Every one must see the necessity of some restraint on human passion in regard to marriage, for where no law existed in old times, mankind invariably ran into the most revolting excesses. "They took them wives," we read in the Scriptures, "of all which they chose," not only as many as they chose, but without any restraint in respect of affinity or consanguinity. These vile practices were continued after the flood among the Canaanites, and formed one of the chief reasons for their disinheritance by the hand of God. To counteract this detestable profligacy among the Jews, and give Divine sanction to a purer code of morals in respect to marriage, Moses was commissioned in the name of God, and as His mouth-piece, to write a table of degrees for restraint of marraige within certain limits, founded on this principle announced in the beginning of the table — " None of you shall approach, (i. e. by marriage) to any that is near of kin to him. I am the Lord." The table then gives instances of such affinity or consanguinity, for no difference is made between them. It is not an exhaustive table, for marriages with a man's own daughter or his grandmother are not forbidden, and the prohibitions are given exclusively to men, though women are equally concerned. But it is evidently goverened by the principle which the Lord lays down as the true foundation of the marriage relation that man and wife become one flesh, and consequently all the blood relationships which would be forbidden are equally unlawful after marriage to relations by affinity. This simple and divinely authorised rule in contradiction to the loose practises of the heathen, and even of some of the Patriarchs, is the rule of Christian morals given to us by our Lord. Even if it could be shown — which is contradicted by the whole sense of the 18th chapter of Leviticus — that this is a part of the ceremonial,
