PRINCETON. N. J
Lihrary.^%iSf'^^'4}'^940^:iy Resented.
BX 8641 . 06 1871 One of the people. Opinions concerning the Bible law of marriage
Number,,
OPINIONS CONCERNING THE BIBLE LAW OF MAHRIAGE.
iii
OPINIONS
CONCERNING
THE BIBLE LAW OF MARRIAGE.
BY
ONE OF THE PEOPLE.
Elijtih said unto the people, — How long halt ye between two opinionsf
If the LoED B£ GoD) follow Hiu; If Baal — follow him. — 1 Kings xviiL 21.
PHILADELPHIA: CLAXTQN, REMSEN & HAFFELFINaER,
No8. 819 AND 821 Market Street.
187L
Entered, ftccording to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by CLAXTON, RKMSEN A HAFKELFINGER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
STEREOTYPED D? }. PAGA>( * 60M.
rniNTED BV MOORE BB08.
TO THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLE SPEAKING THE ENGLISH TONGUE, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED.
I MAKE MY APPEAL TO THESE AS DEFENDERS OF THE RIGHTE0U8- NESS OF OOD'S LAW OF TRUE MARRIAGE, — BECAUSE THEY HAVE SENT CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES ABROAD WHO HATE TRANSLATED THE HOLY BIBLE INTO THE LIVING LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD; AND THUS OPENED THE WAY OF SALVA- TION AND PROGRESS THROUGH KNOWLEDGE OP THE TRUE GOD, AMONG ALL NATIONS.
PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY IS THEREFORE THE GUARDIAN 0?
GOD'S HOLY BOOK. ONE OF THE PEOPLE.
Tii
PEEFACE.
MY readers need not be told that the holy law of marriage, as the Creator at the " begin- ning " established it, has been set aside, trampled upon and openly rejected, by a set of persons styling themselves " Mormons, or Latter Day Saints," now- established in a Territory of the United States, and who have been seeking admission into the Union.
It is not my intention to go into the history of these Mormons ; their rise, progress, characteristics, and religious creed may be found in other publica- tions. My aim is simply to examine one assertion put forth by the leaders of Mormonism and acted upon in their community, namely, "That the Bible, the Old Testament at least, sanctions polygamy."
!N"or is it only this Mormon doctrine that needs examination and refutation. Some of the leading Clergymen in the Protestant orthodox churches of Great Britain and the United States have given expression to opinions which seem to uphold the idea that, so far as the Scriptures of the Old Testa- ment are concerned, polygamy is not sin. All the points raised by the opponents of Monogamy, whe- ther in the Church or out of it, to prove that Bible authority sustained, sanctioned, or tolerated a plu-
X PREFACE.
rality system of wives among the people of Israel, I hope to meet and refute, — God giving me light and power. Here I will only say that the great mistake of all Bible critics has been their false assumption that the men of Israel, because they were Oriental, were polygamists.
And bear in mind, that on the solution of this point depends the great question whether the mar- riage institution in our country shall be held a sacred ordinance, instituted by the Creator no less for the happiness than for the purity of our race, and thei-efore to be guarded and preserved inviolate by the K^atioual Government ; or whether it is a mere arrangement of society, a law of human authority, and therefore liable to be modified to suit the cii--
'If
cumstances of new situations, and the desires and schemes of selfish or powerful men.
In short, the question of admitting the Territory of Utah as a State into our Union must be tried and decided chiefly on this issue — Whether j^olj-g- amy is not a sin against God's law of equality in marriage, and therefore an outrage on the inalienable rights of humanity, which outrage would, if allowed, infallibly destroy the freedom of women and the republican equality of men?
Let us humbly, and with earnest prayers for the aid of the Holy Spirit, who can guide us into all truth, search the Scriptures for the knowledge of the truth in this important matter.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAOE
The PkixMal Law op Marriage 13
CHAPTER II. The Law of Divixe Providence 20
CHAPTER III. Noah 33
CHAPTER IV. Abraham and the Promise 88
CHAPTER V. Jacob and his Sons 49
CHAPTER VI. The Giving of the Law 63
CHAPTER VII. The Special Laws of Moses 83
CHAPTER. VIII.
The Judges of Israel
106
si
Xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
PAGB
David, King of Israel 122
CHAPTER X. Solomon the Wise 147
CHAPTER XI. The Books of Solomon 1G7
CHAPTER XII. The Kings and the Peophets 192
CHAPTER XIII. The Gospel of Jesus Chkist 205
CHAPTER XIV. The Apostles 217
CHAPTER XV. The Great Question 225
CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion. — Summary of the Argument 235
OPINIONS CONCERNING
THE
BIBLE LAW OF MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRIMAL LAW OF MARRIAaE.
THE union or society of one man witK one woman is the Bible law of marriage. This was the primal law of God,
This fundamental ordinance for the govern- ment of the human race is of God, and has been set forth and made known to mankind in a threefold manner :
1st. In the Law of Creation. 2d. In the Law of Providence. 3d. In the Law of Revelation. That the law of creation was strict mono- gamy, one man for one woman, no sane per-
? 13
14
THE PEIMAL LAW.
son, who believes the Bible history, will deny. Let us look over the proofs.
God made man male and female. They were created for each otlier. The woman was formed from the substance of the man, and therefore designed, by the manner of her creation, to be one with him. God united them in marriage, and blessed them. God gave them knowledge of the relation they bore to each other; this is evident from the words of the man when receiving the woman :
" And Adam said. This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
" Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh." — Genesis ii. 23, 24.
Such was the primal law of marriage. Will any man who admits the truth and authority of the Bible, assert that this oneness in union could exist between a man and " two or three," • or three hundred women ?
If the rule can be set aside at all without - sin, that is, without breaking God's primal law, then tlie number of women united to one man would be immaterial by this law.
THE PKIMAL LAW.
15
Some other rule of limitation must be framed, either by divine or by human authority, to make the measure of right in the numbe]' of wives.
God surely did not frame any other law. He could not have done so -without a new cre- ation.
Did God leave this. His first law, His most important law for human beings in their rela- tions to each otlier, incomplete, or subject to change at the will of man?
The prophet Malaclii shall answer this ques- tion. Living three thousand six hundred years after the creation, and speaking by divine inspi- ration, he thus witnesses against the adultery and polygamy, or divorce without cause (all these tran^ressions of the divine law of mar- riage are the same sin) of the Jewish men. He says :
" The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treaclierously : yet is she thy com- panion and the wife of thy covenant.
"And did not He make one? Yet had He the residue of the Spirit. And wherefore one? That He might seek a goodly seed. Therefore
16
THE PRIMAL LAW.
take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the "wife of his youth." — JIalachi ii. 14, 15.
These solemn warnings, this inspired protest against taking more wives than one, were among the last messages of God to His chosen people under the old dispensation. They show that the primal law of marriage, one man with one woman, was never set aside, was never altered by Divine permission. Nay, more, the reason for the law, to secure " a goodly seed," that is, the j)urity and security of the family relation, is now and has ever been felt a necessity of enlightened human legislation. Wherever this principle is violated, insurmountable evils de- structive of human improvement exist, and the race is deteriorated.
That the wise and good God did not leave to men the j)ower of overturning universally the true law of marriage, has saved the world from utter ruin. Not only was this conjugal fidelity made absolute for the first wedded pair, but also the law of monogamy was stamped iiito the constitution of humanity. In the succes- sion of the race, the male and female Avere to hold this same equality of j)roportion to each
THE PRliMAL LAW.
17
other ; the numbers of each sex born into the world were to agree, as at the creation.
Thus we find in every age, country, and cli- mate, among every people, under every form of government, the same proportion of male and female births takes place. Not exactly equal, but preponderating on the side of the males in the proportion of about 100 boys to 94 girls.
This provision is evidently to meet the greater casualties to which the life of the man child is liable in his hazardous pursuits and wasting exposures.
In a table of English statistics now before me, I find that in 1854 the whole number of births in England was 635,005 ; of this num- ber, 324,669 were boys, and 310,336 were girls ; or over fourteen thousand less of the latter than the former.
A similar j^roportion holds good in our own land, and in every other country of tlie globe.
Such is the immutability of God's law of creation. It imposes strict monogamy on men now as it did in Eden. Men may denounce this law as too stringent ; they may deny its holi-
2*
18
THE PRIMAL LAW.
ness, may violate its spirit; but they cannot abrogate the law.
It stands engrafted into the nature of the human being. It is proclaimed anew at every numbering of the people ; one male to one female ; such is the inviolable rule.
In view of these unerring results, does not reason teach us that monogamy, and not polyg- amy, is the law of creation for the sexes ?
Can any man, infidel though he may be, who pretends to a knowledge of philosophy, defend a plurality of wives on the ground of natural justice between man and man, putting woman's happiness out of the question ? - As the sexes are equal in numbers, it follows that if one man be permitted to have " two or three wives," or any number over one, other men will be deprived of their right to any wife, because the supply would not be equal to the demand.
And how dare any Christian man, any min- ister at God's altar, assert that a license, which would violate natural law, and consequently destroy the balance of good in the universe, has been sanctioned or " tolerated " by the God of Highteousness ?
THE PEIMAL LAW.
19
The irreparable and awful evils that over- whelm society whenever this law of strict mon- ogamy is set aside, I shall not here attempt to portray. The history of these results belongs properly to the second division of my subject, viz., the Law of Providence.
Now I would only draw the minds of my readers to the careful study of the Book of Genesis, and to an earnest and honest consider- ation of these three questions :
1st. Did the Law of Creation allow polygamy?
2d. Did the Fall introduce it by the sanction of God?
3d. Is not polygamy a sin against God's primal law of marriage ?
CHAPTER II.
"THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
VEE.Y moral law, being founded in rig-lit-
JLi eousness, is, and must be, ujDlield by the punishment of its transgressors. Hence, if a certain course of human conduct is always fol- lowed by good results, and its opposite course by evil results, are we not, as rational beings, compelled to believe that the former is the right way, and the law of Divine Providence ?
Thus, I affirm that monogamy is the Divine law of marriage, because its transgressions, either by uncurbed license, concubinage, or polygamy, are always, and everywhere, followed by evil, and never by good; that is, followed by the punishment, in some form, of the indi- vidual who breaks the law, or of the commu- nity or people avIio allow of the transgressions.
In dealing with moral questions, the diffi- culty usually is that mathematical or tangible evidence is demanded to support our assertions.
20
THE LAW OF DIVINE PEOVIDENCE. 21
When we say that murder is sin, and can point to the dead body of a man deprived of life by the hand of violence, every human heart responds to the cry, because the crime is tangi- ble and touches the life-instinct of all. And Christian men demand the death of the mur- derer, appealing to God's law as the charter of right to punish the sin.
But when we say that polygamy is sin per se, the prevalence of the custom is urged in excuse for it where it has long existed; and the ex- amples of men, whom the Bible designates as "faithful and chosen of God," are cited to prove that, under some circumstances, such connections have been, by Divine tolerance, permitted, and therefore the having of more than one wife is not of itself a sin.
" What is sin ?
"Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the Law of God."
Such is the definition of the Assembly's Cate- chism. The wisdom of man has never, prob- ably, rendered a clearer exposition. Yet the whole is not told. The depth of the rule is not reached by this explanation.
Murder is not sin merely because it is forbid-
22 THE LAW OF DIVIKE PROVIDENCE.
den by the law of God, but because murder is sin. Therefore God by His hiw did forbid it. Hence the principle is established that each and every sin enumerated in the Decalogue was prohibited because opposed to righteousness, the primal law of Heaven.
God could not, reverently speaking, even by His omnipotent fiat, have done otherwise than forbid these sins, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, etc., for the reason that He is righteous, and His throne is established in righteousness.
It is true that God's law is, to us finite beings, the measure of right, and so the exposition of the catechism is in this sense correct. Still it
«
tends to lower, in human estimation, the stand- ard of Divine pcrfectness, when we consider sin as the consequence merely of transgressing the law of God, and not as the inevitable result of violating His goodness, which is the fountain of Divine Love.
Every one avIio believes the Bible, and I write to believers, must have formed some idea of what is meant by the declaration —
" So God created man in His own image ; in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He them." — Genesis i. 27.
THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 23
Here we are taught tliat Adam, meaning, as the Bible declares, the man and the woman, had certain attributes which entitled him, or them, to this glorious distinction, nowhere recorded of angels, of being* made " in the image of God."
What attributes of the Most High were be- stowed upon Adam ?
Not Omnipotence, nor Omniscience, nor Om- nipresence, nor Infallibility ; the human has not and never had these attributes or powers.
But the Lord God did bestow on Adam the Divine attributes of Spiritual Immortality, of Holiness, and of Love. We are taught this in the Word of God ; prophets and apostles alike bear witness ; and we are constrained to adopt the conclusion that Love, Holixess, and Immok- TALITY make the " image of God," His Soul, so to sjDcak ; and that His other attributes are the means whereby He renders this " image " visible or known to created intelligences.
As Immortality, in the strict sense of the term, is a state of being and not of doing, it follows that this " image of God," or His attri- butes represented in the character of the first human pair, were Holiness and Love.
24 THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
From these two attributes or principles are derived those virtues that we call God-like, namely, Truth, Purity, Justice, Goodness, and INIercy : these all result from Holiness and Love.
Now, in the relation of the first human pair to God, and in their conjugal relation to each other, these divine endowments of the human soul — Love and Holiness — had in Eden full scoj)e and fitting enjoyment. Had they con- tinued obedient, that is, holy, the perfect hap- piness as well as sinlessness of the race would have been complete and eternal.
Jesus Christ fully sustains this doctrine in His declaration "that the whole law is comprised in this, " to love God supremely," which would be holiness, and " to love our neighfjor as our- selves," which includes truth, purity, justice, goodness, and mercy, in all our actions.
Thus, if we fulfilled Christ's injunctions, the kingdom of God would come to us now as it was in Eden.
Love and Holiness are required as the condi- tion of the soul's salvation. The Saviour's blood was shed to redeem man from selfishness, which is sin, and reclothe him in the right-
THE LAW OF DIVINE TROVIDENCE. 25
eousness of Christ, wliicli is love and holiness, thus renewing in man " the image of God."
Here two questions are suggested. First : Had Adam, when in Eden, the knowledge of the moral law (included in the Ten Command- ments), the same in essence as that promulgated on Sinai, and taught by Christ, and recognized by Christians as the Law of God, binding on every human soul, the transgression of which is sin ?
Adam certainly knew that the law of mar- riage was monogamy, because he was the organ of its promulgation. He must have known that obedience to the Creator, including love and worship, was not only his blessed privilege, but the law of his being.
These two duties, love toward God, and love toward each other, true, pure, unselfish love, include the whole requirements of the Moral Law. Therefore Adam must have known this law.
Second : Did Adam, by the Fall, lose his knowledge of God's moral law, or lose his own sense of responsibility to obey it?
Will any Christian man reply in the aflSrm- ative ?
26 THE LAW OF DIVIXE PROVIDENCE.
Then, if Adam did not lose his knowledge that God required love and holiness in His cre- ated sons, Adam must have known that idola- try, murder, adultery, theft, covetousness, and all the transgressions of holiness and love, were forbidden, and were sins. Adam knew this as truly as we now know such transgressions to he wickedness, not merely because forbidden in the decalogue, but from their inherent false- hood, injustice, and destructiveness.
There is a soul-felt necessity for the Moral Law, that code of love and holiness, in the moral government of the world. Without the enforcement of these injunctions, there could be no goodness in the universe.
Every transgressor feels in his own mind and conscience condemned. Thus Cain stood before God when that terrible question, "Where is Abel thy brother ? " sounded in his ears.
God had not promulgated a law against mur- der. The law that convicted and condemned Cain was written in his own soul. " The image of God " created in the human nature, though broken, defiled, and darkened by the Fall, was not destroyed ; that is, the hope of good w;is not crushed out, the knowledge of what was good
TI}E LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 27
was not taken away, the wish for good was not annihilated.
Evil was known, and its deadly influence had polluted the heart, and made the will a rebel to God ; but the mind could see the light of truth, and conscience would feel the justice of punish- ment, because the law of love and holiness had been violated.
This self - condemnation of the sinner has been feelingly expressed by St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans, chap. vii. The intensity of the struggle between good and evil in the human soul is summed up in that fearful cry : " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Sin was first manifested in Eden by disobe- dience to the law of God, and shame followed before the guilty pair had been arraigned, thus showing that transgression inevitably brings evil, that is, punishment.
The next development of sin was in the self- ishness of the man toward the woman, seeking to throw on her the greatest share of the blame of disobedience to God. Thus, even in Eden, the love of each one to the other was suffering eclipse.
28 THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
After tlie Expulsion, sin, by the hand of the fratricide Cain, was written in letters of blood on the mourning earth, that still bears the hid- eous record.
Next, following murder, and in league with it, comes polygamy — as Lamech confesses, coil- ing, like the slimy serpent, its polluting folds around the " image of God" in the human soul, and poisoning with its foul breath the pure air that fed the chaste connubial torch, which made the warmth of domestic peace and the light of social happiness.
The tempter had beguiled the woman in her Eden of bliss by raising in her soul the desire of wisdom, and in her heart the wish for what looked pleasant and seemed good.
Could this foul and lying spirit of evil fail, when, coming to man in his sorrow, as he toiled wearily among the thorns and writhed beneath the terrors of the curse, this old serpent took the form of licentious passion, and for the Eden lost showed men their power over women, and the pleasures of sensual enjoyment?
The recorded history of " the World before the Flood," reaching over a space of more than sixteen hundred years, is all comprised in the
THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 29
first seven chapters of the Book of Genesis. Study that history, and learn there, from the first three chapters, the Law of Creation, that God formed one man and one woman for each other, and united them in holy marriage, thus establishing forever the sanctity of monogamy for our race. Then, in the last four chapters, see how sternly the Law of Divine Providence, always in harmony with the Law of Creation, punished the sins of licentiousness and polyg- amy, or transgressions against the law of mon- ogamy, by the total destruction of " all flesh," all mankind, excepting the four men and four women who had kept the holy law of marriage. Thus was the law of union between husband
«
and wife established by the Creator in the "beginning," reaffirmed, exalted, and sanctified anew by the destruction of the antediluvian world.
There are theologians who, not liking utterly to condemn polygamy as sin, lest good old Jacob should be scandalized, always try to avoid or cover up this question. Such clergymen rep- resent the great wickedness of the old world to be " ungodly marriages," that is, the daughters,
3*
30 THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
or female descendants of Cain, being mai'ried to the sons or male descendants of Seth.
Neither the language of the Bible nor the social condition of the people, admits this con- struction. The Bible record is —
That " The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair ; and they took them wives of all which they chose." — Genesis vi. 2.
If it were reported that our Christian mis- sionaries now in China " had seen that the daughters of the Celestials were fair, and had taken wives of all that they chose," would any person in our country understand that those missionaries were restricted to one wife each ?
Would not the idea of " ungodly marriages," or of polygamy, that is, " more wives than one," be suggested to our minds as the sin of these " sons of God ? "
Moreover, the state of society so graphically described by the inspired penman proves that polygamy and licentiousness — sins against the purity of woman and of true marriage — were the polluting root of the crimes that caused the destruction of men by the tlood.
" The earth was filled with violence." This
THE LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 31
would be, must of necessity be, where polygamy- is the law or the practice of men, because God's law of creation — one man and one woman, or the sexes in equal ratio — is always in operation. To obtain more wives than one, injustice to all women, and to a large portion of men, is the first step.
Then comes the scourge of the passions, made evil by selfishness and wrought up to fury by the fire of lust and the rage of jealousy. From this state of society it follows, as surely as de- struction from the sirocco's deadly blast, that the most devilish crimes and the deepest mise- ries have their origin. Hence come the mur- ders and mutilations of men, the shames and sorrows of women, hatreds, wars, oppressions, cruelties, and pollutions, till holiness and love, which make "the image of God" in the human being, are crushed out, and the best and purest afiections of our nature are trodden down like the mire in the streets.
Thus the social state of the Old World is represented, when " every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil contin- ually.
"And the Lord said, I will destroy man,
32 THE LAW OF DIVIXE PROVIDENCE.
whom I have created, from the face of the earth.
"And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt ; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
" And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me ; for the earth is filled with violence through them : and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
" But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." — Genesis vi.
CHAPTER III.
NOAH.
I HAVE asserted, in the preceding chapter, that polygamy is proved to be sin because it is always punished, individually or nationally, by Divine Providence.
It might be more philosophical to say, that the sin of polygamy has in itself that departure from righteousness which must end in evil and suffering.
But sufferings, it may be urged, are incident to every form of society. True ; because the heart of fallen man is corrupt, and whatever he does bears this impress of evil and imperfect- ness. Still, there are relations in life — all those relations, actions, and pursuits which the Word of God sanctions or does not forbid ; — these bring haj^piness and afford means and opportu- nities of improvement to humian nature.
Not so with the relations, actions, and pur- suits of men which God has positively forbid-
33
34
NOAH.
den, either by a separate injunction or inclusive command ; these invariably and always are found to be an injury, g, snare, and a curse to men.
Now look on IMount Ararat, and behold,- with the eye of faith, the uncovered ark, giving forth its living witnesses of these truths.
Has not God, who wrought for those eight persons, saved from the Deluge, that great mir- acle of mercy, ordered their domestic relations in the right way ?
Those four married couples are to re-people the desolated world. If monogamy were nof the only law of marriage compatible with justice and righteousness, the only law God ordained for man, would it have been so signally sus- tained ?
Was there not, at this time, a good and a suitable opportunity for introducing polygamy, provided it had been good and not evil ?
" Two or three wives " for each of these four men, arguing after the manner of those who uphold the institution, or apologize for the sin, would have seemed very desirable in order to the more speedy re-peopling of the world ; also, the greater satisfaction of man's carnal nature,
NOAH.
35
provided this could be done without sin, might have been " tolerated."
Not thus was the order of the All Righteous. God practically reaffirmed on Ararat His first declaration, that " It is not good for man to bo alone ; " And God, also, there re-ordained His first law of marriage — one man with one wo- man.
It may be asked why this law was not posi- tively promulgated to Noah and his sons, as was the law against murder ?
The reason can be clearly understood by any person who wiil honestly and carefully study this page of sacred history.
God's law of marriage was not only under- stood, but had been strictly obeyed by Noah and his sons. They needed not to have it more distinctly set forth. TJiey also knew the Di- vine law against murder, because it was, and is, stamped on every human conacience ; and they had obeyed it, or they would not have been saved.
But a new ordinance was, after the flood, given to men respecting their sustenance, name- ly, the permission, or command, rather, to eat animal food. Before that time, the whole hu-
36
NOAH.
man race liad been restricted to a vegetable diet. Genesis i. 29.
This new law, in its application, required that the sacredness of human life should be more distinctly guarded. Therefore, to prevent cannibalism, or the eating of human flesh, the terrible denunciation against even the carniv- orous beast, if it dared to destroy the life of man, was thundered forth; and also the* awful doom of him who sheds his brother's blood.
But polygamy needed not a new prohibition. It had been swej)t from off the face of the earth. The deep waters had washed out its pollutions ; the primal law of creation was justified, was sanctified, so to speak, in a living fourfold statute; and thus, as it were, stereotyped into the hearts of Noah and his sons. They needed not the formal prohibition of a sin which their own experience had told them was so cursed of God, and which, under their circumstances, they could not commit.
Certainly those four men would not feel that more wives than one were needed by any hus- band, when God himself prophesied their pros- perity and increase.
"And you, be ye fruitful and multiply;
NOAH.
37
bring fortli abundantly in the earth, and mul- tiplj therein." — Genesis ix. 7. Thus God blessed these four families living in the sanctity of His primal law, and the token of mercy was given as His blessing to a renovated world.
The descendants of Japhet have, with very few exceptions, always obeyed the primal law of marriage. Nationally, as well as individu- ally, monogamy has been the rule of all Ja- phetic peoples. These now hold the destiny of the world in their hands. With two exceptions, the descendants of Japhet have ever been the superior or governing race — superior in learn- ing, arts, sciences, and civilization. One of these exceptions was for old Egypt ; but at that time the descendants of Mizraim, the second son of Ham, were, as I shall show, strict monoga- mists.
The other instance is God's chosen people. The Hebrews were never polygamists. I shall clearly prove this, although that polluting sin has shadowed the names, and did defile the homes of some of the leaders of Israel, and was, next to idolatry, the sin that led to the over- throw of the Jewish nation : still the Hebrews were not polygamists.
4
CHAPTER IV.
ABKAHAM AND THE PROMISE.
OUR hundred and eighteen years had gone
JL by since the bow of the covenant was rounded over Ararat, and the earth is again filled with wickedness.
And now one family is selected ; one man and one woman, as at the first, and through this instrumentality the Lord God is to show forth His wonderful power, mercy, justice, goodness, truth and love, in the redemption of mankind.
