did yet not forbid polygamy and concubinage by any express legal enactments, but rather tolerated them, as is seen from a number of passages, for example, Deut. xxi. 15; Ex. xxi. 8-10; 1 Sam. iii. 7; xii. 5.

Jesus Christ, on the contrary, maintained the perfect will of God on this subject in language too plain to be mistaken. We are informed in Matt. xix. 3-9, that, on one occasion, when His enemies sought to entrap Him, He replied to their question, 'Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh? So that they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' And He regarded their erroneous view on the subject as so little justified by the Law of Moses, that He exposed its fallacy in these weighty words, 'Moses, for your hardness of your heart, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.'

From these expressions it is plain that Jesus Christ insists upon the original character of matrimony, according to which it is a union for life between only one woman and one man. Polygamy in His eyes has a criminal, an adulterous character; for if He says that a man commits adultery by marrying again, after having put away his wife, it is plain that He would also say a man commits adultery who marries a second wife without putting away the first; the adulterous character of the second marriage resulting only from the circumstance, that, when it was contracted, a previously married wife was still living. Hence, also, the apostles only approved of a man's having one wife; and, when speaking of the married state of the Christians in their days, they speak of it uniformly as being of a monogamistic character. So, for example, St. Paul says in 1 Cor. vii. 2, 'But, because of fornications, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband;' and in vii. 12, 13, 'If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her. And the woman which hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave her husband;' and in Eph. v. 33,
'Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she fear her husband.' This re-assertion and restitution of the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage by Christianity is connected with