, must have 
 had flesh, in the statutable sense as has been said, 
 existing within the sister of his deceased wife, and 
 that- his relationship with her cannot be truly 
 spoken of as that of affinity only and not that of 
 consanguinity. This much seems to be deducible, 
 irrefutably, from the language of this law. We 
 have said that this thought, or this fact as it should 
 rather be spoken of, may prove to have relevant, 
 and important, issues. The conclusion at which we 
 have arrived will have to be borne in memory, when 
 we have under consideration the much debated 
 question whether a man, by his marriage, acquires 
 such oneness of flesh with his wife as to make her 
 relatives his own ; so truly and really his own, as, 
 in the particular instance of her sister, to preclude 
 him from adding, as husband, to the relationship of 
 which he has come into possession, as brother. 
 
 This, however, leaves untouched the question 
 What is this statutable sense ? To this, therefore, 
 difficult as it is of solution, we must now apply 
 ourselves. 
 
 It cannot be material, that is to say bodily, flesh 
 that is intended in every case, — if we may not 
 rather say, in any case. This is important, and it 
 must be proved. We claim to prove it in two 
 ways ; by the media of the nearest, and of one of 
 the more remote of the relationships specified in the 
 Levitical chapter, — by the relationship subsisting 
 between a son and his mother, and a man and the 
 granddaughter of his deceased wife by a previous 
 marriage. In the case of a man and his mother. 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 57 
 
 tlie physiologist has assured us, and there is ^ no 
 reason to doubt the correctness of his assertion, 
 that, in the lapse of time from the birth to the 
 maturity of a man, eyery particle of both flesh and 
 blood in the bodies of both mother and son will 
 have been parted with by natural effluxion, and 
 have been replaced, perhaps over and over again, 
 by new ones. Yet when they come together, the 
 grown-up man and his mother, who would venture 
 to challenge the incest upon this account ? Again, 
 in the supposed case of the wife's granddaughter, 
 the parent of the young woman, that is, the wife's 
 daughter, was, by the hypothesis, detached from her 
 mother's womb, and given to have an independent 
 and separate existence, before that mother began to 
 have conjugal connexion with the man to whom she 
 was afterwards married. It may be asked, there- 
 fore, with no possibility of an affirmative answer. 
 Could the corporeal flesh or blood of the man have 
 penetrated, in ^ny the least degree, to the offspring 
 of an offspring, who herself was parted from her 
 mother before the man had had intercourse with 
 her as a husband ? This observation is important, 
 for other consequences which flow from it indeed, 
 but more particularly for the influence which it 
 must have in revising the popular distinction be- 
 tween relationships effected by consanguinity and 
 affinity, seeing that the wife's granddaughter is, in 
 the Scriptures of Grod, disallowed to the man 
 because, in approaching her, he would approach Ms 
 own flesh. 
 
 Thus far we have reached but to a negative 
 conclusion, namely, that the flesh which is inter- 
 
5 8 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 dieted cannot be the remainder, or leaven, or flesli, 
 of material flesli. Still, to the man legislated for it 
 is Ms flesh. If not in an exact physical sense, then, 
 how, or in what sense, can the man have of his 
 flesh in another than himself ? To this renewed 
 inquiry the first suggestion that offers itself for an 
 answer is, naturally, that, if not materially, it must 
 be figuratively, his flesh. But this must be laid 
 aside, and at once. Figures of speech may have 
 correspondingly figurative consequences and results, 
 but nothing more. They cannot force an egress 
 out of their own domain, and pass into another. 
 Incest is not a figurative crime, but a very real 
 one, and punishable with an actual, not a meta- 
 phorical, penalty. The suggestion, therefore, is 
 wholly inadequate, and must as such be dismissed. 
 
