WE regret to observe that the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill was passed into law at the close of the last session of Parliament. There was a vigorous minority opposed to the measure, but the majority carried the day, and a grievous invasion has thus been made in the marriage laws of our country that will bear its own evil fruit in due course. The law of the land on this subject is now in direct antagonism to the statements of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, which have been hitherto recognised as expressing the national law of marriage. These statements are clearly founded upon and agreeable to God’s Word, so that our new marriage law is at war with divine authority. No blessing—only a curse—can follow.
The Confession of Faith declares: “The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband’s kindred nearer in blood than of her own” (chap. xxiv., sect. 4). The deep underlying principle of this prohibition is that husband and wife, according to the Scriptures, become “one flesh,” and that their brothers and sisters on both sides are drawn closely together by the new relationship—they become brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law—and so pass within the degree where it is lawful to marry. But the new licence—whatever innocent appearance it may be made to assume—is an invasion of the unity of the marriage tie, and will directly tend, not to bind together, but to break up society.
The Word of God lays down the law of prohibited degrees of marriage in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, and this law holds for the Mosaic and subsequent ages. What was permitted before then, such as in the times of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not law for a later date. In Leviticus xviii. 16, a man is forbidden to marry his brother’s wife, or widow. The case of a woman marrying her deceased sister’s husband, which is the present case in hand, involves the very same degree of relationship, and so is equally prohibited. Every possible case of prohibition is not explicitly stated in Leviticus. Some cases are to be got at by inference, but that easy and direct. For example, mother and son are forbidden to marry, while nothing is said about father and daughter. The degree of relationship, however, is exactly the same, and it is as clear as a moonbeam that when the one case is forbidden, both are. Those who argue for marriage with the deceased wife’s sister make a lot of the fact that the particular case is not explicitly prohibited, and endeavour to justify it on this ground; but this is an argument of a most superficial and fallacious character, which would justify other marriages of a manifestly unlawful and monstrous description.
No Church that is loyal to God’s Word, not to mention the Confession of Faith, can take anything else but the most serious view of this new Deceased Wife’s Sister Act. What can only be regarded as an adulterous and incestuous union has been sanctioned by the Parliament of this country to its lasting disgrace, and it will be the duty of all who are faithful to God’s truth, and love the purity of national and family life, to protest against the unhallowed enactment. We are safe in affirming that such marriages will be regarded with abhorrence in the Free Presbyterian Church, and that Church privileges will in nowise be extended to any who enter into them. They are, as we have shown, condemned by the Confession of Faith and the Word of God.