But of course the opponent’s rejoinder is: Are you not in the very same case as to the other over-riding? Is not the authority which gave the prohibition of the 16th verse equal to give the permission of the 18th?
Granting that it is so, yet I must again call attention to this; how wholly unlikely it is that, without making any special exception, for any suggested or defined cause, there should be within two verses of each other two general laws exactly contradictory, for so they are, if the argument from parallelism is allowed. And therefore I must again urge how probable this makes it, if there be any other reasonable sense or application of the second passage not involving this contradiction, that such sense and application should be the true one, and there should be thus no over-riding at all between those two verses.
Is there then any such reasonable sense and application of the prohibition of the 18th verse? I think there is. To see what it is, go back to the exception under the law of the Levirate, [16] and ask whether the application of that law might not involve a man’s marrying two sisters. Undoubtedly it might. Suppose two brothers to have married two sisters, and the one brother to die, leaving no child, if, by the Leviratical law the brother, as he would do under that law simply, took his brother’s widow to raise up seed unto his brother, he would also be taking to wife his own wife’s sister, and this, it would seem under the injunction in Deuteronomy, he would not only be permitted but enjoined to do. But was this to be without exception? I answer, No! If his own wife, the sister of the other were still alive, the Almighty did not intend this rule to be carried out in such case. He, the surviving brother, in that contingency, should not “take a wife to her sister to vex her, . . . beside the other in her life-time.” The prohibition of the 18th verse of the xviii. chapter of Leviticus comes in. It comes, in the translation of the authorized version. It comes, in the sense contended for, as prohibitory if both sisters are alive together. It comes, as tacitly sanctioning the union if they are not; but it comes as limited in its application to this one case and one contemplated contingency, as God’s own exception touching the two sisters “in their life-time:”—His exception, as to both sisters alive together; the exception to the exception contained in the law of the Levirate, but as having nothing at all to do with the general law: as therefore in no way interfering with or over-riding the general law of the 16th verse; in no way making its general provision of none effect, as it would do if taken in the sense and application of these reformers of our marriage law. And the above-mentioned sense and application which everyone must allow the 18th verse will bear, nay, which Dr. M’Caul tells us all Jewish authorities claim and sanction, as at least included in its legislation, is, I must contend, ample and sufficient to explain the standing of the 18th verse, and its full meaning, without supposing any other application whatsoever.
And let it be observed that this statement of such application to the case of two brothers having married two sisters, and the consequent duty, in the case of one brother dying childless, of the other brother to take his widow under the law of Deuteronomy, modified by the exception of the 18th verse of Lev. xviii, that such union is not to take place, if his own wife be still alive, is not mine, but Dr. M’Caul’s, in a full examination of certain passages in the Mishna upon this subject. Indeed it was Dr. M’Caul’s own statement, in his Letter addressed, my Lord, to yourself in 1860, which brought to my mind the main line of argument which I am endeavouring to unfold. I asked myself;—If all this in the Mishna and in Dr. M’Caul’s explication of the matter, be true, why is it not the sufficient truth and the whole explanation needed? Why go on to make a conflict between the two verses in Leviticus when the 18th verse is acknowledged to be the enunciation of an exception to the law of the Levirate, and when this is a full and sufficient account of it?
It will, I think, be no waste of time to extract the passage to which I refer from Dr. M’Caul’s letter, as this will serve both to make what I have here said the more distinct, and shew also, how entirely both the Mishna and Dr. M’Caul maintain all which I have advanced as to the application of the verse in Leviticus to the case of the two brothers having married two sisters, though they refuse (at least the latter) to stop at this point.
