"For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me. I will command my people; otherwise they shall harken unto these things"—(that is, revelations forbidding polygamy). "Thus we see that a man among the Nephites, by the law of God had no right to take more than one wife, unless the Lord should command, for the purpose of raising up seed unto himself. Without such a command they were strictly limited to the one-wife doctrine. * * * So it is in this Church of Latter-day Saints; every man is strictly limited to one wife, unless the Lord, through the president and prophet of the church, gives a revelation permitting him to take more."—Orson Pratt in The Seer, page 30.
"For, behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if you abide not that covenant then are you damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory. * * * And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood, if any man espouse a virgin and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent; and if he espouse the second and they are virgins and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to none else; and if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong unto him; and they are given unto him—therefore, he is justified."—Doctrine and Covenants, chapter 132.
"From the foregoing revelation given through Joseph the Seer, it will be seen that God has actually commanded some of his servants to take more wives. * * Showing still further that, if they refuse to obey this command after having the law revealed to them, they should be damned. This revelation, then, makes it a matter of conscience among all the Latter-day Saints; and they embrace it as a part and portion of their religion, and verily believe that they cannot be saved and reject it."—Orson Pratt in The Seer, January, 1853, page 14.
"Who would suppose that any man in this land of religious liberty would presume to say to his fellowman that he had no right to take such steps as he thought necessary to escape damnation. Or that congress would enact a law that would present the alternative to religious believers of being consigned to a penitentiary if they should attempt to obey a law of God which would deliver them from damnation."—Epistle of the first presidency, October 6, 1885.
In a signed article written by Brigham H. Roberts, one of the first seven presidents of the seventies of the Mormon Church, for the Improvement Era of May, 1898, are found the following statements as the conclusion of an argument on the righteousness of polygamy:
"Therefore, I conclude that since God did approve of the plural marriage custom of the ancient patriarchs, prophets and kings of Israel, it is not at all to be wondered at that, in the dispensation of the fulness of time, in which he has promised restitution of all things, God should again establish that system of marriage. And the fact of God's approval of plural marriage in ancient times is a complete defense of the righteousness of the marriage system introduced by revelation through the prophet, Joseph Smith.
"Polygamy is not adultery, for were it so considered, then Abraham, Jacob, and the prophets who practiced it would not be allowed an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, and if polygamy is not adultery, then it cannot be classed as a sin at all.
"It appears to the writer that modern Christians must either learn to tolerate polygamy or give up forever the glorious hope of resting in Abraham's bosom. That which he approves, and so strikingly approves, must be not only not bad, but positively good, pure and holy."—Improvement Era, May, 1898, pages 472, 475, 478, 482.
We quote from the poem written by Apostle Orson Whitney to the Women of the Everlasting Covenant:
"Up with the guardian of social purity,
The marriage system of futurity—
Asylum of reform and penitence;—
God-given home to homeless innocence;
And down with wayward Rome's economy,
Parent of nameless ills, monogamy;
Concomitant of empire crushing vice,
Immolating virtue at the shrine of price,
Let innocence no more be child of shame;
Let nature's needs the laws of nature frame;
Let marriage vows be honorable in all,
Untrammelled by a monogamic wall
Of selfishness and rank hypocrisy,
The gift of Pagan aristocracy."
—Apostle Whitney's Poems.
The declaration made by B. H. Roberts concerning his determination to continue his polygamous living is of a piece with that made under oath by President Joseph Smith and Apostle F. M. Lyman. Mr. Roberts said:
"These women have stood by me. They are good and true women. The law has said that I shall part from them. * * * But the law cannot free me from the obligations assumed before it spoke." (It spoke before he was born.) "No power can do that; even were the church that sanctioned these marriages and performed the ceremonies to turn its back upon us and say that the marriage is not valid now and that I must give these good and loyal women up—I will be damned if I would."—Case of B. H. Roberts of Utah, page 13.
Considerable space has been devoted in the "Address" to a defense of the loyalty of the Mormon Church to civil government. It is not recalled that any Christian church in this country has found itself under a like necessity, for the teachings and practices of the Christian churches have never been such as to raise an issue between church authority and allegiance to civil statutes. "Gentiles" will bear willing testimony to the fact that the Mormon people, as a body, are by no means naturally disposed to contest civil ordinances.
But it must be clear to all that there is much in their surroundings to contravene their obedience to civil government. We may pass by the history of the church's conflict with the federal government, which is yet well remembered, and may mention these facts as bearing upon the point now under consideration: That the most honored leaders of the church in the past have made an issue between the civil power on the one hand the church authority on the other; that the president of the church today, reverenced by his people as God's deputy on the earth, is living in outlawry; that a number of his chosen associates in the governing body of the church are lawbreakers; that many of the most responsible officers of the church, next to those just referred to, are proscribed by the law; that honors are conspicuously accorded by the highest authority in the church to persons who have the taint of this lawlessness upon them; that these offenders against civil government are not called to account by any church authority for their offenses. Such conduct on the part of the leaders cannot be said to stimulate respect for civil authority, but it must be held to be a stronger deterrent to obedience to the laws of society. So that whatever credit the Mormon people may have as a law-abiding people can scarcely be shared by the governing body of the church, since the weight of their precepts and example is wholly against the validity of any claim to such credit.
This review is issued that the real doctrines, practices and general spirit of the Mormon Church may be known. Whatever the intent of the "Address" may have been, the effect of it will certainly be to deceive all readers who are not intimately acquainted with the teachings and practices of the Mormon Church. We are not unmindful of the fact that we shall be charged with persecution and misrepresentation in issuing this review. But the publication of the truth can hardly be called persecution, and if there be any charge of misrepresentation it must lie against the leaders of the Mormon Church, whose own utterances we have quoted as sustaining what has herein been said about their teachings.