bring the law of man and the law of God into direct collision, and make the human supersede the divine. In Prussia a subor- dinate officer of the army cannot marry without the consent of his commander. If he should marry without that consent, it might be right to make him throw up his commission ; but to say that his wife is not a wife, is not only untrue, but it is a monstrous injustice and cruelty. In England, until of late years, no mar- riage was valid unless solemnized in church, within canonical hours, and by a man in priest's orders. This law was designed specially for the protection of heiresses from the wiles of fortune- hunters. It might be just to determine that no marriage not thus solemnized should convey any right to property ; but to say that parties married five minutes after twelve o'clock, noon, are not married at all, whereas had the ceremony been performed ten minutes sooner, they would be truly man and wife, shocks the conscience and common sense of men. So in this country before the abolition of slavery, according to the laws of our Southern States, no slave could marry. A young white man married a young woman, whom no one in the community supposed had a drop of African blood in her veins. It was proved, however, that she was a slave. Her husband purchased her, manumitted her, repudiated her, married another woman, and was received into the communion of a Presbyterian Church. The law of God was thus regarded as a mere nullity.1
Because marriage is in some of its aspects a civil institution, to be regulated within certain limits, by the civil law, men have treated it as though it were a mere business engagement. They ignore its character as a divine institution, regulated and con- trolled by divine laws. Civil legislatures should remember that they can no more annul the laws of God than the laws of nature. If they pronounce those not to be married who, by the divine law, are married ; or if they separate those whom God hath joined together, their laws are absolute nullities at the bar of con- science and in the sight of God.
1 This however was in accordance -with the canonical law, which made error as to the condition of one of the parties, as bond or free, a ground of annulling the marriage contract. Stahl, De Matrimonio Rescindendo. Berlin, 1841. Canon Leg. cap. 2, 4, x., de conjugio ■errorum, 4, 9. See Goschen in Herzog's EncyMopOdie, art "Ehe." This is still the doctrine of the Romish Church. See Dens, Tractatut de Matrimonio ; Theologia, edit. Dublin, 1832, vol. vii., N. 72, p. 199. See also Commentaries on the Law of Marriage and Divorce, by Joel Prentiss Bishop. 4th edition, Boston. 1864, vol. i. chap. x. §§ 154-163.
380 PART m. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
Monogamy.
Marriage is a compact between one man and one woman to live together, as man and wife, until separated by death. According to this definition, first, the marriage relation can subsist only between one man and one woman ; secondly, the union is per- manent, *. e., it can be dissolved only by the death of one or both of the parties, except for reasons specified in the word of God ; and thirdly, the death of one of the parties dissolves the union, so that it is lawful for the survivor to marry again.
As to the first of these points, or that the Scriptural doctrine of marriage is opposed to and condemns polygamy, it is be remarked, —
1. That such has been the doctrine of the Christian Church in all ages and in every part of the world. There has never been a church calling itself Christian which tolerated a plurality of wives among its members. There could hardly be a stronger proof than this fact that such is the law of Christ. It is morally certain that the whole Church cannot have mistaken, on such a subject as this, the mind and will of its divine Head and Master.
2. Marriage as originally constituted and ordained by God was between one man and one woman. And the language of Adam when he received Eve from the hands of her Maker, proves that such was the essential nature of the relation : " And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh There- fore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh." (Gen. ii. 23, 24.) Or, as our Lord quotes and expounds the passage, " They twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.'* (Mark x. 8.) " The two," and no more than two, become one. This was not only the language of unfallen Adam in Paradise, but the language of God uttered through the lips of Adam, as appears not only from the circumstances of the case, but also from our Lord's attributing to them divine authority, as He evidently does in the passage just quoted. Thus the law of marriage as originally instituted by God, required that the union should be between one man and one woman. This law could be changed only by the authority by which it was originally enacted. De- litzsch remarks on this passage i1 "In these words not only the deepest spiritual union, but a union comprehending the whole nature of man, an all comprehending personal communion, is rep-
1 Die Genesis, Leipzig, 1852, p. 114.