should have found her and her husband Elkanah charged with adultery, dragged forth, and stoned to death; for so was adultery to be punished. All this furnishes us with a conclusive proof, that the having more than one wife with which a man cohabited, was not adultery in the sight of God; or, in other words, that it never was reckoned by him any sin against the seventh commandment, or the original marriage institution, or any other law whatsoever.

"4thly. But there is a passage (Deut. 21: 15) which is express to the point, and amounts to a demonstration of God's allowance of polygamy. If a man have TWO WIVES, one beloved and another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the first-born be hers that was hated, then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is, indeed, the first-born, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath; for he is the beginning of his strength, and the right of the first-born is his. On the footing of this law, the marriage of both women is equally lawful. God calls them both wives (for so the word must be rendered in this place, as the context plainly shows), and he cannot be mistaken; if he calls them so, they certainly were so. If the second wife bore the first son, that son was to inherit before a son born afterwards of the first wife. Here the issue is expressly deemed legitimate, and inheritable to the double portion of the first-born; which could not be, if the second marriage were not deemed as lawful and valid as the first.

"5thly. To say that polygamy is sinful, is to make God the author of sin; for, not to forbid that which is evil, but even to countenance and promote it, is being so far the author of it, and accessory to it in the highest degree. And shall we dare to say, or even to think, that this is chargeable on Him who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on iniquity? (Hab. 1: 13.) God forbid. "When God is upbraiding David, by the prophet Nathan, for his ingratitude towards his Almighty benefactor (2 Sam. xii.), he does it in the following terms:-ver. 8, I gave thee thy master's house, and THY MASTER'S WIVES unto thy bosom, and I gave thee the house of Israel and Judah, and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given thee such and such things.

"Can we suppose God giving more wives than one into David's bosom, who already had more than one, if it was sin in David to take them? Can we imagine that God would thus transgress (as it were) his own commandment in one instance, and yet so severely reprove and chastise David for breaking it in another? Is it not rather plain, from the whole transaction, that David committed mortal sin in taking another living man's wife, but not in taking the widows of the deceased Saul; and this, therefore, though the law of God condemned the first, yet it did not condemn the second?

"6thly. When David took the wife of Uriah, he was severely reprimanded by the prophet Nathan; but after Uriah's death, he takes the same woman, though he had other wives before, and no fault is found with him; nor is he charged with the least flaw or insincerity in his repentance on that account. The child which was the fruit of his intercourse with Bathsheba, during her husband Uriah's life, God struck to death with his own hand (2 Sam. 12: 15). Solomon, born of the same woman, begotten by the same man, in a state of polygamy, is

acknowledged by God himself as David's lawful issue (1 Kings 5: 5), and as such set upon his throne. The law which positively excluded bastards, or those born out of lawful wedlock, from the congregation of the Lord, even unto the tenth generation (Deut. 23: 2), is wholly inconsistent with Solomon being employed to build God's temple-being the mouth of the people to God in prayer — and offering sacrifices in the temple at its dedication—unless David's marriage with Bathsheba was a lawful marriage-Solomon, the lawful issue of that marriage

consequently polygamy no sin, either against the primary institution of marriage, or against the seventh commandment. But so far from Solomon being under any disqualification from the law above mentioned, he is appointed by God himself to build the temple (1 Kings 8: 19). His prayer is heard, and the house is hallowed (chap. 9: 3), and filled with such glory, that the priests could not stand to minister (chap. 8: 11). Solomon, therefore, as well as Samuel, stands as a demonstrable proof, that a child born under the circumstances of polygamy is no bastard — God himself being the judge, whose judgment is according to truth.

“A more striking instance of God's thoughts on the total difference between polygamy and adultery, does not meet us anywhere with more force and clearness in any part of the sacred history, than in the account which is given us of David and Bathsheba, and their issue.

