does not see that the race of men was most happy when sin was unknown, and most perfect in intellect when he could hold converse with the Deity and dwell in the garden of God? But if Judaism be true, men are never again to enjoy that state, for then polygamy was unknown. Adam had only one wife; and until sin entered into the world, and ripened even into murder, no man had two wives. Judaism is, therefore, opposed to the pure and perfect state of things that existed in Paradise, and favourable to that confusion introduced by the murderous Lamech, the son of murderous Cain—and Christianity resembles, in its principles of marriage, the happy state ordained by God in Paradise. Here, then, we have another and a practical proof that the oral law is not of God. Its authors totally misunderstood the mind and purpose of Moses, the servant of God, and misinterpreted his temporary toleration of an existing evil into a positive permission and sanction for continuing it. We have also another proof of the divine origin of Christianity.
No. XLVIII.
DIVORCE.
When God delivered the commandments at Sinai, he placed
those which related to himself first, to teach us that our first
duty is to love and serve him: and immediately after these he
gave the command "Honour thy father and thy mother," to
show us that, next to himself, we are bound to reverence, to
love, and to obey those to whom we owe our existence. This
order of things was not an arbitrary choice, but founded in that
natural constitution of creation which God ordained as most
conducive to the intellectual and moral well-being as well as to
the happiness of his creatures. He does not command us to
love and serve Him, and Him only, merely because He has the
light on the one hand, and it is our bounden duty on the other;
but because a conformity to his will is an approximation both
to wisdom and happiness. Neither does he tell us to honour
father and mother, because we owe them all such reverence, as
from them we have derived our being, and to them are indebted
for all the care and affection with which they have tended and
watched over our infancy; but because He has himself constituted
the relation of parent and child, and ordained parental
affection and filial duty as the means of promoting our welfare