Abram, or Abraham, was chosen to be the progenitor of a people to whom should be en- trusted the oracles of the Most High, and through this line the Redeemer was to be mani- fested in the flesh.
Abraham was seventy-five years old, and his wife Sarah sixty-five, when they journeyed through the land of Canaan, he holding God's promise to give it to Abraham's seed, and make them a multitude, like the stars in the sky, like
38
ABRAHAM.
39
tlie sands on the sea-shore — and as yet he had no son.
If Abraham had then concluded that the promise woukl be best accomplished through jiolygamy — indeed, that duty required him to take a younger wife, or " two or three wives " — would he not have had a plausible reason for his transgression of the primal law ?
The nation from which he had come out, had doubtless fallen into this sm. Why did he not become a polygamist ?
Simply because he was a just man, and knew that God's law of marriage would be violated by polygamy. So he waited for ten long weary years, childless, yet having faith in the promise.
And now, as at the first, woman's eagerness to attain the good led to the evil.
Sarah loved her husband so devotedly, had such perfect faith in his destiny, that she was willing to sacrifice her dearest and holiest rights of wifehood to gain for him the fulfilment of the promise.
She humbly suggested that the Lord God might not intend her to be the mother of her husband's son and heir.
This sad history and its miserable result
40
ABRAHAM.
should be carefully pondered by tbose eager zealots wlio would take God's work out of His own hands, because He does not do it in tlieir time nor way.
Where can be found a more perfect example of personal self-sacrifice, to promote what she believed to be God's will and the good of hu- manity, than Sarah voluntarily submitted to, when she gave to her beloved husband her handmaid Hagar " to be his wife "?
Well might angels have wept when they saw the broken heart of this true wife, in its agony of love, thus laid quivering on the altar of duty, as she believed ; while, in reality, she was sacri- ficing her husband and herself to the sugges- tions of the devil.
God is never with us when we break His laws.
Sarah committed her great error of leading her husband into temptation and sin in the earnest hope of furthering God's purposes, as though He could not carry out His designs without the aid of her devices.
Miserably mistaken woman ! What humili- ations, what remorse, what sorrows and evils she was bi-inging on her revered husband, as well as
ABRAHAM.
41
shames and miseries on herself, and wrongs and sufferings on her poor bondwoman !
From the beginning to the end of the con- nection of Abrabam with the Egyptian slave, there is an unbroken series of troubles. All the parties are miserable, because all have sinned, and sin, like this, inevitably brings its own punishment.
That the connection was not marriage is evi- dent. Abraham never considered Hagar as his wife. He never defended nor protected her from the anger of her mistress, Sarah. Hagar was always treated and considered as the bond- woman ; and thus she is recognized in the New Testament by St. Paul.
When, fourteen years after the birth of Ish- mael, Sarah herself bore a son to Abraham, " according to the promise," then the false na- ture of the adulterous compact with Hagar was manifested.
The son of the bondwoman was not the heir. Sarah, the true wife — the only wife — asserted the rights of her son, and God sanctioned her claim.
" Cast out the bondwoman and her son," was the command of God to Abraham.
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ABRAHAM,
It was a cruel fall for the ambitions Hagar. It was a terrible, and seemed a bard, judgment on her young son, who was made a victim to the sins of his parents.
Yet this is the law of sin, of polygamy or concubinage, as truly as of idolatry. The black waters of its wickedness, once allowed to flow, poison or darken the pure well-spring of all in- nocent happiness, of all domestic peace within their influence.
Though God comforted the self-condemned Abraham when, in his grievous sorrow that he must banish Hasfar and her son — his son — whom he dearly loved, he sought the Lord, it is no palliation of the concubinage. God is mer- ciful. He forgives the repentant, and the blood of Christ blots out trans2;ressions. But the consequences of sin — that is, its effect on char- acter and condition in this life — are not re- mitted, nor could they be set aside even by the Lord of Heaven, reverently speaking, because it is His law that sin must bring suffering.
So, although God's promise to make Ishmael " a great nation " has been literally fulfilled, and the wild Arab of to-day is the living repre- sentative of this " archer lad " who dwelt in the
ABRAHAM.
43
wilderness, "his hand against every man and every man's hand against him," yet the charac- ter of Ishmael's descendants, like his own char- acter, has ever borne the stamp of their origin — unlawfulness and sinfulness.
Thus, too, with Abraham. He had, at God's command, put away his iniquity — sent Hagar into the wilderness. Was he clear from his pollutions ? Was his faith as j)ure and stead- fast as the day when first " the Lord made a covenant" with him?
The great trial of Abraham's faith afterwards, proves that he had truly repented ; but that such a trial was required, proves also how widely he had gone astray.
In order to make him the representative of the *' Faithful " he must be purified as by fire, and his perfect obedience to God made as mani- fest as had been his transgression.
Let us dwell for a moment uj)on this pain- fully interesting record.
It was twenty-five years from the time of the first promise to the birth of Isaac. We have seen the old patriarch, wearied with waiting, yielding to the temptation of a substitute for his true wife.
44 ABRAHAM.
Did this device bring tlie promised seed sooner ?
No one will answer in the affirmative.
Another twenty-five years have gone by, and Isaac the beloved, the " only son," according to the promise, is to be sacrificed.
" Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and ofier him there for a burnt-offer- ing upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
Such was the command of God. Then was the triumph of Abraham's obedience and faith. At eighty-five years of age he had distrusted God's wisdom in keeping him childless, and had done evil that good might come.
But at the age of one hundred and twenty- five he bowed in humble submission to the Divine command that would leave him cliildless. Believing that " God would provide himself a lamb," he trusted the same God with the order- ing of all things.
Yet, oh ! what agony of repentance for his former unbelief ; what sorrow for his only son, on whom the father's sin had brought such fearful doom ; what struggles of paternal love ;
ABRAHAM.
45
what anguish of heart at the thought of his be- loved Sarah, whom his haud must make child- less, came over his soul, like deep waters of grief, as he slowly drew near, and nearer, the place of sacrifice !
Who can describe such sorrows ? Who can even imagine them ? By the history we are led to believe that Abraham's sufferings in that trial were greater than were ever before or since endured by a mortal man.
That this was Abraham's punishment for his faithlessness and sin in resrard to Hao;ar there cannot be a doubt. The inspired penman has wrought out, by a few touches of holy truth, this domestic drama, till it moves the soul like a living sorrow. The Divine justice in the penalty, even when it demanded the " only son" Isaac the beloved, is felt to be needed. No other sacrifice could show that the father's heart had been purified by a contrite repentance ; that he laid himself down at the footstool of God's law, and, like an humbled child, was willing that Law should be magnified and made honorable, even though it crushed his own heart, because of his trans2;ressions.
Can that be a light sin, one to be laughed
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ABRAHAM.
at " by Cliristian ministers, wliicli brings such fearful results ? *
Granted, that his repentance and submission were accej^ted by the Lord, and Abraham was
* The licentious mode in which some learned men, styling themselves Christians, have interpreted the " Holy Scrip- tures," is well illustrated in the " Concordance " prepared by that eminent scholar, the late Mr. Alexander Cruden ; a work used by Protestant American Clergymen.
In explaining the term "Concubine," Mr. Cruden asserts that it meant an " inferior wife," and that "Abraham had two concubines, namely, Hagar and Keturah." ,
Now, Abraham's marriage with Keturah is recorded in the Bible as having taken place after Isaac was married to Re- bekah, which did not occur till a number of years after Sarah's death. Abraham had been a widower all these years ; his mar- riage with Keturah was as lawful a wedlock as with his first wife, Sarah ; true, his sons by the second wife did not inherit the "Promises of God" nor the estate; but they were his legitimate children. Why should tlie ministers of God's Word allow such false statements as Mr Cruden .has made, to go forth uncontradicted? Do they wish to have " Faithful Abra- ham" not only shamed by one transgression of purity, but thus branded with the sin of polygamy, to become an example and snare to filthy Mormonism?
Mr. Cruden also asserts (see his Concordance, article Con- cubine) that " polygamy was sometimes practiced by the patri- archs and among the Jews, either by God's permission, who could rightly dispense with his own laws when and where he pleased," — etc.
Is this true? Could the righteous God have dispensed with the punishment of Adam, of Caiu, of tlie people of Sodom, and
ABRAHAM.
47
forgiven ; nay, more, that his position as "Father of the Faithful" and Head of the people of Israel was affirmed, and he fully reinstated in all the honor of God's favor, in all the glory of His love — still Abra- ham's sin was not cancelled. Its evil influ- ence continued, and continues not only in his descendants, but on all who ever heard his name.
His example of adultery, or polygamy, call it which you will (both are one sin), has been the cause of sins of the like kind from that day to this.
The example of Abraham, and that of Jacob, have never ceased to do evil ; they have been used to excuse the licentiousness of the Jewish nation ; to justify the pollutions of false re-
been the righteous God, upholding His own laws of righteous- ness? Where, then, was the need of a Saviour for transgres- sion of His holy law ?
Is it not remarkable that the plea for these permissions and dispensations is always because the carnal lust of men must be indulged? Why not include murder, theft, false witness and covetousness in this license? Are these sins worse for society, more corrupting, more dishonoring to the Law of God, than adultery? Does not this sin lead more certainly than any other forbidden in the second table, to the utter jejection of the true God ? — to idolatry ?
48
ABRAHAM.
ligions, and even to lower the standard of mo- rals in tlie Christian Church.
Nor is this fearful summary the worst of the evil. The Word of God has been falsely ac- cused of sanctioning, or tolerating, polygamy, and licentiousness, because of Abraham's sin !
CHAPTER V.
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
IN the whole range of Bible History, there are no scenes connected with the life of a man so inexpressibly sad as the glimpses we have of the life of Jacob.
The grandson of Abraham, and announced as heir of the promise before his birth, Jacob was led by crooked ways to be the " supplanter " of his elder brother, and thus made him his mortal foe.
The favorite of his mother, even the light of her eyes, and dear as the life-blood of her heart, and returning her love with most tender, rever- ential affection, Jacob found himself compelled, by his obedience to this devoted mother, to be- come a fugitive from his father's house, fleeing, like an outlaw, without follower or means of support, from the land where his seed was to be a great nation.
His life, moreover, was in jeopardy, and he
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
miglit fear, on every sound of the wind, to hear tlie voice of tlie enraged Esau, who was thirst- ing for his blood.
Such is the first act of the drama.
Then comes the sweetest dream of his life — his deep, delicious, almost delirious love for his beautiful cousin, Rachel : and she, as we gather from the after narrative, returned his pure pas- sion with the devotion of a loving woman, wor- thy to be the wife of the man blessed of God, who then sought her in holy marriage.
"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." — Genesis xxix. 20.
Jacob had gone to Haran, where his mother's brother Laban resided, intending to take a wife — not wives — of his own kindred.
Jacob asked Laban for Rachel only. He served seven years for Rachel only, and then, by the selfish craft of the idolatrous Laban, the father, Jacob was deceived into marrying Leah, the oldest daughter, instead of his darling Rachel.
The history shows, as plainly as truth can be set forth, that Jacob had no intention of marry- ing more than one wife, His brother Esau had
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
51
become a polygamist, and thereby sorely grieved the hearts of Isaac and Rebekah, their parents. Would Jacob follow this evil example? No. He was over seventy years of age. The fancies of youthful, and the fires of evil imaginations were subdued. He must have known the im- portance of a holy marriage. Isaac and Re- bekah had enjoined him to take a wife. He had chosen his bride, and proved his constancy by a seven years' servitude — and at last be was deceived.
It was hard to bear such disappointment. He loved Rachel with passionate desire. The wily, wicked Laban was ready with excuses and persuasions. Jacob might have Rachel as well as Leah ; " it was the custom of the country," and those connections were common.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that Jacob, in the whirlwind of passion and disappointment, yielded his conscience to the tempter's snare, and married Rachel in one short week after his forced union with the hated Leah. He thus became the serf of the selfish Laban for another seven years ; but he served these for Rachel.
So ended the second act of the drama.
Jacob had now two wives, and if such arrange-
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
ments can ever be excused, lie surely might claim exemption from any great wrong-doing. He had been, as we have seen, entrapped into the connection. His wives were sisters — had been brought up together ; could they not live lovingly, with him and with each other?
Alas ! there is no peace for the transgressor of God's primal law of marriage. The avenging Nemesis is in the household of every polygamist.
Jacob's home was made miserable by the bit- ter envyings and jealousies of the rival sister- wives, till his almost idolized Rachel could up- braid him as the cause of her wretchedness.
"And Jacob's anger was kindled against Eachel."
What untold agonies of sorrow and of sin are in that one brief revelation !
But there are darker shades on this family picture ; and deeper iniquities, revenges, and pollutions, when the rival wives, to spite each other, urge on Jacob their handmaidens as con- cubines.
Here we see the influence of Sarah's bad ex- ample in regard to Hagar. Nor had Jacob, like Abraham, an oi)portunity of freeing him- self from these trammels of sin. Jacob could
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
53
not send away his paramours. He was in an enemy's land, as we may say, closely watched by Lahan and his sons, who, by thus entangling the heir of the promise in these unholy con- nections, held him like a captive in their service.
The inspired limner, who, by a few sharp, strong, dark touches, has given us the revolting image of Jacob's home-life in Mesopotamia, has shown that the law of monogamy is as neces- sary for the happiness of men as it is for their purity and the comfort of their families.
Thus closes the third act of this life-drama.
And now Jacob, with his four women and eleven sons, has left that corrupting land of idolatry. He is safely settled in Canaan, the possession that God has promised to his seed.
True, his beloved Rachel is dead, and he has mourned for her as the bereaved husband only mourns for " the wife of his bosom," his true companion. He should weep her death, yet it frees him from the living sin of bigamy, and he will no longer be saddened by her repinings that he cannot give her what was her right — the right of every true wife — the whole care, and tenderness, and love of her husband. Will
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
not domestic peace, if not liapj)iness, now be his?
No ! his sins have poisoned the fountain of home happiness by destroying the oneness which children of the same mother can never wholly put off. His sons have been trained in that hell of domestic discord and license, the home of the polygamist. Cruel, treacherous, selfish, lustful and disobedient, hating Joseph, whom Jacob, for Eachel's sake, cherishes with ex- ceeding tenderness, the six sons of his hated wife', and the four unlawful sons of the old patriarch, are the curse of his life ; and his only daughter — Leah's daughter — what is she?
Had Jacob been allowed to marry Rachel only, at the first, as he intended, and had he lived with her in chaste and happy wedlock, what a different life would his have been ! "Wniiat miseries he would have escaped ! And what a superior race of sons would have de- scended from him !
As it is, no one can study Jewish history without tracing the bad blood of Jacob's concu- bines, and the wicked passions of the hated Leah, in the selfish, sensual, stiff-necked, rebel- lious, and idolatrous Hebrew people.
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
55
Poor, sufiferiiig Jacob ! What scene described in Greek tragedy ever equalled, in sorrowful pathos, the cry of the heart-broken father, when his ten wicked sons, who had plotted the mur- der of their half-brother Joseph, and had sold him into Egyptian bondage, stood before the old patriarch with the coat of many colors," torn and bloody, in their hands, and a lie on their lips, believing which, he exclaimed, in his agony,
" It is my son's coat ; an evil beast hath de- voured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
"I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning." — Genesis xxxvii.
Thus ended the fourth act.
And now the curtain is about to fall on a life of brilliant j)romise, of sore temptations, of sad yieldings to sin, and of many sorrows. In every case the fruits of Jacob's transgressions fur- nished the means of his punishment.
Poor old Jacob ! Well might he make that pathetic complaint to Pharaoh :
" Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life."
Except the days of his youth, and the first
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
seven years he served for Rachel, there seems no period of happiness in the life of Jacob.
Why was this ? lie was the chosen of the Most High. He was, too, a devout believer in the Lord. From the time he lay down on his pillow of stones, and saw the " ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven," he never swerved from the worship of the true God.
Why was Jacob subjected to so much do- mestic misery ? Why, unless he had sinned in transgressing God's law of marriage, was his pun- ishment through and by his wives and children ?
If his example were right, or even " toler- ated " by the Lord, why was J acob's existence, wherever he went, made wretched by the dark influences of polygamy ? Its avenging presence was ever tracking his path of life ; its sj^iritual shadows haunted even his bed of-death. — (See Genesis xlix.)
His sons are all gathering around him ; his beloved Joseph is found ; and, though Jacob is dying in Egypt, far away from the Canaan of promise, where Rachel's dust reposes, yet he holds fast his faith in God, and is sure of the inheritance for his posterity.
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
57
Would not Jacob, in giving his farewell bless- ing to liis sons, have blotted out, if it had been possible, their evil doings from his memory and his speech ?
But he could not ; the dark phantoms of in- cest, of blood, of treachery, cruelty, and selfish- ness, were there ; and the crimes and miseries that would overtake his descendants Avere visible to the failing vision of the dying patriarch.
In this remarkable foreshadowing of events, there are truths of vital importance to Chris- tianity, which seem to have been strangely over- looked by expositors of Genesis. The old patri- arch virtually acknowledges God's primal law of marriage, and condemns as evil, his house- hold life. It was his high prerogative to de- clare his successor in the promised covenant that madetlie Hebrews God's chosen people.
Jacob passed over his first-born, Reuben, whose wickedness — only possible in harem life — could not be tolerated. He rejected Simeon and Levi for their blood-guiltiness and treach- ery. Judah, the fourth son of Leah, Jacob's hated wife, stands before his father's prophetic intuitions. Judah was an unrighteous man, and had been an undutiful son. He joined in
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
the plots and lies against Joseph. Why, then, did Judah come before Joseph, the eldest son of the beloved Rachel? — the good son, the great man, whose wisdom had saved Egypt, who at that time held sway over its destinies ! — Jo- seph, who had saved his father and brothers from death, and given them possessions in the richest country on earth ! Did not Joseph's dreams foreshadow his glory ? And, had his mother been the true wife, would not Joseph have been Jacob's choice as the lawgiver to whom " his brethren should bow down" ? *
Can any Christian man read over the history of Jacob's twelve sons, and not feel his mind, as well as his heart, drawn to this preference for Joseph? Jacob saw that this choice could not be permitted — that Joseph was not his legiti- mate son. Jacob had been cheated into the marriage with the elder sister, while the younger was his betrothed wife. Jacob, in his passionate desire to gain the beautiful Rachel, had fool- ishly yielded to the crafty Laban, and consented to fulfil the wedded week, and her sons were the true heirs to the spiritual oflfices. Judah ob-
* Jacob did give Joseph a double portion in the possession of Canaan. — Genesis Ixviii. 22.
JACOB AND HIS SONS.
59
tained the high honor of lawgiver to the He-, brews, and standard-bearer of the Covenanted Promise, " until Shiloh come."
Then, as if to mark more emphatically his faith in God, and his submission to God's right- eous law of marriage, the dying patriarch gave this last charge to his twelve sons :
" Bury me with my fathers, in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife ; and there I buried Leah."
That Jacob thus recognized Leah as his true wife — his only lawful wife — is plain.
In Jacob's character the religious element predominated. Faith in God, and trust in the Divine promises, seem inwoven with every fibre of his nature. His affections were deep and tender as a woman's ; when kindled to pas- sionate love they overmastered his understand- ing. Hence he was led by the persuasions of love, or moved by pity for others, into acts and admissions that his conscience could never have approved. Thus, before the world, he often halted between two opinions, loving the good and following the evil ; but he never faltered in
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JACOB AND HIS SONS.
his faitli and trust in the living God. As when Jacob wrestled for the blessing, and pre- vailed, so was it when the Angel of Death came near and freed his troubled soul from its earthly fetters. "As a prince having power with God," he rose to his upright integrity. He confessed his sins, and accepted their pun- ishment, by acknowledging Leah, the hated, as his only wife, and placing her son, Judah, lord over his brethren. Thus the righteousness of the Bible Law of Marriage is vindicated and established by the .patriarch's authority.
Was not the Providence of God which caused Rachel, the beloved, to be buried apart from Jacob, a proof that she was not his wife ? Had Rachel's dust reposed in that cave of the patriarchs, by the side of Leah, would not this have been urged as a proof that a plurality of wives was allowed by the chosen founders of the Jewish Church ?
Thanks be to God that the faithful Jacob has left this record of his repentance of sin and his reverence for duty. He thus taught his sons to honor God's Primal Law of Marriage, and to obey the letter of this law. There is no ex- ample in Hebrew history, from this time forth,
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of a plurality of wives, until tlie time of the Judges, a period of more tlian five hundred years.
Embold£ned by the sneers of infidels, who always hold up the sins and errors of those men that Bible history has distinguished as leaders in the cause of God's truth, wicked impostors come forward, in the light of this nineteenth century, and claim Abraham and Jacob as the Founders of Polygamy in the Church of the First Covenant.
I appeal to the evidence of the Bible, which I have faithfully and fully stated, and deny the foul imj)utation.
It may as reasonably be asserted that, because Abraham and Isaac were both guilty of un- truths, or prevarications, regarding Sarah and Rebekah (see Genesis xii. 13 ; xx. 2 ; xxvi. 7, 8), that, .therefore, falsehood was, by the ex- ample of the patriarchs, established as right, when thought to be convenient.
We should never forget that the Word of God is the record of truth, and therefore sets forth evil as well as good in the lives of the founders of the Church ; but the evil is nowhere represented as the good.
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JACOB AND niS SONS.
That neither Abraham nor Jacob considered polygamy or concnbinage riglit, is proved, be- cause neither had designed sach connections ; both were persuaded into the sin; -to both it brought great evils and miseries, and neither of them allowed it to their sons.
Isaac was a strict monogamist ; his example of true marriage was, and is to this day, the pride and glory of the Hebrew people, who always bless the young married couple by wish- ^ ing them to be " like Isaac and Rebekah."
Wliy was this custom practiced, unless the union of these two, the one man and one woman of the primal law, was known to be the right way ?
And though the sons of Jacob were all; save Joseph and Benjamin, most grievous sinners in many ways, yet none of them were polygamists; all adhered to the system of Isaac.
Thus, of the fifteen progenitors of the He- brew people, from Abraham to Benjamin, but two ever lived in the open transgression of God's primal law of marriage ; and the law of Divine Providence punished this great sin of Abraham and of Jacob in most notable in- stances, and with terrible sufferings.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
WE stand before Mount Sinai. Here the Lord God descended, and, amid " thunders and lightnings," and from the "thick cloud covering the mountain," He in- structed Moses in those fundamental laws which, from that day to this, in righteousness and for righteousness, are binding on all mankind. Let us, in brief, recapitulate these laws.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make nor worship any graven image.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt do no murder.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
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THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
9. Tliou slialt not bear false •witness. 10. Thou slialt not covet what is thy neigh- bor's.
Such were the Laws given at Mount Sinai, two thousand five hundred and thirteen years after Adam was created.
Did the Creator, on Mount Sinai, promulgate new laws for the human race ? or did He em- body in this Divine Code, called the Moral Law, those fundamental truths and ideas which, of necessity, were and are incorporated in human nature, and which ought to con- trol the inner and the outer life of immor- tal beings, " made in the image of God," and created for happiness if they obey these laws ?
Our reasoning faculties, as well as our re- ligious feelings, instinctively, we may say, affirm the last proposition.
"Would any man of sound mind and just judgment, to whom these questions were fairly stated, contend that, on Mount Sinai, God gave new laws to men ? laws more stringently pure, holy, and righteous, than governed human na- ture before the fall ?
Suppose God had done this, would fallen
THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
65
man have had faculties to discern the righteous- ness of such laws ?
Does not the sinfulness of disobedience, and the justice of punishment, rest on the universal belief, nay, conscious knowledge, that the re- quirements of the Moral Law are good and right, and adapted to the nature of man ?
And who but believes that man had, origi- nally, what he has now, capacities or faculties, to which these requirements are addressed ? and by which he can comprehend his duty of obe- dience ?
I affirm boldly that the " Ten Command- ments of God," given on Mount Sinai, and em- bodied, and set forth by Moses to the children of Israel, then God's chosen people, to keep His righteousness known on earth, were the identical laws to which Adam, as created in the image of God, and all his race, were amenable.
Had there been no transgression, no law would have been felt, because no punishment would have been needed. Obedience to God fulfils the whole law.
When Adam disobeyed, he introduced sin into the world, and punishment followed, thus revealing the law of God that condemns sin ;
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66 THE GIVIXG OF THE LAW.
but the sin did not enact the law ; that was in existence before the offence, or there would have been no offence.
And so of all these Ten Commandments ; each one, as it is violated, brings its punish- ment, inflicted by Divine Justice always, though usually by or through human agency.
Thus the earthquake and the fire punished miraculously, so to speak, the rebellion of Ko- rah and his followers ; but the after rebellions of the Israelites against th? Lord were punished by natural agencies and means, such as wars, pestilences, famines, and other evils.
Yet were not these evils ordained of God, and the result of His immutable laws against sin, as truly as the destruction of Korah ?
