Page:Is Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister Lawful?.djvu/15

Rh marry her brother, therefore she may not marry her sister's husband, who, by his marriage with her sister, has become the same relation to her as her sister is, only in the male line, viz. her brother. Consequently, a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister.

We may argue the same point again from verse 8.

There we see that the man is forbidden to marry his father's wife's daughter who was born before his father married, say, his second wife.

Now, before his father's second marriage, the son by the father's first was no relation by blood or affinity to the daughter of the widow whom his father afterwards married. But after his father's marriage with the widow, the widow's daughter becomes the widower's son's sister, God distinctly says, "She is thy sister."

Here again we see kinship and affinity considered alike in God's sight.

It is very important to notice in this particular instance that there is no blood relationship between son and daughter before the marriage of the widower and widow, and therefore, i.e. according to the present theory of physiologists, there can be none after. It can, according to them, only be between the widower and widow, by consanguinity in the commencement of off-spring. Yet God says that by the marriage they are brother and sister, so that they cannot marry.