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fulfilment of the curse in these days, as a proof of the continuance of the law: but we are no longer under a system of visible earthly rewards and punishments, as the Jews were; yet blasphemy, adultery, and Sabbath-breaking, are not less sinful now, because the offenders are not punished with death. And it most probably means that they should be childless in the sense Jehoichin was — with no heirs, their children being illegitimate.
Again, the reason for this permission does not exist now, neither could it apply to marrying two sisters. It was permitted in order to prevent the fusion of too many inheritances into one, and to keep up the name of the deceased, an object inexpressibly dear to the heart of a Jew.
Moreover, those who take permission from this passage, should remember the conditions. It was only permitted to the Jews, and the deceased must have been childless. This wholly excludes the favourite argument, that a wife's sister is the most proper person to have charge of her children which in many cases might be urged with superior force in regard to her Mother. Such opinions of man's corrupt heart and reason prove nothing as to the rightness of any step; were they to be met on their own ground, it might easily be proved that the permission which would be a convenience in one case would carry disunion into a thousand families where no advantage could ever be derived from it, and instead of the perfectly brotherly and sisterly terms on which such relations (confident in the sanctity of the barrier between them), now live, the distant friendliness of comparative strangers must be substituted.
Surely no Christian could enter on a marriage, (a step in which he is so peculiarly bound to the greatest purity and holiness) against the lawfulness of which, even in the eyes of
