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necessarily confined in their sense to kindred by blood relationship, and cannot embrace relationship by marriage; but I do not feel that there is any material weight in the critical examination of such a passage, as to the general use of a phrase or word, because it seems to me we have here the comment of the Holy Ghost Himself in what follows as to the sense in which the words "near of kin" are, in the connection in which they there stand, to be understood; that is to say, that which follows gives, by the details of the enactments ensuing, God's own comment as to what is intended by "near of kin," and if these details be found to embrace affinity as well as, and as much as, blood relationship, it appears to me that the consideration of what in other cases is the usage of the term, must be beside the question we have before us. Nay, is it not, indeed, very probable that terms, which in their ordinary usage would refer simply to blood relationship, are here chosen by Divine inspiration to include also relationship by affinity, for the very purpose of showing that a man and his wife being one flesh, the nearness of kin here contemplated, and illustrated by the instances which follow, was to embrace both relationships alike? I do not know how better to shew that, in the whole connection of this passage, the enactment is of the kind which I have mentioned, than by a quotation from the pamphlet of Mr. Keble, published in 1849. Though, my lord, you and others have said the same things, you will, I am sure, bear with me whilst I recall the passage as it stands in the words of that revered writer. After shewing the scope of the law to extend not merely to the Jews by the curse which it entails having been brought upon the very heathen who gave way to such iniquities, he says: —
"Now, what are the customs which were so abominable in the old inhabitants of God's Holy Land, and caused the