The common law, governing created man from the "beginning," as the lex non scripta of God, was, in the Ten Commandments, re- vealed and written down, thus becoming the lex scripta — the moral law. That is the whole matter.
What was forbidden on Mount Sinai was sin to Adam just as surely as to Moses. ISIurder was always sin per se ; and so was adultery, theft, and all the other prohibited actions, and
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67
are so proven by tlie Divine punishments in- flicted on transgressors.
On what other ground can the condemnation and punishment of Cain be considered right- eous?— or the punishment of the Antediluvians, ' the Sodomites, or the Canaanites, be justified?
None of tliese people had the Law as revealed on Mount Sinai ; the only Divine law controlling them was thus described by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans :
" For the invisible things of Him (or God) from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead ; so that they are without excuse :
" Because that, v/hen they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thank- ful ; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
" Professing themselves to be wise, they be- came fools." — Romans i. 20-22.
And again St. Paul says (see Romans ii. 12- 16), in effect, that to those who do right, and keep the law, whether they know it, or do not know it as the law of God, it is the law of con- science implanted by the Creator; and their
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THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
own hearts, tliougli they have no revealed law, witness to themselves of the true and the good.
So Cain knew that to kill his brother was sin ; and so the polygamists of the old world knew that marriage was one man with one woman ; that the sexes were born in equal num- bers, and, therefore, to multiply wives was to transgress the law of nature — the primal law of God to man.
Polygamy is adultery, because there is not, never was, and never can be, true marriage, except of one man with one woman.
Thus only can the twain become one. Thus only did God bless the union of the sexes.
It is God's law that has continued the ratio of increase between men and women, in strict conformity with the law of monogamy.
" Thou shalt not commit adultery," thundered from Mount Sinai, was the law that condemned and punished the licentiousness of the old world, the concubinage of Abraham, and the polygamy of Jacob. It condemned and jiunishcd all transgressions of a like kind re- corded throughout the Bible history, as we shall see in the following cha])ters. And it has con-
THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
tinned to condemn and punish every infraction of its holy prohibition among heatlien or Chris- tian nations, in all ages, through all time to the present hour ; from the " Cities of the Plain " to the " City of Salt Lake" !
The Israelites well understood its meaning. They had been educated monogamists. Neither Abraham nor Jacob had set up a new rule of marriage ; they had transgressed the primal law, and suffered for the transgression.
Isaac and Rebekah was the conjugal example for the Hebrew people.
The number of Jacob's descendants that went down with him into Egypt, shows that all had kept this law. His descendants numbered sixty-six ; viz., eleven sons and one daughter, fifty grandchildren, and four great-grandchil- dren. The eldest of Jacob's sons, Reuben, was about forty-six years of age ; Benjamin, the youngest, was thirty, or upwards. All were married, and two of Jacob's grandsons were married ; all had children, but the average was only four children for each family.
Joseph had married, in Egypt, one wife only; for the law of monogamy was then as rigid in the land of the Nile as it was, long afterwards,
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THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
in the Seven-hilled City, during the best ages of the Roman Republic.
According to Herodotus, the women of an- cient Egypt were equal, if not superior, in au- thority to the men. The chief divinity of the Egyptians was Isis, and this goddess was favor- able to her own sex. Neither polygamy nor concubinage was allowed, and the chastity of maidens was protected by a law of the severest kind against their seducers.
Herodotus asserts that, in the marriage con- tract, the husband promised obedience to the wife ; that daughters had the right of inherit- ance or succession to the estates of their parents ; and also that, should the parents become indi- geut, it was on their daughters they depended for support. In short, honor, respect, and pro- tection to women was the law and the custom in ohl Egypt.
The Bible corroborates the assertions of the Greek historian. Potiphar's wife had certainly the largest liberty. Pharaoh's daughter seems to have been as free to follow her own inclina- tions and judgment as any American lady would now desire — far more free to order her own con- duct than would be a princess royal of England.
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King Solomon's Egyptian wife was always treated with the highest respect, as though that was her birthright, and the long-venerated cus- tom of her country.
The one -wife system is also proved to have been the Egyptian law, by the memorials of that remarkable people still extant, the hiero- glyphical inscriptions, and every ascertained habit of the national life.
Nor can we doubt that to this wise adherence to the law of creation they owed much of the wonderful progress they made in wealth, order, ^ and civilization. Arts, science, philosophy, and learning, are rarely cultivated where men are at liberty to lead a life of sensuality.
The curb of restraint must be laid upon the animal passions before the understanding can mature its strength, and the intellect develop its subtle perception of abstract ideas, and its latent power over immaterial or imaginary cre- ations. Then, on reaching that empyrean height, Genius seizes in one hand the thought that lifts the reason of man to the region of duty and honor, and in the other hand she bears aloft the light that guides nations to patriotism and glory.
72
THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
Polygamy is like a wasting fever — a witlier- ing miasma on tlie moral purpose and mental energy of the individual man ; it consumes liis vitality of soul ; it gives predominance to the animal, and thus effectually hinders the mate- rial progress and intellectual greatness of a people.
It was, therefore, a most merciful arrangement of Divine Providence that placed the descend- ants of Jacob, during their tutelage, in the care of a nation where the primal law of the true God was obeyed. This important fact has never, as I can find, been taken into account by any commentator on the Bible.
Another, and, probably, a more powerful re- straint upon immorality among the Hebrews while in bondage, must have been the example of Joseph,
Was not his history preserved in the heart of that waiting, wearied, weeping people, as they toiled for their hard taskmasters beneath the burning sun of Egypt? What a history to insjjire faith in God, and impose restraint on carnal lust, was the simple narrative of Joseph's temptation and triumph in the house of Poti- phar !
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Why is it that the heroism of duty, which Joseph so nobly exemplified, has not been held UJ3 by the priesthood to the admiration of man, and to the justification of God from the charge of sanctioning lust ?
Joseph had but one ordeal of trial — one test applied to his character ; but that test included all the elements of honor, truth, purity, and piety. If he proved that he could withstand that temptation to sensual sin, he was safe.
The fate of Egypt, of Israel, of the world even, hung on his reply to the solicitation of his master's wife :
" Lie with me."
"How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ? " was the reply of the youth.
How did Joseph know that this conduct was " 8171 against God " f No positive enactment forbidding any crime, save murder, had, at that time, been put forth by Johovah.
If the law of Eden had not made the union of husband and wife sacred, and if this knowl- edge was not implanted in the human con- science, and particularly known to those who served God, why should the idea of sin against 7
«
74 THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
the Creator have ever been awakened in the mind of any man on this account?
Joseph's answer and conduct, in this sore temptation, throw a favorable light on the pa- ternal character of Jacob. We see that the old patriarch was not corrupted in conscience by the evil customs of his life ; that this favorite son was favorite because he was the son of the chosen wife, whose first-born should have been heir of the promise. Alas ! by the father's lack of self-control, this noble son had sufiered loss and degradation. Probably, from Jacob's own self-reproach, he had been more tenderly care- ful to instruct Joseph in the laws of the Lord, and in the duty of obedience.
And that law, was it not the same in essence as the Moral Law promulgated on Mount Sinai?
It will be seen, by examining the Command- ments in full, that no penalties were threatened, except in the Third Commandment.
The Lord God only gave the emphatic pro- hibition, " Thou shall not^^ to certain modes of feeling, thought, speech, and action, which might arise among the human race. These forbidden modes are represented in their ele- mentary state; each Commandment being, as
THE GIVING OF THE LAW.
75
it were, the genus from which species and va- rieties of sins may be formed ; but all of a likeness, or similitude, with the parent trans- gression.
Thus murder includes all attempts to injure or destroy the physical life of man or woman.
Adultery, in like manner, includes all trans- gressions against chastity, in man or woman, and all breaches of the marriage covenant, either by husband or by wife.
The Lord God left the punishments, inflicted in this life for transgressions of His moral law, to be provided for by the laws of men, guiding them, however, by those statutes which Moses was inspired to frame for the government of the Hebrew people.
Here we must carefully make a distinction between the statutes based on the moral law and those other laws, framed by the Hebrew lawgiver for a temporary purpose; that is, to keep the Hebrews a distinct and separate people, which laws were to be abrogated when the Messiah should come.
To this last class belong all the laws concern- ing the Levitical priesthood ; the laws of in- heritance ; of leprosy ; of food ; in short, the
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ceremonial and ritual and political laws of Moses.
But the , other statutes, based on the moral law, and given to restrain iniquity, and guide mankind in the way of holiness, are binding on the human race. These are the laws of God for men — not of Moses for the Israelites.
In the interpretation of this Divine code, the death -punishment was, chiefly, to be inflicted for three classes of crimes : idolatry, or treason to God; murder, or malicious destruction of human life; and adultery, or unchastity in many forms. Offences against property were never punished with death.
But the death -punishment was inflicted for adultery as sternly as for murder. Indeed, there was, apparently, more care taken to guard the purity of the marriage-bed and the honor of women than to prevent crimes against hu- man life.
The different crimes enumerated in the Mo- saic law, and punishable with death, are, in a greater measure, the result of disobedience to the Seventh Commandment than to the Sixth.
For eight of these different kinds of trans- gressions against the Seventh Commandment
THE GIVING OF THE LAW. 77
men were to suffer deatli, and women for six ; thus showing that the weaker sex was the least culpable.
A larger number of sins of unholy lust are enumerated, forbidden, or punished by milder forms than death ; but in all these the man is represented as a greater sinner than the woman.
Is not this significant, that no latitude of con- struction, as regards the Seventh Commandment, was allowed to the men of Israel ?
Purity of morals, which always exalts woman, was more sedulously guarded by the statutes of Moses than was property, or even life. Would this have been the case if such an institution as a plurality of wives had been permitted or con- templated as the right of men ?
Is not the Seventh Commandment of the Deca- logue as binding on man as on woman ? Did not the people of Israel, as they heard the com- mand, thus comprehend its meaning?
The priesthood must bring better proofs and stronger reasons than they have yet advanced, before they will succeed in demoralizing the whole Decalogue, which must assuredly follow, if it can be proved that the Seventh Command- ment is not to be understood in its literal sense,
78
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and tliat it means one thing for a man, and quite another thing for a woman.
Why may not all the Commandments be thus interpreted ? Vfhj may not one class of men, namely, patriots and philanthropists, have the privilege of committing murder when it suits their good purposes ? Moses killed the Egyp- tian, and was never blamed for it ; he was only punished by his own fearful conscience and self- banishment of forty years. Why not assert that his bad example is a license for murder, as much as that Jacob's two wives established the rule of polygamy ?
*' But there is no law against polygamy in the Mosaic statutes," exclaims the commentator and reverend divine.
Neither is there any statute making it obliga- tory on the father to provide for his child. Was he at liberty to cast it off? — throw it to the dogs ?
The two great central duties of humanity were settled in Eden. The marriage covenant, one man with one woman, was the first; the care of both parents equally for their children is the second enjoined in that command of God. See Genesis i. 28.
THE GIVING OF THE LAW. 79
" Be fruitful, and multi})ly, and replenish tlie earth, and subdue it : and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
This command, addressed by Jehovah to the two made one, can never be obeyed except by the most sedulous care of both father and mother for their offspring. These two central duties of human life come next after the duty of loving and serving God. No man or woman (who is married) can forego these duties with- out sin ; and no polygamist could ever keep them.
The Hebrew men, as a general rule, have been kind husbands and fathers. Many traces of this care for their wives and children are discernible in the Bible narrative of remarkable events connected with this people ; and secular history, and the jDresent domestic condition of the Jews, attest these facts, honorable to men of this race. Hence we see why, in the primal law of marriage, which the Hebrews acknowl- edged in following the example of Isaac and Rebekah, the support and care of their chil- dren, as a natural sequence, were left, without
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special enactment, to the common usages of tlie people.
The Hebrews had been well instructed in these duties. This is apparent in the history of their emancipation ; and that they stood be- fore Mount Sinai as clear from the institution or the practice of polygamy as our own nation did when our Constitution was framed, there can be no shadow of doubt.
The lamb for the passover was designed only for small householders (see Exodus xii.), and the "forty years in the wilderness" have not a trace of Jacob's sin. His dereliction from duty stands out alone in Hebrew annals, till the time of the fifth judge, Gideon, a period of nearly three hundred years after the giving of the law, and over five hundred years after the unhappy marriage of Jacob.
No doubt that many of the men of Israel were gross sensualists — tlie " mixed multitude " that went out with them shows this : but they were slaves in Egypt. Would the Egyptians allow the despised Hebrews to marry with the daugh- ters of the land ? No such unions are recorded.
An absolute necessity of obedience to the primal law was laid upon the Hebrews during
THE GIVING
or THE LAW.
81
their sojourn in the wilderness, because they were prohibited from marrying heathen women, and the natural laws of increase hardly allowed one wife to each Israelite. Nor did they have an opportunity of marrying or making concu- bines of women taken in war. The command of Moses was to " destroy the Canaanites utter- ly; " during all their wars — till the Israelites settled in Canaan — only sixteen thousand cap- tives, in all, were spared.
Thus,nfor over sixty years, was this system of strict monogamy made absolute by circum- stances, as well as by the primal law, the Sev- enth Commandment, and the special laws of Moses, as I shall prove in my next chapter.
It is as plain as facts and circumstances can make it, that the Israelites could not, and did not, practice polygamy by any license of law or custom afforded them by Divine authority. When they fell into this sin, with other heinous sins, they set at defiance the law regarding unions with heathen women, as well as the law of monogamy.
They did wickedly, and were punished. Why should divines and ecclesiastical bodies seek to lessen the wickedness of the rebellious Israelites
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by casting on the Lord God the odium of con- niving at the sin of adultery, by permitting men to break this command as regarded their own wives ?
If a married man looked on a woman, not his wife, and lusted after her, he could take the second one for a wife, and all was right, say these reverend commentators.
Had Potipliar's wife taken Joseph for her husband, while Potiphar was her husband, would she have done right, by the laws of Mount Sinai ?
No ! no ! would be the indignant rejily of the priesthood.
Why not ? Will the commentators show how the Seventh Commandment could righteously be varied to meet this difference of sex ?
Did Moses interpret the Commandment in this unequal manner?
We shall learn in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
HERE is the strong ground of the polyga- mist. Contemners of the Word of God have eagerly sought to disparage the Bible by holding up the Mosaic Code (whose special laws were designed to keep the Israelites a separate and peculiar people) to reprobation, as the most oppressive, odious, and cruel, ever framed by ancient or modern lawgiver.
I shall not attempt to follow out the specious reasoning, false assertions, and unjust conclu- sions of these unbelievers, from the leviathans of infidelity. Gibbon and Hume, down to the venomous and loathsome creatures of the Mor- mon and Colenso classes.
These libelers of God's truth, and false ac- cusers of His justice, have been boldly met and clearly refuted by many able writers. The Mo- saic Code has been pronounced, by conscientious and learned jurisconsults, to be a system of laws
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far in advance of tlie civilization of tlie age in wliicli it was promulgated, and calculated to secure a greater degree of personal freedom, political equality, and material comfort among the people, than any other nation in the world enjoyed, till after the introduction of Chris- tianity.
With two exceptions, the laws of Moses, regulating the civil polity of the Hebrews as a nation, have been set in their true light of righteousness, mercy, and love. These two ex- ceptions are,
First. Slavery, as established or sanctioned by the Mosaic Code ; and, secondly, the ques- tion of Polygamy.
The first proposition I shall not discuss — the subject needs separate consideration.
The second : — Was Polygamy sanctioned, permitted, tolerated, or " encouraged," by the Mosaic laws ?
This is the question now before us.
It shames and grieves me to acknowledge that men of high repute in the Christian Church have yielded this question. Aye, learned doctors of divinity in the Protestant Church have asserted, either openly, or by silent ac-
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES. 85
quiescence in the monstrous doctrine, that the God of purity has pandered to the lusts of men ; that He, who made man and woman for each other, to be one in marriage, has violated His own law of creation, and by His license allowed a man to have "two or three wives," or more, at a time ; thus annihi- lating the woman's claim to her own husband, and tJie oneness or covenant of true marriage.
And yet these very men will assert that mar- riage is the type of Christ and the Church !
These doctors of divinity, all the Roman Catholic Church, and, I fear, the greater por- tion of Protestant clergymen, unite with the Mormons in the opinion that polygamy was allowed, either by " dispensation," or law, or license, or toleration — at least by the laws of Moses ; and, therefore, polygamy was not sin.
I deny this, and am ready to join issue on the question.
I assert that, by the Mosaic laws, polygamy, or more wives than one, was neither sanctioned, permitted, tolerated, nor " encouraged."
In the last chapter I have shown that God's laws of Creation and of Providence were both of them in perfect harmony with each other,
8
86 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
and witli the law of Revelation at Mount Sinai on this important subject of marriage.
I shall now show that there is not, in the special laws given by Moses to regulate the civil polity of the Hebrew people, a single pre- cept, command, example, or statute, which gave permission to violate the Seventh Command- ment.
There is not a word in these laws recognizing the right of any man to have, at one time, more than one wife ; he must be freed from the wife he has before he takes another.
There is not a word in these laws directing the household relations of the polygamist. If it can be proven by these laws that a man was permitted to have more than one wife at a time, then there would be no limit to the number, and no check interposed on the selfishness and bestiality of men.
Did Moses, who directed that the mother- bird should not be taken with her young ; that the kid should not be seethed in its mother's milk — did this inspired lawgiver leave the mothers and daughters of Israel without law or precept, hope or help, subjected to the lustful and brutish passions of the men ?
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87
Why, tlie lieatlien logislators would put liiin to shame. The worst system of polygamy among Pagans has laws that limit and usages that qualify and regulate the institution.
The Brahminical and Mahometan codes agree in these matters.
The Alcoran is explicit on this point. Ma- homet was not without thought and care for the happiness of women. He says :
" If you fear to do injury to orphans, fear, also, to do injury to women : marry those that please you — two, three, or four. If you appre- hend that you shall not be able to maintain them equally, marry but one.
" Give to women (or your wives) their dowry with a good will ; if they give you anything that is pleasing to you, receive it with affection and civility." — See Alcoran, chap, iv., entitled " Woman," written at Medina.
In the same chapter, where many other in- junctions are given to the husband, regulating the treatment (always to be kind and equal) of his wives, Mahomet says, as with a final in- junction :
" If you believe you cannot keep equality and justice among your wives, although you
88 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
apply yourself to it, incline not altogether to your own liking, and leave not a wife as a thing left in toleration. If you live in good accord, and fear to injure them, God will be merciful to you."
Is there any passage in the Mosaic laws thus explicit on a plurality of wives ?
No one would, I presume, affirm that the Bible has laws like these ; still, if polygamy were allowed, laws would be needed — laws ex- plicit and emphatic, in order to prevent in- justice in families.
But some affirm that more wives than one were hinted at, or referred to, and that there are regulations given for such cases.
Let us examine these cases carefully and thoroughly.
There are three passages, in particular, pointed out as sustaining the opinion that polygamy was allowed or tolerated.
The first is found in Exodus xxi. 7-11.
This chapter is important, as it regulates and legalizes Hebrew servitude. It gives the He- brew man, who had fallen into poverty, the right to sell himself, or his services, for six years on the seventh year he was to go out
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
89
free. He could also sell his son on the same terms as himself, to work six years for his mas- ter, and then be free. But the daughter could not be sold in this manner, as a servant or slave ; she must be sold to be the wife of her master or of his son. The first clause runs thus :
"If a man sell his daughter to be a maid- servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed : to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her." — Exodus xxi. 7, 8.
We see, in this law, the care taken for the young girl's protection. Her master bought her to marry. The Hebrew man always gave presents, or a price, to the parents of his bride. This Hebrew master betrothed the maid-servant; but when he came to see her, if he changed his mind, and refused to marry her, then he was compelled, by this law, to allow her to be re- deemed ; that is, he must take what he had advanced for her, and set the girl at liberty. He could not sell her to the heathen, because a daughter of Israel could not marry an unbe-
90 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
liever ; and no daughter of Israel, as we learn from this law, was permitted to become a slave.
Now for the second contingency :
"And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
" If he take him another betrothed (the translators have added wife, which evidently is not the meaning) ; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.
*' And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money." — Exodus xxi. 9-11.
In the first place there is no marriage predi- cated of the parties — only a betrothal. The translators have interpolated the word wife, in the second clause, which is not the meaning, either grammatically or reasonably. They have also translated the latter part of this clause, which means to " provide her marriage," into the " duty of marriage," which it does not mean.
In the Douay Bible, the tenth verse is ren- dered thus, wliich is the most correct version : "And if he (the master) take another for
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
91
him (his son), lie shall provide her (the maid- servHut) a marriage and raiment." *
The law was evidently framed to prevent the daughters of the poor among the Hebrews from becoming slaves ; to protect them from the selfishness and lust of their masters, and to provide them honorable marriage or honorable freedom.
If the rich man, or the one able to buy, at least, did not fulfil his promise of marrying this poor girl, she went out free. She was not to be his second or third wife, or his concubine, but he was to marry her.
If the master bought her for his son, she was to be in the family as a daughter, not a ser- vant, till she was married ; and if the father changed his mind, and found another to be the wife of his son, then this injured, this disap- pointed, this betrothed maid, had the right to claim that her owner should support her as he
* Ver. 9 But if he hath betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
10 And if he take another wife for him, he shall provide her a marriage, and raiment, neither shall he refuse the price af her chastity.
11 And if he do not these three things, she shall go out free without money. — Douay Bible, Exodus xxi.
92 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
had done, or find lier another husband, or let her go free.
What is there in this law to sustain po- lygamy? The maid -servant goes out a free woman, not a divorced woman, as she would have been had she been married to the son. She goes out because the son is to have another wife taken instead of her ; therefore, she has never been married — only betrothed. Surely this does not sanction a plurality of wives.
Will any American divine contend that the meaning of this law is to be interpreted as a license to the son to keep this young, friendless girl, whom his father had solemnly engaged he should marry — to keep her as a paramour — a sort of left-handed wife, as long as he pleased to gratify his lust, and then set her free — that is, turn her out of his house disgraced, betrayed, ruined ?
Why, Mahomet would have been ashamed of such injustice.
I question whether the Mormon code has a law so wicked as this would be, if thus inter- preted.
The whole tenor of the Mosaic laws is to keep the people virtuous, honorable and good. They
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES. 93
are to be a holy people, so that the Lord God can dwell in the midst of them. One enactment is :
" There shall be no harlot of the daughters of Israel." — Deuteronomy xxiii. 17.
In the face of this positive injunction, does it seem possible that any Protestant Christian di- vine could have interpreted the law of Exodus xxi., given to guard the maid-servant, a daugh- ter of Israel, as meaning that she may be dis- honored, kept as a concubine, and then turned away at the pleasure of the man, who, under a solemn betrothment, sought her to be his wife ?
And yet the Rev. Thomas Scott, D. D., in his celebrated " Notes on the Bible," has asserted that this maid -servant, a daughter of Israel, might be taken by her master " as his wife, or concubine ; " and if her master " afterwards grew weary of her," he might let her be re- deemed, or set her at liberty. And he also ex- plains that the son could keep two women as his wives — that is, be a polygamist.
Now the term concubine is not found in the Levitic^l law. Moses never put the foul word into an ordinance he framed. The whole the- ory of this system of " inferior wives " and
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THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
" concubines " lias been manufactured by monk- ish sensuality and ecclesiastical ingenuity, to gain power for the priesthood over the con- sciences of men.
The Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that polygamy is contrary to God's primal law of marriage, but insists that a " Divine dispen- sation was allowed to the patriarchs, which allowance seems to have continued during tlie law of Moses."* Therefore the Roman Cath- olic Church can grant " dispensations " for these unholy connections.
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Scott does not ex- actly agree to the Roman Catholic doctrine, that the patriarchs had a " Divine dispensa- tion " for adultery, but he turns and twists the moral law in every possible light, to soften the sins of Abraham and Jacob.
By thus working up their minds to the be- lief that the patriarchs did not do any great wrong ; that women have no rights, no duties,
* See the splendid edition of the Douay Bible, " with the complete notes of Rev. George Leo. Haydock," published by Edward Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1855; approved by John, Archbishop of New York, and honored by the Pope, Pius IX., who sent a gold medal and his blessing to the pub- lishers. — In llie notes, see Genesis xvi. 3.
THE SPECIAL LAAVS OF MOSES. 95
but what men may, for their own pleasure and convenience impose, the Protestant clergy have fallen into the gulf of adulterous sin which the Romanist had opened. Without exactly com- mending the concubinage of Abraham, and the polygamy of Jacob, as just and to be imitated, the Protestant divines labor, in their ethical and moral criticisms, to find, in the Mosaic laws, some enactment that will justify the patriarchs. It is impossible to conceive how sane, honest men, if they had faithfully sought the meaning of this law concerning the Hebrew maid- servant, could have interpreted it into a j^er- mission to her master to make her his " concu- bine," or paramour, at his pleasure, and turn her away, if he grew weary of her.
