Page:Is Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister Lawful?.djvu/18

14 in marriage, as typified in the grand union of Christ with His Bride the Church.

It is our duty to believe the Word of God, and in it we see that woman may not marry her sister's husband, because he is near of kin to her; therefore nothing can make it lawful, and according to true physiology, the law of Nature, the law of God, no dispensation is needed for her, in the case of her sister not having any issue, that she should marry her deceased sister's husband. The cause of dispensation is to perpetuate his name. There is no need for one, then, in this case, for he may marry any one, not related, to perpetuate his name. It is God's law that a woman should not marry her sister's husband. It is immutable; man cannot dispense with it. It is only the Maker of it who can, and in this case there is no truly physiological or natural reason for it, but against it.

But here numbers of people say that, although it may be God's law, yet He has been pleased Himself to dispense with it by saying in Leviticus xviii. 18, "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time."

The inference people draw from this is that after your wife's death, you may marry her sister.

Now, at first sight, it may be noticed that this verse does not begin like a dispensatory one,