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A Jew's brother's widow was a member of his family, his wife's sister — unless descended from the same stock — \ was not, and for this reason the argument- from inference and the assumed identity of position of the two sexes entirely fail. Moses, we are told, was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, and yet, reverend disputant.s would have us believe that this skilful law. maker in drawing up a statute would frame a special clatise (18th verse) for a particular case, and yet. after all, leave his intentions with regard to that case to be in- ferred from other clauses. Would any modern draughtsman be so slipshod? Is the supposition probable ':• If not, then we are driven back upon the meaning of the 18th verse, which was written, not by a learned and clever man merely, but by an inspired one, aud it may be asked whether it is conceivable that il this inspired author intended to prohibit a particular marriage upon the illegality of which, according to Mr. Roe, the whole social fabric and otir domestic peace and happiness depend, his language would be so obscure as to give rise to cei\Juries ol dispute ? In truth, there is probably no text in the entire range of Scripture the meaning of which Ih nioru palpable than that of the 18th verse in thin chapter of Leviticus. But, admitting for a moment that there is room for doubt ; th«n, clearly, the whole argument relating to it must be determined by the weight of authority. Let us take Mr. Uoe's authorities tirst. lie quotes Lord Coleridge as having twitted thu I promoters of a change of the law in Knglaud I with being guided by no principle. I have i already, in my former letter, pointed out { that the " no principle ' of Lord Coleridge and ' his friends means simply not their principle, j viz., the principle of so-called symmetry, I which we contend, and have contended, is ! unscriptural. Far from being " dumb" on I this point, the position taken up l)y the ad- j voctttes of reform had been reiterated no j often that Lord Houghton particularly re- j qested his supporters, who were anxious to ! reply to Lord Coleridge, not to do so. There j was an impatience, moreover, to come t^j an I immediate vote ; first, because the majority ! did not wish to see the effect of Lord Colo- I ridge's speech damaged ; second, be<;auMO the I dinner bell had rung (the Lords always re- I ligiously dine) ; and third, because the three I lioyal Princes, who, it was well kncjwn had I other appointments for that evening, were i waiting, at great inconvenience to themsel veH, j to support the bill. I learned these fact* j from a gentleman who is intimately acquaint- I ed with English parliamentary procedure, j who was present throughout the tvhole of 1 this defc-i'e, and who himself a day or two subsequently denied in the most positive terms in the London Times the truth of the statements on which Lord Coleridge had rested much of his argument. His Lordship's only reply was made in private to Lord Houghton, and was to the ettect that if the rebutting facts contained in the letter to the Timen could be substantiated — as, of course, they could, for no one has ever attempti^d to disprove them— the recently rt^jected bill would become law. But further, iiord Cole- ridge said in his now famous speech that the view which a Legislature must take of this quest) /n of marriage must be largely influ- enced by the circumstances of society, and especially by what the higher intelligence of society might at the moment regard as right. Well, sir, both Lord Coleridge and Lord Helborne (another of Mr. Roe's authorities), both of them men of the ascetic High Church school, have taken advantage of their own supremely " high intelligence, to permit their daughters, so carefully guarded against marriage with afiines, to enter into matrimo- h nial allianceH which are p'onouncediv con- 8anf{uineou8! Lord Campbell was in favor of the re- straintH of marriage imposed by the Confes- Hion of Faith, but admitted that when HUch reHtraiDtH were unknown morality was high, when they were enforced with uncompro- miHing Heverity the degeneracy in morals wan appalling. Lord Chancellor Hatherley, it i« not diHputed, was a pre-eminently ijothi man Hut extremely good men, like David and St. I'eter, arc nometimes subject to un- accountable aberrations, and