ture is broken, and its threatenings a dead letter, or, the prohibition does not apply." In a whole lifetime it could hardly fall to one's lot to find any perversion of Scripture so ignorant, so gross, so unspiritual. What! a Christian tell us that because God's Law is no longer enforced by temporal penalties, its moral obligation ceases! Is the penalty of "burning with fire" now inflicted for the union forbidden a little before, ver. 14? and has, moral obligation therefore lapsed! One cannot but wonder at the blindness and the want of sensibility which has permitted Mr. Punshon to quote in his own defence Lev. xx. 21, of all possible arguments!
But there is another "dilemma"—a very harmless, though a very ugly goblin. "If my wife's sister is still [after the wife's decease] my wife's sister; then logically my wife is still my wife, and so far from restricting my liberty to marry to her own relations, her death—as it does not alter my relations to her [his own representation]—does not leave me at liberty to marry at all." How very "logical" indeed, where the word "wife" is plainly "equivocal"—made to represent a past and a present relation; an actual relation in the past, a non-existing one in the present. Nor are we responsible for such logic, as doubtless he would object; but it arises wholly from his mistaking or evading the point at issue,—and that is, not the relation which a man now bears to one who was his wife, but the relation which he now bears to her surviving sister. Once, that relation was undoubted: to cohabit with her would not have been simply adultery, but incest. We have before observed, that nothing can abolish a pre-existing fact—and therefore such cohabitation would still be incest. Though "freed from the law of her husband," as Mr. Punshon emphasises it; it does not follow that a widow is free from all law as to his kindred, as he argues, or we might have such mixtures as would rival the incests of ancient Persia. Because, forsooth, I may not marry my sister-in-law, must I cry out with the logic of a petulant will. You insist that she who was once my wife is still my wife in the spirit world! Surely Mr. Punshon, is here guilty of as "ridiculous a stupidity as to dream of midwifery in the grave," as Bishop Pearson phrases it. This is a Sadducean error. Death "departs" a man and his wife—makes a complete separation; but it does not abolish the relations which that marriage effected between the surviving husband or wife and their respective families, till he comes and touches with his icy fingers each separate one.
We will just put Mr. Punshon's objection into the mouth of the parallel relation—a deceased brother's wife. She objects to the prohibition which would bar her marriage to the surviving brother, and says, in words which have exactly the same value as in Mr. Punshon's argument:—"If my husband's brother is still my husband's brother, then logically my husband is still my husband, and so far from restricting my liberty to marry to his own relations, his death—as it does not alter my relations to him—does not leave me at liberty to marry at all." Now, if this argument have the effect Mr. Punshon wishes, it justifies a union expressly forbidden, Lev. XVIII . 16! But this is no more than the gentleman's whole letter aims at.
Let the public at large notice what the Rev. W. Morley Punshon, President of the Wesleyan Conference, distinctly says: It appears to me, and has always appeared to me that the doctrine of this passage (Rom. VI: 2)'is that the relationship of affinity created by law, ceases when the law
