Second. The terms adultery and fornication are used interchangeably by our Lord, and mean the same thing. A married woman copulating with a man other than her husband is admitted to be adultery, but the highest authority we can bring forward calls the act fornication. Matthew v, 3, 2. Romans vii, 2, 3. 1st Corinthians vii, 1, 4.

Third. The carnal connection of a man with an unmarried woman is positively declared to be adultery in God's holy word. It is so recorded in Job xxiv, from the 15th to the 21st verse; and in Isaiah lvii and 3rd it is taught that the adulterer commits his sin with the whore. Therefore I conclude that the term Naaph, as used in the seventh commandment, comprehends all those modifications of that crime, down to the salacial lust that a man may feel in his soul for a woman.

But it may be asked: If this is so, why then, does the Mosiac law mention a married woman? We deny that such a distinction is made. We do admit, however, that special penalties were pronounced on such an action with a married woman, but for special reasons. What were they? To preserve the genealogy, parentage and birth of Christ from interruption and confusion, which were in imminent danger when intercourse with a married woman was had by a man other than her husband. And no such danger could arise from the intercourse with a married man with an unmarried woman. That law was temporary, and was abolished and passed away when Christ came. Under the Jewish dispensation he that cohabited with a woman other than his wife was responsible to God for the violation of the seventh commandment; the woman was also responsible to God for the violation of the seventh commandment and this special law. But here you say if this be true, then some great men in Bible times were guilty of the violation of the seventh commandment. I say they were; but they were not all polygamists: that I have demonstrated to you to-day. But take the facts: Abraham, when convinced of his sin, put away Hagar; Jacob lived several years out of the state of polygamy; David put away all his wives eight years before he died; and if there is no account that Solomon put away his, neither is there the assurance that he abandoned his idolatry.

This then, my friend, is the argument; and as a Christian minister, desiring only your good, I proclaim the fact that polygamy is adultery. I do it in all kindness, but I assert it as a doctrine taught in the Bible.

I am challenged again to prove that polygamy is no prevention of prostitution. It has been affirmed time and time again, not only in this discussion, but in the written works of these distinguished gentlemen around me, that in monogamic countries prostitution, or what is known as the social evil, is almost universally prevalent. I perceive that I have not time to follow out this in arguments; but I am prepared to prove, and I will prove it in your daily papers, that prostitution is as old as authentic history; that prostitution has been and is to-day more prevalent in polygamic countries than in monogamic countries. I can prove that the figures representing prostitution in monogamic countries are all overdrawn. They are overdrawn in regard to my native city, that the gentleman brought up, New York, and of the million and over of population he can not find six thousand recorded prostitutes. I can go, for instance, to St. Louis, where they have just taken the census of the prostitutes of that city, and with a population of three hundred thousand, there are but 650 courtesans. You may go through the length and breadth of this land, and in villages containing from one thousand to ten thousand inhabitants, you cannot find a house of prostitution. The truth is, my friends, they would not allow it for a moment. Those men who assert that our monogamous country is full of prostitutes put forth a slander upon our country.

Our distinguished friend referred to religious liberty, and claimed that he had a right under the Federal Constitution to enjoy religious liberty and to practise polygamy. I am proud as he is that we have religious liberty here. I rejoice that a man can worship God after his own heart; but I affirm that the law of limitation is no less applicable to religious liberty than it is to the revolution of the heavenly bodies. The law of limitation is as universal as creation, and religious liberty must be practised within the bounds of decency, and the wellbeing of society; and civil authority may extend or restrict this religious liberty within due bounds. Why, the Hindoo mother may come here with her Shasta—with her Bible—and she may throw her babe into your river or lake, and the civil authorities, according to your theory, could not interpose and say to that mother, "You shall not do it." That is the theory. You say it is murder, I say it is not. I say the act is stripped of the attributes of murder; it is a religious act. She turns to her bible or Shasta, and says: "I am commanded to do this by my bible." What will you do? You will turn away from the Shasta and say, "The interests of society demand that you shall not murder that child." So civil government has the right to legislate in regard to marriage, and restrict the number of wives to one, according to God's law. But I am not an advocate of stringent legislation. I agree with my friend, that the law should not incarcerate men, women and children in dungeons! No, my friends, if I can say a word to induce humane and kind legislation toward the people of Utah I shall do it, and do it most gladly. But I assert this principle, that civil government has the right to limit religious liberty within due bounds.

There was another point that I desired to touch upon, and that is as to the longevity of nations. We are told repeatedly here, in printed works, that monogamic nations are short-lived, and that polygamic nations are long-lived. I am prepared to go back to the days of Nimrod, come down to the days of Ninus Sardanapalus, and down to the days of Cyrus the Great, and all through those ancient polygamic nations, and show that they were short-lived; while on the other hand I am prepared to prove that Greece and Rome outlived the longest-lived polygamic nations of the past. Greece, from the days of Homer down to the third century of the Christian era; and Rome at from seven hundred and fifty years before the coming of Christ down to the dissolution of the old empire. But that old empire finds a resurrection in the Italians under Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi; and England, Germany and France are all proofs of the longevity of monogamic nations. Babylon is a ruin to-day, and Babylon was polygamic. Egypt, to-day, is a ruin! Her massy piles of ruin bespeak her former glory and her pristine beauty. And the last edition of the polygamic nations—Turkey—is passing away. From the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, from the Danube, and the Jordan and the Nile, the power of Mahommedanism is passing away before the advance of the monogamic nations of the old world. Our own country is just in its youth; but monogamic as it is, it is destined to live on, to outlive the hoary past, to live on in its greatness, in its benificence, in its power; to live on until it has demonstrated all those great problems committed to our trust for human rights, religion, liberty and the advancement of the race.

My friends, these are the arguments in favor of Monogamy; and when they can be overthrown, then it will be time enough for us to receive the system of Polygamy as it is taught here. But until that great law that we have quoted can be proved to be not a law: until it can be proved that there is no distinction between law and practice; until it can be proved that there is a positive command for polygamy; until it can be proved that Christ did not refer to the original marriage; until it can be proved that Paul does not demand that every man shall have his own wife and every woman her own husband; until it can be proved that polygamy is a prevention of prostitution; until it can be proved that monogamic nations are not as long-lived as polygamous nations; until it can be proved that monogamy is not in harmony with civil liberty; until all these points can be demonstrated beyond a doubt; until then, we can't give up this grand idea that God's law condemns polygamy, and that God's law commends monogamy; that the highest interests of man, that the dearest interests of the rising generation, that all that binds us to earth and points us to heaven are not subserved and promoted under the monogamic system. All these great interests demand the practice of monogamy in marriage—one man and one wife. Then indeed shall be realized the picture portrayed in Scripture of the happy family—the family where the wife is one and the husband one, and the two are equivalent; then, when father and mother, centered in the family, shall bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—when the husband provides for his family—and it is said that the man who does not is worse than an infidel—then indeed monogamy stands forth as a grand Bible doctrine.

DISCOURSE
ON
CELESTIAL MARRIAGE,

DELIVERED BY