A man who obeys the ordinances of God, and is without blemish or deformity, who has sound health and mature age, and enjoys liberty and access to the elements of life; is designed to be the head of a woman, a father, and a guide of the weaker sex, and of those of tender age, to mansions of eternal life and salvation.
A woman, under similar circumstances, is designed to be the glory of some man in the Lord; to be led and governed by him, as her head in all things, even as Christ is the head of the man; to honour, obey, love, serve, comfort and help him in all things; to be a happy wife, and if blessed with offspring, a faithful and affectionate mother, devoting her life to the joys, cares and duties of her domestic sphere.
It frequently happens, in the course of human events, that there is, in a community, a majority of females. In such cases, human laws have no right to interfere with the divine eternal laws of nature, or of nature's God, by suffering females to be prostituted to minister to the wanton pleasures of the lawless, to become the unlawful, dishonoured mistress, the illegitimate mother, or the wretched outcast of shame, disease and crime. Nor yet, on the other hand, have human laws the right to doom a portion of heaven's fair daughters, to single wretchedness, loneliness and gloom, without the lawful privilege of becoming honoured wives and mothers.
A wise legislation, or the law of God, would punish, with just severity, the crimes of adultery or fornication, and would not suffer the idiot, the confirmed, irreclaimable drunkard, the man of hereditary disease, or of vicious habits, to possess or retain a wife; while, at the same time, it would provide for a good and capable man, to honourably receive and maintain more wives than one. Indeed, it should be the privilege of every virtuous female, who has the requisite capacity and qualifications for matrimony; to demand either of individuals or government, the privilege of becoming an honoured and legal wife and mother; even if it were necessary for her to be married to a man who has several wives; or, as Jesus said in the parable, to take the one talent from the place where it remains neglected or unimproved, and give it to him who has ten talents.
The false and corrupt institutions, and still more corrupt practices of "Christendom" have had a downward tendency in the generations of man for many centuries. Our physical organization, health, vigour, strength of body, intellectual faculties, inclinations, &c., are influenced very much by parentage. Hereditary disease, idiocy, weakness of mind, or of constitution, deformity, tendency to violent and ungovernable passions, vicious appetites and desires, are engendered by parents; and are bequeathed as a heritage from generation to generation. Man becomes a murderer, a thief, an adulterer, a drunkard, a lover of tobacco, opium, or other nauseous or poisonous drugs, by means of the predisposition, and inclinations engendered by parentage.
The people before the flood, and also the Sodomites and Canaanites, had carried these corruptions and degeneracies so far, that God, in mercy, destroyed them, and thus put an end to the procreation of races so degenerate and abominable; while Noah, Abraham, Melchesidech, and others, who were taught in the true laws of procreation, "were perfect in their generation," and trained their children in the same laws.
The overthrow of those ancient degenerate races is a type of that which now awaits the nations called "Christian," or in other words, The great whore of all the earth, for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Where is the nation called "Christian," that does not uphold or permit prostitution, fornication and adultery with all their debasing, demoralizing, degenerating and corroding effects, with all their tendencies to disease and crime, to operate unchecked, and to leaven and corrode all classes of society?
Where is the "Christian nation" that does not prohibit the law of
God, as given to Abraham and the ancients in relation to marriage?
Where is the "Christian nation" that punishes the crime of adultery and fornication with death, or other heavy penalties?