religion under which polygamy is allowed'. The succession of seasons hardly bears a stronger testimony to the preserving power of the Creator, than is borne in the perpetual proportion in the numbers of men and women to the divine institution of marriage.

One of the most ancient writers of the Church, in undertaking the defence of marriage from the various objections which were brought against it, pursues a line of argument which justifies the conclusion, that matrimony is of divine institution. He maintains, that nature has formed man with a disposition to marriage, as is clear from the structure of the body of the man and the woman; and, with an allusion probably to the argument of Plato, who held that it was the excellence of marriage to raise up a succession of servants unto God, he proceeds to argue that the man who is childless is destitute of the perfection of his nature, in having no substitute for himself to succeed him in his country, and that he is the most perfect, who sees his children's children descending from him. Hence he infers the necessity of marriage, for the sake of one's country, of the succession of issue, and the consummation of the peopling of the world. He contends that the diseases and infirmities of the body also prove the necessity of marriage, since the affection of a wife, and the earnestness of her care, exceed the assiduities of other friends and domestics, and she is indeed, according to the Scripture, a necessary auxi

'See Encyclopædia Brit. Art. Marriage, where these inferences are sustained by appropriate calculations.

liary. He then meets the objection of some who would detract from marriage, and shews the beneficial influence of marriage upon those who are advanced in years, in affording the care of a wife, and in raising from her children for the support of old age". Are these energies of marriage, extending from the consummation of the world to the decrepitude of individuals, and supplying the wants of each and of all, the effects of divine or human wisdom? And is it no proof of the providence which designed and watches over the ends of marriage, that, under all its cares and anxieties, all its labours and privations, all its peculiar pains and perils, there is ordinarily and actually given to wedded life a longer duration than to a life of celibacy, and that the life of married women especially exceeds that of single women? This is not the result of human policy; it is the blessing of God following his own institution, the secret evidence of that power which is in continual operation for the benefit of mankind.

The perpetuation and universality of the conjugal union, continuing with little deviation from its original law, bear the same testimony to its divine origination and the providential care with which it has been preserved. Marriage was instituted in the person of our first parents in the state of innocence; and after the fall God repeated and confirmed his ordinance, when he spake of the seed of the woman, and of the sorrow and pain of childbirth, adding the penalty of sin, but not rescinding the primary institution of his mercy, for the immediate consolation

u Cl. Alex, Strom. 1. ii. s. 23.

of the parties, and for the perpetual propagation of mankind, in virtue of which Adam calls Eve the mother of all living. So again, after the flood, the Lord God reiterated the precept and the blessing addressed to the first pair, renewing the primary law to the sons of Noah, whose marriages had been recognized by the preservation of them and their wives in the ark: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth: and the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the field, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. . . . And you, be fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. From the issuing of this benedictory commandment, there has been in all ages, and in all countries, and under all dispensations of religion, such uninterrupted respect to marriage as cannot be accounted for without the recognition of a divine institution, and of a corresponding impression on the hearts of men in conformity with the will and ordinance of God. In marriage there is nothing of the partial, the transitory, the fluctuating, and perishable nature of human institutions; the rules of dower and of settlement, and the forms of contracting marriage, which are confessedly of human invention, have all been subject to change; but marriage, both in its law and in its end and purpose, has ever remained the same permanent union of a man with a woman, for mutual consolation and

Gen. iii. 16-20. Gerhard, sect. 48.

y Gen. ix. 1, 2, 7. Gerhard, sect. 48. See Origen, Com, in Gen. vi. 19.

the nurture of common children. The sentiments of the ancient Jews have been collected from the Old Testament, and their descendants, so far from disparaging or being offended at the Christian doctrine of a divine institution, do not scruple to call the rites of marriage by the name of conjugal sanctification. The best and wisest of the heathens derived marriage from the institution of nature, not only for the most pleasant, but the most useful society of life: they ascribed to it a divine and sacred character, speaking of it as holy marriage, a holy conjunction; and they called it by a name which implies perfection, or sacred initiation', placing it under the superintendence of the supreme divinities, reserving the administration of the law of marriage to the Pontifices, and not contracting it without religious offices, without taking the auspices, or without the invocation of a polytheism, multiplied beyond all conception. Polygamy, wherever it has prevailed, whether under the patriarchs, or under the law of Mohammed, is confessedly the corruption of an earlier and purer institution, and among the

“Tλos and yapos are terms of the same signification, whence ynas, to marry, is termed λuwenves, to be made perfect. Married persons are called τελειοι, and are said to be s βιῳ τελείῳ. The same epithet is commonly given to the gods that had the care of marriage." Potter's Antiq. b. iv. c. 11.

e Jus matrimoniorum non mere civile, sed magna ex parte pontificium erat et sanctum habebatur. Fr. Hotman de Sponsalibus, c.

2.

Druses, who are not otherwise scrupulous in respect of marriage, the licence is but seldom permitted. Among tribes the most remote from the practice of civilized life, among the Esquimaux of the North, and the wandering hordes of the Western regions of America, from Tartary to Caffraria, there is, with less modification than might be conceived, a bond of marriage, the virtue and the honour, the blessing and the consolation, of savage as of polished life; the protection and instruction of infancy, the aid of manhood, and the support of feebleness and decrepitude. All the forms of human association have varied, and in the revolution of ages have been superseded and renewed; but marriage has never been unknown: it has had the sanction of such universal practice as proves its conformity with the very constitution of human nature, and the best and kindliest affections of the heart, and leaves the inference of its origination with the Author and Creator of mankind. "That the holy state of matrimony was instituted by God," says Wheatly, "is evident from the two first chapters of the Bible; whence it comes to pass, that, amongst all the descendants from our first parents, the numerous inhabitants of the different nations of the world, there has been some religious way of entering into this state, in consequence and testimony of the divine institution."

If there be any force or value in the authorities or the arguments which have been alleged in favour of the divine institution of marriage, it will be hardly necessary to vindicate the doctrine from the imputa

f Illustration of the Common Prayer, c. x. Introduction.