1. For what hand but that of the Creator could have impressed ineffaceably upon a race, misusing as we have seen to such a degree the faculty of free-will, such an institution as marriage, in which the family, and all which descends from the family, is contained? The dedication of one man and one woman to each other for the term of their lives, for the nurture and education of the family which is to spring from them, is indeed the basis of human society, but a basis which none but its Maker could lay. It exists in perpetual contradiction to human passion and selfishness, for purposes which wisdom or the pure reason of man entirely approves, but which human frailty is at any time ready to break through and elude. If we could so entirely abstract ourselves from habit as to imagine a company of men and women thrown together, without connection with each other, without any knowledge, any conception beforehand of such an institution, and left to form their society for themselves, we should not, I think, imagine them one and all choosing to engage themselves in such a union, resigning, respectively, their liberty, and binding themselves to continue, whatever might happen to either party, however strength and vigour might decline on one side, or grace and attractiveness on the other, in this bondage for life. Yet this institution of marriage is found established, not, as was just imagined, in a single company of human beings thrown together, but in a thousand societies of men separated by place, by language, by religion, and by government. The most highly policied among them are the strictest in maintaining its purity; and the higher you are enabled by existing records to ascend in their history, the stronger and clearer appears the conception of the duties of the married state. It is surrounded with all the veneration which laws can give it, and the blessing of religion consecrates it. Take marriage among the Romans as an instance. Their commonwealth seems to be built upon the sanctity of marriage and the power of the father. The like is the case with China, the most ancient of existing politics. There is not one nation which has gained renown or advanced in civilisation but shows, as far back as you can trace its history, this institution honoured and supported. I leave to mathematicians the task of calculating what are the chances of such an institution springing up in so great a multitude of nations according to an identical rule, guarded in all of them with whatever protection religion and law could afford, except by the fiat of a Creator in the manner described by Moses. The signet of God impressed on Adam at his origin could alone create such a mark on his race; the Maker alone lay such a foundation for it.