 If then this oneness of flesh which constitutes 
 consanguinity, in the meaning of the law, and causes 
 incest to be incest, is not necessarily, if it can be 
 at all, participation by two persons in the same 
 material flesh, and if, on the other hand, it is not 
 figuratively so spoken of, but is actual and real, — 
 what is it ? Upon studying how the various con- 
 ditions of the problem may be met and solved, 
 certain facts will present themselves, and certain 
 inferences seem to be drawn not illicitly, being such 
 as, viewed in the aggregate, will tend to substan- 
 tiate the opinion that the sister of a wife is included 
 within the ranges which hold,' and inclose, incestuous 
 connexion. 
 
 The mysterious interpenetration of being, so to 
 speak, which in certain definable cases God and 
 nature have caused to take place, although not 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 59 
 
 involving identity of matter, is yet such, and so 
 pervading, as to have extended itself to the material 
 no less than to the immaterial constituents of eacli 
 of the several parties. Therefoji?e it is, that truly 
 and not figuratively it is ordered, that none shall 
 approach to tlie remainder or leaven of his flesli. 
 It is necessary that we possess ourselves of this 
 fact. Acts of incest are primarily, though not, as 
 such, exclusively, acts of the body. If the inter- 
 penetration had not found its way to the body, 
 incest would not be what it is. We are assisted in 
 the apprehension of this matter, so difl&cult to grasp, 
 and were doubtless meant to be so, by that which 
 ' is said in the Holy Scriptures of the interpenetration 
 of ourselves by the Divine One, and not that only, 
 but, marvellous as it is, by the interpenetration in 
 turn of Him by us. Thus it is proclaimed,- — we 
 quote with all reverence, — "Whosoever shall confess 
 that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, 
 and he in God." Again, in another place it is by 
 that Son declared of Himself (whether with reference 
 to a sacrament or not it is beside our present 
 purpose to inquire), " He that eateth My flesh, and 
 drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him." 
 That this interpenetration extends to His body we 
 are made to know, since it is said, "We are 
 members," participating portions that is, " of His 
 body, of His flesh and of His bones." And, still 
 more deeply, if that be possible, " The Word became 
 flesh and dwelt among us," or, more exactly, in us. 
 Not without reverence and awe should we, or do we, 
 apply this illustration to our present theme ; nor 
 indeed might we have justified ourselves in doing so 
 
6o The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 at all, if tlie revealing word of God had not already 
 done it for our use. Twice, as is well known, is 
 the illustration given; once, in demonstrating the 
 oneness of a man and his wife ; and once, in 
 demonstrating the heinousness of the sin, when 
 members of Christ are being taken and made 
 members of an harlot. If therefore there is any 
 passing of being from the husband of a wife to the 
 sister of a wife, through the wife intervening, or, 
 contrariwise, from the sister of the wife to the 
 husband of the wife, or, reciprocally from the one 
 to the other on either side, the transference is made 
 to reach to the bodily structure, as well as to the 
 immaterial resident within it. 
 
 It comes therefore to this, that this mutual 
 permeation of being must be accepted by us as one 
 of the mysteries of our nature lying out of the 
 reach of our powers of investigation, the existence 
 of which we know and can predicate certainly from 
 its work, the production of incest following on 
 sexual intercourse, but which, its very self, and 
 what it is, we can neither explain to others, nor 
 ourselves mentally apprehend. Not material on the 
 one hand, not imaginary and existing in a figure of 
 speech only on the other, it inheres and is within 
 us, by the ordering of God, and the operation of 
 nature. It is because of something having mutual 
 existence in mother and son, something, mutually 
 existing in brother and sister, that these pairs 
 cannot come together without incest ; and, if these, 
 so, in their several degrees, others who are within 
 the encircling boundary-line of near relationship. 
 This we know, and this is nearly all that we know. 
 
