of real wives married without the formalities of the civil law, were not reputed guilty of any immorality, and hence were admitted to baptism without any further obligation even in case the husband was a heathen. There was not in it the slightest taint of licentious concubinage or polygamy. Indeed this was a formal condemnation of polygamy.

Moreover, if the woman thus informally taken was a slave, he had either to dismiss or formally marry her; otherwise he would be cast out (notes 156). Here was formal and positive anti-polygamy in the church. It is not possible to think these early churches accepted even a glimmer of polygamy as receiving apostolic sanction in the church of Christ.

There is no need of pursuing this line of inquiry further, as these various illustrations of the early and pervasive fractice of the Christian church contribute confirmatory proof of the monogamous interpretation placed on Paul's epistles and the teachings of Christ. The fact of Paul being a Roman citizen is worthy of being recalled and remembered in this connection. He understood Roman law as well as Roman custom. It was to him a familiar fact that the so-called polygamy of the Gentiles was a vulgar and lawless concubinage. Paul's injunction of obedience to the laws of the State, as in Rom. xiii: 1-7, is a virtual condemnation of polygamy and enforcement of monogamy.

In the Centenary Conference, 1888 (vol. 2: 69, 70), Dean Vahl, presiding, said:

"This meeting is to be a continuation of the meeting which was held here on Tuesday morning, on the relation of the missionary to social customs, such as caste, slavery, polygamy, Indian marriage law, etc.

I should like, before I call upon any gentleman to speak, to make some observations about polygamy, It is necessary that we should arrive at right conclusions and make right distinctions in regard to these grave subjects. It seems to me that it is absolutely necessary to make a distinction between polygamy and concubinage. It has been asked, 'Why has not Christ forbidden polygamy?' and 'Why is polygamy not forbidden in the New Testament?' For myself I do not believe that polygamy existed at all in the Hebrew and the great Latin world, at the time of Christ and the Apostles. Herod Antipas, it is true, had two wives, but he divorced his first wife, and lived only with one. It was the saine in the great Roman world. I have never seen anything in the classics to lead us to believe that polygamy existed at that time. There was very great licentiousness, and there was concubinage. A man had a wife-but, though he lived with many others, he had but one wife."

CHAPTER XII.

"FREE LOVE."

The question respecting polygamy in the church at any time is a question of fact, and where not settled by explicit utterance must be approached, as has been done in this treatise, like all other questions of fact, by inference and cumulative evidence "by necessary consequence." From the explicit teachings of the Savior in his several discourses on the conjugal relation, which indeed seem to settle the question "expressly," authoritatively and finally, so that the tolerance of simultaneous polygamy is to disobey Christ; from the letters of Paul, especially I Timothy, Titus, I Corinthians, Romans and Ephesians, wherein he discourses more fully than any other sacred writer on the relations of the sexes;

from the prevailing monogamous purport of the Old Testament scriptures, and of the history of the Jewish people; together with the monogamous environment of the Gentile peoples, from whom Christian converts were chiefly gathered into the apostolic and primitive churches; also from the scanty but reliable and convincing evidence transmitted to us of the completeness of the renunciation by the converts of the lawless, lapsed, and sinful customs and licentious practices of the heathen nations and of their own former lives in becoming Christians, whose high standard and practice of morals and religious holiness rendered them such a peculiar people and so different from the surrounding world, as to provoke the sarcasm and ridicule of godless poets and the persecution of wicked rulers-when the evidence is collected in reasonable measure from these various sources, pertinent to the question, as has been previously indicated in this discourse, it amounts to a forcible and probable proof, grounding a violent presumption, against polygamists-simultaneous polygamists having been members at all of the apostolic and primitive Christian societies or churches. And there is a total absence of any positive proof in support of it. The Savior's language is confessedly and strictly monognamous, not open to two views on the subject, and his sole relation to his bride, the Lamb's wife, finds a suitable symbol only in the divinelyinstituted monogamy which served the prophets for ages as a present and prospective image in portraying the relation of Israel to the one living and true God, in contrast with the vileness and wickedness of polygamy as the shameful emblem of godless and licentious idolatry and polytheism, but found its true climax and realization in the sacred relation of the Christ to his redeemed people as his bride. "And there

came one of the seven angels, *

and he spake with me, saying: Come hither; I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God." "And I saw no temple therein; for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof; And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof; and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it." "And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And he saith unto me: Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me,

These are true words of God."

"And the Spirit and THE BRIDE say, Come: And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come; and he that will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. xxi: 9, 10, 22-24; xxii: 1, 2, 17; xix: 9).

Only think of this glorious ideal state, to which every company of believers has ever aspired with longing desire, having been befouled by apostolic approval or toleration of the actual practice of polygamy by the members of Christ's church! And yet the only prevention of this heathen and diabolical prostitution by the company of the saints was to keep separate from it. It is true the church was imperfect and beset with sinful practices; but they were disapproved and disci

plined, and no such radical apostacy from the fundamental idea of the church as the tolerance of polygamy is discernible. And Jude throws light on this aspect of the situation when he says, verses 3,

4:

"Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in privily, even they who were of old written of beforehand unto this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." "Woe unto them. Hidden rocks in your love-feasts when they feast with you" (11, 12). The apostolic Christians were not easy-going weaklings, but wide-awake and strong men to detect and resist impostors and hypocrites. And the presence of the Holy Spirit gave them discernment and courage. If the vice of polygamy was in the church it was hidden in the double lives of "certain men crept in privily," and not with the knowledge and sympathetic sanction and toleration of God's people. There is no infallible remedy against hypocrites. If there was simultaneous polygamy in the church it was there secretly, as it now infests our monogamous society. Every few days the mask falls or is torn away from some impostor, who has been living a plural life. It is not thus in our church at Luebo. These moral lepers are known and by the officers of the church are actually thrust into the fellowship of the saints. Shall this thing continue? This polygamy is open, flagrant and defiant.

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches"-the seven churches of Asia Minor.