Lord Hathcr- ley's weakness was a morbid antipathy to the wife's sister. On one occasion he declar- ed in the House of Lords that rather than see this marriage legalized he would prefer that the homes of England should be invad- ed by a hundred thousand foreign troops. At another time he assured his fellow Peers of the certainli/ that In the parish with which he had been connected for forty years, and every corner of which he knew intimately, not more than one, or at the most three of these marriages had taken place. An in- quiry in that parish, set on toot in conse- quence of his Loidship's assertion, led to the discovery, in the short space of three days, ot not less than one hundred and forty such marriages. Everyone has heard of the great abilities ot Lord Salisbury and Lord Cam- arvon as politicians, but no one knew until to-day that thev were high authorities on the marriage laws. Rumour says that the vote of the former is not the result of conviction so much as dictation, proceeding from quar- ters where men who are so weak as to take to themselves wives must now and again succumb to superior influences. Bishop Philpott's " unanswerable"' speech was so completely answered by Dr. McCaul, Serjeant Manning and others, that, until Mr. Eoe resuscitated him, the bishop had long since ceased to be quoted eva;:. by his admirers. The Scholarly Bishop Thirlwall declared em- phatically that in his opinion the prohibition ot these marriages could be defended on scriptural grounds, but he thought them objectionable trom the point of view of ex- pediency. Why does not Mr. Roe preach a crusade against marriages whose inexpedi- ency is far more obvious ? Finally, sir, your correspondent calls up Bishop Henley, whose authority, it seems, is considered all the more weighty because he was " the father of Dean Stanley." Well, Dean Stanley himself — the greater son of a great father — a short time before his death, pooh-poohed the scrip- tural arguments against these marriages as so much ecclesiastical rubbish. There remain three other distinguished authorities which ar<- not named by Mr. Roe, but two of which ought, at all events, to have figured in his (atalogue, because they certainly can lay claim to mm h higher scholarship than someof those whose author- ity hti parades. These two are Dr. I'usey, Dean of Christ Church, and Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln. The former of the.ie divines unreservedly admitted before the Royal Commission of 1847-48 that the Jews allowed the marriages in question, as being in accordance with Mosaic law, but, confident of his superior knowledge of Hebrew, and differing from all the learned Uabbis of this and every age, he has spent more ingenuity in wresting the seventeenth and eigliteeuth of Leviticus from its obvious meaning, in order to make it fit his preconceived notions, than could be described in a volume. The " Great Dean ' tir.sl adopted an interpretation of that passage which was never even heard of at any time or among any people until the latter half of the sixteenth century : he subsequently shifted bis ground, and finally landed no one knows where. In England the Dean's authority is dead. Dr. Wordsworth,while differing from the Dean in interpretation, also denounces those mar- riages as prohibited in Scripture, but he somewhat discourages our confidence in him as an authority by deducing from the same sacred source the doctrine that all dissenters — and epecially Methodists — are in danger of damnation. The last and ultimate authority is the Rev. Henry Roe, of Bishop's College, Lennoxville. I add his address with a purpose. Christian men and Chris- tian women, who only a fortnight ago read with wondering delight his beautiful idylls on the sweetness and purity of English homes, have since become convinced that his real estimate of tho.se homes is some- thing far different. He, in truth, tenants them with creatures so degradetl and bestial that we must infer that the casting in an op- posite direction of those three votes in the Dominion Senate, which for a moment in 1880 hung so dubiously suspended between principle on one side and delay on the other, was alone required to prove O'lr women Cleo- patras and our men a species of civilized Calibans. For the sake of decency, if not to repel tiie foul aspersions thrown on their husbands, their