Marriage luith Sisters in Succession. 6i 
 
 in I'espect to this mystery. When we bring together 
 the similar poles of two magnetised needles, they 
 will, as every one is aware, repel each other from 
 the contact. "We find that in them there is some- 
 thing, and something which seems to issue and pass 
 forth from them, which interferes with their coming 
 into junction. Now this something, although it is 
 true we may know somewhat about it, is to us 
 invisible. It is not discernible, nor otherwise 
 apprehensible, by any faculties which we possess. 
 Yet we can predicate with all certainty its existence, 
 and its presence, and what we may call its proper- 
 ties of self-retraction and of repulsion of its like. 
 In making use of this illustration it is not, of 
 course, meant by us that nearly related persons are 
 repelled, each from the other, by any causation 
 resemblihg that which acts in the magnetic needles. 
 "What we mean is this, that the presence of that 
 which is not cognizable by our senses can be 
 demonstrated from the eflfects which it produces, 
 which effects it is not possible to deny. In this 
 context it is proper, perhaps, that we should limit 
 the amount of application allowable to the illus- 
 tration just previously given, — that of the union of 
 the Divine Being with ourselves. That the illus- 
 tration is not incorrect we know, as has been said, 
 from the holy Scripture itself; but we should not 
 therefore be, in the least degree, warranted in 
 drawing an inference, that there is from the one 
 of two relatives tp the other of two relatives 
 an emanation, such as we accept and believe 
 in, when we speak of the gift of the Holy Spirit 
 whereby we are " made partakers of the Divine 
 
62 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 nature," and whereby we inhere and dwell in God, 
 and God in us. 
 
 Although what is now being stated is strictly 
 true, that the nature and character of the perme- 
 ation is unknown to us, that we may not describe it 
 as an emanation from the one to another of two 
 persons, uniting and making them one, nor describe 
 its repelling influences as effluent streams refusing 
 to be intermingled, yet we must persistently claim 
 for it that its reality is not to be lost out of sight, 
 nor so to be pared away as to be reduced to a 
 nonentity, or to all but such. With this object, the 
 proof of reality, we require it to be observed and 
 acknowledged that this mutual reception of being is 
 so thorough, in the strictest sense of that word, 
 that, once had, it can never, in this world at the 
 least,^ which is all the area with which we have 
 now to do, be parted with, howsoever much that 
 may in some instances be desired. When once in 
 any case it has had entrance given to it, thence- 
 forward it remains an inalienable constituent of the 
 personal being, or self. It is beyond the power of 
 any person to annihilate matter, or to effect the 
 destruction of his own existence. To separate from 
 himself the being of another which has become a 
 part of his own is not less so. It cannot be done 
 by our own volition. It cannot be done for us by 
 the action of our fellow-men. The putting away, 
 even lawfully, by divorce,^ leaves it unaffected. The 
 
 ' " In this world at least." It is not meant by this expression 
 to imply that there will not be an eternal union elsewhere, in 
 some celestial way, between those, in Christ, who by birth, or 
 marriage, have been united in this present life. 
 
 " An inadvertent e.xprcssion in the former edition of this 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 63 
 
 removal by death of any one through whom nearness 
 of kin with remoter ones has come in is inoperative. 
 The nearness with those more distant ones will 
 abide untouched, the divorce notwithstanding, the 
 death notwithstanding, — the same as it was before. 
 The pervasion is not as though it had only pene- 
 trated deeply with a deep root. The relationship has 
 become inei-adicable, by the passing of the existence 
 of the one of the parties into that of the other. 
 
 "We ask also that it may be noted, and laid up in 
 mind, that, as this communication of being is not 
 interfered with by putting away or by decease, so 
 neither is it diminished by lapse of time, however 
 considerable that may be. This has been already 
 said in part, but it is here introduced again, that 
 the modus operandi of this mystical residence of the 
 being of one within another may be somewhat more 
 fully studied. It would' seem that the communi- 
 cated being (the word is repeated so often, because 
 no other perhaps would express what has to be 
 expressed so well) like personal identity, abides amid, 
 and notwithstanding, the natural continuous change 
 going on in that within which it inheres, and with 
 which we may almost say that it is one. The only 
 account to be given would seem to be this, that 
 evermore, as the new flesh and the new blood are 
 being formed, to replace the outgoing flesh and 
 
 pamphlet has very properly had attention called to it as incorrect. 
 The bond of marriage cannot be dissolved, by the adultery of either 
 man or -woman, but by God alone, Who pronounces the dissolution, 
 for sufficient cause given by one or both of these, acting through 
 some Court, or other authority, duly constituted. But even, in 
 such case, as is here remarked, the relationships once acquired 
 continue. 
 
