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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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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-

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.

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.

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,

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-

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.

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-

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.

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.

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

ABRAHAM.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ?

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

5 49

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.

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-

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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,

JACOB AND HIS SONS.

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.

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.

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.

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 ;

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

THE GIVING OF THE LAW.

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

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,

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.

THE GIVING or THE LAW.

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.

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 !

THE GIVING OF THE LAW.

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.

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

THE GIVING OF THE LATV.

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,

THE GIVIKG OF THE LAW.

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

THE GIVIXO OF THE LAW.

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.

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

THE GIVING OF THE LAW.

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

84 THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.

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,

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 ?

THE SPECIAL LAWS OF MOSES.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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*

114

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

118

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."

120

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-

122

KINO DAVID,

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

124

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*

126

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

128

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 :

KING DAVID. 129

(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.

130

KIKG DAVID.

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

KINO D A I D .

131

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.

132

KING DAVID.

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

KINO DAVID.

133

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

134

KING DAVID.

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 !

KING DAVID.

135

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.

136

KING DAVID.

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

KING DAVID.

137

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* .

138

KING DAVID.

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.

KING DAVID.

139

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 ?

140

KING DAVID.

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,

KINO DAVID.

141

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."

142

KING DAVID.

"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

KINO DAVID.

143

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.

144

KING DAVID.

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

KING DAVID.

145

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.

146

KING DAVID.

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-

147

148

SOLOMON.

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

SOLOMON.

149

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

13*

150

SOLOMON.

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.

SOLOMON.

151

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

152 SOLOMON.

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.

SOLOMON.

153

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

154

SOLOMON.

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

SOLOMON.

155

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,"

156

SOLOMON.

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."

SOLOMON.

157

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

158

SOLOMON.

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

SOLOMON.

159

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

160

SOLOMON.

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

SOLOMON.

161

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,

14*

162

SOLOMON.

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

SOLOMOK.

163

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

164

SOLOMON.

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.

SOLOMON.

165

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.

166

SOLOMON.

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.)

167

168

PEOVEEBS or SOLOMON.

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.

1G9

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

170

PEOVERBS OF SOLOMON.

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.)

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

171

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?

172

PEOVERBS OF SOLOMON.

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

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

173

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

15*

174

PROVERBS OF SOLOMOJT.

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

ECCLESI ASTES.

175

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.

176

ECCLESIASTES.

"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

ECCLESIASTES.

177

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

178

ECCLESIASTES.

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

ECCLESI ASTES.

179

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

180

ECCLESIASTES.

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.

181

" 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

182

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

Solomon's song.

183

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.

184

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."

Solomon's song.

185

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

16*

186

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

Solomon's song.

187

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.

188

Solomon's song.

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

Solomon's song.

189

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.

190

Solomon's song.

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

Solomon's song.

191

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,

192

THE KINGS. 193

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

194

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.

THE KINGS.

195

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

196

THE PROPHETS.

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.

THE PROPHETS.

197

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

17*

198

THE PROPHETS.

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-

THE PROPHETS.

199

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

200

THE PEOPHETS.

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

THE PEOPIIETS.

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

202

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.

THE PKOPIIETS.

203

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.

204

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.

18 205

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,

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHEIST. 207

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

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. 209

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

18*

210

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.

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

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. 211

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.

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. 213

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

218

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.

221

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

19*

222

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 ? "

THE APOSTLES.

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 ?

224

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

225

226

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,

228

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.

230

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

232

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

20*

234

.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

235

236

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.

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