Page:Bigamy and Polygamy - Reed - c. 1879.pdf/26

 government to do ought to impair the obligations of contracts. Statutes by which such obligations are enfeebled are pronounced invalid. The principle upon which the maxim is based includes the denial to legislatures of authority to do ought to diminish the free agency of the citizen in contracting. Therefore, by the same rule, statutes whose effect is to impair or diminish such free agency are unlawful. To the operation of this principle, there can be no valid reason why a marriage contract, untainted by fraud and entered into in conformity with the custom of the community wherein it is executed, should be held,to constitute an exception. If such contract is, in any sense the basis of a "sacred obligation," so much the more reason why, especially after it has been consummated by cohabitation, secular hands should not be laid upon it to work its outlawry and dissolution. There are those who profess to have penetrated deeper than ordinary mortals into the counsels of heaven, and to have obtained clearer views of the divine will in respect to the duties and relations of life; bub they are persons whose suggestions it is not safe for such as are appointed to administer justice to accept.

And here—assuming that the Bible is the revealed word of God, given to mankind for their instruction, by precept and by example—it is proper to inquire into its teachings in respect to marriage. "The chosen people of God," as the Bible relates, practised polygamy from the days of the founder of the race, Abraham—who was a polygamist; as they do to this day, in countries where polygamy is customary. Polygamy is recognized as lawful by the Levitical precepts. The example of the rulers of the land and the leaders of society was in its favor, and throughout the Old Testament, there is not a word in its condemnation or to its disparagement. In the Paulino Epistles of the New, it appears that the author—who believed the end of the world to be near at hand—was opposed to marriages; and except in exceptional cases, advised the believers against them. As a measure of precaution, however, he was of the opinion that a presbyter, or teacher of religion, should be a married man; or, as the not altogether candid translation expresses it, "the husband of one wife." It was, at the most, a special and limited dispensation in favor of the clergy—the reasons for which, in the light of modern experience, are too obvious to need explanation. By means of free interpretation and abundant inference, nevertheless, these five words have been discovered, by theoretical ecclesi-