64 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 blood, they are, in some way by us not understood, 
 pervaded and possessed as they come in, and that, 
 so really, so thoroughly, that the nearness of kin 
 remains undiminished in amount to the very close 
 of even a long life. This remark has, indeed, no 
 special bearing on the relationships with wives' 
 sisters more than other relationships, but it has a 
 place allowed it as helping (so it is thought) to our 
 grasp of this fact which, after all our efforts to 
 state or to apprehend it, will continue, expressed or 
 unexpressed, to be mysterious and abstruse. 
 
 As we draw towards the close of our argument, 
 it becomes necessary to press on the consideration 
 of those who have to judge it that the whole doctrine 
 of incest, as between persons liot originally related 
 by birth, rests upon the absolute truth of this state- 
 ment, that, through marriage and matrimonial inter- 
 course, two persons will have become one flesh; 
 that the being of the husband will have passed into 
 the being of the wife, and the being of the wife into 
 the being of the husband, so that they will have 
 become one, in the most real and the most complete 
 sense of that word. According to this proposition, 
 if it be indeed accurately true, not only will the 
 husband and wife become one by a coalescence, so 
 perfect that perfect oneness itself will have been 
 arrived at, but the consequences of the oneness will 
 have extended themselves to all the congenital 
 relationships on either side, until the boundary-line, 
 where incest ceases to be, shall have been reached. 
 The language of the Divine Scriptures is not 
 doubtful, but clear and precise upon this point. 
 Not only is the statement implied, in words to be 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 65 
 
 found in tlie second chapter of Genesis and in the 
 fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Bphesians, words 
 to the effect that two shall pass into one flesh (for 
 such is, in either case, the more accurate meaning 
 of the phrase employed), but it is mad.e absolute by- 
 expressions used by the Lord Himself, and recorded 
 by the Evangelist St. Matthew in his nineteenth 
 chapter, " They are no more twain, but one flesh;" 
 made so, because by God " joined together," and by 
 man not to be dissevered. 
 
 The reality of the oneness which has been effected 
 between a man and the wife whom he has married 
 is to be demonstrated, as has been already said, by 
 the singular employment of expressions which speak 
 of the uncovering of nakedness. This, indeed, is 
 so remarkable, that it may be offered as a tenable 
 proposition, that the phrase was constructed by the 
 Holy Ghost in view of the very use to which we are 
 now engaged in putting it. Here are instances to 
 the point : " The nakedness of thy father's wife thou 
 shalt not uncover. It is thy father's nakedness." 
 " Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy 
 father's brother. Thou shalt not approach unto his 
 wife." " Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of 
 thy brother's wife. It is thy brother's nakedness." 
 
 In each one of the foregoing expressions there is 
 apparent, as any one may see, a complication or 
 involution of meaning, such, that it defies direct 
 and grammatical interpretation. The key to the 
 phrase is, it is submitted, what is now being treated 
 of, the conveyance of the husband's being to the 
 wife, and the wife's to the husband ; so that what is 
 predicable of the one, in respect to these matters, is 
 