The next paSsage relied on to prove a Divine permission for a plurality of wives, occurs in Leviticus xviii. 18. The lawgiver is treating of " unlawful marriages."
"Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, beside the other in her life- time."
Here the prohibition against taking a second wife, during the life-time of the first, has been tortured into meaning that the man might take
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THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
" two or three wives," or as many as lie pleased, provided he did not marry two sisters.
This law, it is evident on its face, was espe- cially pointed against a plurality of wives. The only case of this j^olygamy extant, in He- brew history, was that of Jacob, which this ex- actly met and prohibited in future.
As the patriarch had married two sisters, a law strictly forbidding unions of a like kind was need'ed. It was given. The only plausible justification of such a sin was thus taken away from the men of Israel. No man could venture to set the example of Jacob above the positive law of Moses. No man could marry two sisters, and plead such a marriage was once " tolerated" « by the Lord in the case of the patriarch.
Plow could this law sustain polygamy, when it forbade such connections ?
The third passage quoted by "plurality" men is in Deuteronomy xxi. 15-17.
" If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have borne him chil- dren, both the beloved and the hated ; and if the first-born son be hers that was hated : Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit
THE SPECIAL LAWS OP MOSES. 97
that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born :
*' But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the first-born, by giving him a double portion of all thtit he hath."
The right of divorce permitted the Hebrew husband to put away his wife, " if he hated her " (or, as some translators say, if he used her ill), and to marry another.
This law of the " two wives " was the very statute needed to guard the rights of the chil- dren of the first marriage. The hated and divorced wife, who had borne her husband a son, was thus secured in her rights as a mother ; her husband could not disinherit her son, how-» ever he might " hate her," and divorce her.
But this law did not give a man the right to have two wives at a time, any more than it gave him the right to have twenty, or two hundred.
An English or American law might be ex- pressed in the exact terms of this Mosaic statute, namely :
" If a man have two wives, the eldest son shall have a double portion; the father shall
9
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THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
not make a will to liis detriment, in favor of the eldest son by the second wife."
Would any legislator, lawyer, or logician, in- terpret the law to mean that an American, or an Englishman, might lawfully have the two wives at -the same time ? might break the Sev- enth Commandment, and be a bigamist, if he chose ?
Would not every person see that it was meant to guard the rights of children, when divorce or death allowed a man to have, or to have had, more wives than one ? *
* As a case in point, I will refer to that eminent Baptist clergyman, Rev. Adonijah Judson, D. D., whose memory, as a learned and pious Christian missionary, is honored throughout the world.
Dr. Judson resided over forty years in a land of polygamy ; be married three wives ; the biographies of these three wives are now bound together in one volume.
Here is accumulated circumstantial evidence that Dr. Jud- son was a polygamist; indeed, the circumstances thus truly told are far stronger than any which can be adduced to prove that the Mosaic laws, or the usages of the Hebrew people, favored a plurality of wives. Why do we not believe that Dr. Judson was a polygamist?
Because we know he was of a people and a faith which pre- clude such an idea.
And this was the condition of the Hebrew nation when the Mosaic law was given ; they understood the statute in question as we should understand a similar' one in our codes, namely,
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
99
A monogamist may liave had three or four wives ill his lifetime. We have, in our Church, examples of such marriages, all lawful, loving, and happy ; or, may be, one of the wives the favorite.
So, doubtless, it was in Israel ; but this law took away the power of the man to change the succession in his family — his eldest son was legal heir of a double portion, though his mother might not have been the favorite wife, nor the first wife of his father.
Now the passages I have given are the only laws that can, by any twisting, be made to lean to the side of polygamy.
I appeal to reasonable men — to reverent, Bible-loving Christians, men and women — to examine these passages in all their bearings, and I feel sure they will agree with me in the conclusion that there is nothing in these laws to sanction, or permit, or tolerate polygamy for the Hebrew men — but the reverse.
The negative side of the question is stronger
that it was intended to protect the rights of the eldest son of Rev. Dr. Judson, whether born of his first, second, or third wife ; while no idea of a plurality of living wives would even be suggested.
100 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
still. There is no law, no permission in tlie Mosaic code for a man to have more wives tlian one at a time.
There are no regulations for such a state of society as this permission would have developed.
The law of marrying a deceased brother's widow, shows that no such case as a plurality of wives was ever contemplated by Moses, any more than by the framers of our own laws.
The law referred to required that, if a man died, leaving no children, his brother, or nearest kinsman, should marry the widow ; and if she bore a son, he took the name and inheritance of her first husband, so that his name might not be blotted out of his tribe.
Now if, according to the Mosaic laws, a man might lawfully marry " two or three," or twenty wives, would not such a contingency have been taken into account? Would not the brother have been enjoined to marry several of these widows, so as to make certain of an heir for his brother? And would not some mode of pro- viding for the widows have been suggested? either to burn them, as in India, or to give them a retiring portion of the deceased man's estate? Instead of which, one widoio only is
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES. 101
considered possible by this law, as in our own laws, and her son, if she should bear one, is to inherit all his father's estate.
Can any of the theologians who insist on the polygamy of the Hebrew men give the law or the authority to show how this plurality of wives was supported, and what provision was made for the family of widows which, at times, must have been left by some Joe Smith in Israel ?
What would have been the duty of Boaz, if Mahlon had left " two or three " widows be- sides Ruth? Would Boaz have been obliged to marry them all at once ? or consecutively, if Ruth had borne no son ?
And, supposing Boaz had a wife when he married Ruth, " encouraged (by this law) to take a second wife while the first was living ; " and then, had Boaz died, leaving these two widows, would they have been equally entitled to the protection of the Lord God ?
Here is a difficulty which no theologian has yet solved, nor, so far as I can find, ever con- sidered. What was to become of the widows left by the polygamist ?
In the Old Testament, as in the New, widows are represented, and set forth by example, as
102
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
specially cared for and watclied over by Divine Providence, and entitled to tlie kindest consid- eration by human laws. Jehovah is the widow's "Judge " and " God : " who shall do her wrong and escape punishment ?
Is not the system of polygamy always a grievous wrong on woman? If the Israelites were left without any law to restrain their lust, and could take any number of wives they pleased, from "two or three" to "seven," or " seven hundred," what became of the widows of these polygamists ?
That this law comprehended only the un- married brothers of the deceased husband, is apparent on its face ; but, as if to preclude all doubt, we have three illustrations of its prac- tical application, and in each no vestige of polygamy.
First, see Genesis xxxviii., where the usage for which this statute was substituted is exempli- fied ; second, the marriage of Boaz with Ruth ; third, the case of the woman who had married, successively, seven brothers. — St. Matthew xxii. 24.
If it can be proven that this law of marrying a deceased brother's widow did " encourage (a
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES. 103
man) to take a second wife while the first was living," then the Seventh Commandment was set aside ; and if one Commandment can be nul- lified without sin, the whole Decalogue is mere waste paper.
All the Mosaic laws, and all the usages re- ferred to in the books of Moses, with the ex- ception of the deeds of Abraham and Jacob, in Genesis, are and were framed on the legality of monogamy only.
No other mode of marriage is recognized ; nor are the family arrangements any more in- dicative of a state of polygamy than are those of New York or Massachusetts.
The regulations concerning the marriages of the priests prove as plainly as St. Paul's injunc- tions to Timothy, that one wife only was the law. (See Leviticus xxi. 13, 14.)
So, also, does the law for the inheritance of daughters show the same true family relations. Numbers xxxvi. 11, 12.
In the same spirit all the statutes against licentiousness are framed ; and, also, all the laws to protect woman's virtue, and to punish men's sensual sins. But one wife is taken into account in framing the law of divorce; and
104 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.
here is an exception whicli has been interpreted in the favor of the men of Israel — that is, a man could divorce his wife if he found " some uncleanness in her," but no such permission is given the woman.
That this law was not framed because men were better than women, but because they were worse, the Saviour has clearly explained ; yet this statute did not, in the least, give permission to polygamy. It seems to have been framed in mercy to the hated wife, so that she might have another chance for conjugal happiness; or, if she were impure, and had imposed on a good man, it gave him redress. According to our Saviour's explanation, the latter case seldoju occurred.
Now, if the Hebrew men were so hard of heart — so sensual as they are constantly repre- sented— had polygamy been allowed, they would liave become a nation of Mormons. The fact that no trace of the institution can be discovered in their laws, and that every infraction of the Divine command against connections with the women of the heathen people that surrounded tlieir journey, was punished at once with death, defeat, and national calamities, are unanswerable
THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES. 105
refutations of this charge of polygamy against the Israelites.
And, over and above all this mass of tes- timony, which every righteous lawgiver, and every honest mind seeking legal truth, must acknowledge to be conclusive, we have the direct enactment.
In the only case where, under a possible con- tingency, the power of one man might set the common usage of Hebrew marriage and the Seventh Commandment at defiance, a special ordinance is promulgated.
Anticipating the time when the Israelites might desire a king to rule over them, which time came in about three hundred years, Moses gave laws for this future monarch ; — one clause runs thus :
" Neither shall he (the king) multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away." — Deuteronomy xvii. 17.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
THE Israelites are always represented as a sensual and rebellious people. Prominent in the record of their sins are their intermar- riages and licentious connections with the heathen around them, into which the chosen race fell as soon as the opportunity presented.
These connections always led the Israelites into idolatry, which is the natural ally of po- lygamy.
Search the history of the past : — have not all false religions either commenced or ended iu corrupting the simple oneness of God's primal law of marriage ?
Look over the world of the present : — does not every nation, people, and individual, up- holding a plurality of wives, deny the true God?
How, then, can it be possible for a Christian to believe that He, who "knew what was in
106
THE JUDGES OP ISRAEL.
107
man," should have sanctioned, permitted, or tolerated, by His authority, the indulgence of such a corru2)ting practice ?
The history of the Hebrew nation under the Judges, from the death of Joshua till the theo- cratic republic was merged iuto a monarchy, includes a period of nearly three hundred and fifty years. The records are unceasing repe- titions of the idolatries and licentiousness of the people, and their sufferings for those sins un- der the just punishments which the holy laws of God inflicted.
It is a most sorrowful record of poor fallen humanity ; most humbling to the pride of those philosophers who glory in the power of reason to regulate the passions, and who would de- throne the God of the Moral Law and exalt Nature to be the guide of man.
Whilst Joshua and the elders lived, who had known Moses, and truly loved and feared the Lord, all was prosperity. But when new gen- erations arose, who set aside and derided the law, while " every man did that which was right in his own eyes " — in modern philosophical jargon, when man was a law to himself — then such scenes of horrible iniquity became fre-
108
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
quent in the land as no written description can jwrtray. We feel the awful guilt of the people in the awful punishments they had to undergo.
Polygamy is among these heaven-daring sins, and two cases stand out, prominently, on the dark picture of wickedness which Holy Writ has revealed.
The first is that of Gideon, the brave young champion, who roused his enslaved and repent- ant countrymen to rebel against their Philistine oppressors. By his heroic prowess, which was signally blessed of God, he delivered Israel from their fierce foes, and restored the tribes to the enjoyment of their freedom.
But so deeply had the Israelites become be- sotted in heathen customs, that even Gideon, the strong warrior who conquered the two princes of Midian, yielded to the pollutions of idolatrous worship and polygamy, those twin destroyers of the souls of men.
" He had many wives," and " three-score and ten sons," besides one other son, born of a con- cubine whom Gideon kei)t in Sechem.
This mighty man of valor, this Judge of Israel, had, as the natural sequence of his harem life, fallen into idolatry ; yet there is no punish-
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
109
ment for either sin recorded against him. He lived as he chose, and he " died in a good old age."
Had the family annals there ended, the jus- tice of God, in this case, would have been un- explained.
But mark the sequel. Gideon left a regiment of sons. Surely these, his descendants, must take root in the land their father delivered from the Philistines.
Alas ! no. Foes more cruel than the heathen are in the family of every polygamist. The greater the number of children in such a house- hold, the more deadly enemies each one has to encounter.
In this case the destruction came by Abime- lech, the son of the concubine. He " slew his brethren, three-score and ten persons, upon one stone ; " all, save Jotham, the youngest, who hid himself, and is of no further account.
Abimelech seized the government, but, after three years only, he, too, was ignominiously killed — his skull broken by the hand of a woman !
And thus the adulterous family of Gideon was, in the space of a few years, swept from off
10
110
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
tlie face of tlie earth. — See Judges vii., viii., ix.
Another terrible tragedy, resulting from these sins against God's holy law of marriage, is that of the Levite and his concubine, which excited a civil war between the tribe of Benjamin and all the other tribes of Israel.
In this bloody strife of brethren, one hun- dred and ten thousand men of war, reckoning losses on both sides, were slain. Moreover, every city of Benjamin was taken and pillaged ; every man, woman and child of that tribe was put to the sword, — excepting six hundred men of war, who fled to the wilderness, and thus escaped the general massacre.
All these crimes, revenges, and horrors, were the legitimate result of licentiousness and con- cubinage ; thus demonstrating the sins of these unlawful connections ; for nothing but sin and its punishment disturbs the moral harmony of the universe.
Moreover, this history furnishes a signal proof that monogamy was then, as it was when Abraham was called out of Haran with his one wife, and ever had been, notwithstanding its violations, the law of marriage in Israel.
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL. Ill
I need not go into particulars ; read the last three chapters of "Judges," and learn how the six hundred Benjaminites, all that were left of this once powerful tribe, were provided with wives, "every man his wife" — one wife, and no more.
The next instance of polygamy is recorded in 1 Samuel i. It is the story of Hannah, wife of Elkanah, who had " two wives."
From this narrative it is apparent that Han- nah was the true wife, the first wife, the beloved of her husband ; but she had no children. That might have been the reason or excuse for taking the other wife, Peninuah, who had borne Elka- nah ten sons ; yet still he loved the childless Hannah better than all these sons.
This love for the favorite wife, which Elkanah seems to have openly manifested, made Penin- nali furious in her spite and jealousy toward Hannah. The first glimpse we have of the family shows its life of contentions and hatreds; its unceasing troubles and bitter sorrows.
The sketches we have of the pious mother of Samuel and of her distinguished son are instruc- tive on many points connected with the question.
112
THE JUDGES OF ISEAEL.
we are discussing. We have here the immediate and certain evil results of unlawful marriages in the unhappiness of Elkauah and his "two wives ; " and though the mother of Samuel was sinned against more than sinning, and her faith was blessed with such a son as Samuel, yet his history shows us the sure retributive justice that, sooner or later, overtakes all who break God's laws, or who, by neglecting their duties, allow others to violate these laws.
Eli, good old Eli ! — that is, he himself — had not done wickedly. He loved the Lord and walked in the statutes of Moses. And yet he, the High Priest and Ruler of Israel, is to be superseded, because he has tolerated the licen- tious sins of his sons.
Does this justify the opinion which com- mentators and ecclesiastical writers often in- sinuate— if they do not openly advance and advocate — namely, that God made woman to subserve the sensual desires of men ?
The Lord did not thus tenderly treat the lusts of the sons of good old Eli. These wicked young men, whom their father " had not re- strained," were both to die in one day; to be cut oflf without ho23e ; there was never to be another
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
113
old man of that race ; all were to " die in the flower of their age." — See 1 Samuel ii. 12-36.
And as though to stamp them and their father with deeper humiliation and ignominy, an Ephrathite, the son of a polygamist, the son of a woman whom the old priest had thought drunken — this boy was to be the successor and the superior of Eli !
What must have been the degeneracy of those who, by birth-right, claimed the priesthood, when such a child was chosen to supersede the Aaronic line?
Was there any other cause for this degeneracy except disobedience to the Moral and the Mosaic laws which God had established? And is it not apparent, from the curse of the Lord against the sons of Eli, that their unpardonable sin was the transgression of the Seventh Commandment — the pollution of woman ?
Still, it happens, not unfrequently, that pun- ishments for sin are delayed till the guilty, and sometimes the innocent, think that wickedness is tolerated, or may be sanctioned. God is long- suffering. He waits and gives opportunity for repentance and reformation. The effects of moral degeneracy, of unlawful acts, are not de-
10*
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THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
veloped, nor their consequences seen, in one generation, or even in two. This is the decla- ration :
" For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
It happens, and not unfrequently, that one who truly loves God, as Sarah did, as Hannah undoubtedly did, is drawn into the snares of wickedness by connections with transgressors ; and the woman sins and suiBfers — yet God does show mercy, does forgive.
But to forgive sin is not to tolerate sin. This should be carefully remembered.
God showed mercy, great mercy, to Hannah and to Elkanah ; yet the narrative proves that the life they lived was not the assured, happy domestic state of chaste marriage.
Samuel their sou was blessed of God, and raised to the highest station the world then afforded. High Priest and Ruler of Israel.
Did the sins of his parents escape punishment through him ?
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
115
No ; Samuel well understood that the Lord had deposed the sons of Eli from the priesthood because of their evil conduct, which their father tolerated, though he did not approve.
Yet Samuel tolerated the like iniquities in his own sons. Inheriting from their grandfather the bad passions and vicious tastes which a sen- sual domestic life never fails to develop, if it does not implant, these sons of Samuel seem aliens to his devout piety and lofty patriotism. Their outrageous wickedness disgusted the Hebrew people with their theocratic form of govern- ment. The people found that the sons of Samuel were unfit for the office of Judges, and the elders of Israel determined to have " a king to rule over them."
This was a great sin, because they, in effect, rejected the government of God which He had instituted for them ; and their change brought its terrible results.
But the immediate cause of their transgressions was the profligacy of Samuel's sons, so that, in reality, the catastrophe resulted from this de- scendant of an unlawful marriage.
Samuel had tolerated his sons in their diso- bedience and wickedness, till these developed
116
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
more boldly tlie rebellious passions of the Israelites.
Tims it is ever ; one sin tolerated by a human judge or sovereign, say murder or adultery, or theft, or any of the deadly transgressions enu- merated in the Decalogite, the standard of public morals would at once become vitiated, the con- trast between good and evil would be lessened, and the peojjle soon lose their sensibility, to crime or evil.
" There 's not a sin But takes its proper change out still in sin, If once rung on the counter of this world."
Those who advance or adopt the monstrous idea that Elkanah's polygamy was right, and approved of God, because Samuel was advanced to the High Priesthood, forget the fearful judg- ments this son of an adulterous father was raised up to fulfill. In him ended the line of Hebrew Judges. The sins of his own offspring broke up the union of the Lord God with the Hebrew State. From his time to the end of the Jewish nationality, the authority of adulterous kings was placed, by the debased and enslaved Israelites, above the law of the Most High.
Samuel seems likewise raised up to mark the
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
117
mercy of God to oppressed woman, who is often compelled into sin by circumstances she has not the power to control. This is true of the sin of polygamy always. Woman would never will- ingly choose such a degradation. The Lord had mercy on Hannah ; as the Saviour, long after- wards, showed mercy to the woman taken in adultery.
Will any clergyman contend that women may sometimes break the Seventh Commandment without sin, because that woman in the Temple was not condemned for what she had done ?
And yet these reverend and learned men are constantly engaged in defending or softening the sins of adultery in the connections styled polygamy, or concubinage, which have been devised by man's lust to evade, in the most con- venient and respectable manner, the primal law of marriage.
It is pitiable, as well as disgusting, to read the Biblical commentators on this history of Hannah. Instead of showing, from the misery of his family, that the sin into which Elkanah, a Levite, had fallen, was daily and hourly pun- ished, and therefore should be avoided, the Rev. Dr. Scott tries his utmost skill to make the
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THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
" two or three wife " system appear agreeable. He thus gently disposes of the sin of adultery.
" Hannah seems to have been the jfirst wife of Elkanah : but as she was barren, it is probable that he took Peninnah (as Abraham took Hagar) , from an impatient desire of children : but the event showed that in deviating from the original law of marriage, though in a ma7iner then tolerated, he little consulted his own peace and comfort."
So, according to the Rev. Dr. Scott, there was an " original law of marriage ; " but he seeks by his reasoning to make it appear that if a man had an " impatient desire for children," he could violate this law without sin. Nor does this learned theologian have the least respect to the Seventh Commandment; it never seems to enter into his mind that the wife can be sinned against. The husband is privileged to take another wife if it will conduce to his own " comfort."
And this Rev. Dr. Scott also asserts, that polygamy was " in a manner then tolerated."
By whom was it tolerated ? Was it tolerated in the Moral law ? or in the Mosaic laws ? If so, then bring forward the clause, you ministers of the Protestant faith. Show us this patent of " toleration " for adultery \vhich you, in effect,
THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
119
say the men of tlie Church, under the Okl Testament dispensation, enjoyed.
The pious Roman Catholic divines do not trouble themselves with any qualifications. In the notes to an edition of the Douay Bible, not long ago published in New York, it is asserted, regarding this marriage of Elkanah with Pe- ninnah (or Pheninna), that " she was only of inferior dignity," and adds, *' at that time po- lygamy was lawful, as Moses insinuates, if he does not expressly allow it."
Moses neither insinuates nor allows anything of the kind, as I have clearly shown in my last chapter. Therefore, in the name of the people of the United States, I call on the reverend clergy of all denominations to retract and dis- avow this impious Mormon doctrine.
Those who advance or countenance this mon- strous idea, lower the character of Jehovah infi- nitely below that of the heathen Jove. The God of Olympus was consistent. Licentious himself, he could have sympathy and " tolera- tion " for men of like conduct. He was one with them.
But the God of the Bible is the God of Holi- ness, before whom "angels veil their faces."
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THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL.
He is SO pure tliat " the heavens are not clear in His sight."
Shall men who minister at His altar repre- sent this holy and righteous God, who, by His primal law of creation, made one man for one woman, and ordained their oneness in the mar- riage union — shall these men represent this Holy God as pandering to the lusts of the flesh, and " tolerating," for men, the transgression of the marriage covenant ?
As we follow out the results of this pretended Divine license to men (not merely to the Jewish men, but all — the moral law was for man- kind), thus permitted to gratify their animal lusts, even at the expense of the woman's hap- piness, the harmony of the family, the purity of society, we may well be amazed at the fool- ishness of the interpreters of the Word of God, who expect that the world, if it believe their report, will believe the Bible is ^ holy book.
The sin of Elkanah was what might be ex- pected to have been committed in the then profligate condition of the Jewish people. Its opposition to the righteous law of God was evi- dent in the misery and confusion it introduced. This should be pointed out ; the holiness of the
THE JUDGES OP ISRAEL.
121
Lord God vindicated, and the Commandment exalted.
What do we find? That the preachers of Christ's righteousness — of the " Son of God made of a woman " — explain the law as per- mitting woman to be polluted by an adulterous connection with her husband, who has "another wife, or concubine ! God is represented as ex- cusing adultery in men, aye, tolerating a sin forbidden in His law as surely as idolatry is forbidden; a sin thgt leads more surely than any other in the Decalogue to idolatry.
All this is so amazing that, if the names of
the men who thus libel the Almighty were not
given, by their own hands, to their assertions, it
would be impossible to believe that Protestant
clergymen could be guilty of such treason to
their Divine Master. at. 11
CHAPTER IX.
DAVID, KIXG OF ISEAEL.
THE history of David's life is one of remark- able interest, alternating, as it does, be- tween scenes of the brightest glory and the blackest shame.
But his glory stands in* the foreground, and both his penitences and his punishments have so softened the dark outline of his colossal sins, that learned theologians, when touching on his transgressions, seem always to cover their eyes, or dip their pens in his tears of remorse and so efface the Divine record against him.
Gladly would I follow this examj^le. David is the hero of Bible history, and was the be- loved hero of my childhood. How often have I stood, in imagination, " on the mountain with Israel," and seen the Philistine — the terrible Goliath of Gath — "whose height was six cubits and a span." No giant of romance was he, but the actual incarnation of evil power — a cham-
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123
pion of liell, avIio "defied the armies of the living God."
How I hated him I
And then came forth the young champion of the Lord. Tall, lithe, and graceful, David stood before the eyes of my imagination, the model of manly beauty and bravery. Eagerly would I have yielded all the strength of my puny arm to have helped him in the battle with that huge Philistine warrior, " the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam."
Behold ! — from that stripling's sling, held lightly in his unarmed hand, the smooth 'stone is hurled with unerring aim, and with a force no mortal life may withstand. It smites the Philistine in his forehead ; Goliath of Gath has fallen on his face to the earth ; he lies j)rostrate , before the shepherd boy, for " the battle is the Lord's."
O ! that David had always stood thus bravely on the Lord's side; that he had crushed the Goliath of his own passions, as he did the Go- liath of Gath !
What shames and sorrows would have been spared to himself and to those connected with him ; what errors and humiliations to the
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KING DAVID.
Church ; what sins, and excuses for sins, in the world of men !
It is not my purpose to describe the public events of David's career. His domestic life is the point of inquiry, and the influences for good or for evil that his family relations exerted on himself, on the people he ruled, and on the Church of God.