I ought to say thus much as introduction to the Extract. In his first letter Dr. M’Caul had mentioned the Mishna as confirming his view. “The Mishna compiled in the second century testifies that it (this permission of the marriage) was the common and received sense of the Hebraizing Jews.” [18] This drew some remarks from the writer of one of the Tracts published by the Marriage Law Defence Association, (Tract 8, p. 4, and Appendix, quoted also by yourself in the Appendix to your speech,) upon the statements of the Mishna, which again caused Dr. M’Caul in rejoinder to examine those statements and to comment upon them afresh in his letter to yourself. I need not go back to the first two pamphlets. Dr. M’Caul’s explanations in his second letter will shew all which I want to exhibit. Complaining of inaccurate quotation on the part of the writer of Tract 8, he says,
“I will give the passages as they stand in the Mishna, and you, Sir, may judge of the faithfulness of this writer in making quotations. The words of the Mishna are:—
“‘Suppose three brothers, two of them married to two sisters, and one of them married to a stranger—one of the sister’s husbands dies, and he who is married to the stranger takes his widow—then the wife of the second dies, and after that he that is married to the stranger dies, behold this widow, (i.e., the surviving sister) is prohibited to him for ever, because she was prohibited to him for one hour.’
“Now, Sir, you will perceive several differences between this statement of the Mishna and that of the Appendix. 1st, The Appendix says,—‘It is declared, that if that brother’s wife is his own wife’s sister, he may not marry her.’ The Mishna makes no such general statement, but confines itself to a particular case. 2dly, The reason the Mishna gives for the prohibition of the surviving sister is that ‘she had been prohibited to him for one hour,’ which the Appendix omits altogether. 3rdly, The Appendix says, ‘And the reason assigned is, that the man and his wife’s sister are related within the degrees forbidden by the holy law to intermarry,’ not one word of which is in the text of the Mishna, as you see. The Mishna gives the reason correctly, she had been prohibited to the second brother for one hour, i.e., her widowhood commenced whilst her sister was still alive and the wife of the other brother, in which case the Rabbis rule that she is prohibited for ever.
“To make this plain, I will put letters as in the Appendix:—
“Two brothers | A/B | marry | M/N | Two sisters.
“A third brother, C, marries S, a stranger, i.e., no relation.
“A dies; M is left a widow.
“C marries M, A’s Widow, to fulfil a brother-in-law’s duty, which B could not do, because to marry two sisters simultaneously is forbidden by Lev. xviii. 18. This is the ‘one hour’ during which M is prohibited to B.
“N then dies, and B is left a widower; but he is not allowed to marry M, left a second time a widow, because on the death of A, whilst N, his wife, was alive, M was prohibited. Out of this particular case, by putting in words not in the Mishna, and by leaving out the words ‘one hour,’ which are in the Mishna, the writer has made a new Rabbinic law, unknown to the Mishna and its commentators, and from a particular case has drawn a general conclusion, opposed to Jewish law and practice. For, take the deaths in a different order, so as to avoid the ‘one hour,’ and then B might marry M. Thus:—
“Two brothers | A/B | marry | M/N | Two sisters.
“A third brother, C, marries S, a stranger.
“Suppose that N dies first, and after she is dead A dies without children, then B may marry M, because she had not been ‘prohibited to him for one hour,’ i.e., she had not been a widow whilst his own wife was alive. The second case alluded to is exactly similar:—
“Mishna III. 9.—‘Suppose two brothers [A and B] married two sisters [M and N]. If one of the brothers [A] die, and afterwards the wife of the second [N] die, then the widow [M] is prohibited to the surviving brother [B] because she had been prohibited to him one hour.’
