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Show I 3 2 PRACTICAL POLYGAMY. Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, it matters not. The existence of the sect seemed to depend upon it. Twen ty- one years' experience had settled that question. Proselyt ing would not make the sect as numerous as the dreams of its founders would have it. Those who became proselytes, through honest motives, were liable to apostatize when they saw their error ; but if the church should be built of the progeny of those who remained faithful, their allegiance to it would be stronger. We all know the effect of early edu cation upon the religious status of our lives. Moreover their children could be kept in more complete ignorance of everything outside of Mormonism, which is another desir able consideration. With the impure and lustful, neither such practical arguments as this, or a revelation enjoining it as a duty, with the promise of increased happiness in the eternal world, were necessary to their acceptance of the new doctrine. For society to tolerate their licentiousness was sufficient. But a more powerful influence must operate upon the poor deluded woman to induce her voluntarily to live in a state so unnatural, and so degrading. The revela tion meets that end. It both promises reward and threatens punishment. Marriage, by it, is made essential to happiness in heaven. It is a part of their theology that an unmarried woman can enter there only in a menial capacity to those more highly favored, and to such it is not even represented as that desirable place which the most contracted views of any Christian would regard it to be. Celibacy in man is not represented to be so punished, though it is greatly deprecated, and his glory in the eternal world, it is declared, will be proportionate with the number of wives he may have been the means of introducing there, and the number of his children will constitute the size of his eternal kingdom. Hence the importance of multiplying wives. Not only is increased glory held up to women, who will marry, but to do so is a paramount duty, enjoined by the great head of the Church. Very many simple, confiding, honest women are by such arguments induced to enter into |
