the whole number of incestuous marriages which it is intended to prohibit.
The teachings both of the Scriptures and of nature show that the participation by two persons in the same flesh may be ascribed more immediately to either the one or the other of two several causes. It may be so, when sameness of flesh has been communicated by procreation ; or it may be so, when the communication has been effected by conjugal intercourse, accruing from the mystical decree of nature and of God from the beginning, "They two shall be one flesh." The reality and the amount of the incest involved in any given instance in the latter of these two cases are, essentially, the same as those involved in any corresponding instance of the former of them. There may possibly be a shade of difference between the two, but, if so, a shade only ; substantially, they are the same. Marriage with a father's wife, a step-mother, or with a son's wife, a daughter-in-law, is as truly forbidden by the Word of God, and as truly contrary to the laws of nature, as marriage with a mother would be, or with a daughter. If this is so in these closer connexions, then, relatively and 'pari passio, in others also less or more distant, until incest shall have ceased to be predicable by marriage becoming lawful ; marriage, perhaps, in the cases lying nearest to incest not altogether prudent and commendable, but yet lawful, inasmuch as it does not involve infraction of the laws which define, and restrain from, incest. At the present time questions are not being raised with regard to marriages being incestuous by reason of congenital consanguinity. It is, we may hope,