sisters and themselves, the wives of Canada ought surely to write to Mr. Roe and remind him that much sacer- dotalism has made him mad. If their modest reserve prevents their doing this, let me tell him, and I am not speaking without know- ledge, that many of the laity of the Dominion 8 who take a prominent part in church work, and whose charactern are above HUHpicion, are intensely diHguHtud (the ^.erm is not mine) at the exaggerated and wholly un- warrantable language UMed by hiniHelf and a few other clergymun in this mutter. At the very moment I am writing, a letter has reached me from a gentleman of position in society, who, among other epithets, applies to Mr. Roe's correspondence those of " inde- cent" and " unnatural. ' But now to i|Uote some authorities on the other side. Mr. Roe cites only Lord Chan- cellors and Bishops — nobody less elevated than a Maniuis or an Earl. I must sorrow- fully admit that many on whom 1 must rely are of meaner clay. Let me begin with tht- Jews. The reverend gentleman dare not deny that in every period of .Jewish history, from the time of Moses to the present hour, marriage with a deceased wife's sister has been common among the chosen race. Which of their dearest kings and rulers, which of their prophets, which of their rabbis or their learned professors, has ever denounced such marriages as contrary to the law of God ? Did Samuel or David; did Lsaiah, Nehemiali or Ezra; did the eminent authors of the Mishna, or have their scholarly and pious re- presentatives of the present day, such as Dr. Adler and Dr. de Sola, ever done so ? What of our Lord and his Apostles ? Christ was at the marriage feast of Cana ; He spoke with the much-married woman of Samaria ; His opin- ions were asked by those who would entangle him in the case of the woman who had been married to seven brothers in succession ; He strongly rebuked those who would have stoned the woman taken in adultery ; He re- proved the Jews in the matter of divorce. Were not all these occasions of which, if these people hai systemat cally violated their marriage law, advantage might and would probably have been taken to remind them of the national sin ? Mr. Roe quotes St. Paul. I am glad of it. Paul was a bachelor, not partial to marriage, though he wrote a great deal about it ; sharp to detect and to condemn any breach of the law, and rather more profound than some modern divines in his knowledge ot Hebrew and of Jewish cus- toms and ordinances. Yet he seems never to have written a warning epistle, not even a verse, nor tj have uttered a monition of any kind against the deceased wife's sister. Our Lord, as I have previously said, usually quot- ed from that version of the Scriptures known as the " Septnagint. ' The author of this version lived not long after the later prophets, and must have known the Jewish iaw. Will Mr. Roe point out in the Septnagint or any other of the early authoritative versions, any gloss, or comment, oi the turning of a phrase which supports his interpretation ot Lev. .Yviii, 18. Will he deal with the Patristic writings in the same way ? Will he take up the Mishna, and tell uh how he explains the following passage, chap. iv,13: " If his wife die, he is allowed to marry her sister. It he divorce iier, iiud she tlie, he is allowed to marry her sister. If she be married to another man and die he is allowed to mairy her .sister, if his brother's widow die, he is allowed to many her sister. If he have performed to her the ceremony of tak- ing ott the shoe, aiid she die, he is allowed to marry her sister : if she marry another man I and die, he is allowed to marry her sister.'' Will he examine the following passage in the ' Speaker's Commentary — •' the latest tlTort of I the combined scholarship ot this age and ; nation ' — and tell us how, as a gocd church- man, he can stand by the Canons of 1603 i and rejei't the Commentary, which is of in> j finitely superior weight? "The rule," says I the Commentary, - as it here stands (Lev. xviii, 18) woiild seem to bear no other meaning than that a man is not I to form a connection with his wife's I sister while his wife is alive. It ! appears to follow that the law permitted j marriage witli the sister of a deceased wife. i • • * The testimony of the Rabbinical Jews in the Targums, the Mishna, and their I later writings ; that of the Hellenistic Jews in