P.S.—Whilst these sheets are passing through the press, I am reminded of an objection taken to the whole line of the argument of my letter upon the very strength of the law of the Levirate. I am told (and I think the view was touched upon in the report of the Commission) that there are some who deem the law of the Levirate to be the total repeal of the prohibition as to the brother’s wife (which most certainly it is not), and who would then go on to say, And, upon your own shewing, after the wife’s death this very law of the Levirate will bring you to the conclusion of marrying the wife’s sister.
I should, perhaps, hardly deem it necessary to notice seriously such an objection, but that I hear of it as actually made or revived at the present time. I will then say a few words upon it. I reply; Consider what must be assumed, and what must be denied, to bring this argument in any way to bear upon the question before the Legislature.
First—It must be assumed that the law of the Levirate is a law binding upon Christians; that it is a law, not simply intended for the Jewish economy, but that a Christian man is intended to take his brother’s widow, if he have died childless, and raise up seed unto his brother.
Secondly—It must be assumed that this object is to be attained, not by the taking the brother’s widow, but by taking the wife’s sister, which is the object of the Bill, but was not the object at all of the Jewish legislation, and which, moreover, is absolutely absurd as to the end of raising up seed unto a brother.
Thirdly—It must be denied that polygamy is forbidden to Christians; for if the brother in the case supposed have a wife previously to his brother’s death, (this wife being still alive, but not the sister of his deceased brother’s wife,) then, according to the law of the Levirate hereby assumed to be in force, he must still take his brother’s widow to wife to raise up seed unto his brother.
Or, Fourthly, if the argument be not carried quite so far, and it be maintained that the brother should say, “I cannot take her, lest I mar my own inheritance;” or, “I cannot take her, as I have already a wife;” or, “I like not to take her for I am engaged to another;” or, if he should for any cause refuse, then, at least, if the law of the Levirate be binding upon us (which is the argument; for if not, it does not help the promoters of the Bill at all), the refuser should undergo the penalty provided in the case, and we should have to witness the scene of the widow, or the wife’s sister, calling together the elders of her city, and loosing the shoe of her husband’s brother, or sister’s husband, and spitting in his face and saying, “So shall it be clone unto that man that will not to build up his brother’s house;” and we should have to revive the name of “the house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”
No! Who does not see that the whole scope and intention of the law of the Levirate was Judaical, and limited to and exhausted by that economy. And, therefore, if the connection between the law of the Levirate and the 18th verse of Lev. xviii. be established, as I have endeavoured to shew it is, it will follow that the exception to that law must belong exclusively to it and expire with it; and, therefore, that the supposed permission to take the sister, “beside the other,” if it be not “in her life-time,” has, as I have all along been arguing, nothing to do with us as Christians at all, but is tied to and restrained by the law of the Levirate, and of the Jewish dispensation. Under it, it was lawful, it was enjoined, when a brother died childless, for the brother to take his wife and raise up seed unto his brother; and this would be lawful and enjoined in that particular case even when his brother’s widow was his own wife’s sister, if his own wife, the sister of the other were dead. But among Christians I cannot believe that any one seriously believes for a moment that the law of the Levirate remains, and so no one can suppose, if the 18th verse of Lev. xviii. be merely the exception to that law, that it has any bearing upon, or gives any permission to, Christians in their marriages at all. [36]
M. W. M.
APPENDIX A.
The only two passages which I have met with taking the same line of argument with that of the foregoing letter are the following. In an appendix to the Speech of Vice-Chancellor Sir W. Page Wood, Feb. 1st, 1860, I find this comment upon the statements in the Mishna:—