66 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 predicable of the other, as though each were 
 mutually contained in each; which indeed is the 
 fact. If any one of the examples just recited be 
 put under examination, what we are meaning to 
 educe will be seen at once. Let it be, for instance, 
 the commission of incest with a stepmother. "When 
 a son having intercourse with a woman not by birth 
 related to him can be said, through that intercourse, 
 to uncover a father s nakedness, we may conclude, 
 ex vi termini, as the logicians speak, the complete 
 oneness of that woman with her husband. By this 
 very peculiar, and what if it were not in the Holy 
 Scriptures we might call this very adroit, use of 
 language, she is brought within the circle, and the 
 incest made to be of the very worst kind, that 
 between offspring and parent. The same remark 
 has application to the uncovering of a brother's 
 nakedness by incest with a brother's wife. Brother 
 and sister are correlative terms, and by none but a 
 sister could this be to a brother. So the incest i§ 
 made to be between a sister and a brother; made 
 lingually so, in order that we may infer that it is so 
 made actually. An appended expression with respect 
 to connexion with the wife of an uncle is worthy of 
 notice, " Thou shalt not approach unto his wife. 
 She is thine aunt." The word in the Hebrew 
 language is the same which is used of a father's 
 sister. The aunt, then, who is forbidden as the 
 uncle's wife, is thus made a relative by blood 
 lingually, that the reality of her relationship, for the 
 purposes of incest, may by the mind be inferred. 
 
 The time has now at length arrived for the 
 bringing into review the schedule of examples by 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 67 
 
 which, the law None of you shall approach to any 
 that is near of kin to him is illustrated, and ex- 
 plained, in the chapter in which it is found. In 
 doing this we shall not keep them to the order in 
 which they occur, but arrange and sort them so as 
 may best suit the plan of our argument. 
 
 Placing, then, under our view, in the proper 
 mental focus, an imagined man, one who is or has 
 been married, and surrounding this man with a 
 group of proscribed female relatives, such by birth, 
 all of them supposed to be still surviving, and 
 assorting these by means of a series of concentric 
 circles, we shall have within the innermost circle 
 the mother who bare him, and the daughter whom 
 he has begotten. With neither of these may he 
 marry. They are, in the fullest degree, his own 
 flesh. In the circular area next outside this interior 
 one, we shall have (by implication) his parents' two 
 mothers ; his daughter's daughter ; and his parents' 
 other offspring, his sisters. These, likewise, are 
 forbidden him, as being in the next degree his 
 nearest of kin. And lastly, within a circle carried 
 still further back, we shall have the offspring of his 
 parents' parents, the sisters of his father and the 
 sisters of his mother. These relatives complete the 
 list so far. He is forbidden mother, daughter, 
 granddaughter, sister, and aunt. From some of 
 these has been derived, and to some of them has 
 been sent forth, that indescribable participation in 
 being which, where it exists, makes sexual inter- 
 course to be incestuous ; and makes it so, by the 
 laws, alike, of right feeling, of nature, and of God. 
 Only in the two nearest, those in which parent and 
 
 B 2 
 
68 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 offspring are brought together, is the communication 
 direct and immediate. In the others, it has come 
 indirectly, through intervening persons ; those inter- 
 posed ones holding in themselves, at one and the 
 same time, the one on the one side, and the other 
 on the other side, of them, and becoming thus the 
 means of union for the uniting of the two exterior 
 relatives, if we may so , speak of them, and for im- 
 parting to them sameness of flesh, in and through 
 a central relative common to them both. That the 
 relationship which causes incest never does, nor can, 
 pass 'per saltum a momentary thought will suffice to 
 show. Where it is not direct and immediate, it must 
 always, and necessarily, have been conveyed. 
 
 Retaining still our imagined man in the field of 
 vision, we have now to make an important alteration 
 in his surroundings. Hitherto we have looked at 
 him encircled by a company of female relatives, 
 made such by innate relationship. We have, instead 
 of these, to encompass him with male relatives of 
 like kind, that is, having respectively similar degrees 
 of relationship. To these male relatives we are to 
 give wives, and to observe what ensues. Instead 
 of mother, daughter, sister, and aunt, we have now 
 to contemplate an assemblage of wives, — the wives 
 of father, son, brother, and father's brother. What 
 relationship do we find these women bearing to the 
 man, in the Levitical valuations ? The father's 
 wife, by becoming one flesh with him, has received 
 into herself all the relationships that were pre- 
 existing in her husband, and so she has become the 
 mother of him whom we have placed in the imaginary 
 centre. The son's wife will, in like manner, have 
 
