Now, my brethren, I could adduce many moral reasons why we should take alarm at the most distant prospect of such a state of things, and set ourselves most earnestly to work, if not to oppose it, yet at least to put it off, until we have had time to judge of its expediency and its consequences; but I take a higher stand, and I entreat you to do so—a religious stand. The Word of God deals with the question of marriage, and legislates upon it; God prescribes the qualifications for it, the duties of it, the nature and endurance of its covenant, and the prohibitions against entering upon it. Are you prepared, my brethren, to say that all that is now proposed as law of the land is in harmony with the law of God? Recollect you do say so, if you do not strongly deny it and protest against it. “He that is not with me is against me.” God Himself deals with this whole question. Have you so investigated the subject, as to feel convinced that man only proposes now to carry out God’s law? If you were appealed to to petition against this bill, or to pray that it may be put off, would your refusal to do so (if you refused) be grounded upon a thorough conviction, formed from devout and careful study of God’s Word, that there was nothing religiously wrong in the measure! No! To many of you the trumpet has appeared to give an uncertain sound, and you have not prepared yourselves for the battle. “The priest’s lips have not kept knowledge, and you have not sought the law at his mouth,” or anywhere else. I say not this in idle declamation against others, dear brethren. I exempt not myself when I say that the vast majority of God’s priests and people have long remained in strange and culpable ignorance or indifference about the teaching of God, and the occasional human legislation on this subject; and that it is only very gradually that they are being awakened, and led to the knowledge of what has Divine sanction and what has human sanction, and consequently to a correct judgment, as to what should be done at this crisis. Let us, my brethren, awake quickly and thoroughly, while there is use in so doing. Let us, priests and people, betake us to the Word of God, and speak and hear what is there written; and then let us go forth to be doers of that Word, according to our several abilities and opportunities.