is manifest from the fact that, in September 1624, Jeffrey Irvine suffered the extreme penalty of the law in Edinburgh for incest with his brother's widow. He had begotten four children by her, and when his case was libelled, no plea in extenuation of his guilt would be accepted. The law is still unrepealed; it remains on the statute-book as a terror to evil doers; nevertheless so little deterrent is it, or so lax is the moral feeling, that it is notoriously well known that persons are living in religious Scotland, aye, and in Edinburgh, too, before the full view of Her Majesty's criminal prosecutors, in open violation of the law, and apparently utterly regardless of its consequences. It may well be asked, by all who respect social order, and who desire to see the foundations of morality preserved,-" Can such things be, and overcome us, like a summer cloud, without our special wonder?"

It is worth while mentioning, as a fact, that the society which was promoted to advocate the marriage with a deceased wife's sister, are decidedly opposed to the marriage with a deceased brother's wife; and all their authorities hold it to be incestuous in the case of marriage with a deceased brother's wife.

So far, I think, I have made the facts and arguments complete and conclusive that it is incestuous for a man to marry or live with his brother's wife or widow,—a crime against nature, against society, and against God. Let me now consider what might be expected to be the state of nations if such an iniquity were suffered to spread or to go unpunished.

CHAPTER VIII.

PERNICIOUS EFFECTS ON SOCIETY.

It is scarcely necessary to say that, if man is to be a law to himself, there will soon be an end to all civil and moral law. If man is to cohabit with or marry whomsoever he chooses,-relations by blood, relations by affinity, or relations which, though only of the latter, are as nearly as possible relations by blood,—then clearly society cannot hold together social bonds must be broken, natural feelings must be stifled, the most sacred relationships of life must be sundered, the civil codes of ages must be treated as "old almanacs," the law of God itself must be deemed and taken to be as of no account. Let the British public, looking at and studying what presents itself to them every day in the incestuous connections which are being formed, apparently without let or hindrance, consider what the effect of them would be, were they as general as many would wish, or as universal as some would desire. It seems as if some men would gratify their lust at the expense of every law of nature and of God,-aye, without even a regard to that which is sometimes more powerful than either with them, a sense of public propriety or of common decency. There is no use in saying that they find something somewhere apparently to justify or excuse them. They defend, or attempt to defend their enormities in a variety of ways. If they do not openly discard the Scriptures altogether, they are ready to contend that the incest prohibited in them is merely incestuous fornication or adultery, and thus no marriage can be incestuous; or that consanguinity is the sole scriptural ground of incest, and that it cannot exist in any case of affinity; or that the levitical prohibitions were intended merely to preserve the natural supremacy of the husband; or that the levitical law prohibits marriage with certain women while they are the wives of other men, but not

after they become widows; or that the law of incest was either merely ceremonial or merely the natural law of Israel, and in neither case binding on us; or that incest is merely a positive offence, and therefore not a crime in its own nature; or that we are subject to no law of incest whatever, all marriages being lawful. These and other such arguments, if they can be so called, are being constantly thrown in the teeth of the friends of morality and religion. I think I have shewn that, however frequently or persistently they may be stated, they are utterly without foundation,-that the law of God stands firm and sure, however it may be opposed or be sought to be trampled under foot; and that if men will transgress it, and by transgressing it bring themselves to the level or lower than the brutes that perish, on their own heads, and on the heads of society which suffers them, must rest the blame. Society, however, is bound to protect and defend itself as much against the violations of marriage laws as against the violation of laws designed to guard life and to conserve property. It will not do for legislators or others to say or insinuate that because the degrees in marriage, prohibited by nature, by revelation, and by express judicial declaration, are every day being set at nought by certain orders of society, therefore they must either wink at them or legalize them. It might as well be said and argued that because robberies are frequent and murders not uncommon, and that there are those who are able to persuade themselves that they are justified in committing one or the other, or both, that the nation is not to punish the robber or the murderer, or rather that it is bound in the interests of morality to protect and defend both. No man in his senses would hold the latter of these justifiable, and for the same reason no man in his senses should hold the former justifiable. Let it be admitted as a principle that because a vice or crime is common, and that there are individuals, chiefly in the higher ranks of society, who believe it to be right, or will not acknowledge that it is wrong, let it be admitted, I say, that because a feeling or passion of this sort is prevalent, the legislature is to set

aside all its own enactments in its favour, and to refuse to exercise the strong arm of the law in defence of its own solemn statutes and tribunals, then farewell to everything like social amenity, moral feeling, or national good order. The foundations being destroyed, the entire superstructure disappears, and it will be with us as it was with the Jews in the time of their deepest humiliation and disgrace-every man will do that, neither less nor more, than seems right in his own eyes. I might enlarge to any extent on this topic, which is sufficiently suggestive in itself not to need elaborate argument; I find, however, so much said about it, and said so appropriately and forcibly in the work of Dr Lindsay, from which I have before quoted, that I again extract freely from his pages. On the duty of all who profess to be Christians to obey the law of the land, he says:

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Every man is bound to submit to the laws of his country, and a Christian is doubly bound. He is bound by the same obligation which rests upon others, and he is bound by the additional obligation of Christ's command. Nor is he to render obedience only for wrath's sake, but also for conscience' sake; not simply that he may avoid penalties, but mainly that he may discharge a duty enforced by Divine authority. It is not simply a crime to violate the civil law, but it is a sin against God; and it is a sin, not merely in so far as the particular act may be condemned in Scripture, as in the case of murder and robbery, but it is a sin also on the simple ground of being a violation of public law, and that for the plain reason that God has commanded submission to the powers that be. The thing required by civil rulers may be in itself a matter of indifference, neither commanded in Scripture nor forbidden, as is the case with ten thousand regulations upon the statute-book, but it is not a matter of indifference whether we observe them or not, when commanded by lawful authority.

"Some seem to think that they may violate a civil law

if they consider it unjust, if they think that it does them a wrong, if they suppose that it unduly restricts their freedom. But this is an egregious mistake. These may be good reasons for endeavouring to procure the repeal of an obnoxious law, but they are no reason at all for transgressing it. Never was there a law enacted in any age or country, no, not in the freest nation upon the face of the earth, which was not considered by numbers of individuals to be wrong; and if every man were justified in disobeying a civil statute when he conceived it to be unjust or uncalled for, this would be equivalent to saying that every man was bound to obey only those laws of which he approved. In short, the bonds of society would be dissevered, and each individual would do just what seemed right in his own eyes. In all cases, when charged with transgression, it would be a sufficient defence to say that we considered the law wrong. The law may be wrong, nay, it may do us a real injustice, but submission is our duty, and that not merely for wrath, but also for conscience' sake. When we are suffering under the operation of an unjust law, we are suffering, if our submission be grounded upon Christian principles, for righteousness' sake, and we shall not lose our reward. By all means procure the abrogation of an unjust law if you can, but obey it while it is law, unless the crisis be one of those great eras which occur at rare periods, when the community as with one soul feels itself summoned to revolutionize society. A whole nation, in cases of irremediable tyranny, where under colour of law the most grinding oppression is exercised upon all ranks, may by force resist and overthrow its government when it is felt that there is no remedy short of this extreme and perilous expedient. But an individual is never warranted to transgress any law of his country unless he is prepared to say that obedience to that law would place him in a position of rebellion against God."

Looking at the condition and arguments of those who, in the matter of incestuous marriages, such as that with a