verses above quoted, that from the beginning it was not so?
It is true, however, that Moses, in the law, did suppose (Deut. xxi, 15) the case of a man having two wives, and has there prescribed certain regulations respecting the children of such wives, but does not, in so many words, any where say that his people might have more wives than one at a time, nor had Moses himself ever but one wife. It is true, also, that he gave a power to the Jews to put away a wife by divorce, who did not please them; but even this allowance was done out of mercy to the woman; for on this very subject Jesus Christ said that Moses allowed it to be done on account of the hardness of their hearts, or cruelty to their wives: but from the beginning it was not true that a man might have a plurality of wives. On this subject, the Savior founds his argument against polygamy, namely, that God, or himself, who was God, in the beginning made them male and female, and married them to each other, adding, that as God had put them together by marriage, that no man could, legally or morally, put them asunder, except for but one cause only. Are we, therefore, to imagine that the author of both codes of law, the Gospel and the Pentateuch, would thus contradict his own eternal views of morality? Accordingly, there is found no such admission in the law of Moses, but exactly the contrary.
It is true, however, that polygamy was practiced to a great extent during all the ages of the Jewish history; but the writer of these pages is not prepared to say that the law of God allowed it, or that the
