Show AH air ABSURD english STATUTE WE have received a letter from the earl of dalhousie Dal dai housle housie dated london feb asking for tho publication of somo correspondence enclose ed edn oda eda a copy of which his has been addressed to the tha Goyer governor nor non of ea esch each ch state in the union it will be found in another part of this paper we presume that a similar letter hab has been bent to mo moat at of the loading journals of this country accompanying it are the annexed re marka marha 11 it git is evident writes an american clergyman ito to those of us ns who are old enough to remember the state of things previous to these innovation nova lons ions that a change for the worse has been brought about I 1 can well recollect when ladics ladies in the lifetime of their hus hue husbands bands used to th feel as if their brothers in law were their own brothers and to treat them accordingly in all the anro serve of domestic intercourse when a brother in law after an absence would kiss hiss his brothers bro theeb theys wife in nil nii purity as his hia own sister and she would ouid confide in him without a thought w of evil or a feeling of embarrassment barras and an and J when too in case of a wife dying her sister bister would remain in charge of her family or would remove to the bereaved home homo to live with the widower and take care of his children as 83 a thing of course without r whisper of aia ala slander or any occasion for it when the children too knowing that their aunt could never be in any nearer relation to them loved and reve fenced her and confided confined in her and yielded readily a most moat wholesome influence to her nearness of connection has bean deemed not improper and even desirable there thero has grown up in families a perceptible and painful constraint the children learning to look with apprehension on their mothers sisters bisters and the wives becoming jealous of their influence with their hus hua husbands bands while familiarities which formerly were thought to be and really were innocent have come to posses possess a consciousness of evil tendes tended tendency cy which itself is of the nature of sin bin I 1 1 I know of a wife whose health was gradually declining a woman women of the world with a husband as worldly as herself and in their home was a young and attractive sister of theirs between whom and her husband there had bad grown up gradually gradual lk a degree of affectionate intercourse which in the tha days of the cifes health had been thought only natural but aa the end drew draw near it became on his part more pointed anddrew and drew to it her attention so BO agonizingly that it became tho the one engrossing feeling of her soul foh sor the last few weeks of her life exciting in her an undisguised dread of what she foresaw would as it 11 aids did take place and so BO absorbed her as aa to shut out all thought of religion and make mae her inh miserable lerable to her very death 11 As our views in relation to thia subject are desired we will state them we do not know who Is ia the american clergyman that writes such stuff as the foregoing but sup pose posa that he must have moved within the limits of a very small email social circle or that his observations have been confined to cases of extreme Jeal jealousy chronic suspicion and morbid anticipation of death see eno kno no reason pos poa sivility sibl lity of a winea wines decease before that of an unmarried lster sister fi and tho the groundless assumption that if the wife died first the tho husband would marry the sister sisters should cause causs the ap apprehension distrust and constraint described bed and do not believe that such things are general or common some isolated instance of this kind may have come to the notice of tho the american clergyman and he has hab leaped to the conclusion that it is a type of an extensive class clars we have havo instances ot of similar ularand and even vorse worse suspicions on the he part 0 of invalid ladies in england audy andy where it is unlawful for a man to wed hia hib deceased cifes sistar sister r and the cause is of course not to be at tri buted tributes to the source named by the american clergyman but either to the undue familiarity of the husband with his hla sister in law or the extreme sensitiveness and jealousy of the nervous and debilitated wife we have always regarded the english law forbidding marriage with a deceased cifes sia sla alateras sister teras as foolish unnecessary and unscriptural r the repeal of the law hns hab been chiefly opposed by the chuch churchmen men andy and yel yet et they cannot cite any acknowledged authority for their objections to brt art buch such ch marriages the quotations usually made by them from tho the mosaic law have no bearing whatever upon the subject one of the moat most citations is ia the pr passage elego made famous in utah by the notorious dr newman formerly of the methodist denomination and paster of the church with the chimes in washington D C but now of new kew york and another sect which has secured his ber Per services vIces by larger emoluments in his discussion with prof orson pratt on the question of polygamy he referred so BO often to leviticus 18 that he is 12 commonly called by that title in this city examination of that text will show that it is even lets less appropriate in an argument against marriage with a deceased cifers bister sister than in a dispute upon polygamy thou not take lake a wife to her bister sister to vex her beside the other during her lifetime life time what Is ia there in this which forbids marriage with a eifes sister after the wiles s death nothing at all the inference is that the widower may tako take tako the sister in law if he does not do so during the rifea wife s lifetime but when we wa analyze the langu language agge that we only condition imposed against the mar riago of the cifes bister sister during the lifetime of the wife is the cifes aversion to the plural plurad marriage it if it vex her the union Is forbidden if not not the marriage of a man with two sisters was not forbidden in the mosaic code jacob jacobs s union with two sisters wes was not condemned and his example was frequently followed in israel there is no natural consanguinity between the hu hi aldand and and nis cifes bister aister therefore luere allele lue eue re is no natural barrier to his mar marriage ringe with her elther either during daring the rifea ilfe iloe or after her death the text we bavo cited is sometimes rende rendered reds thou not tt e one wife unto another etc ete this was the version sprung by dr newman upon prof pratt nut his hebrew roots with which he expected to smite polygamy hip and thigh merely strack struck against other hebrew roots roote in the nanda handa of his opponent and the result was the demolition of his argument he was not prepared for erudition in a defender of the mormon faith falth and his discomfiture discomfit ure ura was waa overwhelming wh elming but granting for arguments sake bake tho the correctness of this rendering of the pa passage spage the same bame condi condl condition ulon flou which we have pointed out applies if the wife a agrees greeb grees there is na n prohibition bi whether it relates to the cifes slater or another woman thou thoa shall not take one wife to another or a wife to her slater stater to vex her during darlng her lifetime thu the earl of dalhousie will find when he collates the tho responses to hla hia letter that there have been many casts casas where the tho invalid wife expecting to die and leave her little ones without a mother haa entreated the hubband husband to marry her slater who has cared for the mildren during her sickness and would in all probability be nearer like a second mother to them than any one else wo we are of the opinion that such instances are much commoner than thosa imagined or exaggerated by the american clergyman and if it would not shock him too much we would like to whisper to him that there are not sas cas ea of a married woman desiring her husband to wed her sister durine her lifetime and ot of two sisters bisters devoted to each other who determine it if possible to marry the bame came man that they may remain together in life ufa ss as they had lived in spin thib thid too with the purest of motives and the most unselfish affection fec tion but bat of course this is under tho the Wo mormon rmon system of marital relations and would be startling t to the tho nerves of one trammeled by tho the L bonds of perverted christian traditions dit ions and yet it is strictly and there is nothing against it but the statutes which men have made unguided by the law of god and un inspired by the spirit which flows from hia hig presence we have to bay say to the gentleman who makes the inquiry that wo we know of nothing either in the kerp tures which are accepted as aa the christian standard and which lay down the principle that marriage is ordained of god nor in a somewhat extensive human experience in two hemispheres which can be ba legitt ti urged against marriage with a deceased cifes sister |