tians as not understanding polygamy and as poorly entitled to any opinions on the subject. The simple truth is that all the essential and concrete elements of polygamy are just as well understood by home Christians as by missionaries in the field, and it may be in many respects vastly better, as less influenced by warping prejudice and covering a wider and more varied field. One of the laments of missionaries is their comparatively individual isolation.

I will submit an extract from Schaff-Herzog on marriage: "Marriage is the union of a male and female human being, without which (union) there could be no family, no parental care, no developed political communities, no general society of mankind. It is, in its essence, not only a union of hearts but a physical union Christ sanctioned this view of it and added, what God hath joined together let not man put asunder.

It is thus (a natural and) a religious ordinance, (not a transient contrivance of man, but) contrived and instituted by God which is to control the whole human race as long as the present laws of earth and man shall endure." Dr. Shedd and others of high authority, also support this radical or root view that the conjugal relation is founded in the nature of man-(the natural man)-as plainly taught by Christ in consecrating it as a fundamental law of his kingdom and glorified in the spiritual nature of the new man or Christian.

It is sufficiently obvious that the only true (and scriptural) conception of the relation of the polygamist to all the women with whom he cohabits, except his true and lawful wife, is that of adultery. Throughout the gentile world the so-called plural wives are merely concubines. In heathen lands man's ignorance of the heinousness of the sin

against his own soul and body, against his neighbor and against his God, may and does lessen the number of stripes deserved, but it does not change its sinful character, nor does God's forbearance with that sin, any more than with multitudes of other sins, divest it of its sinfulness. In Leviticus (ch. iv) several sacrifices are designated for sins of ignorance by individuals and the community. Why, the sin of the crucifixion, for which Peter called on the perpetrators to repent, was a sin of ignorance. Ignorance is no exemption from guilt though it mitigates the punishment. "Ignorantia legis excusat neminem— Ignorance of the law excuses nobody." Says Peter: "And now, brethren, I know that in ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers" (Acts iii: 17). This language was addressed to those who had been guilty of the crime of the crucifixion.

This principle of the divine government, which mitigates but does not ignore nor cancel the sins of ignorance, is applicable to Old Testament ignorance; but it is a perversion of this principle to plead it for connivance at sin under New Testament light. It does not allow for a moment's continuance in known sin. So that when the heathen come to the missionary and learn the truth as it is in Jesus, this ignorance cannot then for a moment be pleaded without aggravating the guilt. If a heathen learn enough to accept Christ as a Savior from sin, he has certainly learned enough to renounce polygamy as a sin however ignorant he may have been of it previously. There can nowhere be found any justification of tolerating polygamy in the Christian life. They are as incompatable as fire and water.

Acts xvii: 30 is a searchlight passage on this Old Testament plea point. "The times of ignorance, therefore, God over

looked: but now He commandeth men that they shall all everywhere repent." Neither Jew nor Gentile is exempted. But this utterance does not stand alone. In Rom. iii: 25 the Apostle is careful to point out that God did not compromise "his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God," as would be shown by his holding sinners strictly to account with no hope of deliverance from their sins except on terms laid down by Jesus Christ. Luke xvi: 16 we read: "The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man entereth violently into it." In Heb. vi: 1-8 the scripture recognizes progress of enlightenment and warns us that those who do not profit thereby are "rejected and nigh unto a curse." Heb. x: 26: "For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment."

With the light we now have, since "the gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached," this polygamous practice tolerated in the twilight of patriarchal times could not now be tolerated for a moment. Continuance in it cannot even plead mitigation where the missionary has dutifully imparted the instruction of the gospel, especially as it has fallen from the lips of Christ and the pens of His apostles.

CHAPTER X.

BIBLE ARGUMENT.

PART 2. OLD TESTAMENT.

The Patriarchs: This leads me to notice finally from the Bible the attempt of some to weaken and qualify the rigid constitutional law of our church against polygamy by an appeal to old-time practices recorded in the Old Testament. The argument from the New Testament is impregnable.

The monogamous conjugal relation is throughout the sacred scriptures the chosen type of Christ's union with his church. The Jew recognized it as the emblem of the relation of the true God to Israel. It pervades the history, the poetry and the prophecy of the Old Testament, and is a dominating conception of the New Testament. (See Eph. v: 22-33 and Rev. xix: 6-9.) Our Lord, the afternoon of the day of his resurrection, whilst journeying to Emmaus, a village a few miles distant from Jerusalem, fell in with two disciples whose minds were bewildered by the occurrences of the past few days, and to enable them to see that it was not all a confused and chance medley, but the well-ordered fulfillment of their sacred oracles, we are told: "And he said unto them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in (after) all that the prophets have spoken! Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." This lifting of the veil by the Christ for these simple-minded wayfarers not only cast a searchlight on the work of the atone

ment, but also on his conjugal relation to his blood-bought church. Christ also is the head of the church, being himself also the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their husbands in everything. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

We thus learn that the ideal of the Messiah was that of a final and triumphant entrance into his glory, not alone, but with his redeemed bride. "The king's daughter within the palace is all glorious: her clothing is inwrought with gold" (Ps. xlv: 13). Hence we see that the second Adam is even more gloriously monogamous that the first Adam.

Hence, in view of this Messianic anticipation of the glorification of monogamy in His conjugal relation to His redeemed and spotless church, I am prepared to appreciate the abounding proof that this fundamental idea maintained its unyielding ascendancy, notwithstanding the sad lapsings through Satanic and lustful promptings of sinful and worldly ambitious individual men, whose perverse disregard of God's goodness and the flagrant immoralities of some of whose lives were a sore trial and disgrace to Israel.

In briefly canvassing the subject of polygamy in the Old Testament, I wish to express at the very outset my obligations to Dr. R. L. Dabney for the assistance rendered especially by his Theology and his Practical Philosophy. He boldly and confidently announces his position thus: "We assert that the whole legislation of the Pentateuch and of all