Page:Marriagewithade00forbgoog.djvu/20

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your attention to a very remarkable statement regarding the Mahometan law on this subject. It is contained in a sermon, entitled "Marriage with Two Sisters contrary to the Holy Law of God and Nature," preached in Canterbury Cathedral on Tuesday, May 7, 1850, by the Rev. Charles Forster, B.D.; and it is in that division of his sermon where he is replying to the charge "that this particular restriction is without sanction from the law of nature, or the natural sense of mankind ". He says (pp. 24, 25): "The law of Mahomet differs as widely from the law of Christ as a carnal can differ from a spiritual law. It goes beyond the liberty of the Mosaic law: for it enacts polygamy, and gives lawless licence of divorce. Yet this licentious creed has too its table of prohibited degrees of marriage; a table certainly not taken from the table of Leviticus, as its variations most clearly prove. As Mahomet assuredly did not introduce into the Koran restraints borrowed from the pure morality of the Law or Gospel, it is clear that he took them where he found them, from the traditional law and custom of the Arabs; a law and custom, all must acknowledge, originating with the Patriarchs. Now, it is most remarkable that the Mahometan table of prohibited degrees, recited in the 4th chapter of the Koran, entitled 'Women' is either literally or virtually identical with the table in the 18th chapter of Leviticus, and that it closes with a prohibition, in the most solemn terms, of the very marriage now in question. 'It is forbidden—or it is wickedness—for a man to unite himself with two sisters'. After this, who will be bold enough to affirm that marriage with the sister of a deceased wife is not contrary to the law of nature? that the law of nature and the primitive usage and custom of mankind do not unite in interpreting the law of God in this matter, as laid down in Leviticus, as the Church universal and the Church of England have done? What Christian state can venture to let down the pure morality of the Gospel below even the lax and licentious morality of Mahomet and the Koran? Yet is this the guilty consummation at which a British Legislature must arrive, before it can become lawful in this Christian land for a man to marry the sister of his deceased wife. May our statesmen, then," Mr. Forster concludes his sermon, "no less than