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them with a mutual affection, not often parallelled for. its ardour or its strength. He served Laban seven years, that he might receive Rachel as his wife; "and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love that he had to her."-" And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife; for my days are fulfilled.' And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And in the evening, he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to Jacob, instead of Rachel." The marriage ceremonies of the country rendered such a deception not only possible, but easy.-What, during that night, were the feelings of Rachel towards Leah! Her husband, betrothed to her for seven years, and inexpressibly endeared by his affection and tenderness, cruelly stolen from her, at the moment so long anticipated by her with cheerfulness and joy, by him with impatience and transport :--stolen from her without his knowledge or consent, and with the agonizing mistake on his part, that herself was then with him :-stolen by a sister whom Jacob had never loved, by a sister who had fraudulently supplanted her in her bridal bed!" And it came to pass that, in the morning, behold it was Leah!!!"-What was the anguish of Jacob's mind, when he rose up in the morning, and said unto Laban, "What is this, that thou hast done to me? Did I not serve thee for Rachel? Wherefore hast thou beguiled me?"-Who can wonder that "Leah was hated" by Jacob, or that Rachel was still more tenderly loved. Who could wonder, if Rachel had despised Leah, or if Leah had been envious of Rachel. Surely it needed all the strength of sisterly affection and parental influence, to save them from unceasing jealousy and rancour. -What then was the fact?-The story is told us in Gen. xxix. 31,-xxx. 21. Yet we find no recital of

uncommon bickerings, or of peculiar unhappiness. We are simply told that Jacob at first hated Leah, and loved Rachel; that Rachel envied Leah her children, and said to Jacob "Give me children, or else I die ;" and that when Rachel asked Leah for the fruit brought by Reuben from the field, she replied, "Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband; and wouldest thou take my son's mandrakes also ?"

But we have another case of polygamy in the Scriptures, that of Elkanah of Mount Ephraim, who had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah, who were not sisters. Hannah, like Rachel, was loved by her husband, and like her had no children. Peninnah, like Leah, had children, and, like her, triumphed over her associate, No two cases could be more nearly parallel. Peninnah, however, had not supplanted Hannah on the bridal night. The distress of Hannah is described in 1 Sam. i. 1,-ii. 11. I refer the reader to the two cases, as detailed at length, with perfect confidence that the vexations of Hannah were far more intense than those of Rachel.

Let him particularly notice the appearance of Hannah in the temple: "And when the time was, that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and daughters, portions; but unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but she had no children. And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because she had no children. And he did so year by year. When she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat. Then said Elkanah her husband to her 'Hannah, why weepest thou; am I not better to thee than ten sons ? So Hannah rose up, after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk: (now

Eli the priest sat upon a seat, by a post of the temple of the Lord) and she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, 'O Lord of hosts! if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man-child; then will I give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.'-Now Hannah she spake in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, 'How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee.'--And Hannah answered and said, 'No, my lord; I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink; but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial; for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto." "

Here, then, in the house of Elkanah, where the two wives were not sisters, we find the distress introduced by polygamy incomparably more intense and agonizing, than in the house of Jacob. This too was the fact, though the circumstances of Hannah and Rachel on the one part, and those of Leah and Peninnah on the other, were generally the same; and though the original substitution of Leah bade fair to kindle in the mind of Rachel an irreconcilable hatred. But what is the position under consideration-That it will vex a wife, if her husband marries her sister; but that it will not vex her, if he marries a stranger. In other words, the polygamy of Elkanah was no cause of grief or vexation to Hannah; she was perfectly con

tented and happy under it, because Peninnah was not her sister !!

I appeal then with confidence to every reader, male as well as female, that the position assumed in this interpretation is false; and that the interpretation represents God as assigning both a foolish, and a false reason, for the permission of polygamy. Examined on its own merits, therefore, it proves to be erroneous.*

Our investigation of Lev. xviii. 18, and of the interpretation of it to which we are driven, if we admit marriage with a wife's sister to be lawful, viz.-Neither shalt thou take another 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, because that will not vex her, and after her death, her sister also-has brought us then to the following results:

1. Polygamy was expressly prohibited by God in the Original Law of Marriage, on account of its immoral tendency; has been shown to have been unlawful to the Patriarchs and under the Levitical code; and is declared by Christ to be adultery.

2. The Law of incest, in expressly forbidding marriage between a brother's wife and a husband's brother, just as certainly forbad it between a sister's husband and a wife's sister, as in expressly forbidding marriage between a nephew and an aunt, or between a

* Mohammed had either too much reverence, or too much sense, to assign so foolish and so false a reason for forbidding a man to marry his wife's sister. As he authorized polygamy, he prohibited this marriage simply on the account of the incest. In thus comparing the respective claims of the institutions of Mohammed, and those of the sys tem which we oppose, to the character of purity and even of common decency, it is painful to find in every case that the prophet of Mecca has the advantage.

mother and a son, it forbad it between an uncle and a niece, or between a father and a daughter. If we deny this, we must also deny that equals are equal.

3. The Law of incest in expressly forbidding marriage between a man and his collaterals of the second degree by affinity, declares the propinquity between them to be so great, as to render marriage between them unlawful; and yet this interpretation makes it declare the propinquity between a man and his wife's sister, a collateral of the first degree, and of course one degree nearer than they, not to be so great as to render marriage between them unlawful: in other words, that the less is greater than the greater.

4. If we deny the unlawfulness of this marriage, we are also compelled to admit that under the Levitical Law of incest a man had a right to marry his own daughter, and his own grandmother; and that these marriages are now right.

5. The reason, expressly assigned in the Law, why a brother's wife may not marry a husband's brother after the husband's death is that, on account of the propinquity, such marriage is "an abomination ;" and yet the reason assigned in this interpretation, why a sister's husband may not marry a wife's sister, during the life-time of the wife, that is why he may not have two sisters for wives at once, when the propinquity is identically the same, is that it will vex the sister whom he married first! We cannot charge such trifling on a Law of God.

6. A minute and careful examination of every passage in the Scriptures, in which the controverted phrase, a man to his brother, or a woman to her sister occurs, has shown that the words brother and sister in this phrase have no reference to relationship by blood; and that the phrase itself denotes uniformly one to another,