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and which involves so deeply the dearest interests and comforts of the whole human family, cannot be neglected or forgotten. There must be a law somewhere in the Mosaic code, to ascertain who may and who may not be united in marriage. Without such a law, the great object of the seventh command will remain fearfully exposed, and be left at a dreadful uncertainty. - Blessed be God! There is a law in his word which draws the line of prohibited intercourse. A law strictly moral, and appertaining expressly to the seventh command; but which, like all the rest that relate to the moral precepts of the Decalogue, is blended and incorporated with the ecclesiastical and civil statues of Israel.

After making these observations respecting Law in general, and the structure of the laws in the statues of Moses in particular, we are now prepared to open the Book, and examine the contents of the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus.

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SECTION V.

LEVITICUS XVIII. 16.

In discussing this article, attention must be paid to - the object and scope of the Law in Leviticus, xviii. 6-17: - the rules to be adopted for explaining that law - the particular precept which forbids a marriage with a sister in law - and the extent of all these prohibitions. If it shall appear that this law exclusively respects the crime of incest - that, agreeably to the rules of just interpretation, the marriage of a deceased wife's sister is actually forbidden in the 16th verse - and, that this Law is not ceremonial but moral, and as binding, in its prohibitions, upon Christians, as it was upon the Jews; the question will be decided by an authority, which it would be impious to contract, and dangerous to disobey.

I.  The object and scope of this Law is obvious from - its connection with the other laws contained in