Marriage with Sisiers in S\tccession. 69 
 
 become his son in the feminine gender, if such an 
 expression may be used. The brother's wife, again, 
 by her reception of the brother's kinsmanship, has 
 come to be the sister of the man. And the uncle's 
 "wife is to him, as indeed she is spoken of in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, his father's sister, an aunt both 
 in name and in fact. Thus the man has become 
 furnished with an entire set of acquired " near of 
 kin to him." Originally, and for years of his life 
 perhaps, they had no relationship whatever to him, 
 but now as stepmother. Stepdaughter, sister-in-law, 
 and aunt by marriage, they are not distinguished, 
 nor distinguishable, in the Levitical chapter from 
 the birth-relatives in the corresponding degrees of 
 kinsmanship. So perfect is the oneness of flesh in 
 the marital state exhibited to us, that no diminution 
 is allowed to be, upon the ground that these rela- 
 tives ,by marriage are only such, and that they are 
 not relatives through birth. 
 
 Our next measure will be the removal, from his 
 place in the centre, of the man whose connexion 
 with those around him we have been scanning ; we 
 are to place there a female in his stead. She too is 
 to be one who is or has been married, and is to have 
 around her the same circle of surviving relatives 
 that the man who preceded her had. We have to 
 observe, then, what will follow upon this change. 
 As the man might not marry his mother, nor his 
 stepmother, so may not this woman her father, nor 
 her stepfather. As the man was prohibited con- 
 jugal connexion with his daughter, or his son's 
 wife, so, this woman like connexion with her son, 
 or her daughter's husband. Once more, as the man 
 
yo The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 miglit not take to wife his sister, nor his brother's 
 wife, so may not this woman have for a husband 
 her brother, or — unless we had checked ourselves, 
 we should have gone on to say, her sister's husband. 
 But here, by the terms of this contention, we are 
 arrested, and are abruptly stopped. We are not 
 allowed to complete the analogy, by adding the 
 husband of her sister. The sister's husband is to 
 be put back, so it is claimed, out beyond the furthest 
 of the concentric circles of near kinsmanship, so as 
 to become to her marriageable, as any other outside 
 them might be. 
 
 Again, and now but this once more, we have to 
 make an alteration in the figure occupying our ideal 
 centre. This time, let it be the same man as 
 formerly, but with this addition, that the wife who 
 has become one flesh with him shall have been pre- 
 viously married to a husband now deceased, and 
 shall by him have offspring yet alive. "We are to 
 study what near-of-kin relationships the man will 
 have come into possession of by this particular 
 marriage, and what new prohibitions will have 
 emerged into existence in consequence of it. By 
 the absolute oneness of the woman with her new 
 husband, which this marriage will have brought 
 about, the wife's mother will, of course, have 
 become the man's mother; and, since a man may 
 not marry his mother, she is placed beyond his 
 access at all future time. By the same oneness, and 
 this is our special point, the wife's daughter, though 
 detached from her mother, as has been said, pre- 
 viously to this her second marriage, is also too near 
 of kin. She likewise, to the close of lifetime, may 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 71 
 
 never become tlie wife of the man, nor be approached 
 for marriage by Mm. Nor her daughter's daughter; 
 for she also is too near. There remains yet, in this 
 catalogue of relationships, the wife's sister. Con- 
 cerning her the decision is demanded that she, and 
 she alone, of all these relatives, is not too near, that 
 she is so distant as not to be affected. In regard 
 to her, although to her only, we are called upon to 
 rule that the deceased wife is to be considered as 
 not to have been with her husband one flesh, in 
 such sense as to make the sister of the one the 
 sister of the other. If, upon our part, it be urged, 
 in rejoinder, that in the book of God she is set forth 
 as having been with him one flesh, even so far as 
 to make her mother his mother, her daughter his 
 daughter, her granddaughter his granddaughter, 
 yet our rejoinder is to be rejected, and the relevancy 
 disallowed. It is not to be claimed as therefore 
 following, that she has been with him one flesh, so 
 far as to make her sister also his sister. 
 