“But suppose that N had died first, and then A died without children, then it would have been lawful for B to marry M, as may be seen in Maimonides, Yad Hachazakah, Hilchoth Yibbum, ch. vii., § 3, 4, where there is an analogous case. The prohibition in the one case, and the permission in the other, depends, not upon the words of the law, but upon a general rule laid down by the Rabbis; that the lawfulness or unlawfulness, as well as the obligation to perform the duty of a brother-in-law, is regulated by the state of things existing at the moment when the brother died.” [20]
I have extracted the above at full length, because at the same time that it shews all I want and even more than I want for my purpose, it yet also shews no contradiction to what I want, whilst it shews also that I suppress no part of Dr. M’Caul’s statement or argument. I say that it shews something more than I want, though nothing contradictory to it; because I have no need to consider either the third case of a brother marrying a stranger, or the case of the one hour commented upon by the Mishna, or at least this case no further than as it brings out into the plainest prominence Dr. M’Caul’s own witness to the sense of Lev. xviii. 18, that it forbids “B to marry A’s widow, because to marry two sisters simultaneously is forbidden by Lev. xviii. 18.” That is, by the law of the Levirate simply, this would have been required, but by the exception of the above verse it is forbidden. [21]
And this is what I mean by saying the passage shews all I want. It proves incontestably that according to the Mishna, according to the Jewish Rabbis, according to Dr. M’Caul, the enactment of the 18th verse of the xviii. of Leviticus was inserted, for the very purpose which I have all along supposed:—that it was the declaration of God’s will, that when the operation of the law of the Levirate per se would bring about the brother taking his own wife’s sister to wife to raise up seed unto his brother, then the exception to the exception came in and forbade him to do so, if her sister, his own wife, were alive. And this is what made me say (p. 13) that Dr. M’Caul came very near to the application of that text which I have been unfolding, though I was obliged to add, he overlooked its importance in interpreting the law as contained in Leviticus, for he allows that the 18th verse of Leviticus xviii. reaches to, is intended to reach to, and to forbid, this especial union, which otherwise would have been enjoined by the law in Deut. xxv., but it appears never to have occurred to him that this is the ample and sufficient explanation of the existence of that 18th verse. He never seems to have conceived it possible that it should be restricted to being the exception to the Leviratical Law, and not be a general Law itself.
I would, my Lord, for many reasons, had it so pleased God, that Dr. M’Caul were alive. His ability and learning, his strong sense and true piety, and not least his willing readiness to join with those who might differ from him in many points in the defence of our common Church and common faith against the assaults of infidelity and rationalism, make his death a no ordinary loss to us in days like these. But beyond this, I own, had it so been possible, I should have liked to point out to him how his own statements, his own authorities, and his own reasoning had been the very means to lead me to the conclusion, that we find a very complete and sufficient explanation of the existence and meaning of the 18th verse of Lev. xviii., without any occasion to resort to so violent an over-riding one statement of Scripture by another, as he has advocated. And this too without having to question the ordinary translation of the verse, or to find any difficulty in the sense of the words, “in her lifetime.” All this, at any rate for the sake of argument, I seem able to concede to Dr. M’Caul, to take his own account of an application of the passage, and only add, that it seems to me to be the application, and the only application needed. I cannot forbear adding, that if there be but a chance of this being so, it makes it a most serious thing for anyone to speak lightly of the restrictions in question—not merely of this one of the brother’s wife, but of all those laid down in this chapter of Leviticus, or to think even of relaxing that code; for who shall say that we shall not thus “haply be found to fight against God,” and be bringing ourselves and our country under the curse of His Word, denounced against all who defile themselves in these things: “Ye shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments; and shall not commit any of these abominations, neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (for all these abominations have the men of the land done which were before you, and the land is defiled:) that the land spue not you out also, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep Mine ordinance, that ye commit not any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord.” [23] In these days, my lord, we have many things to make us anxious—many things, I do not go too far in saying, to make us tremble; but I hardly know anything which should fill us more with anxiety, fear and trembling, than the thought that our legislature should bring us under this terrible curse of God, by sanctioning, as the act of a people among whom “Christianity is” still “the law of the land,” any one of those abominations, for which even the nations of Canaan were cut off and spued out. And as to individuals, I must say, there are to me few things more calculated to raise mixed feelings of pity, contempt and horror, than the levity and recklessness of some of those who are advocating the change—pity for the ignorance of many who have been misled by mere bold assertion, contempt for the reasoning powers of others who seem never to dream of looking at any side of the question except that on which their own passions, prejudices, or wishes are enlisted, and horror at the fearful temerity of those who dare approach and argue upon such a subject, without at least a sense of its importance, of the reverence with which all discussion relative to it should be conducted, and an awe, at any rate, as to the possibility, after all, of God’s law and will being in accordance with the Church’s interpretation of it for so long a time, and wholly against the “new thing” which the spirit of modern lawlessness seems anxious to introduce!