boldly and manfully forward to give their verdict against their own offspring, set an example to all who call themselves Christians, which ought to be followed, and which, if followed, would no doubt prove beneficial in the stoppage of so iniquitous a practice. Is there any necessity for adding more? Has not every man an inner consciousness that to violate the sacred law of incest is to violate personal peace, family comfort, and social order. Do I need to refer to all the iniquities perpetrated in Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed by fire from heaven; to all the uncleannesses and sensualities among the ancient heathens, who were eaten up by their own vile lusts and swept off from the face of the earth as with the besom of divine destruction; or to the loosenesses and irregularities, the vices and crimes, of the benighted heathen of other lands in our own times, which we affect so much to pity, and spend so much annually to remove. "Line might be added to line," and "precept to precept," in this way to almost any extent. Cui bono, however, let me ask? What more on the subject of which I treat is needed than the clear and explicit declaration of the Great God Himself: "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." APPENDIX. OPINIONS OF EMINENT SCOTTISH DIVINES. The following Ministers of the Gospel in Edinburgh and Glasgow, of all Denominations, have expressed their views in regard to Marriage with a Deceased Brother's Wife as contrary to the Laws of God; but as the opinions would occupy too much space, and are in substance as I have already stated, I simply give the names. MINISTERS IN EDINBURGH. THE MARRIAGE OF COUSINS. In the foregoing pages the subject of the Marriage of Cousins has not been discussed, although there are not a few who hold that all such marriages are undoubtedly unwise. In whatever way it originally came about, the Marriage of Cousins in Great Britain and Ireland is now sanctioned by long usage and custom. The fact, however, that such marriages are not uncommon, is no argument in their favour, as ample experience goes to show that they are, with rare exceptions, productive of the most serious consequences to families and to the nation at large. Nor is it enough to say in their favour that they are nowhere expressly prohibited in the Scriptures, as it is very well known that many other relationships which would be, beyond all doubt, regarded as wrong, and treated criminally as such, were they entered into, are nowhere in so many words prohibited by the Levitical Code. Nature, common sense, and experience ought to demonstrate the impropriety, if not the criminality, of marriages between those so closely related by affinity and consanguinity as cousins. The weight of medical testimony in Great Britain and other nations is decidedly against the Marriage of Cousins, though somehow or other, chiefly from cupidity, the evil continues to be a growing and a spreading one. Recently, at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, there was read a paper by a celebrated physician, giving an account of his own personal observations in a single family related to each other by cousinship in marriage. Its conclusions amounted to these, that the Marriage of Cousins has a depressing influence over the vital powers; that it |