PREFACE.

It will not unreasonably be regarded at first sight as presumptuous that a humble layman, more conversant with business than with Theology, should attempt to discuss so important a subject as that of Incestuous Marriages. I have not, however, undertaken the task without good reason, nor without much labour, study, and preparation. Unworthy men have attempted to defend the crime of Marriage with a Deceased Brother's Wife. It has been with a view to expose their sophistries, and, if possible, to prevent the spread of a great evil, that I have been led to study the whole subject, and to publish the result of my cogitations as they appear in the following pages.

I have to express my obligations to the Rev. James Gibson, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology and Church History in the Free Church College, Glasgow, for his kindness in allowing me to quote largely from his able work on "The Marriage Affinity Question;" and I have pleasure in stating how deeply I feel indebted for facts and arguments to the exhaustive

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treatise of the Rev. Dr William Lindsay, Professor of Sacred Languages and Biblical Criticism to the United Presbyterian Church, in his "Inquiry into the Christian Law as to the Relationships which Bar Marriage ;" and to the brief though instructive work of the Rev. John Macrae, of Hawick, on "The Scripture Law of Marriage with reference to the Prohibited Degrees."

The present treatise has this peculiarity in its favour, that, so far as I know, no other work exists in this country discussing fully the question of Marriage with a Deceased Brother's Wife. In the hope that it will serve the purpose for which it has been written, and that it will tend to some extent to stem the tide of immorality which, there is too much reason to fear, is strengthening and extending in Great Britain as well as on the Continent and in America, I humbly submit it to an interested public.

EDINBURGH, January 1869.

CHALMERS I. PATON.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE present age may be said to be decidedly revolutionary in its character. There is an uneasy feeling-a restless impatience for change-pervading all classes. Old ideas in politics are being repudiated or ridiculed, old authorities in morals are being impugned or burlesqued, old standards in religion are being canvassed, called in question, and in some cases rejected and condemned. It is difficult to say what the end of so much mental and social inquietude will be, or what influence it will have on the material and moral prospects of our family relationship, the nation, and the world at large. The desire seems to be to get out of all "the old paths," and to court fortune or favour in new ones-to doubt everything however well established, and to believe, or try to believe, everything not established at all. This breaking loose of mind and spirit is not confined to the region of science. It is noticed in politics; it presents itself everywhere in religious creeds and convictions; it is found in the wide fields of social economics; and it is every year becoming more and more observable in the broad-unhappily, now too broad-domains of morals. It is not my purpose in the present work to picture the new phases of thought or discuss the new courses of conduct in the various departments of life to which I have referred. I have a humbler, though not less important, duty to discharge-that of pointing out how the most sacred social bonds are being broken by lax law and laxer discipline, and that of urging the moral and well-disposed of all classes of British society to look where they are being led, and to stem the tide of immorality before it surges into their own households and

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acquires sufficient force and volume to overwhelm themselves and all whom they hold dear.

My subject is the Marriage Relations, and my object is not so much to express opinions of my own as to place before the British public the Laws of the Eternal and Unchangeable God, and the conclusions arrived at, with regard to these Laws, by the Jews, to whom they were originally given-by the early Christians, among whom they were confirmed-by the Fathers and Councils of all the leading Churches, before and subsequent to the Reformation by the laws and practices of heathen nations, ancient and modern-by the laws and customs of our own nation at various periods of its history-by the constitution and principles of Ecclesiastical Courts, with their Canon Laws, Creeds, and Confessions—and by the Laws of Nature, which, however they may be despised or trampled under foot, can never be broken with impunity or set aside as out of date. The field is large. Let me say at once, however, that while I shall leave no really important feature of it untouched, my chief design is to expose the iniquity of that horribly incestuous and inconceivably dangerous innovation-the Marriage of a Brother with a Deceased Brother's Wife.

It may be thought utterly unnecessary, in an age of boasted civilization and religion like the present, and where so much respect is supposed to be conceded to what are called "The Laws of Nature," that so heinous a vice and crime as that of Concubinage or Marriage with a Deceased Brother's Wife should be protested against and condemned. There is no disguising the fact, however, that the enormity is winked at in high quarters—that it is finding apologists or approvers among men holding distinguished places and offices in certain churches-that it is tolerated, if not countenanced, in bodies which formerly would have repudiated it with their whole heart and soul -and that it is a growing and extending crime, perpetrated in the face of the Laws of God and man, and, so far as can be observed, without the slightest regard to the evils it