For a moment or more she sat silent, evidently in deep thought. Then she spoke:
“I believe you are right, sir; though it has not struck me in that way before. It did bring ‘forth the bitter fruits of sin,’ very much the same fruits that polygamy brings forth here and in this day,” she concluded with a heavy sigh.
Captain Raymond was again turning over the leaves of his Bible. “Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Have ye not read, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh! Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.’”
“That passage is from Matthew, and Mark also gives these words of the Master,” the captain said. “And have you not noticed how Paul in his epistles always seems to take it for granted, when speaking of the marriage tie, that a man can lawfully have but one wife at a time?
“‘For the husband is the head of the wife’ (not wives).
“‘He that loveth his wife loveth himself,’ ... ‘Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself.’
“‘A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife.’
“But Mormonism teaches that bishops may have, and ought to have, many wives. Polygamy is encouraged on the ground that the rank and dignity of its members is in proportion to the number of their wives and children. Is not that the fact?”
“Yes,” she answered with a heavy sigh, “it is according to the revelation made to Bishop Young.”