women and children, to seize their country, and to take possession of their property; and it was executed by Joshua. God commanded Abraham to offer his son, his only son, Isaac, as a burnt-offering, on Mount Moriah. In a case of all cases the most agonizing, the Patriarch, with views wholly different from those of the objector,- instead of stopping to ask, Whether the act were not of such a nature, that God, consistently with his own holiness, could not, under any circumstances, command it,-heard the command, bowed in submission to Him who gave it, and obeyed. Rising up early in the morning, he took his son, the heir of promise, and went to the place, of which God had told him. "And Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." Just as the life of Isaac was on the wing, a Voice from heaven said unto him, "Lay not thy hand upon the lad; neither do thou any thing unto him." What was the nature of this conduct?" Murder!" says the objector; "an Act, which God could not license, consistently with his holiness !"-What said the Voice from Heaven?" Now I know, that thou fearest God; seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.” Had these acts been done without a Divine command, the first would have been a treacherous assassination; the second, a wanton butchery of men women and children; and the third, a cold-blooded murder of an only son. Having been done with that command, they met a high reward from the hands of God. God, however, in commanding these acts, did not command them to be performed with malice or the spirit of murder, any more than he commands the exercise of that spirit in the execution of a murderer. Had he done so,--if we may be justified for one moment in making the horrible supposition,--clouds and darkness, infinitely deeper and more awful than the blackness of darkness itself, would have quenched the glory of the Majesty on High! The ground therefore, taken by the objector, cannot be correct; for it leads to consequences, at which he himself will revolt. "The Maker justly claims the world he made: Life is his gift; and he may take it back, at what time, in what place, under what circumstances, and by what means, instruments, or agents, he pleases. If the command to destroy it, in a given case, certainly proceeds from him; what, in other circumstances, would be murder, becomes an imperious duty. While, therefore, as at present advised, we cannot admit, that even a command of God could justify impiety, or blusphemy, or malice, or perjury; we claim, with perfect consistency, and on grounds which cannot be shaken, that mere External Acts are not in such a sense wrong, that God consistently with his holiness, cannot, under any circumstances, permit or command them. The subject of Marriage and that of Sexual Intercourse stand precisely upon this footing. From the very nature of the case, all commands relating to them must be in one sense of a positive nature. When God had created one man and one woman, "he had," says Malachi "the residue of the spirit ;"-i. e. he had the spirit of life remaining in himself, which he could have imparted to any additional number of females, and then given them to Adam. When he had thus made them, instead of instituting Marriage--the union of one man with one woman-he might have instituted Polygamy ; or he might have simply said to Adam and his sons, as he said to the inferior classes of animals, "Increase, and multiply, and replenish the Earth," and thus left them to a Promiscuous Intercourse. But he made one woman only, and then gave Adam and Eve the Original Law of Marriage, binding all their posterity. That Law was strictly positive in its nature, as resulting from a positive command. Still, in its design, in its binding force, and in the duties which it involves, as well as in the violations, to which it is liable, it is, as we have seen, in the highest sense moral. Yet, in revealing his will to Mankind, respecting one important division of the general subject of marriage, viz. Divorce, God, at three different periods of the history of Man, has given three wholly different Statutory provisions concerning it. The Original Law of Marriage did not allow of Divorces, in any case whatever; and no provision was made for its dissolution but by death; and that, had man been willing to do his duty, was indisputably the only right law for the Human Race. This state of things continued upwards of twenty-five hundred years. The Levitical Code authorized the husband, "if his wife found no favour in his eyes, because he had found some uncleanness in her," to give her a bill of divorcement," which wrought a dissolution of the marriage. This Code was given in a semi-savage state of society; it was, as we have seen, to protect wives from the cruelty or "hard-heartedness" of alienated husbands, in such a state of society, that this legal provision for their relief was made. This state of things continued for nearly fifteen hundred years. Christ abrogates a part of this provision of the Levitical Code, and allows of divorce in a single case-that of incontinence. Hence, under the Christian dispensation, divorce for any cause except incontinence, followed by marriage with another, is adultery; while, under the Levitical, it was lawful for various other causes; and yet under the Patriarchal, even the divorce for incontinence, as well as every other, if followed by marriage, was adultery. Yet these changes in the Law of marriage, or the Great Law regulating Sexual Intercourse, do not prove that that Law is not in the strictest sense a Moral law. Nor would the objector hence argue that fornication, adultery, rape, sodomy and bestiality, were not mala in se, immoralities, crimes in their own nature, but merely mala prohibita, offences created by statute. This is equally true respecting the Law of incest. The facts that Cain, Abel and Seth, lawfully married their sisters, and that an Israelite, in certain circumstances, might lawfully marry his brother's wife, fall just as far short of proving, that Incest is not malum in se, an immorality, a crime in its own nature. God has a right to give us what positive laws he pleases. When he has forbidden a given act, the wilful commission of that act is a sin, and that in every case. When we know his positive commands, our business is not to ask, "Why,” or "Wherefore," but simply to obey. And if we do otherwise, we must meet the consequences. Again. This argument might have been urged by an Israelite under the Levitical Code, with just as much force, as now by the objector. Wishing to marry his niece or his sister, he might have said, 'Incest is merely an offence by positive statute, and not a crime in itself, or in its own nature. Cain, Abel and Seth, and the other sons of Adam, married their sisters from the very necessity of the case. There is no sin, there fore, in my marrying as I wish.' When brought to his trial, for breaking the Law of Incest, what would Moses have said to him, in reply to such a plea? What Moses would have said to him, a greater LAWGIVER than Moses will hereafter say to the man, who now breaks the Law of Incest. 2. The Practice of incest, among the Patriarchs and Israelites, is alleged, against the binding force of the Law of incest. Without repeating the answers to the argument from Practice, in the Essay on Polygamy, and in a former part of this Essay, we will inquire into the actual Extent of the practice. Abraham married his half-sister. Lot's two daughters committed incestuous rape with their father, after they had made him drunk for the purpose. Jacob married two sisters, under circumstances, which have been considered at length. Thamar committed incestuous fornication with Judah, her father-in-law: he not knowing her to be his daughterin-law. Reuben committed incestuous adultery, if so it may be called, with Bilhah, his father's concubine. -Amram married his father's sister. Amnon committed incestuous rape with his half-sister. Absalom.committed incestuous rape with ten of his father's concubines, on the house-top, in the sight of all Israel. If we except the terrible denunciations against the inhabitants of Jerusalem, in Ezek. xxii., for the shameless commission of this crime, and the story of the destruction of the Canaanites already recited, and the case of the sons of Adam, which was lawful marriage, the above is, I believe, a full history of Incest in the Old Testament. We have here, then, three cases of incestuous marriage, |