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 our moral nature, shocks our religious convictions. And if we are to view the matter as those who declare the marriage of a sister of a deceased wife incestuous would have us, then there is no escape from doing violence to our own religious convictions, and of presenting the Word of God to others in such a manner as will induce them to turn away from it with loathing and disgust. Thanks be to God that in His great mercy He has preserved us from such an awful calamity.

We have only to cast our prejudices away from us, rise superior to the traditions of men, refuse to become idolators of human standards, and come to the study of the Scriptures "as newborn babes, desirous of the sincere milk of the Word, that we may grow thereby," and we will behold the glory of God in His word, such divine majesty in the Scriptures, as will constrain us to acknowledge their heavenly source, see them to be worthy of God, adapted to our true nature and circumstances, the true source of morality, and the only means of religion.

Do we, then, advocate marriage with a deceased wife’s sister? No more than we do with the widow of a deceased brother. What we desire is, to do all in our power to preserve the Scriptures from perversion, and the Church from occupying a false position. The entrance into marriage with the sister of a deceased wife is not without risk, and those who contract such marriages are not likely to be without “trouble in the flesh.” If the encouraging of such marriages does not endanger family purity, it is calculated to mar the delicacy of the sweet and lovely intercourse of the household circle. If it does not awaken in the calm and amiable breast of the gentle wife the emotion of burning jealousy towards a lovely sister, it is sure to interfere with the free and unfettered intercourse of relations in life. Nor can the vague possibility of the aunt proving a better stepmother than another woman compensate in the family for the evils that may otherwise arise. If the aunt-stepmother should have no children of her own, she is likely to prove the better stepmother; but if she become a mother herself, then the chances are in the other direction.

Those who defend the doctrine of the Confession of Faith lay great stress on the saying of John the Baptist in his condemnation of Herod for having his brother Philip’s wife, and on Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthian Church for tolerating in their communion one guilty of gross sin. It is amazing how intelligent scholars will allow themselves to be carried away by feelings which withdraw them from the perception of the force of a word. Neither the Baptist nor the Apostle speak of the unlawfulness of having the widow, but of the sin of having the wife of another man, and of this sin being greatly aggravated by the fact that the women they had in these connections were—one, the wife of a brother; the other, of a father; and in this lies the difference. Indeed, the cases of Herod and of the unnatural son, as read by the upholders of the Confession, have no bearing on the matter in dispute; but,