THE BISHOP OF OXFORD ON THE MARRIAGE LAW.
WE agree with the Bishop of Oxford, in his letter to yesterday's Times, that the real test of consistency in relation to the demand for the repeal of the law against marriage with a deceased wife's sister, is the willingness to legalise all marriages of affinity, and that is precisely what we should be prepared to do, though, of course, only on the ground that we are not justified in forbidding by law many marriages which even grossly revolt the finer moral tastes and sentiments. To forbid a marriage which, in our opinion, is neither contrary to divine law nor to any substantial principle of human expediency, is a very grave step to take. Amongst the poorer classes, whose life is much more completely determined by the pressure of family necessities than it is among the relatively rich, the forbidding of such marriages frequently leads to very grave sin, and therefore we would never impose a legal impediment on the celebration of any marriage which is only opposed to the finer moral taste and discrimination, and not to any simple principle, human or divine. It has always seemed to us that the moral repulsion,—which we share,—against marriage with a deceased wife's sister, is precisely of the same kind which we should feel against marriage with a deceased wife's or deceased husband's most intimate friend, to which, of course, there is no legal impediment at all. The ground of the repulsion is this,—that there is a real unnaturalness in the transformation of any intimate feeling into a feeling of a very different and quite inconsistent type. For our own parts, we should say that if a man and his wife had adopted a daughter in her infancy, and had brought her up to womanhood, the man's marriage with that adopted daughter, after the death of his wife, would be in every way as revolting to the most intimate feelings of a strong natural character as his marriage with a real step-daughter. Both marriages would, to a fine moral taste, be utterly revolting ; but no country would think of forbidding the former by law, and we do not see any sound reason for forbidding the latter by law. To those in whom the transformation of feeling is possible, such a marriage would, we suppose, be no sin. To those in whom it would not be possible, there would be no danger of it. There ought to be substantial danger to the interests of the State in any marriage which the law interferes to forbid. It is just the same in relation to marriage with a very intimate friend's widow. To a man who had been long accustomed to think of a woman as his dearest friend's wife, and only as his dearest friend's wife, there would be something unutterably repulsive in taking-up a part which he would feel entirely incon sistent with the feelings which he had so long cherished previously for his friend, and through his friend, for that friend's wife. But, of course, no State could afford to make so intangible a matter as a former intimate friendship for a man, a bar to marriage with his widow. We only put the case to show that the very revolt of feeling which is so deep and natural in healthy minds against many of the marriages forbidden by our present marriage-law, is quite as strong against many other marriages which no State in its senses would or could forbid. The reasons for forbidding marriages of consanguinity, when they are too close, are plain, practical, and founded on the most substantial grounds. There are, so far as we know, no reasons for forbidding marriages of affinity on any grounds except those of feeling ; and though these are often very strong, and seem to us founded in the finest part of man, yet they are not founded on any consideration which does not equally apply to very many marriages which no State could afford or would even wish to forbid.
This is our reply to the Bishop of Oxford's challenge. As to Bishop Barry's course in advising his clergy not to admit to Communion any man or woman who has contracted a marriage forbidden by the present law of the Church, but not forbidden by the law of New South Wales, we can only say that he seems to us to have taken a very serious step. We do not say that Churchmen owe no deference to the canonical law of their Church, while it exists. We should think that a good Churchman would take some pains to understand the grounds on which such marriages have been so long condemned by the Church,—though we believe that dispensations permitting such marriages have been common in the other Episcopal Churches of Europe. Our own, of course, has no power to dispense. But it is one thing to say that Churchmen should pay some deference to the law of their Church, and quite another to say that if they violate it, Communion should be refused to them. Can Communion be properly refused to any one who is not believed to be living in conscious sin ? And is it possible to assume this of every Churchman who on this very bitterly-debated question accepts the law of the State in which he lives rather than the law of the Church to which he belongs ? It seems to us a very grave responsibility to refuse the privilege of a Christian sacrament to a man who, though he may be violating a canonical law on which opinion is very strongly divided, is certainly not violating the law of the land in which he lives, and who, so far as the Clergy can judge, may be acting in the strictest conformity with his own conscience. Little as we admire most of these marriages of affinity, we think Bishop Barry's step in refusing Communion to all who had contracted one in accordance with the law of the State in which they lived, a very dangerous one, and one likely to be mainly injurious to the moral life of the community under his care.
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