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law of the Levirate, but as having nothing at all to do with the general law: as therefore in no way interfering with or over-riding the general law of the 16th verse; in no waymaking its general provision of none effect, as it would do if taken in the sense and application of these reformers of our marriage law. And the above-mentioned sense and application which everyone must allow the 18th verse will bear, nay, which Dr. M'Caul tells us all Jewish authorities claim and sanction, as at least included in its legislation, is, I must contend, ample and sufficient to explain the standing of the 18th verse, and its full meaning, without supposing any other appplication whatsoever.
And let it be observed that this statement of such application to the case of two brothers having married two sisters, and the consequent duty, in the case of one brother dying childless, of the other brother to take his widow under the law of Deuteronomy, modified by the exception of the 18th verse of Lev. xviii, that such union is not to take place, if his own wife be still alive, is not mine, but Dr. M'Caul's, in a full examination of certain passages in the Mishna upon this subject. Indeed it was Dr. M' Caul's own statement, in his Letter addressed, my Lord, to yourself in 1860, which brought to my mind the main line of argument which I am endeavouring to unfold. I asked myself;—If all this in the Mishna and in Dr. M'Caul's explication of the matter, be true, why is it not the sufficient truth and the whole explanation needed? Why go on to make a conflict between the two verses in Leviticus when the 18th verse is acknowledged to be the enunciation of an exception to the law of the Levirate, and when this is a full and sufficient account of it?
It will, I think, be no waste of time to extract the passage to which I refer from Dr. M'Caul's letter, as this will serve both to make what I have here said the more
