40 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



spring assuredly of a well-stocked harem ; David de- 

 nied himself nothing ; Eehoboam had eighteen wives 

 and sixty concubines ; Solomon 700 wives and 300 con- 

 cubines. The same system obtained until the time of 

 Herod the Great, who, according to Josephus, had nine 

 wives. But, alas for the blindness and the misdirected 

 zeal of the early Christians ! they wholly miscon- 

 ceived the value of the new faith as an instrument 

 for the reorganisation of society. The potential good 

 that dwelt in Christianity had to assert itself against 

 the whole weight of the authority of the early Church. 

 There is no more painful spectacle in history than 

 the attitude maintained by the Church towards mar- 

 riage during the first ten centuries of the Christian 

 era. We can hardly say, indeed, that the Church has 

 ever touched this subject with clean hands, for its 

 tardy adoption of the sacramental view of marriage 

 appears to have been dictated, if possible, by less 

 worthy motives than its previous hostility to the 

 nuptial union.^ For many centuries after Christ 



' "The numberless ceremonial impediments that were invented, 

 and occasionally dispensed with by the holy see, not only enriched 

 the coffers of the Church, but gave a great ascendency over princes 

 of all denominations, whose marriages were sanctioned or reprobated, 

 their issue legitimatised or otherwise, and the succession of their 

 thrones established or rendered precarious, according to the humour 



