family were not only unpolluted, but un-neighedafter.

Jer. vi. 11, "I will pour the fury of the Lord upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together; for even the husband with the wife shall be v taken; the aged with him that is full of days." As the prophet intends by this language to denote the comprehensive extent of the divine fury, had Polygamy been lawful, he must have said,---"the husband with his wives." He could not have intended to intimate that, under a most sweeping desolation, all the wives but one, in each family, should escape.

Mal. ii. 14, "The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth!"--In this chapter Malachi obviously intends to reprove the Israelites for their general infidelity to the marriage vow; yet I appeal to the common sense of every reader, that his language would have neither force nor meaning, if addressed to a nation of polygamists. If a Mohammedan priest were to read this reproof, in a Turkish mosque, it would not be intelligible; and were the book of Malachi to be read by a Turk, he would at once conclude, that, among the Jews, it was not lawful to have more than one wife.

Math. xix. 29, " And every one, that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred fold and shall inherit everlasting life."

Luke xiv. 26. "If any man come to me, and hate

not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, he cannot be my disciple."

These two passages were addressed to the Jews, as our Saviour found them, living under the laws of Moses. The conduct, to which this high reward is promised, is the cheerful surrendry of every thing dear and valuable, for the sake of the Saviour. The word, used in each case, denotes the entireity of the sacrifice. Thus, brethren, and sisters, and children, and houses, and lands denote all one's brethren, and sisters, and children, all one's houses and lands; since the surrendry of a part of any one kind would have been unavailing, without a surrendry of the residue. Each word here used is intended, therefore, to express as many things of the given kind, as the persons addressed could be supposed to possess. Where they could have several, the plural is used; where only one, the singular. As they could have but one father, but one mother, and but one wife, each of these is in the singular; as they could have more than one of each of the other things mentioned-brethren, sisters, children, houses, lands, -they are all in the plural. Had Christ said, "If you forsake not your brother, and sister, and child, and house, and land," the language would obviously have been defective; for it would have implied that forsaking one brother, or sister, or child, or house, or one piece of land, was enough, and that the remainder of each might be preferred to Christ. But when he says, "If you forsake not your father, and mother, and wife," there is no such defect; because each word, though in the singular, is all of the kind, that any individual could possess or forsake. Surely a Jew could have no merit in preferring the Saviour to one wife, if he loved his other wives more than the Saviour. It is plainly impossible, therefore,

that Christ should have used this language, had he been surrounded by an assembly of polygamists.

These passages are a few, taken from a great number found in every part of the Bible. They show the customary phraseology of the scriptural writers, and are susceptible of but one construction. They exhibit an account of lawful wedlock, as it actually existed in every period of biblical history, among the Patriarchs, the Israelites, and the Jews. The writer or speaker, in every instance, takes his countrymen and their marriages as he found them. Every reader will at once say, that such an account of the subject could not possibly have been written respecting a state of society, in which Marriage was Polygamy. It presupposes, that Marriage is in itself, and was, as it actually existed, the union of one man with one woman. It never explains the duties of a state of polygamy, nor supposes it to exist. It is an account of Marriage, just as it exists in Christian countries, and utterly irreconcileable with such a state of Marriage, as exists in Turkey, and in Southern Asia.

At the same time, the Bible does not contain a solitary example of an opposite use of language. The few instances of Polygamy, on record, are simply mentioned as events that occurred, and are recorded in precisely the same manner, as the sacred writers customarily record other transgressions of law. To a fair unbiassed mind, this fact of itself will, I think, appear absolutely conclusive.

We thus find, as the result of our inquiries, that the Original Law of Marriage forbad Polygamy to mankind; that no repeal of that law is found in the Scriptures; and that Polygamy was not lawful, either among the Patriarchs, or under the Levitical Code.

There is, however, as we contend, one passage more relating to the subject, which we have not yet examined, -Lev. xviii. 18, "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other, in her life-time."--This passage, it will be recollected, is regularly resorted to, to prove marriage with the sister of a deceased wife to be lawful. And when, in opposition to that construction, we contend that this passage is simply a prohibition of Polygamy, and is precisely equivalent to--Neither shalt thou take one wife to another in her life-time, to vex her--we are regularly met with the Objection, that Polygamy was actually lawful among the Israelites, and of course that this construction is erroneous. The other construction of the passage,--Neither shalt thou take a second wife, who is the sister of thy first wife, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other, in her life-time; although thou mayest take one, who is not her sister, as that will not vex her; and her sister also, after her death-is, if correct, a full and explicit permission of polygamy. This passage will be minutely examined, in the progress of the subsequent Essay; and when we come to the examination, I hope it will be distinctly remembered, that the Scriptures (this one passage out of the question) furnish decisive evidence that Polygamy was unlawful; and that if the lawfulness of Polygamy is to be proved, the evidence must be derived from this one passage alone. Thus, we shall be able to examine this much controverted text, on its own merits, and to investigate the Law of Incest, without entangling it with the lawfulness or unlawfulness of Polygamy.

THE LAW OF INCEST.

THE Law of Incest was long supposed to be definitively settled. Under the care of the Israelitish Church, it remained unaltered for fifteen centuries, and under that of the Christian, for more than seventeen. To our American Legislatures belongs the honour of the discovery, that these Churches, doubtless from the love of supererogatory obedience so natural to man, submitted, for more than three thousand years, to various restraints on their marriages, which were wholly unenjoined by the Law of God. Since this discovery, they have, to say the least, deserved no censure for not removing these restraints, as soon as they could make them out to be supererogatory.

The curious reader, in examining some of our Statutebooks, will be struck with sundry nice distinctions, made between lawful and unlawful marriages. In various instances, he will find, that a Man is allowed to marry his wife's sister, or niece, while a Woman is forbidden to marry her husband's brother, or nephew. In endeavouring to account for these distinctions, he may perhaps imagine, that the law-makers were guided by a Modern Notion-that a woman is more nearly related to her husband than a man to his wife. This, however, could not have occasioned them, for the statutes, in which they are found, were made before the publication of the Pamphlet, in which this notion was first promulgated. Their real origin is to be traced to the