All who have read the Bible know that David was the second king of Israel ; the suc- cessor of Saul, and anointed as such by Sam- uel, before the battle with Goliath.
Saul was not aware of this when he first knew David, and loved and promoted him. But soon jealousy of the popularity of the young chief- tain was awakened in the king's mind, till, finally, he " hated David, and sought to slay him."
While appearing to favor David, Saul had given him Michal, his daughter, to wife. Da- vid thus became the king's son-in-law.
Michal loved David. Her love must have been true, tender, and self-sacrificing, as it is twice recorded she periled her own safety, and braved the anger of her infuriated father, by saving David's life, and sending him away, when Saul sought to slay him.
KING DAVID.
125
So David became a fugitive from tlie wrath of King Saul. In these wanderings and hidings in the wilderness, where David jjassed eight or ten years, he was joined by friends and adven- turers, till he had a company of several hun- dred followers. Concealed in caves, or trusting himself to the hospitality of the Philistines, David kept up a sort of guerrilla warfare against the bands of men that King Saul sent out to take the rebel.
Living thus at hazard, and often with the heathen people around Israel, it is not strange that David acquired habits of thought, and license of action, foreign to his early training.
His wife, Michal, had been, by her father, Saul, given in marriage to another man, Plialti, son of Laish. David may have considered himself legally at liberty to take another wife, which he did, marrying, while he roved in the wilderness, Abigail, of Mount Carmel, the widow of Nabal. — See 1 Samuel xxv.
But, not contented with this one w^ife, he soon afterwards took Ahinoam, of Jezreel.
Samuel was dead. David had no outward
check on his selfish and sensual nature. There
was none to reprove or warn. And he entered 11*
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KING DAVID.
on that life of polygamy, so mean and miserable for himself, so disgraceful to the Church of the Old Covenant.
A few years passed, and then Saul and his three eldest sons were all slain on Mount Gil- boa, in battle with the Philistines.
David became King of Judah. He was chosen by that tribe to which he belonged, and he began his reign at Hebron, where he resided seven years and six months. Then all the tribes chose him for their ruler, and he was made king over all Israel.
Saul had but one wife. He had kept the letter of the law, but he had broken its si^irit in taking one or two concubines, and from these sinful connections resulted the total ruin of his house, and the transfer of the allegiance of the tribes of Israel from Ish-bosheth, the last sou of Saul, to David, of the rival house. — See 2 Samuel iii,, iv. So perished the family of Saul. Yet King David did not heed the les- son. It is recorded that, while he dwelt at Hebron, " there were sons born " to him ; six som, and each son had a different mother ; so his harem was fast increasing.
Six sons I What became of them ? The fate
KIXG DAVID.
127
of three is on the Bible record. Amnon com- mitted rape and incest with his half-sister, Ta~ mar, and he was slain by his half-brother and Tamar's own brother, Absalom.
Absalom was afterwards the rebellious son that sought to dethrone and murder his father, David, and was himself slain by Joab.
Adonijah attempted to seize the government, when his father, King David, was on his bed of death, and was at last killed by order of his half-brother, Solomon.
If David had had but one wife, the one mother of those, his children, seven brothers, reckoning Solomon, and one sister, would they have been guilty of such horrible crimes ?
If it can be proved that God has ever " tol- erated " polygamy, does it not follow, justly as well as necessarily, that He must also tolerate the sins which always have resulted, and always must be develojied by this unnatural institution, so long as human nature, and the natural laws of increase that govern the race continue un- changed ?
And now David is king over all Israel. He has conquered the Jebusites and taken their strong city of the Hills, where he established
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KING DAVID.
his seat of government, tlius making Jerusalem the capital of Israel, from that clay to this.
"And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron : and there were yet sons and daughters born to David." — 2 Samuel v. 13.
Then follows a list of names, eleven sons ; these, with the six previously enumerated, give seventeen sons of David. He had j)i'obably, at that time, as many (so called) wives and con- cubines ; yet all these did not fill up the measure of his lust.
Tlie story of the murder of Uriah, by order of King David, who had seduced the beautiful wife of that good man, a faithful servant and soldier of the king, all who read the Bible know. But here I must give, somewhat at length, my explanation of a passage in this Bible history of David's great sin. This pas- sage priests and monks have interpreted to mean that the Lord God gave to David license to take the wives of his dead master, Saul. This would excuse, if not justify, a plurality of wives.
All readers of the Bible know that Nathan, the prophet, was sent to reprove King David :
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(read the wliole — 2 Samuel xii. — we give this remarkable passage, only.)
3 But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, * * * * it eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.
^ ^ ^
7 Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I an- ointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul ;
8 And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah.
Before going further, the reader should know . that the word wife, and the word woman, are used in the Hebrew language as in the French, the word femme, in the latter, meaning both wife and woman. The translators of the Bible made the mistake of giving the word wives,^ when they should have used the word women : then the passage would read, that the Lord gave "thy mastei'^s women into thy hosom^
* That the translators are not particular in the translation of this word wives, see verse 11 of this same chapter, where the prophet, in his reproof of David, referring to his punish- inent, alludes to his wives. Yet, when the punishment came, these " wives" are termed, by the same translators, " concu- Innci." — See 2 Saynud xvi. 21, 22.
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The pro23liet, in his rebuke of David's sin, twice uses the word bosom, and in both ex- amples it is clear that the idea was the same. He meant simply to express — or, rather, illus- trate— the tenderness of compassion which the strong and fortunate should feel for the weak and suffering, who were dependent upon theui for support and comfort.
The first example, in the parable of Nathan, was the beautiful wife of Uriah — his ''one Utile ewe lamb, which lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughterr
Can this similitude be tortured into the mean- ing of unholy lust, or even into conjugal love? Does not the word bosom here imply the in- stinctive tenderness that watches over the wel- fare of a trusting dej^endent, securing, under Divine Providence, the safety and happiness of its object?
In this spirit w'e must interpret the second example. The Lord gave the women of Saul's family into the bosom of King David ; that is, into his compassionate regard — his sustaining tenderness ; he must comfort and support this family iji their grief, and lift their hearts to the light of hope. The whole rebuke was in the
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allegorical or figurative style. We know that it could no more mean a license to David to marry Saul's women than it could mean that Bath-sheba was Uriah's ewe lamb. Besides, Saul had but one wife. David had married her daughter, Michal. Did the prophet mean that David, to his great guilt, might add the name- less crime of marrying his Avife's own mother !
These crimes of David are too prominently distinct for concealment or excuse. Theolo- gians even venture to condemn these carnal, cruel and cowardly sins, because God's sentence of condemnation was thundered against them, and David was punished immediately, by Di- vine authority.
Not only this, but he was under a sentence of perpetual punishment ; the sword was never to depart from his house. This fearful state, in which David was, by his sin, placed for life, is seldom or never the theme of preachers or com- mentators. They always dwell on the penittence of the sinner, as though, because he was for- given, his sin was " canceled " — was forgiven.
Never yet, on earth, was there a single sin canceled, so that the sinner and the world were not left worse for the transgression.
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True it is that tlie " blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin." The soul of the penitent is re- deemed, and his sins will not be reckoned against him at tKe last day.
But if a man have committed murder, will his penitence restore the dead victim to life? Did David's repentance bring Uriah from his bloody grave?
If he have wronged woman, will his tears and prayers, and even God's forgiveness of his sin, restore her to purity and honor ? Is Bath- sheba thus cleared from the stain ?
"Was David's soul cleansed from the " perilous stufif" of blood-guiltiness and adultery?
Let his own self-condemnings answer. No, no! To a real penitent, the memory of his wicked deeds, and the sorrows these have caused to others, will be thorns in his jiatli of life; scorpions poisoning his heart's blood; swords piercing to the marrow of his bones. — See Psalms xxxviii. and xxxix.
Read carefully the records of David's family 11 life; the crimes and the doom of Ajnnon ; the n rebellion of Absalom, with all its revolting, and i| tragical, and heart-rending details; and then ■ say if you can, as a Christian man, make the
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assertion that God ever tolerated — ever " en- couraged"— tlie system of a plurality of wives, ■which was the procuring cause of these horrors.
Why, God was punishing David for his po- lygamy every day of his life. The shames and sorrows of the king came by and through his own family. There is not one of his seventeen sons of whom any good is recorded, except Solo- mon, and we shall see, in the next chapter, how he had profited by his harem training.
The sinful connections of David had become so inwoven with his habits of kingly rule, that it does not appear as if he ever made an attempt to free himself from the pollution ; but his re- morse and griefs are faithfully confessed. His war-songs are grand and triumphant strains, when he chants the victories God had given him over his enemies without. But his penitential psalms show how deeply he felt that his enemies within, his own evil passions, and lusts of the flesh, often most fatally enslaved him, blighting his best resolves, and bringing him down to the mire of shame and the lowest deeps of sorrow. (See Psalms xxxviii., li., Ixxxviii., cii., and cxxx.)
And now there is another manifestation of the
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evil influence of David's harem life on his own character : his pride hecomes rampant.
The history of those nations where polygamy is established always displays the pride and van- ity of the rulers. What amazing power these voluptuous kings assume! How blasphemously they arrogate to themselves the attributes of the Almighty ! This pride results, chiefly, from the degradation of woman's nature before their cruel lusts.
"The woman is the glory of the man."
Thus saith the Bible. But then the man must be " the husband of one wife ; " he must love her only, hold her the " chaste," the " honored," the "companion of his youth," the "help-meet for him," — " made to be with him." No other connection is marriage, and from no other does the " glory," which the Apostle recognizes, rest on the husband.
Every observant person will admit that no success so elevates a man in his own esteem as the favor of women. That he is beloved by a pure, tender, high-hearted woman, — what an in- centive to worthy aims and glorious deeds is this knowledge, when the man is conscientious, hon- orable, and sincere !
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But let power and lust have corrupted the soul of that man, because he is able to command the caresses of the woman to whom he should sue and always honor ; let him be able to com- mand not only one wife, but "two or three wives," or as many as his own carnal mind, and the devil, who jSnds easy access to such minds, may suggest, and what intense self - sufficiency Avill be manifested ! What great swelling words he will utter! — what fantastic titles of glory he will invent for himself as a substitute for that "real "glory" which the "one wife" would give, which the " virtuous woman " only can confer to " crown her husband ! "
The man who degrades the true wife- into the harem mistress, will disobey or deny the true God. Thus David disobeyed Him when he sent Joab forth to number the people.
God had declared to the Patriarchs, of their seed, that " no man shall number them." But David was lord of a harem ; his pride was uplifted by the flatteries of the women he had degraded ; by his sinful example even the cor- rupt Israelites had become more sinful — and David through them was punished. He was left to disobey God.
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For this audacious attempt to learn what was to be hidden, a pestilence destroyed " from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men." (2 Sam. xxiv.)
In the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the high- est computation of the slain is eighty thousand. Recent Protestant writers lower greatly this number.
The authors of that terrible massacre are held up as sinners of the deepest and darkest abom- inations, and the indignant scorn and detestation of the Protestant world is invoked against them.
How is this sin of David, that brought as great, if not greater, destruction on the men of Israel, treated by Protestant divines ? They can never hear or repeat the name of Catherine de Medicis without execrations and horror.
Do they in their writings or teachings ever dwell on this massacre, which David's arrogance and disobedience brought on his own people, and condemn his pride and lust which had such results? And Avhile liumbly thanking God for His great mercy extended to such a sinner, who did indeed repent, do Protestant divines warn the men of their flocks against the lusts of Da- vid, that brought him down to the door of the
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pit, and, as though he was crushed in the wine- press of God's wrath, forced out such fearful revelations of his soul's agonies ? — See Fsaim li.* But David's deepest humiliation was his last. He did not breathe this to his divine harp, for the strings were broken, his fingers palsied, and his voice was sunken to the hoarse whisper of death.
Let us examine this last scene. Nothing could more surely mark the low sensuality and
* Some portion of my Christian readers entertain, probably, the idea that "King David" was the author of all the "Psalms" that are printed in the "book" bearing his name. This is a mistake. The collection, as it is found in our Bibles, is to be regarded as the Hebrew Anthology, or, per- haps more fitly, as the Hymn-book of the Hebrew Church. David is named in the title as the chief writer, although six names are given in addition to his. There are seventy-one psalms attributed to David; far the greater portion bear in- trinsic evidence of having been written by him when he was young, probably between the ages of eighteen and thirty; a period when he was a favorite in the family of Saul — "the king's son-in-law " — or the proscribed rebel, fleeing and fight- ing for his own life. During these vicissitudes, David's faith in God was fervent, and his poetic genius kindled with its holiest flame of love, zeal, and devotion. In marked contrast with these glorious hymns are the " penitential psalms " of David, written while he was indeed king of Israel, but a mis- erable sinner before God. These confessions and lamentations are the sad testimonies of his guilt, but also the cheering proof of his penitence.
li* .
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open profligacy of the servants of King David, and their utter lack of loyalty for their great master — of reverence for his noble nature, and for the eminent services which, notwithstanding the bad example of his home-life, he had ren- dered to his country and to his God. His valor and his genius had made the Hebrew name glo- rious when lie lay helpless in their power. At the age of seventy years, David is represented as " very old," benumbed, and helpless ; " they covered him with clothes, but he got no heat." He was dying. The mock sympathy of these false friends suggested the remedy.
The story of the fair Abishag * should be read in the Bible, 1 Kings i. to the close of the second chapter. The plan of the \ticked men who counseled the king and selected the chief actress in this drama, which proved so tragical in its results to the inventors, so blessed to the man they had intended to destroy, soul as well as
* Abisliag must have been concerned in the plot to dethrone King David ; the conspirators had selected her to minister to him. Tliat Solomon had learned the secrets of the plot, and knew, when Adouijah asked for Abishag to be his wife, that another conspiracy to make Adonijah king was contemplated, seems certain from his language. He immediately gave the order that Adouijah should be slain. — 1 Kings ii. 17-25.
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character — should be studied in the Divine liglit of Sacred history.
That there was a plot to dethrone King David, even while he lived, and give the government into the hands of Adonijah, his illegitimate son, is proven — because these conspirators did pro- claim him king. But they also sought to de- grade David in the eyes of his people, by showing him as a driveling dotard in the arms of -Abishag ; his own true wife, Bath-sheba, was banished from his chamber, and she could not warn her husband of their plans, nor plead for her son Solomon.
But David is dying ! In peace ? Before his eyes are darkened by the black shadows of death, sees he a group of devoted, dutiful sons gather- ing around his couch ? Do these come, joining hands in fraternal sympathy, in their common loss, as they weep together over the last fare- well of their revered father ?
David had sung of the blessings that children confer on a father. He might have boasted a quiver full " of these " arrovfs." Seventeen sons he had had — the Chronicles reckon nineteen. Have these sons made him strong ? Have they made him blessed ?
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Let the shades of Amnon and Absalom reply.
Alas ! for David. The royal head is laid low in helplessness and sorrow. The grave is open- ing beneath his feet, while his favorite son, Adonijah, whom his father had not displeased at any time in saying, " Why hast thou done so?" — this son, followed by all the king's sons save Solomon, and all King David's chief officers gathered together, are feasting, and re- joicing, and shouting " God save King Adoni- jah ! " (1 Kin^s i.)
Now comes the graphic picture of seraglio life, such as polygamy always exhibits.
David had sworn to the wronged Bath-sheba that, after him, her son Solomon should be king and sit on his father's throne. She claimed the fulfillment of the royal oath. David dared not refuse her. He roused himself from the stupor of mental decay, from the lethargy of dissolving nature, to fulfill his promise con- cerning Solomon. King David did this, though he must have known that, by thus placing on his throne the son of Bath-sheba, he was signing the death-warrant of Adonijah. David must have felt that these his sons, whose mothers,
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from tlieir position, were enemies, had been trained to hate each other — and all the more cruel, because of their relationship, was the thirst of their tiger-fury for each other's blood. Only in blood could this rivalry and hate be satiated.
Thus King David closed his eventful career, leaving rebellion in his own family, and a legacy of revenge to the son he "made his successor.
Glorious in personal beauty and manly strength, gifted with genius above all the in- spired writers, and blessed with the loving favor of the Lord, that never wholly forsook him, even in his most sinful deeds, his family life presents, from the time he married his "two wives," an almost unbroken record of his trans- gressions of God's law of marriage.
1st. He set aside the primal law, one man and one woman.
2d. He broke the Seventh Commandment.
3d. He disobeyed the particular law of Moses that the Hebrews should not intermarry with the heathen.
4th. He transgressed the particular law for a king ; that he should " not multiply wives to himself."
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"Was he not punished for these fourfold sins against God and against woman ?
The history of David's life, public as well as private, will answer.
The evils, sorrows, and shames his transgres- sions brought upon himself and others, are mul- tiplied on every page of the sacred narrative.
The mercy of God is shown to-him in this — he was not left to harden himself in iniquity. He was constantly under the rod. The Holy Spirit was striving with his carnal nature al- ways. As St. Paul describes the struggle between his sensual and his spiritual nature, thus was David, in a struggle to which his battle with Goliath of Gath was but as child's play. David was purified, as by fire, in the judgments that overtook him.
Is there a shadow of proof, from the life of this king, warrior, poet, and believer, as he was, which, when honestly searched in reference to the dealings of God with him — is there a shadow of proof, I say, to support the assertion that his polygamy was sanctioned, permitted, or tolerated, or " encouraged," either by the law or by the favor of the righteous God ? *
* It is not the Bible record of David's family life that lias
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Thanks to our Heavenly Father, that David did not die as the fool dieth, at enmity with his Maker ! Like Jacob, whose name he invoked in "his last words" (1 Kings), this old mon- arch was roused to repentance and to duty. David was again the man who w^as raised up on high — the anointed of the God of Jacob — the sweet psalmist. He was again the servant of the Living God, and knew that " He who ruleth over men must be just."
brought shame on the Old Covenant Church. The mistakes, glosses, and false interpretations of the sacred text, charging the scandal of David's polygamy on the God of Holiness, is the great sin of the Biblical expounders from the fourth century to the present time. From this libel on God's Word is drawn the power of the Romish Church to grant indulgences for sin. From this fruitful source of error they find a pretence to keep the Holy Bible from the people, as a book unfit for family reading.
The question now to be settled, is — Do the clergy of the Protestant Churches believe the interpretation which the Romish priesthood have given respecting the Bible law of marriage, namely, that the Lord God set aside His own law in the case of Abraham, of Jacob, and of David — good men, par- ticularly favored. Will not the Protestant clergy of America take up this sacred task of vindicating God's Word ? Come in the strength of faith, and the Holy Spirit will lead you into the knowledge of Divine truth. Come, now, before heathen- ism and infidelity have defiled our goodly land, as the idol temples built by Solomon defiled Jerusalem.
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This resurrection, as it were, from the dead, came over David when the prophet Nathan en- tered his chamber, and told him that Adonijah was proclaimed king by all the captains of the host, and all the king's sons, excepting Solo- mon — and Nathan inquired if this was done by David's order.
Then it was that the conscience of the royal sinner was fully awakened to his condition ; he must make it known that he acknowledged his lawful wife, and her son Solomon as the only true heir to the throne. Bath-sheba was re- called, and the oath to her (David's only legal wife, whom he had married after the death of Michal) was renewed.
Then, as though the loving favor of the Lord had restored to David strength of faith and power of will to serve Him, as when he slew the mighty Philistine, he issued his order to -have Solomon anointed king, and said :
" For he shall be king in my stead : and I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and over Judah."
Now came the great triumjih of David over the enemies of his soul and of hi^ government, the hour of exaltation before his people. By
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his command, his promised son was seated on the throne of his kingdom. The shout went forth — " God save King Solomon ! " And Da- vid said :
" Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even seeing it."
Adonijah and his rebel supporters, smitten with fear, as though " hail-stones and coals of fire" had fallen upon them, fled and submitted. Solomon's reign began as the rising sun, dif- fusing its radiance and scattering the dark clouds of night ; it seemed to bring the holi- ness of Heaven nearer earth.
David, no longer king, had a more glorious title. The Lord had said, " Thy sins are for- given"— he was again the man after God's own heart. He has put away the strange women from his love, and their children from his in- heritance. David's last legacy to his successor, Solomon, was :
" Keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and His tes- timonies, as it is written in the law of Moses." — 1 Kings ii. 3.
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This was the culminating point of King Da- vid's earthly glory and happiness. Feeling his sins forgiven, his whole nature seemed to cry out, in the ecstasy of faith, to the Lord of ho- liness, " Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? And there is none upon earth that I desire be- side Thee."
CHAPTER X.
SOLOMON THE WISE.
THE great types of human character stand out alone in the "Word of God as they do in profane history.
The righteousness of Noah ; the faith of Abraham ; the meekness of Moses ; the patience pf Job ; the piety of David ; the wisdom of Solo- mon:— has the particular excellence embodied in each name ever had its counterpart or supe- rior in the gifts of God bestowed on the sons of men ?
And yet, however humbling it may be to human reason to confess it, do we not see that each one of these great exemplars was guilty of sins which violated, in the most positive manner, the characteristic excellence with which each had been endowed ?
The righteous Noah was drunken with wine. The faithful Abraham, distrusting God's prom- ise to give him an heir by his true wife, com-
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mitted adultery with her slave. The meek Moses in outbursts of sudden wrath "killed the Egyptian " and " rebelled " against God. 'The patient Job cursed the day in which he was born. The pious David was a betrayer, a mur- derer, an adulterer, and a rebel to the God he so devoutly loved.
The wise Solomon, wisest of all the kings, by "the wickedness of folly" destroyed all the good committed to his " excellency of wisdom."
What do these records of Holy Writ teach ? Not surely to lower the standard of God's holy law to suit human imperfection ; nor yet to imitate the deeds which disgraced the lives of such men, and for which they were, each and all, punished most signally ; either by Divine Power or by human agency Divinely directed.
Take the drunkenness of Noah ; w^as it re- corded for example, or for warning, to the chil- dren of men?
In the light of such proofs of the imperfect- ness of men's righteousness, the folly of human wisdom and the wickedness of the natural heart, let us turn to " God our righteousness," and be- seech Him to pardon our sins, keep us from
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temptation, and strengthen us both to discern the truth and do the right.
Then -we shall no longer believe that an example of wickedness, however high in the world's estimation, or excused by the prescrip- tive license of power, rank, learning, riches, or religion, could have been " tolerated " or " en- couraged " by the God of Holiness.
Were the sins of Solomon " tolerated " ? The annals of the world furnish no parallel to the wonderful advantages placed at the disposal of this young man.
Crowned by his father David, the greatest warrior and genius of his age, who resigned, while in life, his sceptre and diadem to this his chosen son, Solomon at the age of eighteen ascended the throne of Israel.
No doubt he was peerless in manly beauty and strength, as both his j^arents were celebrated for their personal perfections. To these gifts of nature, Solomon must have added all the culture of mind and accomplishments of art and manners which the court of his royal father afforded.
King David, whose soul -inspirations have moulded the souls of men to a loftier and more
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divine standard of taste in poetry and music than any other of the inspired writers, must have left to his son rich legacies of art, and the knowledge of many excellent inventions. But the richest legacy of all was the building of the House of God.
David had projected this great work. Being forbidden to go on because he had " shed much blood," the Prophet Nathan assured him that his son, to whom God would " give peace and quietness," should build the Lord's House.
So David had prepared largely for the work, and left the " pattern of the House," and all the gold and rich materials he had collected, to Solomon.
This then was the career opened before the young king of Israel: a reign of peace and prosperity over God's chosen people ; and the immortal glory of connecting his own name with the building of the first Temple to Jehovah ever made by human hands. The crowning of King Solomon has been recorded in the history of his father. His first acts after the death of David were to carry out the commands of his father. In this he showed his filial obedience and indomitable power of will.
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The next record is of Ins marriage with the daughter of the King of Egypt. This princess is the only wife of Solomon mentioned for more than twenty years ; and as she is repeatedly re- ferred to, and seems to have been treated with great consideration — " Solomon built her a house " — it seems clear that he had no other wife at that time.
He had not then become a voluptuary, be- cause it is recorded that Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father."
"The statutes of David," not his example; the former were righteous, always.
Thus Solomon began his reign, and doubtless proposed to himself a useful, honorable and holy life. Still, even in his pious feelings and religious duties, he showed that love of display which marks the vain-glorious imagination — "he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places."
He was devoted in his piety, and here his taste for magnificence first showed itself. On Mount Gibeon he sacrificed a thousand burnt- offerings ; such a display as probably had never before been witnessed. It was here that he had
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liis remarkable dream. The Lord appeared to liim and said :
"Ask what I shall give thee."
Solomon chose wisdom, " an understanding heart to judge the people, and to discern be^ tween the good and the evil."
" His speech pleased the Lord."
How emphatically that brief sentence marks the great favor accorded to this young king.
God granted him his prayer, endowing him with wisdom and understanding, and declaring to Solomon, " there was none like thee, before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee."
