character of it," and that it was admitted into the divinely-inspired code "under special and exceptional circumstances, as part of concessive and temporary legislation."[1]
It is not necessary to have recourse to any such expedients when once we remember that the experience of Israel was not other than that of the rest of mankind, that the Levirate-marriage was once common everywhere, and that everywhere for the same reasons it has fallen into disrepute and disuse. The circumstance that the literature of Israel came to have a sacred character, and that a mechanical theory of inspiration clothed that literature with an irrational, because an indiscriminating, sanctity explains the fact that a relic of primitive barbarism survived into the age of civilisation, and drew to itself the anxious regard of civilised and religious men. How barbarous the practice really is becomes apparent when it is considered in the
- ↑ See Luckock, "History of Marriage," p. 248.
