It may be asked, What has this to do with polygamy? I answer that as the law is general, it is binding upon brethren and upon all near kinsmen dwelling together. Not unmarried brethren or unmarried kinsmen, but the married and unmarried. The law is general. If it can be proved from the original, or from any source whatever, that the law is not general, then the point will have to be given up. But if that cannot be proven, then here is a law that not only sanctions polygamy, but commands it; and if we can find one law where a command is given, then plurality of wives would be established on a permanent footing, equal in legality to that of monogamy. This law of God absolutely does command all persons, whether married or unmarried, it makes no difference--brethren dwelling together, or near kinsmen dwelling together--which shows that it is not unmarried persons living in the same house that are meant, but persons living together in the same neighborhood, in the same country in Israel, as it is well known that Israel in ancient days did so dwell together; and the law was binding upon them. This was calculated to make a vast number of polygamists in Israel from that day until the coming of Christ. And the Christian religion must have admitted these polygamists into the Church, because they would have been condemned if they had not observed this law. There was a penalty attached to it, and they could not be justified and refuse to obey it. Hence there must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of polygamists in Israel, when Jesus came, who were living in obedience to this law and who would have been condemned if they had disobeyed it. When the gospel was preached to them, if they could not have been admitted into the Christian Church without divorcing their wives God would have been unjust to them, for if they, through their obedience to God's law, should have been cut off from the gospel, would it not have been both inconsistent and unjust? But as there is no law either in the Old or New Testament against polygamy, and as we here find polygamy commanded, we must come to the conclusion that it is a legal form of marriage. We cannot come to any other conclusion, for it stands on a par with the monogamic form of marriage; consequently, wherever we find either righteous men or wicked men, whatever may be their practices in the course of their lives, it does not affect the legality of their marriage with one wife or with two wives.