 This, then, is our contention, supported, we think, 
 as by the arguments which have gone before, so 
 now, more recently, by an examination of the 
 schedule of certain incestuous marriages given in 
 exemplification and for guidance, — this is our claim, 
 — that marriage with the sister of a wife already 
 had is not to be allowed, but is to be held as tainted 
 with incest if it should be contracted. "We find, so 
 we contend, that a circular line drawn so as to 
 touch unions named as incestuous, and to include 
 them, must be drawn at so wide a distance from its 
 centre as to include also this particular one, this 
 one involving a relationship undeniably nearer than 
 
72 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 some of the others that are inclosed. We find, again, 
 so we further contend, that nothing has been alleged, 
 or can be alleged, in favour of this special marriage, 
 "which should exempt it from the operation of the 
 laws of analogical reasoning ; while, if it be brought 
 within the rulings of analogy, it must be condemned, 
 seeing that other marriages precisely similar in their 
 character are distinctly specified in the written law, 
 and are condemned. 
 
 For a survey of the whole argument let the mind 
 be held in poise, so as to look over it from above, — 
 what may be said for the lawfulness of these mar- 
 riages : — what, on the other hand, may be urged in 
 refutation, clause by clause, against the appropria- 
 tion, by the advocates of the marriage, of the dis- 
 puted verse in Leviticus : — why the absence from 
 the proscribed list is not to be regarded as a decision 
 in its favour, and how the argument founded on the 
 custom of levirate marriage among the Jews may 
 be met, and deprived of its cogency. Then again : 
 To what the incest that comes through affinity (in 
 the common sense of that term) is to be traced, 
 namely, the real interpenetration of being, by the 
 will and word of God, causing two persons to become 
 one, thereby bringing in relationships of consan- 
 guinity from either side, and so conveying them as 
 to make them equal, in the valuation, with those 
 that are congenital, and which, by any person, may 
 already have been had in possession. And together 
 with this : — The proofs of the existence of that . 
 rautual pervasion by husband and wife, from which 
 comes incest upon the marriage of the one of them 
 with the near of kin to the other of them, — such 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. ^2) 
 
 proofs including what is published in the Holy- 
 Scriptures of, the inhabitation of ourselves by the 
 Divine Being, and of Him by us, and of the oneness of 
 Christ with His Church, even to participation of His 
 flesh and bones ; including, also, the indestructibility 
 of the cause of incestuousness, either by divorce, or 
 by death, and the teachings to be drawn from the 
 uncovering, so spoken of, of the nakedness of one of 
 two persons married together, by sexual intercourse 
 not with that one at all but with the other of the 
 two. Lastly : How, upon assortment of relationships 
 which are to be set forth as a bar to marriages, the 
 relationship to a man of a wife's sister must be 
 inserted among them, both by inclusion, and from 
 analogy. 
 
 More, and much more, might be added, but the 
 argument has already perhaps been protracted to 
 too great a length, and so here we bring it to an 
 end. 
 
 Appended, but as excrescential observations only, 
 a few remarks follow. They are these. 
 
 Supposing a question not of morality, but of 
 money, to have become in some way connected with 
 this question — as for instance, supposing a consider- 
 able sum, such as a hundred thousand pounds, to 
 have been left by a wealthy widower, his executors 
 being directed to distribute it among all his near of 
 kin, as far as, and including, an uncle's widow, and 
 a granddaughter of a then deceased wife by her 
 former husband; and supposing the sister of that 
 wife were to lay claim to a share, and, having her 
 claim disallowed, were to carry it for adjudication 
 into some court of law,— would not that her claim 
 
74 The Question of Incest relatively to 
 
 be lield to have been substantiated ? If this were 
 so, and if her claim were affirmed, with reference to 
 that one suit (as we all feel that it would be), could 
 she, the same person, consistently seek to have the 
 relationship disaffirmed, with reference to another 
 suit, — that is, when she was claiming to become 
 lawfully married to some other brother-in-law, who 
 might yet be surviving ? 
 