And then, because Solomon had done well in choosing wisdom, God gave him both riches and honor, and added the promise of long life, if he kept the statutes of the Lord.
Here, then, was all that the unregencrated soul of man has coveted for earthly happiness : wisdom, wealth, honor, long life — the first three bestowed ; the fourth promised, if
Did Solomon then doubt his own ability and purpose to fulfill the conditions?
The first proof of Solomon's remarkable wis- dom was his judgment between the two harlots.
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This deserves to be well considered. It demon- strates his wonderful insight and knowledge of that difficult problem, a woman's heart, which no man, except himself, has clearly fathomed. And it also proves his own exceeding wicked- ness, when, afterwards, to gratify his brutish lusts, he appropriated to his own selfish pleas- ures a thousand such hearts, that he knew were only capable of goodness and happiness in the chaste love and tenderness which the sacred relations of home — not the harem — affiDrd to woman's affections.
But these sins had not darkened his life whea he undertook his great work.
The Temple of Solomon ! — Many writers have sought to describe it according to the ideas which the Bible and Jewish history afford. Yet probably no man who saw it not, could or can conceive the grandeur and glory of this wonderful structure. Only by the means ex- pended on, and the time given to this great work, can we approximate to a notion of its magnificence.
The time of building was seven years. The number of men emj^loyed could not have been less than 200,000. There were " three-score and
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ten thousand that bore burdens ; and four-score thousand hewers in the mountains." Then there were " thirty thousand a levy out of all Israel," and thi^ee thousand three hundred of- ficers. Making in all 183,300. To these must be added all the architects and artisans who wrought in Jerusalem — all the men employed by Hiram King of Tyre in the sea-service of Solomon ; and the whole number could not have been less than 200,000 men. These labored seven years.
We should get a more definite idea of this vast industrial, or rather architectural enter- j)rise, if we lengthen the time and reduce the number of workmen. Supposing but 25,000 men had been employed, the time required would have been fifty-six years.
Had that number — twenty - five thousand — American men begun to build a similar Temple at the close of our last Avau with Great Britain, in 1814, they would only now, in 1870, have completed it.
Then for the means ; all the stores and riches laid up by King David, during his forty years' reign ; all the revenues of Solomon, and all he could obtain from the King of Tyre, master of
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the richest nation the earth then contained. These means were not enough, and " King Solo- mon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee."
Truly the work was great. It was completed. The elders and all the men of Israel assembled. Before and above them rose the awful temple, its golden roof swelling upward toward the blue of heaven, as though it rivaled the sun in its glory.
Most reverently was the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord brought into the Holy place under wings of the Cherubim.
"And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord."
Try, if you can, to form a conception of that wonderful scene, when the Most High had come to dwell in a temple made with hands, and when His presence was felt in " the thick darkness," and Solomon said :
" I have surely built Thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for Thee to abide in forever."
Who would have thought, hearing Solomon's devout prayer, as he knelt before the altar, " and spread forth his hands toward heaven,"
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while thousands, and hundreds of thousands, "all the congregation of Israel" stood before him — who would have anticipated that that moment was the culminating point of the na- tion's glory !
Who could have foreseen that when the four- teen days of Solomon's feasting were ended, and he sent the people away joyful, blessing the King," — that, in less than thirty years, his sins would have broken the Union of the Tribes, destroyed the Nationality of Israel, and polluted that Holy Temj3le of God with idol worship ?
He did do all this, and all was the result of his polygamy and licentiousness.
The record of his fearful fall and doom is given in the concise, graphic style that marks Divine history. The sin ; the evil effect ; the sentence of condemnation, are all contained in one chapter. (See 1 Kings xi. 7.)
" King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh.
" He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines : and his wives turned away his heart from serving the Lord."
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He liacl " multiplied wives " from all the liea- tlien nations, which Moses in the special laws, had strictly forbidden.
God had said in the Moral Law, " Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Solomon had broken these laws ; sin always thrives by sin. He was led by polygamy into idolatry, that unpardonable sin of the Jews, and destruction followed.
I recollect reading, though I do not remem- ber the author, some remarks on Solomon's idolatry, where the whole blame was thrown on his wives (or women), because the Bible said " they led him" into it.
The fallacy of this argument may be easily shown. Solomon had the power, he had the truth, he had the promise. His wives kept their faith in their false gods. Is he to be ex- cused because he had less firmness in the true faith ? He must have been very easy to lead, as he was led in so many wrong ways.
In the very face, as it were, of that Holy Temple of the Lord which Solomon had built with such cost and dedicated with such jDomp, he, the Wise King of Israel, set up altars to
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Molecli, to Ashtoreth, and to the other idols of " all his strange wives."
No argument, however, is needed to settle the question of the guilty party. The Judge of all the earth never censured the miserable wives. It was the royal sinner who was arraigned and found guilty.
When we read of the greatness and power of Solomon ; that he " exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom ; " that " all his drinking- vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold ; " that he " built cities in all the land of his dominions ; " that he " gathered to- gether chariots and horsemen, and made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones" — we cannot but feel admiration as well as astonishment for his wonderful magnificence and honor. We are loth to believe that, by his own wicked folly, all this glory was dimmed and lost.
It would seem impossible to believe that in so short a time as twenty-five or thirty years, such entire rottenness could have corrupted the na- tional religion ; such deep discord have been excited in the national feelings; such rank seeds of ruin sown throughout the national
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prosperity ; if we do not take into account the wasting as well as corrupting nature of the sin of polygamy.
Solomon, as we have seen, indulged his. taste in this way of life on the grandest scale. He was " Solomon the magnificent," in guilt as well as in glory. To support his thousand women in the style described of his household, would have exhausted all the gold of California. He had Ophir, but it did not suffice for his extrava- gances, and he had burdened Israel with heavy taxations.
He had centralized the government, that he might draw the power and the wealth to Jeru- salem, and thus gratify his pride and lust.
There is no record in the world's history so humbling to man's wisdom and ambition as this downfall of Solomon. Convicted as he was of the blackest and basest crimes a king and a man can commit, disobeying God and dishon- oring woman, the Lord by the mouth of His prophet denounced the guilt of Solomon, and thus sealed his doom.
" I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant," said the Lord.
Solomon was only permitted to hold the
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throne upon sufferance to tlie end of his life, because of his father David. In the same re- gard to David, and " for Jerusalem's sake," the Lord allowed one tribe (Benjamin) beside Ju- dah to Solomon's son.
Solomon had forfeited all.
To gain a clear idea of the enormity of his wickedness, we must consider what he lost, and what evils he inflicted upon others.
He impoverished and corrupted the people of Israel : they never recovered from the bad effects of Solomon's reign.
He destroyed the union of the Tribes ; a union which had subsisted from the going down into Egypt, or for more than eight hundred years.
He murdered peace ; the blessing so peculiarly bestowed on his reign. From his vices and sins it so resulted that the Jewish nation was divided, and those fierce wars between the brother tribes commenced, that made, in their progress, the whole land from Dan to Beersheba one field of blood ; causing Judea and Israel to become the prey of surrounding heathen nations, till enmities and wars, domestic and foreign, were stimulated, that never ended till both kingdoms of the Hebrew people were broken up, as by the
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whirlwind of God's wratli, and all the Tribes of Israel swept into captivity.
He established idolatry — erecting near Jeru- salem the first altar to idol-worship. Solomon thus by his authority corrupted the national faith, and polluted the Temple of the Lord God, which was never more made clear from these abominations, till it was swept with the besom of fire that consumed it, and all the work, and the wealth Solomon had devoted to its glory.
And he himself, Solomon the Wise, the Mag- nificent— What of him? What punishments came on him ?
He lost the hingdom of all Israel.
He lost the promise of long life.
He lost the favor of God.
He lost his own soul.
Is there any reason for hope, when Solomon never repented, never prayed, never was for- given, as David rej^ented, prayed, and was for- given ?
Solomon rebelled against God's sentence to the last, and sought to kill Jeroboam, and thus prevent the execution of God's justice. There was no repentance.
Aye, this man, endowed with the faculty,
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never before or since bestowed on mortal, of discerning, instinctively, between the good and tbe bad, wbo if he did the good held God's promise of long life — died at the age of ffty- eight years ; this omnipotent ruler, -whose word was law, died without power; this king, pro- moted to honor by the King of kings, died in shame and disgrace ; this man of peace died with murder in his heart, warring against God ; this chosen of the Lord died an outcast from Heaven's mercy ; this " wisest of all men " died " as the fool dieth ! "
The fierce judgments of God, those fearful calamities which, from the days of Solomon to the present day, have fallen on the Jewish peo- ple, have been caused by the sins whose root is disobedience to God's commands, and whose two deadliest branches are idolatry and polygamy or adultery.
And this root, though Solomon did not plant, he cherished ; these two branches he developed to their rankest growth and deadliest poison.
Nor has this poison from Solomon's sins been confined ^0 his own people.
All the kings and governments of the earth
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have been made worse since his time, by his example.
His wisdom and honor seem to have sanctified, so to speak, his shame and foolislmess. Licen- tiousness has been considered the privilege of kings. Their sins are not openly rebuked, even by the preachers of righteousness — never ques- tioned by legislators, and hardly blamed by the gravest writers on philosophy, morals, or religion.
Solomon's sin of licentiousness has, with ac- quiescence, if not encouragement, come to be considered the man's privilege. Instead of shame it gives a sort of celebrity which many mistake for glory, to be called " men of pleas- ure." Many a youth, like the "simple" one Solomon so graphically described, has been, by his example, led into those haunts of sin that " go down to the chambers of death."
The sins of David darken and corrupt the Church.
The sins of Solomon have corrupted all men.
W e can see the devilish nature of these sins when acted out, unmasked, as in Utah.
What is their influence when covered with the thin veil of respectability, or the darker
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mantle of liypocrisy, as in the large cities of our land, and in the old world ?
Are we blind to the results that must follow, if this open sepulchre of Utah is not purified or closed ?
If the assertions and deductions advanced by theologians and commentators upon* the Bible be sustained — then Utah is safe as she is.
" Abraham had a concubine ! " says one of these.
" Jacob had two wives ! " softly whispers an- other.
" And David had twenty wives ! " musingly responds the third.
" And Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines ! " shouts a fourth.
And so, blind leaders of the blind bring it about that the sins of those eminent men, polygamy and licentiousness,were not sins under the laws of the Jewish Church.
Is it possible that the reverend clergy of the American Churches, the enlightened and faith- ful men who seek to guide the people in the way of righteousness, have rightly read the judg- ments of God against licentiousness and po- lygamy.
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If so, then all the world may become Mor- monized without sin.
I call upon all people who love the Bible and believe God is righteous to examine this question.
Read the Bible for yourselves, and see if I have not, in these pages, gone carefully through the evidence, from the Creation to the close of Solomon's reign, a period of more than three thousand years. Is there a shadow of authority for this assertion that God sanctioned, allowed, or tolerated polygamy ?
Not a law or a permission can be found.
There are four eminent cases recorded of the violation of God's primal law; three of these men, Abraham, Jacob, and David, were servants of God, and the Bible that sets forth their guilt records their punishments.
Solomon's doom we have now before us. Does it show that God " tolerated " his polyg- amy ?
Every nation and people, guilty of the sins that result from the violation of the primal law of marriage, were punished and destroyed — from the contemporaries of Noah down to the Canaanites, the people swept away to make room for Israel.
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And the Hebrew nation — from wliat sin came its repeated backslidings from the Lord? Came they not from this prolific source of evils and crimes ?
Ponder well these things, and then, if you dare, accuse God of the unrighteousness of sanctioning or tolerating a practice that tends always and only to evil — that breaks the first law for created human beings, and thus intro- duces the sins that never escape the just judg- ments of Divine Power.
And now let us together read Solomon's con- fession of his own guilt, in the testimony he bears to the righteousness of God's laws.
CHAPTER XL
THE BOOKS OF SOLOMON.
IN deciding on the guilt of transgressing tHe Moral Law, next to the punishments in- flicted by the infallible and just Judge of all the earth, is the confession of the transgressor.
We have considered the direful punishments God inflicted on Solomon ; now we will examine the testimony of his guilt, written by his own hand.
When comparing the writings of Solomon with those of David his father, we are made, unmistakably, aware of the worldly-wise or practical philosophy of the former compared with the heavenly aspirations, the zeal, and love toward God which pervade the effusions of the latter.
Solomon's wisdom is for the understanding ; guiding men safely through thi& life his highest aim.
" To give subtilty to the simjole, to the young man knowledge and discretion." {Prov. i. 4.)
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David's faitli and love are for the soul, uplift- ing it as on tlie wings of Divine Hope to a heavenly inheritance.
"Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." {Ps. iii. 3.)
Yes, a shield indeed ; better a thousand times, even for this life, than all the subtilty of Solo- mon.; aye, more blessed than all the knowledge and discretion set forth in all the Proverbs, is the simple, loving " trust in the Lord," which David enforces.
The sentiment in the Book of Proverbs rarely rises above the " fear of the Lord." It is the punishment that overtakes the transgressor which is described and warned against, not the sin of transgression.
The exceptions to this are in the first three chapters, where God the Holy Spirit is personi- fied as "Wisdom." Even there the worldly advantages of piety have the prominent place. The love of wisdom is to lead to honor, and riches, and long life. In short, it is the wisdom of this world, but perfect of its kind, that we learn from the teachings of Solomon.
In addressing the understanding, and enfor- cing the true economy of life, there was never a
PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.
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writer like him. His mind was as transparent and true as a convex lens. He saw through all the shams. He could unmask the deceptions of the imagination, untwist the sophistries of reason, unbind the coils of selfishness, and even enlighten the blindness of afiection.
He did all these and more ; he made the way to wealth, honor, reverence, and all the enjoy- ments of this life as " plain (to use Franklin's expressive phrase), as the way to market." There are no axioms of political wisdom, no hints for business men, no precepts of domestic conduct, that can compare with the Proverbs of Solomon.
He did more than this ; there is a vein of the best and purest gold of philosophical and moral truth running through these Proverbs. If a young man would "order his way" of life as these precepts direct, he would be a good man in the sight of men. He would do good, great good, for an upright examj^le is a powerful lever in raising the tone of society. He would go down to the grave in great honor, and his mem- ory would, deservedly, be held in high estima- tion.
But would he be a righteous man in the sight
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of the holy God? AVould he love God su- premely ?
Solomon was Divinely inspired to reveal to men the worldly advantages of morality and goodness. He has set these before them in such a clear light as no rational mind can mistake or misconstrue. We see and feel that truth, purity, honesty, sobriety, and mercy, or charity, are required for the best interests of an individ- ual as well as for the community.
But did Solomon love these virtues that he praised ? Did he practice them ?
Like Balaam, he was compelled, by the Holy Spirit, to communicate truth, whether it pleased him or not.*
* Is it not strange that in texts from Proverbs, where right- eousness and wickedness are contrasted, those who preach God's ^yord rarely, or never, allude to the discrepancies between the divine philosophy of Solomon and his own life and examples?
He teaches always that blessings attend on virtue, and that misery overtakes vice: how could this sound religious doctriuc be better illustrated than by setting before the world the true picture of his own life and death?
Let us examine a few of these texts.
" Wisdom is b'>tter than weapons of war : but one sinner destroycth much good." {Eccl. ix.18.)
Was there ever a sinner of mortal mould who destroyed so much good as did Solomon ?
"It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness : for the throne is established by righteousness." (Prov. xvi. 12.)
Did he not by his own wickedness, forfeit his throne and destroy his kingdom ?
" The fear of the Lord prolongeth davs ; but the years of the wicked shall be shortened." {Prov. x. 27.)
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Herein we see the truth and the love of God. The bad actions of good men, and the good actions of bad men, are alike set forth in the Bible. Neither of these courses of action could have been, with truth, suppressed. But see how Divine mercy instructs all who would learn the right way, the difference between the good and the bad. Never is the bad action of a good man unrebuked or unpunished. Never is the false idea put forth as true, nor the sinful deed advo- cated by Divine inspiration. While the peni- tent sinner may hope, because great sins of pious men who repented were forgiven, the presump- tuous sinner cannot find in the whole range of Bible history and ethics, a single allowance, by Divine authority, for the transgressions of the Primal Law, or of the Moral Law.
Did he not, -by his wickedness, shorten his own years from the "long life" God had promised him, if he did well, to a mere span? He died before he had reached the age at which man's best faculties are ripened, his character matured, and his high- est attainments won.
The above Proverbs, and scores of others, might be cited to show how Solomon was compelled by the Spirit of all truth to pass judgment upon himself. His wisdom was trumpet- tongued in proclaiming his own shame and doom, yet these warnings have never been thus presented to awaken sinners or to encourage the righteous.
It is not surprising that these truths have been suppressed in the Old World Churches, because there the ethics of royalty subverting the Moral Law, teach that kings can do no wrong; but why should our American Protestant ministers be thus blinded?
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Solomon had seven hundred wives ! If po- lygamy had been sanctioned, " encouraged," or even " tolerated," by God's law of marriage, would not sucli a wise philosopher as was this inspired king have commended his own example to his son, or at least have justified his own way of married life?
He had three hundred concubines : has he commended concubinage ?
He has done nothing of the sort. His writ- ings are as strictly in support of continence and chastity as are those of St. Paul. Not a licentious word, not an impure idea can be found in the Proverbs. The only system of marriage alluded to, is strictly monogamy. — Read chap, v., from verse 15 to the end.
" Rejoice with the wife of thy youth."
** Be thou ravished always with her love."
"Let her be as the loving hind and pleas- ant roe."
In this same connection he thus admonishes his son :
" Why wilt thou be ravished with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger ? "
In a number of chapters the same vein of warning recurs, and never is license given to the
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passions through a phirality of wives or concu- bines. When alluding to the wife it is always in the singular number.
" A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband."
"Whoso findeth a wife fiudeth a good, and obtaineth favor of the Lord." — Prov. xviii. 22.
If Solomon had believed polygamy to be the right way of marriage, or even the " tolerated " way, would he not have boasted of his seven hundred crowns ?
How wonderful the amount of " good " be- stowed on this lascivious king if all his wives brought this dowry ! and how amazing the " favor of the Lord " to him, if the seven hun- dred women he had married, were, by the law of God, Solomon's wives I
Is it not unaccountable that this king was led into the dreadful sin of idolatry by his wives, if they had come to him through the " favor of the Lord?"
That such dark pollutions and terrible pun- ishments should be the result of his adulterous- monopoly of women is not surprising, when we consider the laws he had violated.
He had monopolized a thousand women as his companions. Nine hundred and ninety-nine
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men in the world were, then, deprived of their just rights, each one having the right by mar- riage to the companionship of one woman.
What disturbance, license, sin, wretchedness, and waste of the means of improvement and haj)piness such a state of society would, of necessity, bring about, will be apparent to every reasonable man. Such general moral and mate- rial waste, as well as wickedness, must have been the condition of the Jews in the latter part of Solomon's reign.
Through his example, sin had abounded, and destruction followed.
Yet Solomon knew the right way. His pic- ture of the " virtuous woman " proves this. And out of his own mouth comes his condemnation, because his delineation of bad women, the incal- culable evils of degrading the sex, making them the slaves of man's lust, are most truly ex- hibited. When the holiest hopes of woman are forbidden, and her sweetest affections crushed •out by the licentiousness of her oppressors, she becomes the devil's agent of temptation to man, and " her house is the way to hell."
That Solomon's own brutal lusts, and not God's " toleration," or " encouragement " of
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his sin, liad been the cause of filling his harem, is apparent in all his precepts commending mar- riage and virtue. But the most crushing proof of his miserable selfishness and guilt in the degradation of the sex, is shown in his praises of a " virtuous woman." — Chap. xxxi.
No seraglio, no home of " two or three wives" could have furnished the original of this " good wife." She must have been the " one wife; " the " only," the beloved and honored of her hus- band, with no rival in his affections nor in his imagination.
Read the last chapter of Proverbs, from the tenth verse to the end, and say if such a femi- nine character is compatible with any system of marriage except strict monogamy.
" EccLESiASTES ; OR, THE Peeachee," pkccd as the Second Book of Solomon, was without doubt his last, as it begins by summing up the results, of his exi:)erience of a life of grandeur, success, glory, and voluptuousness, which no other man in like measure and perfectness ever enjoyed.
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"What is tlie result of his experience ?
" Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, van- ity of vanities ; all is vanity."
The bitterest sarcasms of the misanthropist, who had all his days dwelt in disappointment, darkness and despair, could not have represented the lot of man under a more hopeless aspect.
It is the Avail of a lost life ; not the sorrowful confession of a penitent sinner who has misused the opportunities afforded him.
If any proof, in addition to the history of Solo- mon, as recorded in 1 Kings, xi., were needed to show his hardness of heart and imjienitence to the last, this 'preachment of his, taken throughout its revelations, suggestions, and admissions, would make his own ruin of soul clearly visible.
He begins by denouncing and despising all the advantages and good gifts of this life, — be- cause his selfish desecration of these have made the portion — the king's portion assigned to him, a curse and not a blessing.
Yet he still teaches men no higher aim than the pursuit of these material things. He knows —
" Nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make
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his soul enjoy good in liis labour." — Eccl. ii. 24.
He analyzes the nature of the sons of men, and finds they are like the " beasts." " So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast." (One male beast never had a thousand of the females of his species at his pleasure : was not that a pre-eminence ?) Solomon evidently did not believe that God breathed the breath of life into man so that he " became a living (or im- mortal) soul."
The conclusion of his material philosophy would suit the most rabid materialist of the Hume and Hobbes school of infidelity. Solo- mon says :
"All go unto one place: (beasts and men) all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
" Who knoweth the spirit of man that goetli upward, and the spiiit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" — Eccl. iii. 18, and on.
That is, as no man could tell about these things, there was no good in such speculations ; as for faith in God, he knew it not ; as for hope in immortality, it brought him no happiness. He never alluded to it, till near the close of his
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teachings, and tlien as a truth for others, not as an aspiration for himself
To feel the full imj^ort of Solomon's tardy and apparently forced acknowledgment of a judgment to come, and of the "return of the spirit to God who gave it,''' we must contrast his cold admissions of God's providence, jDOwer, and goodness, with his father David's love, and faith, and piety.
"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God ; when shall I come and appear before God?''— Fsalm xxii. 2.
" God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave ; for He shall receive me." — Psalm xlix. 15.
" Happy is that people, w^hose God is the Lord." Psalm cxliv. 15. So sings David.
Still, however, Solomon might have hardened his heart in guilt, and sought to justify his own course of life by the sensuous standard of Epi- curean philosophy, which no man could have better understood, yet he was compelled, by the Spirit of Divine Inspiration, to give evidence against himself, and against the philosophy of chance which he would fain have taught.
Solomon advised the young man to live in
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all the indulgences of sense that he desired; yet the terrible retribution for these sins was de- clared.
" Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." — Eccl. xi. 9.
Did not Solomon know that he had sinned, and that God would bring hira into judgment?
Is there a word of penitence ; of supplication ; of love ; of faith, in these his latest confessions ? Not one. But - there is an assertion of the " many proverbs " he had set in order, and a declaration that " the words written in the Proverbs were upright words of truth."
In these Proverbs he has, whenever he has alluded to the union of the sexes, invariably maintained strict monogamy, and upheld the purest continence and virtue.
The recognitions of God, of His providence, justice, and judgment against all evil doers and evil doings are intrinsic proofs that " Ecclesi- astes " is an inspired Book ; for only by such power of the Spirit of Truth would the Wise Solomon, the Great King of Israel, have thus been brought to give evidence against the sins of which he was the living embodiment.
In Ecclesiastes, as in his other Books, he gives
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his testimony in favor of the one-wife system, and against licentiousness.
" Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He (God) hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity." — £ccl. ix. 9.
" I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands : whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her." JEccl. vii. 26.
Was not Solomon " taken by her "? by many strange women — and destroyed by his own sins ?
Now, if these acknowledgments of the holi- ness of God's laws, and, consequently, admissions of his own guilt and the certainty of punish- ment, had not been made, the philosophy of Ecclesiastes would lead to the same conclusions as the teachings of the materialists.
JBut, thanks be to God, the falsities and par-' adoxes of heathen philosophy, which Solomon strove to believe and to set forth, are shriveled like green flax before the fire, in that one Divine Truth of the infallibility and justice of God.
" It shall not be well with the wicked." — Ihcl. viii. 13.
Solomon's song.
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" The Song of Songs, which is Solomou's," dififeis entirely from his other writings.
It is recorded that his " Songs were a thousand and five ; " all are lost save this one. As Divine Providence has so ordered that this Song has been preserved, and has retained its place in the sacred Books of the Synagogue and in the ca- nonical Scriptures of the Christian Church, we have no reason to doubt its inspiration.
But what truth does it teach ?
The Song is in the dramatic form, the inter- locutors are a new-married couple and their two friends.
The husband and wife describe, alternately, their loves, fears, hopes, and the joys that are to crown their sacred union.
