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Show 208 It is a measure of his commitment to the Principle that in the final year of his life Roberts said, "If I had my life to live over again I would spend more time with my family." His three wives and fifteen children, had they heard him say it, would have gladly provided their own hearty, "Amen!" Madsen concluded his chapter on the home life of Roberts by saying, "God himself had proclaimed the timelessness of eternal marriage and made of it the highest sacrament. And as Roberts agonized over his own lapses from the ideal home, he said, 'Thank God for the eternities.'" Ellis concluded her life's recollections, most appropriately, with a small treatise on the Principle and its effect upon her life. In the early seventies [1870s] there existed...a principle which was conscientiously and religiously practiced by a chosen few of God's children then living on the earth. This was the doctrine of Plural Marriage. After two years of wedded life with the husband of my choice, he brought to our home a second wife, and in the course of five years, two others. I cannot say that I rejoiced, neither did I rebel, because of my implicit Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which had been so thoroughly impressed upon my mind and soul. I felt assured this principle was a revelation from our Eternal Father! And thus I accepted it and sought to live thereby, patiently, uncomplainingly. And when I refer to my husband's family I include with me and my beloved offspring these other three wives and their beloved offspring. We all lived under the same roof, ate at the same table, knelt at the same shrine, and humbly believe we were doing the will of our Father in Heaven. As our families increased in numbers and our responsibilities became greater, we each felt we needed individual homes, which today are ours. Yet there still remains after many long years a most sacred bond of fellowship, a beautiful loving interest and sweet affection one for another, that is most truly akin to the divine!12 |
