In the Second Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John we find that Jesus was a guest at a marriage in Cana of Galilee. His attendance at the wedding feast is not notable for His having on this occasion given the marriage contract the character of a sacrament, for nothing in the record even hints at this. The account is principally noteworthy as the history of His first miracle, that of turning water into wine. It was from the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians that the dogma that marriage is a sacrament was gradually evolved. In this chapter the Apostle points out the particular duties of the marriage status, and exhorts wives to obey their husbands, and husbands to love their wives. "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." However, the early Christian Church did not treat marriage as a sacrament, although its celebration was usually the occasion of prayers and exhortations. It was not until the year 1563, by an edict of the Council of Trent, that the oldest branch of the Christian Church, namely, that governed by the See of Rome, required the celebration of marriage to be an essentially religious ceremony. The general marriage law of the European continent has been derived and developed from the edicts of the Roman emperors and the decrees of the Christian Church. This historical evolution is strikingly apparent when we read the definition of marriage as given in the Institutes of Justinian: _Nuptiae autem, sive matrimonium est veri et mulieris conjunctio, individuam vitae consuetudinem continens_. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman, including an inseparable association of their lives. There are as many definitions of marriage as there are views concerning it, but none of them improve very much upon that given in the Institutes. It is also worth noting that the impediments to lawful marriage were very nearly the same under the Roman Empire as they are to-day in most civilized countries. The 18th Chapter of the Book of Leviticus appears to have set the standard. There are three principal forms of marriage, namely, monogamy, polygamy and polyandry. Monogamy, or the condition of one man being married to but one woman at a time, appears to be not only the best but the most ancient and universal type. It was, according to the Bible, good enough for the first husband, Adam, for his only wife was Eve. The first polygamist on the same authority was Lamech, who was of the sixth generation after Adam, for he "took unto him two wives." Reading in the First Book of Kings, we are informed that King Solomon had "seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines." A round thousand. However, polygamy, or the marriage of a man to more than one wife at the same time, was not the rule even among the ancient Hebrews. Such a trial was left to kings and other luxurious persons.