united in wedlock, have an inalienable right in each other, a right that should never be cancelled, but by a violation of the marriage vows''. To this subject our Lord was led by his exposition of the seventh com- mandment. He had shewn, that that commandment was no less violated by an impure look than by the act of adultery itself: and now he proceeds to shew, that those practices, which were supposed to be sanc- tioned by the Mosaic law, were never to be tolerated amongst his followers, since they were directly con- trary to the spirit of that commandment. There was one, and only one reason, which should henceforth be admitted as a proper ground of divorce : and if any one in future should put away his wife in defiance of this restriction, he should be dealt with as an adulterer in the day of judgment.
The restriction itself being so clear and simple, we shall not attempt any further elucidation of it, but shall rather point out the imijortance of the restriction to the zvelfare of mankind.
I. It raises the female sex from the lowest state of degradation —
[Whilst men were at liberty to take, and to repudiate, as many wives as they pleased, the female sex were viewed in no other light than as females are regarded by the brute creation. Their moral and intellectual qualities were overlooked. What- ever distinguished them as a higher order of beings, was dis- regarded : their beauty only was deemed of any essential consequence ; and they were valued only as means and instru- ments of licentious gratification. Consider the state of those whom Solomon and Rehoboam selected as ministers to their pleasures. Rehoboam had eighteen wives and sixty concubines*^. Solomon had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concu- bines'^. What can be conceived more humiliating than the state of all those women ? all cut off from converse with men ; all precluded from a possibility of filling that station in life, to which, in common with other females, they had been ordained. View those also who are selected for the choice of king Aha- suerus. Officers were appointed to gather together all the most beautiful young virgins throughout the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of his empire : these were all to be purified with oil of myrrh and sweet odours for the space of a
^ Matt. xix. 3—9. <= 2 Chron. xi. 21. ^ i Kings xi. 3.