Then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed. What is the object of this law! Evidently the preservation of families and family inheritances. And now I challenge the gentleman to bring forward a solitary instance in the Bible where a married man was compelled to obey this law. Take the case of Tamar! Certainly the brother that was to have married her could not have been a married man, because she had to wait until he grew up. Then take the case of Ruth. You know how she lost her noble Mahlon afar off beyond Jordan, and how she returned to Bethlehem, and goes to Boaz, a near kinsman, and demands that he shall marry her. Boaz says--"there is another kinsman. I will speak to him." It is asked--"Didn't Boaz know whether the nearer kinsman was married?" but yet that was not the business of Boaz. The divine law required that this man should appear at the gate of the city before the elders, and there either marry her or say that he was disqualified because he was already a married man; and there is no proof in the Bible that Boaz had been married; nay, more than this, old Josephus, the Jewish historian, asserts that the reason why the near kinsman did not marry Ruth was that he had a wife and children already, so I judge that this law, which is said to be general, is that that I laid down--"Neither shall a man take one wife unto another," etc. He refers me to Numbers xxxi, 17th and 18th verses. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women-children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. This passage has nothing whatever to do with polygamy. It is an account of the results of a military expedition of the Jews against the Midianites; their slaughter of a portion of the people, and their reduction of the remainder to slavery--namely the women for domestics. My friend dwells upon thirty-two thousand women that were saved! What were these among the Jewish nation--a people numbering two and a half millions? He quotes Deuteronomy xxi, 10th and 13th verses: When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive; And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full mouth: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband and she shall be thy wife.