have to revive the name of "the house of him that hath his shoe loosed."
No! Who does not see that the whole scope and intention of the law of the Levirat ewas Judaical,and limited to and exhausted by that economy. And, therefore, if the connection between the law of the Levirate and the 18th verse of Lev. xviii. be established, as I have endeavoured to shew it is, it will follow that the exception to that law must belong exclusively to it and expire with it; and, therefore, that the supposed permission to take the sister, "beside the other," if it be not "in her life-time," has, as I have all along been arguing, nothing to do with us as Christians at all, but is tied to and restrained by the law of the Levirate, and of the Jewish dispensation. Under it, it was lawful, it was enjoined, when a brother died childless, for the brother to take his wife and raise up seed unto his brother; and this would be lawful and enjoined in that particular case even when his brother's widow was his own wife's sister, if his own wife, the sister of the other were dead. But among Christians I cannot believe that any one seriously believes for a moment that the law of the Levirate remains, and so no one can suppose, if the 18th verse of Lev. xviii. be merely the exception to that law, that it has any bearing upon, or gives any permission to, Christians in their marriages at all.[1]
M. W. M.
- ↑ Appendix C.