 It is a common custom, with our magistracy, to 
 defer to the known scope and object of a law, when 
 the application of that law in some particular 
 instance is claimed, such instance having had no 
 special mention in the statute referred to. This is 
 so, for example, in proceedings before the constituted 
 authorities for the abatement of some nuisance, 
 alleged undeniably to be prejudicial to the public 
 health of the neighbourhood. If neither named nor 
 exempted, that which is immediately in question 
 will be considered with relation to the general 
 import of the laws made to inforce proper sanitary 
 arrangements. Now the scope and main objects of 
 the laws of incest can scarcely be said to be impene- 
 trable. They are, upon the contrary, clear and evident. 
 These, namely, — first and chiefly, the purification 
 of homes, in which near relatives are constantly 
 together, and in the presence, often, of none other 
 than themselves ; and, secondly and subordinately, 
 the providing of residences for persons who, if the 
 feelings and regulations which restrain from incest 
 were unknown, would have to be refused admission 
 to families wherein now they blamelessly, and un- 
 suspectedly, can dwell. It needs not to be pointed 
 out at length how this knowledge of the law's scopes 
 
Marriage with Sisters in Succession. 75 
 
 and intents affects the question of marriage witli 
 sisters in succession. It must be patent to every 
 one who will give to it even a small amount of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 " God is not the author of confusion." So it is 
 said of Him in another sense. In this, also, we 
 may regard ourselves as entitled to apply the 
 saying. Confusion of relationships, and of titles in 
 accordance with them, arises, necessarily, when a 
 marriage of a man with his former wife's sister 
 shall have taken place. He himself is, at once, 
 husband and brother-in-law, for, as has been said, 
 a relationship once acquired cannot afterwards be 
 put off ; and the woman, at once, sister-in-law and 
 wife. To his own children the man is father and 
 uncle, and his wife, mother and aunt ; the selection 
 of either designation being left to them, if they 
 should choose to exercise their option, as they grow 
 up. The children of the two families, supposing 
 there to be such, are cousins to each other, as well 
 as brothers and sisters. It is not with the spirit of 
 levity that attention is being drawn to these mani- 
 fold complications, this utter confusion — so we may 
 call it — within the precincts of a home. Known, 
 and observable, as is the jperfedness of all arrange- 
 ments which have God for their designer and 
 orderer, the imperfection thus resulting in the 
 present case may be taken, more or less, as an a 
 'priori reason why we should infer that marriage 
 with a sister-in-law is not " of God ;" and, if not of 
 God, then also not consonant with the intentions of 
 nature. 
 
 With these words the writer ends his observations 
 
76 The Question of Incest, &c. 
 
 upon a subject to him more than commonly repul- 
 sive, one taken up "with extreme reluctance, and one 
 on -which he had never written until he engaged 
 himself in the preparation of the former edition of 
 this pamphlet : of which, indeed, he has scarcely 
 ever spoken, before or since that time, even to his 
 nearest relatives and friends. It seemed to him to 
 be the duty of one to whom leisure had been given 
 by God to make research for the sake of others, and 
 to oflFer the result of that research for the consider- 
 ation of those who, as statesmen or otherwise, 
 might not have the like opportunities for study. 
 If the judgment at which he has arrived may seem 
 to some to be a harsh one, he can but plead, in his 
 defence, that he was bound to seek simple and 
 severe truth, even though in doing so he might 
 have to distress some whose feelings he would not 
 wish to wound. The abatements of a benevolent 
 and considerate Mercy follow after : they belong to 
 another, and a higher One, than himself. 
 
 TSIHTi:^ BT GILBEBI AHD IHTISGHOH, IIMIIBD, 61. JOHir'S SQTTABI, LOlTDOlf, B.C.