The two friends break in, occasionally, with a few words of congratulation and encouragement.
Through the rose-color of Eastern imagery and the passionate love of these young hearts, the expressions are, at times, warm almost to wantonness ; yet the love is chaste and the senti- ment virtuous.
The " spouse," so beloved of Solomon, has no rival in her husband's heart. He says : " My dove, my undefiled is but one j she is the only
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Solomon's soxg.
one of lier mother." — So lie had no excuse for doing as Jacob did, taking two sisters.
The " Song " bears intrinsic evidence of hav- ing been Solomon's royal welcome to his Egyp- tian Bride. He was then about twenty-one years old — the age of love and poesy; the very time most meet for the composition of this *' Schir Haschinm " — (in Hebrew) " The most excellent of all Songs."
He had had a wife before this, as Rehoboam, his son — the only son of his ever alluded to — was born while King David was living. The mother of Rehoboam was Naamah an Ammon- itess ; but she is never mentioned after the death of David. Therefore we may infer that he had no wife when he married Pharaoh's daughter. She was his only wife. At that time it is re- corded that " Solomon loved the Lord ; " it was the time of his holiest inspiration. He was not a polygamist. But if the Song was inspired, what does it teach ?
This: — Conjugal love and happiness are com- plete in the true marriage ; one man with one woman ; and such union is the Divine Law.
Theologians and commentators have set aside this idea of human marriage, and refer only to
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the allegorical or spiritual interpretation of the union between Christ and the Church.
Can tliis interpretation be sustained ?
My readers are doubtless aware that the head- ings or contents of each chapter in the Bible are sheer interpolations of uninspired men ; that the division of the Sacred Books into chapter and verse was the work of monks of the thir- teenth century.
" The Song of Solomon " in the Hebrew has iieither chapter nor verse ; it is a continuous Poem in dramatic form.
About six or seven hundred years ago an old monk divided this " Song " into eight chapters, prefixing headings over each, explaining that Christ and His spouse, the Church, are the interlocutors.
He thus sjjiritualizes the sentiment to suit his own ideas. An old monk who held human marriage, or carnal marriage as he would term it, unfit for a man who ministers at God's altar, would not be likely to hold the description of such union fit for the Word of God.
This monk's interpretation is now found, pi'iuted, over every chapter of the Song, in every Bible extant.
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Solomon's song.
But tliis does not make it true that tlie Song has, or was intended to have, such spiritual mean- ing. This testimony should be found in the Song itself — in the writings of the Prophets and Apostles, or among the recorded teachings of Christ. Does any such testimony exist ?
In the Song itself, there is not the slightest evidence of this spirituality, but the reverse. Neither Heaven, nor God, nor the Hedeemer are alluded to. Take away the headings of the old monk, and no person reading the " Song of Solomon " would dream that it referred to Christ and the Church.
There is then no intrinsic evidence of this sj)iritual meaning ; nor is there any evidence for it in the other Sacred Books. The prophets do not refer to Solomon. The Apostles never men- tion his name, nor did Christ our Lord, except to throw contempt on the greatness and gran- deur of this Wise King of Israel.
The flowers of the field are more glorious than Solomon. Jesus, who stood before his proud Pharisaical critics, as the lowly carpen- ter's sou, the poor, despised preacher to the rab- ble of Jerusalem, declares Himself to be " greater than Solomon."
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How those mocking priests and scribes must have scorned the comparison !
If this Song of Solomon were such a wonder- ful prophecy of Christ aud the Church, would not He, who knew all truth and the importance of such truth, have referred to this testimony of His Divine Mission ?
Would the meaning of this sacred allegory have beeu left to an old monk's penetration and solution ?
I do not object to the allegorical aud spiritual interpretation of this Song, because it would, if established, tend to spiritualize Solomon. If he had had all those clear revelations of the Messiah and His offices, which the old monk and his followers suppose, and all the burning visions of love between Christ and the Church, which they have set down to his credit, still these visions could not prove him to have been a good man in the face of the records against him : nor could they excuse his sins.
Balaam was not made good by his clear vision of the " Star out of Jacob."
But it does make a difference with the Bible, and with its interpreters the clergy.
Holding up, as they do, the Canticles, as the
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Solomon's song.
most wonderful proplietic description of Divine Love for the Church to be found iu tlie Old Testament, leads the clergy, of all denomina- tions, to look leniently on Solomon's sins. They thus shadow the purity of God's Holy "Word, and lower the requirements of God's Holy Law.
AVliile representing such a man, steeped to the lips in sensuality, as being intrusted with the deepest and divinest mysteries of redeeming grace, how can they rebuke the sins of his sen- suality ?
If a King with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines is thus favored, surely adul- tery, polygamy and concubinage are not so very bad, morally, — not surely in Solomon's case. He must be excused ; and all kings are thus encouraged in sin. And if the " wisest of men " may be excused, then men less wise are left free to follow their own lusts — for none can be any greater sinners than was Solomon.
To avoid these conclusions. Christian Theol- ogy has altered the standard and lowered the sanctity of the jirimal law of marriage to suit the convenience or the practice of some of the fathers of the Old Testament Church. And this monkish inter^jretation of Solomon's Song
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has been one of the misleading causes producing this moral obliquity.
But if we consider this sublime *'Song of Con- jugal Love, to set forth truly the happiness of chaste and holy marriage, such as God instituted in Eden, when He blessed the wedded pair made one, all the mystery is cleared.
Might nor such a theme be as worthy of in- spiration as the Economies of life, which Solo- mon has put forth in his " Proverbs " ? or the misanthropical speculations of false philoso- phy, which he seems to have attempted in " Ecclesiastes"?
What event, over which he has any control, in the life of a man, is so important to him as his own marriage ? What secular engagement of his is so sacred ? When entered into from right motives and with pure affections, what
* I bare purposely refrained from a critical analysis of this wonderful Poem, or any comparisons of.it with the Oriental Nuptial Songs similar in design to the Epithalamium of the Greeks. — My only desire and aim is to set forth the plain, simple truths of God's Word ; thus showing the righteousness of His laws and the wisdom of His appointments. I trust that the minds of the Anglo-Saxon people will be awakened to search into these things. God, in His own good time, will raise up worthy and able interpreters of His Law of true marriage.
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condition of life is so near the lieaveuly and holy as marriage?
Has not God sanctioned this idea, when making such union the type of Christ's union with the Church ?
But it must be true marriage, one man with one woman, to make the true ly^Q ; and Solomon uttered or prophesied his own condemnation, the condemnation of polygamy in this his " Song of Songs," just as surely whether we consider it under the allegorical or under the natural inter- pretation.
Let us for a moment picture what would have been the result had the " wisest of men " fol- lowed his own teachings. In all his writings he has taught and upheld strict monogamy. If Solomon had kept faith with his " dove," his " only one," " his prince's daughter," nor allowed his eyes to wander, " like the fool's eyes, to the ends of the earth " in search of " strange wo- men," he would never have forsaken his own faith, never lost the favor of the Lord.
There is no record in the Bible of a Hebrew becoming an idolater who had not, previously, become a polygamist.
The worst vices and sins of Solomon resulted
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from liis polygamy. With one wife only, the temptations to all these wicked courses and evil deeds would have been removed. Solomon would have done right in the sight of the Lord, and enjoyed the crowning blessing promised to his obedience — long life !
How long he might have lived no one can tell, but very, very long ; — longer, it may rea- sonably be assumed, than any instance of natural longevity since his day.
There are some instances on record, and well authenticated — that of Old Parr is one, where human life has been prolonged over one hundred and fifty years.
Might not Solomon have lived as long as the oldest patriarch ? Isaac lived to the age of one hundred and eighty years. Perhaps the " Wise King " might have greatly exceeded this, had he lived a holy life ; his years might have been lengthened to the age of Noah, nine hundred and fifty years, and have made comprehensible to our now short-lived race the truth of antedi- luvian longevity.
One thing is sure ; if Solomon had lived vir- tuously he would have had his short life of fifty- eight years wonderfully lengthened.
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He had in liis keeping all tlie materials for the best happiness earth affords, or that men can with honor and right enjoy ; and he had the power and wisdom to use his own gifts in the God-iike enjoyment of doing good to others.
Thus ordered, all his reign would have been years of peace, prosperity, and glory to the peo- ple of Israel ; because " righteousness exalteth a nation." This truth Solomon well knew, for he taught it.
What perfection in the best modes of civil- ization the nation might have reached ! Jeru- salem would have become the great centre of intellectual wisdom, of j)ractical philosophy, of <noral improvement for the whole world.
The people of Israel might have been pre- pared, through such a long, righteous, and peace- ful reign, for the Advent of the Prince of Peace, the King of Righteousness. Then the United Tribes would have welcomed with joyous hosan- nas the entrance of their Messiah into the Holy City, where the Glorious Temple, that Solomon built, would have opened its everlasting doors that the King of Glory should come in.
The whole history of the world would have been changed and blessed. All men that have
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lived, from that day to tins, would have been made better and happier, if Solomon had kept faith with his one wife'^
And Solomon himself, what an increase of riches, power and honor would have been his, if he had ordered his married life in the right way, which he has set forth in his writings! Then, indeed, he might have been worthy of the glo- rious name bestowed on him at his birth by the prophet of God — " Jedidiah" beloved of the Lord.
* Is it not because they have accepted the monk's legend that this false interpretation of Solomon's Song is given ? While our American clergy thus, as it were, canonize the " Wise King of Israel," how can they set forth his abominable wickedness ?
Do our Protestant ministers generally believe in the monk's interpretation, that Solomon was the favored recipient, by the Holy Ghost, of the deepest and holiest mysteries of man's salvation — the love and union of Christ and the Church?
Would the people of America believe this interpretation, if the Gospel preacher would honestly describe the character of Solomon as it is portrayed in the eleventh chapter of the first Bool: of Kings? He is there shown as a selfish, sensual profli- gate, wasting his God-gifts of Wisdom, Eiches, and Honor on a harem of harlots, thus dishonoring his faith and desecrating his Church — an impenitent sinner, who rebelled against the just, aj'e, merciful sentence of the Most High, and died, leaving the curse of idolatry and polygamy on his kingdom. He died in his sins, a disgrace to kings, a shame to his Church, a castaway from God !
CHAPTER XII.
THE KINGS AND THE PROPHETS.
IHE great centre of Idolatry and Polygamy
J- in the Hebrew nation was broken np by the dividing of the kingdom. The poison of those sins which had, during Solomon's reign, been concentrated at Jerusalem, was now diffused throughout Judea and Israel. The wasting was sometimes stayed, but the corrupting causes were never removed ; nor did they cease in the king- dom of Israel till the ten Tribes, conquered, subdued, rooted out, were dispersed and lost among the heathen nations, whose sins they had imitated and exceeded.
Lost themselves, and lost to the knowledge of men ; the descendants of ten of Jacob's sons, who had been under the special protection of the Almighty for more than a thousand years, were lost as completely and irrecoverably as the stately cedar of Lebanon, when its rotten trunk, torn in pieces by the whirlwind, is scattered,
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ground to rubbish, and trodden down and lost in tbe dirt of tbe earth !
The kingdom of Judah was, for David's sake, . to be spared its nationality till the coming of the Messiah. But the canker-worms of unbelief and lust had eaten into the heart of the Olive of Mount Zion ; its decay, though slow, was sure and inevitable. It bowed its head to the tem- pest of God's justice in the Captivity, and for seventy years it lay prostrate in the dust of humiliation. It was revived and raised, by the Mercy of God, on the repentance of the people ; but the wounds and putrefying sores of its heart were never healed ; the dews of heavenly life never more freshened its leaves.
The sword of Titus was sharpened on the sins of Solomon. The fires, kindled by the self- executed Jews, which even Roman pity could not extinguish, these avenging flames that were needed to cleanse the polluted city, burned down to the foundation-stones the second Temj)le; thus effacing forever the last visible record of the glory and gorgeousness of that first " House of God " built by Solomon.
This history has a moral which cannot be misunderstood. Its lessons teach that the one
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THE KINGS.
true God, the one true wife, these are the only sure conditions that make man virtuous and good. Adultery and Idolatry are the twin " Shapes " of Milton — his " Sin and Death."
Rehoboam, it is recorded, " desired many wives," as was natural in his case. He had been trained in that school ; still his harem was a small affair compared with Solomon's. In Chronicles the record for Rehoboam is " eigh- teen wives, and three -score concubines." He was an idolater, and " did evil in the sight of the Lord."
His son Abijah, or Abijam, followed the ex- ample of his predecessors, but on a still lessen- ing scale. He " married fourteen wives," and " he walked in all the sins of his father."
From this time to the close of the monarchy, we have glimpses of the " institution ; " with intervals of reformation, during the reigns of those " Kings who did right in the eyes of the Lord."
It is worthy of special note that the bad kings are, with scarce an exception, sons of heathen mothers ; the good kings are sons of Jewish mothers, all save one, Asa, (see 1 Kings XV. 13 ;) and these good kings are never recorded as polygamists.
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There is one notable exception, however, and men of the Christian priesthood should carefully ponder it. Those who are now imputing the establishment, or the " toleration," of polygamy to the Bible, may see as in a glass the destnic- tive consequences of thus endeavoring to excuse the sin, or lessen the idea of its criminality.
Read the history of Joash, 2 Chronicles xxiv. Jehoiada, the high priest, who placed Joash on the throne, took for this young king of Judah two wives. After the death of the high priest, the king, as polygamists are prone to do, fell into idolatry. The son of Jehoiada, who was then high priest, reproved the king, and he immediately ordered this son of his benefactor, but his tempter too, to be put to death. Thus sin leads to sin.
There is also a lesson to be found in the Book of Ezra, that might be useful in solving the problem which seems to have puzzled grave and learned men, viz. : whether the heathen converts in India may, or may not, as Christians, retain a plurality of wives ?
When Ezra went up from the Babylonish captivity to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, and restore the worship of the true God, he
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found tliat many of the returned Jews had intermarried with heathen women, and had *' strange wives."
Whether any man had more than one of these
wives " is not recorded ; but from the customs of the heathen, and from the narrative itself, the conclusion is strongly in favor of a " plurality."
If this was not the case, if every Jew, in all the seventy years, during which that j)eople had been scattered, without law or worship, if, I say, the Jewish men had kept themselves free from this sin, each one taking but one wife, the proof that such marriage was the law of God, which had been sacredly and always inculcated on the Hebrew people, though broken at times by their kings, must be apparent to every Bible critic.
That the great mass of the Jewish men had always kept strictly to the one- wife system is of a surety true. They could not do otherwise. There could not have been " two or three wives " attainable for each man. God has so ordered, that monogamy is and must be absolutely the rule for the majority. Where polygamy is established, it is always the exception in favor of kings and rulers, (whether priests or laymen,) war- chiefs and men of power.
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The poorer and subordinate men can never obtain but one wife ; while servants, soldiers, sailors, and other dependents usually are pre- vented from marrying at all.
But wherever the plurality system is estab- lished or allowed, it vitiates the marriage con- tract, all the same, whether a man has fifty wives or one wife, or no wife at all. If the husband has the right, by law or custom, to take more than one wife, the right of the wife to her own husband is disallowed. He is only hers by sufferance.
The Jews that came to Jerusalem with " strange wives," were, it appears, mostly "princes and rulers" and "priests," — that is, men who could maintain more than one wife; the class of men that, where polygamy is al- lowed, invariably avail themselves of the " plu- rality " system.
But Ezra was not daunted by the array even of the names of " many priests." The people had in Ezra an earnest and pious leader, who was true to his trust.
He had no difficulty in deciding the matter. God's law on one side, and its violators on the other, he never canvassed the expediency of the
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measure; only duty to God and obedience to His law were considered. See Ezra ix. and x.
So tlie way was plain ; the " strange wives " were put away, and tlieir children also.
Now the American Christian Missionaries in India, if they do not acknowledge the primal law of God, one man for one woman ; nor the Law of God's providence that has always and every where punished the infraction of this pri- mal law ; if they do not believe that the law of Revelation, in prohibiting adultery, prohibited polygamy, must they not yet have some respect for the law of the Gospel under which they hold their right to " teach all nations " ?
What is the Marriage Law of the Gospel ?
This : " Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." 1 Cor. vii. 2.
The prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, are true to the Divine appointment of marriage. Not a word can be found in all the prophetic Books to support those views which would desecrate the Old Testament revelation by ascribing to it a toleration of polygamy or licentiousness.
The words of Malachi, tlie last of the \>to-
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plicts, have been quoted. But turn again to the Holy Book, and read the second chapter of that awful prophecy. See how Malachi de- nounces the priests for their unfaithfulness, and the people for idolatry and adultery.
The language can bear but one interpretation ; a scathing rebuke to all who substitute their own opinions for God's truth, and who have thus corrupted God's law of marriage, and of wor- ship.
Thus closes the Old Testament, as it began, with the Divine warrant of one man and one woman only, in the Union of Marriage.
No other law of connection for the sexes was ever sanctioned by the authority of the Creator.
Every transgression of this law, recorded in the Old Testament, has its punishment recorded also. This punishment fell on the transgressor and on his children. We have gone over the list — Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon. No son of these men, born of the unlawful wives, was a good man — save the two sons of Rachel.
A good man and his lawful wife may have bad sons ; but that all the sons of those four men, born of the " strange wives," should prove
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wicked, and be tlie trial and torment, the sliame and sorrow of their fathers in their lifetime ; or, like Solomon, destroy the best works of his father after his death — these results are not to be put aside.
And yet, all that these men suffered could not cancel their crimes. All the trials of Abra- ham ; all the afflictions of Jacob ; all the tears and confessions of David, did not blot out their iniquities.
Nor did even the forgiveness of God to each of these penitent sinners, do away the evil con- sequences of their sins.
The American Church, meaning thereby every denomination of Christians in our land, the Church is now trailing her beautiful garments, all dark with dust, under the curse of the sins of Abraham, Jacob, and David; sins which she does not rebuke.
Men every where are led to think lightly of the Seventh Commandment, and divorce and lewdness are tolerated as practices necessary for tJie peace of society !
What would be the effect if murder, theft, and false witness were as prevalent, or passed as unrebuked from the pulpit, as unpunished by
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201
the law, as licentiousness does now among na- tions calling themselves Christian ?
How came it to pass that the Seventh Com- mandment should be selected as the least sacred of the Ten ? Came it not from the " lusts of the flesh ? " that is, from the temptations of the devil, who has seduced the great ones of the world to do him homage through licentiousness ?
Every kingdom and people on earth are now sufferingj more or less, from the wickedness that Solomon, by his wisdom and power, made gra- cious nearly three thousand years ago. His sins have corrupted all kings and rulers ; and through these high examples, public sentiment is corrupted. Even many Christians, so called, look on the Seventh Commandment as very respectable for good people to observe, but not exactly binding as a law, because those good old patriarchs, that pious David, and the wise Solo- mon, did not scruple to set it aside.
These evil results, this lax morality, have been, and now are, the work in a great measure of the priesthood.
The Jewish priesthood do not like to con- demn the old Fathers and Kings of their ances- tral religion. The Christian clergy, whose duty
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THE PROPHETS.
it is to expound the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, to hold up and to prove the Righteousness of God from the righteousness of His laws and dealings with men, have utterly failed to magnify and make honorable the Sev- enth Commandment.
Every where, and by all denominations, it has been, by the priesthood, conceded that the Crea- tor has made void his primary law of marriage by " tolerating " its transgressions.
They virtually assert that God, in the Seventh Commandment, did not take men much into ac- count in the prohibition, but laid the severe injunction of the law on women — thus making a distinction in the moral government of the sexes.
Can we wonder that licentiousness among men should now be the great sin of the world ?
In the early ages of the Christian Church it was not thus. The Apostles and primitive Christians kept the faith in purity of life as well as in doctrine. They loved and obeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who never failed to rebuke men for their adulteries and sins.
But as soon as the Church grasped at secular power, she lost her Divine love and purity.
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The priestliood began to pander to the vices of Kings, and to seek precedents for the indulgence of their sins. Tlie Bible was interpreted to suit Power, not to set forth Truth.
The sins of good men, that had been recorded with the evil results of tliese transgressions, and thus made warnings for iniquity and encourage- ments of penitence to hope forgiveness, — these transgressions of the primal law of marriage were, and -are, interpreted by Theological writers and Ecclesiastical authorities, as " tolerated " or allowed, or rebuked with gentleness only.
The dishonor and unhappiness of women in these adulterous connections are of no account with the priesthood.
The evil effect of thus degrading the mother before her children, making her the " inferior wife " or " concubine," is never even lamented by these learned divines ; it is simj^ly ignored.
If we accept the explanations of these com- mentators and expounders of the Bible, Pro- testant as well as Romanist, we must believe that the Lord God has had a peculiar indulgence for the sensual passions of men, particularly for the lusts of good men, such as Abraham was, and J acob and David ; and also for the vices of Kings.
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THE PROPHETS.
In our land tlie question, between the true and the false in these interpretations of God's law of marriage, must soon be brought to the bar of public scrutiny, and tested by men not of these Theological Schools. If the Bible authority for monogamy fail us, then " Free Love," " Mormon- ism," or some other form of the false in domestic life, must ultimately prevail.
Should the Old Testament fail us, the result will be equally disastrous to virtue and religion, because the New Testament does not introduce any new law in reference to marriage, as will be shown hereafter.
But the Old Testament has not failed us. I appeal to every reader who has followed me thus far, has not the evidence that monogamy, or the marriage of one man with one woman, is the Divine Law, which from Genesis to Malachi is revealed as God's ordinance for humanity, been fully sustained ?
Does not the marriage of the first pair, when the Creator was the Priest, and Heaven and Earth the witnesses, stand to-day as the only rule and model of conjugal union for men and women ever sanctioned and sanctified by the Lord in His threefold Law of Creation, of Providence, and of Revelation ?
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHEIST.
IHE laws of God are eternal and uncliange-
X able. His judgments are " righteous alto- getlier." In Him "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
What we call a miracle is but the law of God manifested in its operation.
The " Cherubim and flaming sword," that kept the *' tree of life " from the hands of the rebels in Eden, were but symbols of the sharp fears and terrible obstacles that the first volun- tary transgression of God's INIoral Law (the Ten Commandments) raises up before every trans- gressor.
The expulsion of Adam from Paradise is only what happens to every human soul that sins ; it is driven away and away, farther and farther from righteousness, which is the true Eden.
Every Court of Justice in our land, and all the world over, would verify these assertions.
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206 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.
Every criminal calendar, every prison, every place of execution will, witli mournful voice, affirm the proclivity of the sinner to sin.
The hope held out to the first transgressors was identical with that now offered to a sinful world by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The " seed of the woman " was Christ.
Kedemption by faith in the " seed " was preached to Adam and Eve in the promise given them, that it (the Seed) should bruise the serpent's head, as truly as " Christ our righteousness " was preached by the Apostles.
No new law for man's moral government has been framed since the creation of the first hu- man pair.
We have the proof of analogy for this asser- • tion. The great law of the material universe, gravitation, must have been the governing power of matter from the beginning. It has two forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal ; these, always acting in harmony, uphold the whole frame of nature.
In like manner, the Moral Law has been the rule for all rational beings created in the " image of God." This Moral Law has two forces to keep human beings in the right way; — namely,
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obedience to God, and rigliteoiisness towards each other ; both modes of conduct springing from one source. Love, j)ure, undefiled love ; the motive power of all good in the spiritual universe, as geavitation is of material good in the world of matter.
This Moral Law, and no other, was the great Charter of the Jewish Lawgiver, and the theme of all the prophetic and preceptive writers of the Old Church.
This Moral Law, and no other, was the basis of Christ's Sermon on the Mount — the first recorded exposition of Gospel doctrine.
Did Jesus Christ explain away or set aside the Seventh Commandment because two of the patriarchs and the pious psalmist had broken it?
Did He make men less culpable than woman for this sin, because men have attempted to legalize their crimes by polygamy ? E,ead the bth chapter of Matthew, vei\ VI to 33.
Christ revealed, what had not been so clearly made known under the old covenant, the spirit- uality of the Commandments, and the everlast- ing punishments for disobedience.
Before this, the majority of believers had sup-
208 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.
posed that temporal punishment in this life only would be inflicted on transgressors.
The Saviour, in revealing His spiritual king- dom, made manifest also the more stringent requirements of purity in the heart, which before was exacted in the life ; but the sin of lust was, by prohibiting adultery, just as surely forbidden in the Law from Mount Sinai as it was in the Sermon on the Mount.
Christ expounded the Law of Moses in its spiritual meaning. The law of marriage was instituted, as I have repeatedly stated, in Eden by Jehovah ; and just as it was at first, so was it re-afiirmed by the Redeemer four thousand years after Eden had been forfeited.
" Have ye not read," said Jesus to the Phari- sees, " that He which made them at the begin- ning made them male and female,
" And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife : and they twain shall be one flesh ?
" Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." {3Ialthew xix. 4-6.)
