The Bishop of Exeter has expressed both the strongest and
-the most paradoxical opinion on the subject of marriage with a -dheeased wife's sister, of which we have yet heard. He said, at
the Exeter Diocesan Conference on Tuesday, according to the guardian, that the evil of legalising such marriages would,
though less in degree, be exactly "the same in kind" as the evil of restoring polygamy. We have not the least notion what that means, unless. it be that in some sense the relation of a man to his sisters-in-law,—supposing it were lawful for him to marry any of them in case his own wife died,—would approxi- mate to that of the husband of many wives to those wives. Sueh an assertion seems to us as deadly an attack on the sacredness of marriage under the existing law, as could well be made, for it implies, of course, that the relation of a man to all those female friends or relatives of his wife whom it is not illegal for him to marry in case of her decease, already approximates • to-that of a man with many wives towards those wives. What can Bishop Temple mean ? It seems to us that his powerful and masculine judgment has on this subject suffered some grave and exceptional perversion.
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