It is a question with some persons, whether it is lawful for a widower to marry the sister of his deceased wife. The Presbyterian Church has long ago given her judgment on this question, in her Confession of faith, which, at the time it was drawn up, was acknowledged as the standard of the united kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and is still maintained by all English-speaking Presbyterian congregations and churches throughout the world; while in Scotland it is to this day, I am thankful to say, the law of the land as wellas the law of the church. In the twenty-fourth chapter it declares, "Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affnity forbidden in the word, nor can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife. The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own; nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own."
That this simple intelligible principle is a Scriptural one, and therefore binding upon all Christians, is evident from the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, 6th verse, where the reason given for prohibiting marriage with an uncle's wife is because "she is thine aunt." This proves that consanguinity and affinity, that is relationship by blood, and relationship by
