"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion, &c."

"And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."

"And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be ONE FLESH."

Thus, was ordained the union of one man with one woman, and that indissolubly a union thus constituted was "blessed."

The compilers of the Code Napoleon, in their exposition say "that the world had long remained in ignorance of the basis of this union, and that it was only within a short period, that confused and inexact notions were not entertained in regard to it. They were convinced that marriage which had existed before the establishment of Christianity; which preceded all positive law, and which is founded in the constitution of our natures, is neither a civil act, nor a religious act, but a natural act, which has engaged the attention of the legislature and which religion has sanctified."

No greater mischief has been done to sound philosophy, and consequently to an elevated civilization, than was done by the inculcation of the notion that the natural condition of mankind was that of savageness, and that his relations might be ascertained by tracing his history from a barbarous origin. In this point of view,marriage was originally the connection of male and female for the procreation of young. It required no law; it involved no religion; it was not a civil, nor a religious act; it proceeded from animal instincts. The same authors repeating what had been said by Montesquieu, affirm "that every people had caused Heaven to intervene in a contract which was destined to exercise so great an influence over the fortunes of the spouses, which, binding the future to the present, makes their happiness depend upon a succession of uncertain events, and which exciting fears as well as hopes, seem to require the aid of Heaven to fill up the chasm between them.".

The omnipotence of the law-making power-the pervading energy of its will, must have her conceptions congenial to men, to whom was committed the great task, of reforming and harmonising the legal institutions and civil order of a mighty empire. Hence, we can readily understand their faith, that the social and civil organism, about which they were employed, had been created by legislation; that those deep-rooted and universally diffused notions of the presence of God, at the celebration of a marriage formed according to his will, and that his blessing attends and hallows, were ingenious inventions, serving to couple and connect the hopes with the fears and anxieties which in the sensibilities of the young pair were aroused at the prospects before them.

We very much question the accuracy of these conclusions of those eminent juris consults. We doubt very much the fact, that the world had been so long ignorant, and we cannot hail with gratitude this gospel so lately promulgated. Marriage had existed before Christianity, if by Christianity is meant the advent and teachings of Christ. But Christianity was in the earth from the foundation of the world, and we have the words of the Messiah, that he restored and revived the ideas in regard to marriage which had existed in the beginning. At the moment of his preaching scarcely a nation existed but recognised, in some form or other, the connection of religion with this institution. The relation of husband and wife is a natural relation, but that does not describe it. There can be no marriage that does not involve a civil relation. Were there but two persons on the earth and those forming a conjugal society-between those persons a civil order would necessarily result. Whose labors would sustain the society? what would be the arrangements of the family? who would determine its abode and the manner of its abiding?-are questions they would decide between themselves. As the civil order becomes more complicated, these inquiries involve more significence and have a larger range. Combinations of property, application of industry, civil capacities, domestic authority, flow from the connection.

These enquiries, do not solve all the questions? Those reasonings lead to sterile results, which treat of man, without a reference

to his relations to his Maker, or which seek for him in a condition where these relations are not acknowledged. All human science and all art, proceed from that first revelation, "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." In this over-ruling and all-pervading truth, we must find the source of all finite relations.

In reference to man, we have, however, a specific revelation of the origin and plan of the marital relation. It was a union of two persons, so as to form but one-an identity of ends and aims-a fusion of separate volitions, impulses, affections, sympathies, so as to form a single existence. It is a spiritual incorporation, by which two souls and bodies are made one flesh.

The christian theory never treats of man's natural condition, as a savage and ignorant condition. It does not recognise his primitive nature as a degraded nature.

The first communications of God to man placed him in possession of all the truths essential to the development of a perfect social, civil, and political order. He revealed Himself;-he ordained the social union, and blessed the chaste nuptials of his first creatures. Christ, appealed to by the pragmatical and caviling Pharisees, to know whether it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause, answered, "Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

This truth lost its sway in the early periods of the world's history. Polygamy and promiscuous commerce appear in the earliest epochs.

- Woman was made the slave of man, and marriage scarcely rose above the dignity of an animal connection. The claims of the husband to his wife appear, however, in the first rank of civil arrangements. Abraham and Isaac, wandering over the barbarous lands of Arabia and Palestine, express the fear that their right would not be respected, but their distrust called forth rebuke from the kings and princes of those lands. The Egyptians ascribe their laws of marriage to Menes, and the Chinese to Fo,

their earliest sovereigns. The Athenians trace theirs to Cecrops, the Romans to Romulus.

In all countries, except the Persian and Assyrian, connections between persons in the direct line of descent were forbidden. In these countries a man might marry his mother. The Athenians permitted the marriage of the half-sister of the father's side, while the Spartans only of the mother's. The Egyptians permitted marriages of brother and sister. The Mosaic law prohibited such customs, but the practice of the Hebrews was not, at all times, equal to their laws. The Romans prohibited marriages in the direct line through all degrees, and collaterals were prohibited from marrying within the fourth degree. This was altered by Arcadius, who authorized the marriages of cousins.

4

Marriages between persons related by affinity were prohibited, in the second degree, though the manners of the people forbade such connections to the fourth.

"In all times," say the compilers of the French code, “marriage has been prohibited between children and their progenitors. These would be frequently irreconcilable with the laws of physical nature. They would always be with decorum and sound morals. They would change essentially the relations which should exist between parents and their children. They would reverse their positions, overthrow their respective obligations, and shock the sentiments of mankind." The Hebrews punished with death such connections. The Romans declared them infamous. The Council of Trent imposed the prohibition of intermarriage between persons standing in the second degree, by affinity, according to their rule of computation. The earlier regulations extended the prohibition to the fourth, and even the sixth and seventh degrees.

These earlier prohibitions were not considered so unyielding but that dispensations might be procured. The traffic in these was the subject of legitimate complaint. The basis of the law of marriage in the church is the Mosaic code, and those dispensations rarely, if ever, invaded its prescriptions.

The periods at which marriages may be formed differ widely in the laws of different nations. The Spartans fixed the legal age

for men at thirty, and at twenty for females. The Romans permitted marriages at fourteen in males, and twelve in females; and, from their code, this is the age of consent in Great Britain, Spain, and most of the United States. The age in Switzerland, Hungary, Prussia, and Saxony is eighteen and fourteen; Holland, Belgium, Russia, eighteen and fifteen; in Sweden and Hesse, twenty-one; Wurtemberg, twenty-five. In the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, a man over forty years cannot marry a woman, unless she is within ten years of his own age.

The control of parents, and the good sense and humanity of the society at large, prevents the growth of very great abuses in the matter of early marriages. Still, whatever is made the subject of legislation, should be dealt with discreetly and seriously. The ages of twelve years for females and fourteen for males scarcely approximate the time at which marriages should be permitted. Eighteen for males and fifteen for females would scarcely answer for the minimum periods of legal capacity. The great Apostle, discussing the domestic relations in his letter to the Church at Ephesus, enters into a minute statement of the analogy between the relation of husband and wife, and the connection between Christ and the Church.

(( Wives," he says, "submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.

"So ought men to love their wives as their own body. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Sacramentum hoc magnum est, ego dico in Christo et in ecclesia."

These words constitute the principal foundation of the argument by which the matrimonial contract was treated by the Church as a sacrament, and thus falling under its control and supervision. They unquestionably made a deep impression on the