the Septnagint and Philo ; that of the I early and mediii'val church in the old Italic, : the Vulgate, with the othei early versions ; of the Old Testament, and in every reference to the text in the Fathers and schoolmen, I arc unanimous in supporting, or not in any I wise opposing, the common rendering of the ' passage. This iute'pretation, indeed, ap- { pears to have stood its ground unchallenged, i from the third century before Christ to tne I middle of the sixteenth century after Christ." I The gloss here referred to as first suggested in the sixteenth century (the actual date was 157.")) was rejected by St. James' translators in the seventeenth century, and, as Mr. Roe is fond of prophecy, I will venture to pre- ; sent him with one which does not seem to I have occurred to him, viz., that when our i new translation appears a year or two hence I it will be found that its authors, with the i Bishop of Gloucester and Bri.stol (a hater of the wife's sister) at their head, have utterly [ demolished his own fancy interpretations. ' Quitting the Jews and early Christians I will next ask Mr. Roe, which of all the 11 t I) CbriHtiaD Rtatefi in the modern woi-ld — Kn^. land nmonK thoui — Iish nut nctud on thu uh. HuuptiuM thnt the JuwIhIi iiitorprutation in tht< rorrcct ontMUid whtitlier tlifi iiiitliority of bin half.(lo/.en jioerK ctm Ixi loaHonably ac- ropted in oppoHition to tho (•()liittiv»» wis- dom of HO many KovuinmuntH and uatioDH ? DeHci'ndinK Ironi peoples to Het'ts let me aslv your correHpondent to name any denomination of ChriHtians in tlio Britisli Kmpire, outside tliu numerically — thouKh 1 cheerfully admit not an intellectu- ally-insiKnilicant one to which he belonKH (tbe RitualistH), the vast majority of the members of which do nut reject bis argu- ments supposed tu be based un Scripture. As to individuals 1 admit bis "giants,' though as J have shown, they do not by any means fight on tbe same battle-ground or under tlie influence of the same views as himself. JStill Qiant Campbell would have found his matt h in Uiant Lyndhurst, Selborne in Cockburn, Coleridge in Westbury, and Hatberley in Penzance. Hroughatn, whose name in these later days has become almost synonymous with narrowness, prided himself in knowing everything ; but, if ho was omniscient, then Gladstone (who supports the wifes sister), knows everything and sumetbing else be- sides. Mr. Uoe s strength, however, lies largely in Bishops, and y« t, with tho Arch- bishop of Canterbury on her side, and with such Bishops and Archbishops in her train as Whately, of Dublin, Musgrave, of York, Lonsdale, of Lichlield, Fitzgerald, of York, Bickerstctb, of Uipon, and Bucklaud, ot Bath, tbe deceased wife's sister has no reason to be ashamed of her episcopal following while, if she might go back to a period ante- cedent to the rise of asceticism and ritual- ism, her giants in lawn sleeves would be unapproachable. In these episcopally de. generate days she is not anxious tor the sup- port of Bishops, for from tbe anti-slavery movement downwards the mitre and thu crozierhave invariably arrayed themselves on the wrong side, and tbe Bishops lived to see the cause tliey championed ignomiuionsly fail. The sister is content to be supported by such pious and eruditt' chnrchnu-n as Stanley and V'anghan, by such scholars as Robertson, Max Mulier, Adler and McCaul, by sHch earnest- minded statesmen as Corne- wall Lewis and Hussell, and by such dis- senting divines as Chalmers, Tullocb, Caird, Macmillau, tbe Yenerabh; Motlatt, Kadieand McLeod. But not to pursue this matter of authority to inordinate limits, i' we are to settle the whole controversy by a display of big names, let Mr. Roe send his complete list to the Ga/.bttk, and for every outj of bis authorities of repute I will undertake to say tbe friends ot Mr. (iirouard's bill will pro. duce ilirt)' of acknowledged respectability and weight. In a third letter (and 1 promise it shall be very brief) I would like to reply to Mr. Roe's "one-Hesh' argument, and will then leave him to be further dealt with by abler pens. I am, sir. Your obedient servant, R. D. McGIBBON. Montreal, January 18th, 1882. THK LAW OF MARRIAGE. TO THE KDITOR OF THK GAZETTE. Sill,— In my last letter I promised 1 would this time be very brief. But since then Mr. Roe has sent you his sixth communication, containing more inaccuracies au