Here is the first and only law of marriage ever put forth by God the Creator, proclaimed
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by God the Saviour, as the then existing law for the Jews.
Did the Pharisees deny this Law ? Did they bring forward any argument to invalidate its sacredness, appealing to the flagrant instances of polygamy that had been notorious in their nation ?
Not a word of this. The idea that polygamy was allowed or " tolerated " by the laws of the Jews is completely refuted by this scene " be- yond Jordan."
The Pharisees, cavilers as they were, would have seized this opportunity to inquire, had " two or three wives " been considered lawful, how such oneness, as Christ described, could be, if a man had more than one wife ?
The Son of God could not have explained such a union, for CTmnipotent Power cannot make the false to be the true.
The Pharisees submitted at once to the views advanced by Jesus Christ, of the system of strict monogamy. They never intimate that any man had or might, lawfully, have more than one wife at a time; but they press the question of divorce.; they seek to know why, if marriage is
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sucli a sacred union, a man was ever permitted to put away his wife and to marry another ?
Then the more stringent exposition of the law of divorce was put forth by Christ. The law of marriage was not changed. One man with one woman was the rule of creation ; one man with one woman is the rule forever.
But Jesus Christ shows the spirituality of true marriage, and the wickedness of lust, and the licentiousness of men and the wrongs of women, in a light which should make every Christian man ashamed to justify the sins of his own sex.
No Commandment among the Ten was more rigidly enforced, in the Saviour's teachings, than the Seventh; in its spirit and in its letter He upheld it ; and no portion of His followers were so tenderly cared for as women.
He exposed the injustice and condemned the practice of divorce, except for one cause, unfaith- fulness.
How crushingly Christ showed the mean hy- pocrisy of the men who brought the woman into the Temple and accused her before Him, when their own sins were accusing them before God ! And His simple answer made each creeping
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coward, as he stole out of tlie Temple, feel in his own conscience tlie sentence of " Guilty ! "
So would His rebuke have stricken the Scribes and Pharisees, who questioned Hira of divorce, if they had been greater sinners, if they had been guilty of degrading women from the com- panionship of the chaste, conjugal union, to the licentiousness of harem bondage.
The glimpses afforded us of the private life of Jesus the Son of Mary, in His human aspect, are so few, that we cannot judge of His feelings as a man ; but the great Apostle asserts that " He (Jesus) was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." — Hebrews iv. 15.
Is not Christ's spotless life the example for His followers ? How dare a man, professing Christianity and preaching the Gospel, lower the standard of purity which Christ taught, and by which He lived ?
Does not His perfect obedience to the laAV give the lie to the plea so often urged that the sensual passions of men are too violent to be controlled, and must therefore be indulged ? This plea is made without shame by some who call themselves honorable, and even religious men. I appeal to every honest, truth-seeking
212 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.
reader of the Bible, does not every precept of the Gospel enjoin chastity on men as sternly as it does on women ?
Is there a single intimation that a plurality of wives was ever permitted or tolerated by God's law ?
Is there a single Scripture authority in the Law or in the Gospel for the lax morality in regard to the sensual lives of men, which is ex- cused, at least, if not encouraged in most Theo- logical writings, and which seems to be fast pervading the Protestant American Divinity ! The sum of the arguments, or sentiments rather, is this:
That the Bible has no absolute law against 'polygamy ; they do not consider it adultery ! (If Ave could legalize, by civil law, stealing, murder, false witness, and call them by softer names, would they cease to be sins ?)
That the Jewish polygamist must not be judged by the Moral Law, as we understand it: that adultery was forbidden, but not " two or three wives."
A man might not take his neighbor's wife, but he could take as many women as he found con- venient, if these were free when he married them.
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The man only could be sinned against, not tlie woman. If she took two husbands let her be put to death, and the last husband she mar- ried. She would break the Seventh Command- ment. But Jacob did not break it ; nor did David ; nor did Solomon ; they were men !
Such, put in honest phraseology, is the sub- stance of the arguments by which this license for masculine sensuality is now maintained. Are these arguments just ? Are they righteous? Are they ScrijDtural ?
The question was submitted to Jesus Christ by the Sadducees of a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, under a law of the Jews that enjoined the eldest surviving brother to marry his deceased brother's widow. The question to be solved was, to which of the bro- thers the woman, at the resurrection, would be- long, as all " seven had her to wife."
Now, if the laws of the Jews had allowed polygamy to men, such a question concerning the seven hundred wives of Solomon would have been more to the jDurpose. To know whether all these wives would be his at the resurrection? — or what number would be allowed? — and how the selection would be made ? These would have
214 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.
been questions indeed, questions of the greatest importance.
The number of Solomon's wives was an his- torical fact; and the magnitude of the matter would have afforded a grand theme of discussion for the mocking Sadducees, who sought to entrap the Teacher of the " new doctrine " in some mesh of heresy against Moses.
Bat even these unbelieving Jews did not pre- sume, unscrupulous as they were, to propose a grave question concerning marriage founded on a falsehood. They knew that Solomon had no warrant in the Law for his way of life. They knew the seven hundred women of his house- hold were not his wives ; that neither he, nor any other man, had or could have but one law- ful wife at one time. — Luke xx. 27, and on.
This sacred narrative discloses the ideas and customs of marriage among the Jews to have been as incompatible with licensed or tolerated polygamy as our own institutions are at this moment.
Monogamy was, from the beginning to the end of the Hebrew polity, from Moses to the Maccabees, the only law of marriage for the chosen people. It was the law under which
THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. 215
Abraliam was called ; it was the law under wliicti Noah was saved ; it was the law to which Adam was subjected, the condition for which he was created.
That this law was disregarded by many hea- then nations is notoriously true. That it was broken by some of the servants of the Most High is true also ; but did either of these violations make the law null? Were its conditions less binding because it was disobeyed ?
If transgressions of law could nullify law, there would be no restrictions on sin ; the moral world would long ago have become a chaos of ruin, over which the blackness of darkness would brood as a pall.
But, thanks be to God, all the errors and transgressions of all the men who had lived from the morn of creation to the day of the Sermon on the Mount, had not lowered the standard of righteousness, nor struck one pro- hibited action from the list of damnable sins.
Under the sublime exposition of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, entire and holy, stand out as though written in let- ters of fire over the gate of Paradise, to strike every transgressor with despair, and make
216 THE GOSPEL OP JESUS CHRIST.
every apologist for transgressions dumb before God.
" Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
" For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." {JIatfhew V. 17, 18.)
CHAPTER XIV.
THE APOSTLES.
THAT the law of marriage, set fortli by the Apostles, was strict Monogamy, is clear as command and illustration can make it.
Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband," is the command of St. Paul. (1 Corinthians vii. 2.)
Is not this sentence positive in its require- ment of monogamy ? Is there a clearer statute in Justinian, establishing the marriage law of the Romans, which we know permitted but one wife ? Is the law of marriage in England, or in our own country, more definite in determining the one- wife system ?
In the same s^jirit all the instructions con- cerning the duties of the married, are given in this chapter. No portion of the directions or commands can be tortured or twisted into the idea that, in referring to marriage, more wives than one, or more husbands than one, were ever
19 217
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THE APOSTLES.
imagined to be compatible witli tbe conjugal relation.
In the same spirit all the injunctions and in- structions of St. Paul, in all his Epistles, are writ- ten. The fifth chapter of Ephesians is especially important in its clear illustration of the duties of the married pair. The reason for the sub- mission of the wife to her husband; because she represents the Church and her husband repre- sents Christ, is here, for the first time, clearly- advanced and exjDlained. The holiness of mo- nogamy, or true marriage, is thus illustrated in a Divine metaphor, which infidelity would not dare to interpret as meaning polygamy.
There is a gleam of light on this holy mys- tery in the rapt prophecies of Isaiah, {see chap. Ixi. ver. 10,) but the elucidation was not made till the new Covenant Church was established. Jesus Christ came as a Bridegroom to claim the Church, without spot or blemish, as the Bride, the Wife — " one with Christ."
In this light, St. Paul urged on every husband the duty of loving his own wife as the Saviour loved the Church.
The love of Christ, who gave himself even to death to redeem the Church, was to be a
THE APOSTLES.
219
living example for every man, eacli in his own family.
*' So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. lie that loveth his wife loveth himself.
" For no man ever yet hated his own flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church :
" For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.
" For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
" This is a great mystery : but I speak con- cerning Christ and the church.
" Nevertheless let every one of you in par- ticular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband." — Ephesians v. 28-33.
I have given these passages as St. Paul's own commentary on the Bible doctrine of marriage, or the union of the sexes.
The reference of the Apostle to the primal law, one man and one woman, as the true basis of the Covenant of love and union which typified Christ and the Church, is conclusive of
220
THE APOSTLES.
his belief in the universal rule of IMonogamj, as ordained by the Creator, for the human race.
The love of the husband for his wife, the reverence of the wife for her husband, described and enforced by the Apostle — these are as in- comjjatible with polygamy, as are the ideas of happiness in hell, or of misery in heaven.
In St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, a direct command is given, corresponding with all his other teachings.
" A bishop then must be blameless, the hus- band of one wife." — 1 Tim. iii. 2.
So too of the deacons.
"Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife." — 1 Tim. iii. 12.
These particular charges cannot be interpreted as giving license to other men, members of the churches, to have more wives than one, but the reverse.
In every country where a plurality of wives is allowed, or " tolerated," it is not the people who practice polygamy, but the ruling classes, among which the priests, usually, take high rank. As there are not women enough to make a plurality universal, if the ruling classes in the
• THE APOSTLES.
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church are restrained, all men in the church are restrained also.
These commands of St. Paul were necessary for the converted heathen, who had been accus- tomed to the institution, or to its practice among their leading men. All the Apostle's injunctions concerning marriage are directed to these heathen converts. In his Epistle to the Hebrews the subject is not named — they knew and upheld the law of marriage as God established it. So also, the Romans, by the light of reason and con- science, had come to the knowledge of God's primal law, and made monogamy the basis of their system of marriage; therefore St. Paul had no need to remind them of this important duty.
The Apostle Peter shows the same tender regard for the purity and peacefulness of the home affections as was manifested by his brother Apostle. It is not uncontrolled passion, not lust, but the true, chaste, devoted, conjugal love, that, next to the love of God, is the holiest desire and most elevating emotion human hearts can feel.
This blessed love makes the true wife will- ingly submissive to her husband, whom she
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THE APOSTLES, .
deliglits to consider worthy of her reverence ; she thus wins him by her "chaste conversation" to embrace the true faith, even when he may have resisted every other Means of Grace.
And the true husband is to give "honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life ; that your prayers be not hindered." — 1 Peter iii. 7.
Is it possible that this " honor unto the wife" by her husband, and this " chaste conversation " of the wife with her husband, could occur in the family of a polygamist — say, for example, that of Brighara Young ?
The examination of these questions, shows us the reason why nien, who live in this sin, hate Divine truth, and why those who openly em- body, in their code of law or religion, customs forbidden by God's law, must reject the Bible, must devise a scheme of false doctrine, based ou lying legends, to sustain their systems of teach- ing and of conduct.
That the " Word of God " does not allow po- lygamy or licentiousness is made sure by this — all men who o])enly uphold and practice these sins reject the Bible.
" What concord hath Christ with Belial ? "
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223
The history of the human race begins with conjugal love; holy, pure, chaste, conjugal love. It is the grand diapason of humanity. Every perfect chord of man's strong heart, every soft impulse of woman's finer nature, responds to the Divine Harp that sings of " two made one," in this indissoluble, this rapturous union.
Marriage, as God ordained it, confers on man the best happiness of this life ; it does infinitely more ; it purifies his passions and exalts his soul in unison with the worship of the true God.
When thus sanctified, it is the type of Christ and the Church, such as the beloved Apostle John beheld and described as the " New Jeru- salem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." — Revelation xxi. 2.
And the Angel said, " Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." — Revelation xxi. 9.
Was there more than one Church? — than one wife for the Lamb ?
Would those men, who accuse God of sanc- tioning or tolerating more wives than one in marriage, be willing to carry out their idea by the denial of truth in this similitude ?
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THE APOSTLES.
Will tbey presume, in the liglit of tliis holy type of true conjugal union, to call Abraham's concubinage right, or Jacob's connection with other than Leah marriage, or David's twenty women his lawful wives ?
As the Book of Genesis opens human history ■with the marriage of the first pair in their inno- cence and happiness, the true type of the true Church, or rather the Church itself then first ordained ; so the last Book, the Divine " Reve- lation," in closing the history of man on earth, shows the holiness of marriage in the loftiest and loveliest image which the human mind can reach and the human heart understand, as it shadows forth the love of God to our sinful race in that wonderful metaphor, — " The Bride, the Lamb's wife ! "
CHAPTER XV.
THE GEEAT QUESTION.
THUS have I, my fellow-citizens, gone rapidly- over the Holy Book, seeking with earnest endeavor to place its truth, as regards marriage, before you.
The time of trial is approaching when each man, in our United States, must take his stand on the side of upholding Monogamy, or of allow- ing or tolerating Polygamy. It is not a subject that can be shirked or long postponed.
Are you ready for the question ?
In order to fight this battle bravely, it is ne- cessary to know the ground we stand upon, and the weapons of our warfare.
Have we, who contend for the sacredness of the marriage contract, as the Bible sets it forth in Genesis — one man with one woman, — have we God's Word, throughout the Bible, on our side?
"We have the law of Nature. Figures, that
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THE GEEAT QUESTION.
cannot lie, show us the equality, in numbers, of the sexes, continuously.
We have the rule of Historical experience. Polygamy wherever established is a curse, and not a blessing to humanity.
But have we the Bible testimony, unequivocal and sure, on our side ?
- Theological interpreters say No ! The Chris- tian priesthood says No! The Mormons in Utah say No ! I appeal to the people of the United States.
The idea, that the God of righteousness re- vealed in the Bible, ever sanctioned or tolerated a course of conduct in his chosen servants that was diametrically opposed to His own Law of Nature, and therefore must ever be and ever have been disastrous to mankind, is so mon- strous, that it seems sinful even to state it.
Is not the Universe u^jheld by Law ? Could the Almighty sustain what He created, except by His ordained law — just, righteous, immutable law ? It is the foundation of His throne. He could not act unrighteously, that is, contrary to His own law, and be the good God. Should He do this, He would be the Disturber, the power of Evil.
THE GREAT QUESTION.
227
God's law of Creation assigns one man and one woman to live together in that union which He has created men and women to desire, as their best state of earthly happiness.
God has kept this law of Monogamy in per- petual force since the creation, by keeping the sexes equal in numbers.*
He could not tolerate, that is allow, with- out punishment, any one man to have " two or
* The following statistics of population I take from a news- paper of 18G9 :
" The Secretary of State of Michigan has recently published a very interesting report on the vitality statistics of that State for that portion of the year 1868 between April 5 and December 31 . From this report we learn that during the period mentioned there were 19,171 births, of whom 10,133 were males."
This would leave 9,038 females — being 1,095 less than the number of boys, or about one hundred boys to ninety-one girls.
The usual rate of excess in the number of boys settled by the vitality statistics of the Old World is 100 boys to 94 girls.
Our New World shows in the report from Michigan a higher rate of increase in the males. The census of the United States for 1870 will settle this important question for us. It would be well for our statesmen to examine this matter with atten- tion. If it is found that the proportion of births be 100 boys to 94 girls, will not this rate of excess confirm the Bible law of Marriage — one man for one woman, the excess being re- quired by the law of nature to meet the dangers and diseases to which the man is more especially exposed ?
We must also take into account the stream of emigration now pouring over our land, the far greater number of emigrants being men. The census will probably show us that heathen devices to absorb women in polygamy can never be allowed in our country. The United States of North America must be the land of Christian Homes,
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THE GREAT QUESTION.
three wives," or any number over one at a time, without doing injustice, without violating His first and only law of marriage. He could not sanction polygamy and be the just God, hating iniquity and every evil work.
Those Clergymen and " Associations of Churches " that have advocated or allowed this charge of coincidence between the Mormons and the Bible doctrine of Marriage to go unrebuked, must be brought to the bar of the people.
You, my fellow -citizens, must come to the rescue of the Holy Bible from the false inter- pretations of its heretofore Guardians. Do you answer — the Reverend Clergy should raise their banner of God's Law and lead the way when licentious idolatry is to be rooted out?
In Christian Europe such a course would no doubt be taken, but we have the better way. Our people are not the power behind the Govern- ment, they are the power of the Government. Let the American people will that Mormonism shall be put down, and the power of our Chris- tian Clergy, through their pulpits, will be swift as the thunder -bolt when the lightning from Heaven has done its appointed work.
Come up then, Men of America, to the help
THE GEEAT QUESTION.
229
of the Lord against the mighty. You who arc willing to stand on God's Bible truth, come and put down all false theological logic which would tolerate or excuse polygamy by pretending to find that it was allowed or sanctioned in the Mosaic Law.
Search the Scriptures. You will there find that Moses wrote his laws for a people who did not recognize the usage of a plurality of wives among themselves any more than did our own progenitors. We must read and interpret the Mosaic statutes on these points as we do our own statutes — namely, that Monogamy was the common Law of the Pilgrim Fathers at Mount Sinai, as it was the common Law of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock.
Search the Scriptures, and you will see that God is on our side. This truth will make you strong to put down the open violation of God's law now witnessed within the borders of our land.
Search History, and you will find that no nation of freemen ever allowed or tolerated polygamy. The institution is death to civil liberty. Polygamy, if allowed in Utah, will vitiate every marriage in the United States.
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THE GEEAT QUESTION.
"We boast of our " inalienable rights " ! What human right is so inalienable as the right of every husband to have his own wife, and the right of every wife to have her own husband? If Mormonism prevails, many a man will be unable to have one wife, and every wife in our land will be liable to the monstrous wrong of finding, while she lives, her husband's name and affections transferred to another wife.
The Constitution of the United States allows every man to enjoy, unmolested, his own religion ; but it does not allow him, under the cloak of that religion, to deprive another man of life, liberty, property, good name, or domestic hap- piness.
Would the Car of Juggernaut, or the Suttee of the Brahmin, be allowed in our land ?
Could a community that sanctified or allowed by their religion. Murder, Theft, and False Wit- ness, be admitted as a Republican State into our Confederacy ?
Would such a community of men, established in any Territory, be allowed to organize and carry out their devilish devices ?
Why then should it be pretended that polyg- amy, which annihilates the dearest domestic
THE GREAT QUESTION. 231
and individual riglits of every woman subject to its rule, which murders the innocence of chil- dren and destroys the balance of equality among men, can, by the fiction that it is a religious in- stitution, be legally established within the juris- diction of the United States ?
Such a pretence, when brought to the scru- tiny of reason, of natural justice, of Revealed Truth, and of our Federal Constitution, cannot stand for a moment.
" We the people of the United States," must, in earnest, take up this matter. We are equal to the task. We are the rulers. Let our reli- gious teachers the Clergy know, let our public servants of the Government know, that we will not endure this injustice, this shame, this sin of polygamy on American soil.
Every year its strength and boldness in- creases. It hunts out its victims on foreign shores, and there, like the creeping voracious Boa, it swallows its living prey ; and, return- ing hither, disgorges it, moulded by its foul, slimy touch, to its own serpent form and nature.
It thus pollutes our fair land, kept open for the oppressed and unfortunate, for the
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THE GREAT QUESTION.
brave in enterprise and the lover of free institu- tions.
The Mormons in Utah now number about a hundred thousand people. Many of their most influential men — Missionaries they style them- selves — have been sent out to the Old World to gain proselytes.
In a few more years, if allowed to go on un- restrained in their polygamy, they will prove a dangerous foe to deal with : and, although I have no fears for the final result of the struggle, come when it may, yet the longer it is delayed the worse it will be for us.
Why wait till war actually comes? — till the blood of our sons has freshened the shores of the Salt Lake, and the bones of our brothers are whitening the dark deserts of Utah ?
Let us begin now at the ballot-boxes. Choose no man for an ofiice in the National or State Government who upholds the Mormon doe- trine, or who would permit polygamy in a State or Territory, under any pretence what- ever.
See to it that each State Legislature enacts laws to prevent the Mormon leaders, who have gone out to Europe, from bringing their foul
THE GEEAT QUESTION. . 233
cargoes to our shores. Send back those deluded hordes to their own countries. Why shoukl the moral lazar-houses of Europe be emptied on our land ? Why should these mad, misguided men be permitted to come here, and, because they are together, put into usage and common practice crimes against the laws of every State in the Union ?
Has not this Mormon polygamy already caused disastrous disturbances on our borders ; rebellion against the laws of the United States ; the expense of millions to our Government; exposures, hardships, and destruction of pro- perty and health, — and death, aye, a bloody death, to some of our best citizens?
Are not these things sufficient proof that a community of polygamists can never become citizens of the United States? Does not the fundamental law of their society, the plurality of wives, -destroy the civil rights of woman and make the Government, of necessity, oligarchi- cal, and not republican ?
Shall we wait to see greater crimes committed than the open licensed adultery of Utah has already brought in its train, before we move to
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.THE GREAT QUESTION.
put down this rebellion against tlie law of tlie Bible and the law of our Constitution ?
Shall the land whose Hero is Washington be thus desecrated?
We the people of the United States can and must prevent it.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION.
" TT^OE. tlie Commandment is a lamp ; and
J- the law is light ; and reproofs of in- struction are the way of life." — Proverbs vi. 23.
" Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of me." — St. John v. 39.
The wisdom of Solomon and the words of Jesus Christ agree in urging on men the study of God's laws. By personal study only, can their Divine Truth be clearly apprehended, and its meaning applied to individual responsibility.
This little volume has been written in the earnest hope of arousing men to search the Scriptures. American Protestant Christians are without excuse if they neglect this duty. We have the Bible in our homes. We have the right of private judgment. We should exam- ine how the Bible has been dealt with by trans- lators and by commentators. If there have
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CONCLUSION.
been errors of translation, or gross and vital mistakes of interpretation, we must see that the sacred Hebrew text is cleared from these heathen pollutions.
The work of reformation for us is not merely sweeping away Mormonism ! A far higher duty rests on the American people. We whose charter of civil liberty and of religious freedom rests on God's laws of Nature and Revelation — always in harmony — we must see to it, that the misinterpretations of Scripture which have given license to sins that degrade mankind and dis- honor the Creator, shall be branded as false and infamous.
King David's family life is the stumbling- block that has not only corrupted the Church, but hindered the progress of Christianity. Here then is the battle-ground between Divine wratli and human error in regard to the Bible Law of Marriage. The questions to be settled are —
Did the God of holiness and justice give Saul's wives (or women) to fill up the measure of King David's lust? Or did our God, whose loving kindness is over all — give these forlorn women to the protecting care of David, that he might have an opportunity of showing kinduass
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 237
to the family of liis dead master ? David would thus prove his own goodness in strong contrast with the evil dealings of Saul with him.
[ T'his brief synopsis of proofs, found in the Bible, sustaining the marriage laws of the United States, may be useful to men who would study the subject in the light that comes to us from the most ancient record of Mankind.]
The primal Law of Marriage was one Man with one Woman. This is the only Divine Law of Marriage set forth in the Bible.
" And Adam said. This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called . Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
*' Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they shall be one flesh." — Genesis ii. 23, 24.
" And did not He make one ? Yet had He the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one ? That He might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth." — Malachi ii. 15.
" And He (Jesus) answered and said unto
238 SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT.
them, Have ye not read, that He -which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his ■wife : and they twain shall be one flesh." — Matthew xix. 4, 5.
" For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." — Ephesiam V. 31.
Here are four witnesses to the Bible Law of Marriage.
1st. Moses, God's chosen lawgiver.
2d. Malaclii, God's prophet, the last sent to the people of Israel.
3d. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.
4th. St. Paul, God's chosen Ajiostle to the Gentiles.
This primal Law of Marriage was universal, binding on all men and women to the end of time.
The violation of this Law was sin, under the Old Testament dispensation, as surely as it is sin under the Gospel.
The violation of this Law was and is as surely sin in man as in woman ; God in His Moral Laws makes no distinctions between the sexes.
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 239
The violation of this primal Law of Marriage was and is Adultery. The peoj)le of Israel thus understood the Law of Sinai.
Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomdh were guilty of sin in violating this Law, and were punished for the sin.
Polygamy is Adultery.
Those men who practice polygamy are rebels against God's Law of Marriage, as revealed in the Bible and sustained by His Law of Nature regulating the increase of the sexes.
Those Theologians who would excuse the polygamists of the Old Testament by pretend- ing that Jehovah tolerated or sanctioned such usages in the men of His chosen race, are guilty of dishonoring God, of falsifying the Bible, of pandering to the lusts of men, of destroying the purity and happiness of women, and of letting in the flood of corruptions that have brought low the Protestant churches of Europe, and greatly hindered the progress of true reli- gion in the United States.
Polygamy is a violation of our civil rights as citizens ; a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and must be suppressed.