"When David took Bathsheba, she was another man's wife; the child which he begat upon her in that situation was begotten in adultery—and the thing which David had done displeased the Lord (2 Sam. 11: 27). And what was the consequence? We are told, 2 Sam. 12: 1, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet unto David. Nathan opened his commission with a most beautiful parable descriptive of David's crime; this parable the prophet applies to the conviction of the delinquent, sets it home upon his conscience, brings him to repentance, and the poor penitent finds mercy his life is spared, ver. 13. Yet God will vindicate the honor of his moral government, and that in the most awful manner the murder of Uriah is to be visited upon David and his house. The sword shall never depart from thine house, ver. 10. The adultery with Bathsheba was to be retaliated in the most aggravated manner. Because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife, thus saith the Lord, 1 will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives and give them unto thy neighbor before thine eyes; and he shall lie with thy wives in sight of the sun; for thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun. All this was shortly fulfilled in the rebellion and incest of Absalom, chap. 16: 21, 22. And this was done in the way of judgment on David for taking and defiling the wife of Uriah, and was included in the curses threatened (Deut. 28: 30) to the despisers of God's laws.

“As to the issue of David's adulterous commerce with Bathsheba, it is written, 2 Sam. 12: 15, The Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick. What a dreadful scourge this was to David, who could not but read his crime in his punishment, the following verses declare — wherein we find David almost frantic with grief. However, the child's sickness was unto death, for, ver. 18, on the seventh day the child died.

"Now, let us take a view of David's act of polygamy, when, after Uriah's death, he added Bathsheba to his other wives (ver. 24, 25). And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her and lay with her, and she bare a son, and he called his name (773) Selomoh (that maketh peace and reconciliation, or recompense), and the Lord loved him. Again we find Nathan, who had been sent on the former occasion, sent also on this, but with a very different message. And he (the Lord) sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called his name JEDIDIAH (Dilectus Domini-Beloved of the Lord), because of the Lord,- i. e., because of the favor God had towards him (ver. 24).

"Let any read onward through the whole history of Solomon; let them consider the instances of God's peculiar favor towards him already mentioned, and the many others that are to be found in the account we have of him; let them compare God's dealings with the unhappy issue of David's adultery, and this happy offspring of his polygamy, and if the allowance and approbation of the latter doth not as clearly appear as the condemnation and punishment of the former, surely all distinction and difference must be at an end, and the Scripture itself lose the force of its own evidence.

"7thly. I have mentioned the law being explained by the prophets. These were extraordinary messengers which God raised up and sent forth under a special commission, not only to foretell things to come, but to preach to the people, to hold forth the law, to point out their defections from it, and to call them to repentance, under the severest terms of God's displeasure unless they obeyed. Their commission, in these respects, we find recorded in Isa. 58: 1, Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet: Show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. This commission was to be faithfully executed at the peril of the prophet's own destruction, as appears from the solemn charge given to Ezekiel, chapter 3: 18, When I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. "These prophets executed their commissions very unfaithfully towards God and the people, as well as most dangerously for themselves, if polygamy was a sin against God's law, for is was the common practice of the whole nation, from the prince on the throne to the lowest of the people; and yet neither Isaiah, Jeremiah, nor any one of the prophets, bore the least testimony against it. They reproved them sharply and plainly for defiling their neighbors' wives, as Jer. 5 8. 29: 23, in which fifth chapter we not only find the prophet bearing testimony against adultery, but against whoredom and fornication (ver. 7), for that they assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses. Not a word against polygamy. How is it possible, in any reason, to think that this, if a sin, should never be mentioned as such by God, by Moses, or any one of the prophets? *

*Some have considered Malachi 11: 14, 15, as a denunciation of polygamy. But a careful comparison of these verses with the 11th verse and with the state of the Jews at that time, as described in Ezra 10 and 11 chapters, and Nehemiah 13: 23-31, will show that the prophet had then no reference to polygamy, but was reproving the Jews for "having married the daughters of a strange god; " that is, heathen wives, which was strictly forbidden by the laws of Moses. Deut. 7: 3. Exo. 34: 16. - D. 0. A.

"Lastly. In the Old Testament, polygamy was not only allowed in all cases, but in some commanded. Here, for example, is the law (Deut. 25: 5–10), If brethren dwell together, and one of them die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the first-born which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel, etc.

