immoral "Because of the hardness of men's hearts," He did, indeed, allow divorce, then, for reasons, which are not allowed under the better dispensation of the Gospel; but he never commanded even under the peculiar Law of the Jews, anything immoral. Yet he did command (for the keeping inheritances in families, and so preserving the genealogy correct) the man to marry his Brothers Widow: that is, one Woman to marry two Brothers. This proves to me that there is no such relationship in his view between persons so connected as to forbid marriage.
3. There being thus no moral evil in such a connection as the Marriage of a man with his deceased Wife's Sister, we see obviously that it would be very expedient: second Marriages are seldom happy to the children of the former Marriage. A second Wife cannot feel as a Mother, She may love her husband, as a husband, and will look with some regard on that husband's children, but can seldom either feel or act in a motherly way towards them. There is not only no regard felt towards the first wife, but a jealous feeling springs up when she is alluded to, in many minds.
This, however, must necessarily be less likely to arise when the second Wife is sister of the former, than in any other almost conceivable instance. Who can look at the motherless children so tenderly as the sister of their departed mother? Who so likely to bear with their little waywardness; because she loves them as the sister of that one who is no more, and who saw those children when they were under that mother's care? It appears to me, therefore, that first, as Scripture