"This law must certainly be looked upon as an exception from the general law (Lev. 18: 16), and the reason of it appears in the law itself, namely, ‘To preserve inheritances in the families to which they belonged.' . . . As there was no law against polygamy, there was nothing to exempt a married man from the obligation of marrying his brother's widow.... For, let us suppose that not only the surviving brother, but all the near kinsmen, to whom the marriage of the widow and the redemption of the inheritance belonged, were married men -if that exempted them from the obligation of this law as they could not redeem the inheritance unless they married the widow (Ruth 4: 5) — the end of this important law must in many cases be defeated — the widow be tempted to marry a stranger-to put herself and the inheritance into his hands hands—and the whole reason assigned for the law itself, that of raising up seed to the deceased, to preserve the inheritance in his family, that his name be not put out of Israel fall to the ground. For which weighty reasons, as there was evidently no law against polygamy, there could be no exemption of a man from the positive duty of this law because he was married. As we say, Ubi cadit ratio, ibi idem jus."- Vol. i. pp. 108, 131, 260, 267; vol. ii. p. 244, 402.

APPENDIX D. p. 585.

An acquaintance with the Hindu sacred books will at once show that no one who has been educated in modern science and literature, can have any confidence in their divine origin. The accounts which the Purans give of the creation of the world, of the form of the earth, of different countries, of astronomy, philosophy, and many other subjects, are not only unreasonable and absurd, but are at variance with well-known facts. The same Purans contain accounts of the Hindu deities, describing their immoral conduct and odious character, and inculcating their worship by the performance of degrading rites and disgusting ceremonies. It was obvious to Europeans on becoming acquainted with the contents of these works, that the Hindus would believe them no longer than they continued in a state of ignorance of nearly all the world beyond their own country. It was evident that a knowledge of Christianity and of European science and literature would destroy all confidence in the popular superstitions of India, and leave the people in a state of scepticism, or lead them to embrace some system of religion founded on more reason and truth.

Such expectations have been realized. The progress of Christianity, the dif

fusion of general knowledge, and education in European science and literature aroused the native mind to inquiry and reflection, and many intelligent and discerning Hindus became satisfied that a large portion of their reputed sacred books had no just claim to divine authority. They saw that the Hindu religion, as exhibited in the popular creed and generally practised, was no longer credible and so must either be reformed or abandoned. The first man who took an open and public stand and fearlessly declared his views on this subject, was Ram Mohun Roy, who subsequently acquired much celebrity in India, Europe, and America as a Hindu reformer. He was a man of much general learning and had given special attention to the Vedas. In these works he found the doctrine of one God, "the God of the whole world," and believing this to be the basis and sum of all true religion, and the other doctrines and precepts of the Vedas to be sufficient for all the practical purposes of life, he fixed on them as being the original and genuine Hindu Scriptures, and rejected the Purans as mere human compositions, as legends, fables, and fictions. He felt a strong sympathy with his erring and deluded countrymen, and having, as he believed, found the truth, he determined to do what he could to communicate it to others. With much trouble and expense he collected the Upanishads (works containing extracts from the Vedas and commentaries upon their doctrines), translated them into the vernacular language, and circulated them. He incurred much censure from his family and friends and much obloquy from the native community, but. he persevered year after year in what he felt was a good cause. He also published some other works, among which was one called "the Precepts of Jesus," or selections from the New Testament, all designed to enlighten and reform his countrymen. Other Hindus gradually embraced his views, and in 1830, in order to give public expression of their sentiments and to promote the reformation they had begun, they established what they called the Brahm Sabha; a regularly organized society with religious meetings, somewhat after the model of Christian assemblies, in which the Upanishads should be read and explained, and the worship of Brahm (the Supreme Being, not Brahma, the first of the Hindu Triad) should be performed with prayers and praise. These assemblies were not large, but their peculiar sentiments, the reputation for learning and piety of those who composed them, and the manner in which they conducted their worship, excited for a while much attention among the native population.

Ram Mohun Roy left India for England near the close of 1830. It was his intention to return and devote his life to the cause of reforming his countrymen; but he died in England in 1833. After his departure from India the Brahm Sabha gradually declined and little was heard of it for some years. In the mean time the causes and circumstances in which the Brahm Sabha originated, continued to operate with increasing force, and in 1839 it was resuscitated, or rather a new Society embracing its essential religious principles with a superior and more definite organization under a new name, the Tattwabodhini Sabha, was formed. One avowed object of this new society was to propagate their principles and to gain converts to their creed. For this purpose they established branch societies and opened schools in several large cities. They collected a library of religious