No people hold more sacred the principle of marriage, nor esteem more
highly the possession of chastity, than do the Latter-day Saints. Among
no people, either Catholic or Protestant, is a lapse of virtue so rare
as among this people. We consider sexual crime the most blighting curse
that infests the earth today. Adultery is considered as next in the
catalogue of crime to murder. Individuals guilty of fornication or
adultery are promptly excommunicated from the church, unless the sin is
followed by the most profound repentance and the best reparation which
can possibly be made. The children around the family altar, in Sunday
school, Mutual Improvement Associations, Primary Associations, and all
the institutions of the church, are taught to hold their virtue more
sacred to them than life itself. When they attain to years of maturity
and enter the holy state of matrimony, they vow before God, angels and
living witnesses that they will never violate the marriage covenants.
We believe that God ordained the union of the sexes in marriage, not
only for time but for all eternity. It is greatly due to this fact
and the deeply religious element which enters into marriage among our
people, that divorces are so rare. Young men and women are taught
that, while pure love and perfect congeniality should exist between
the parties to the marriage covenants, passion and infatuation should
not be the ruling motive, but principle should control; and that in
the weakness of humanity the dangers of mistakes in the mating of
the sexes are so great, the only safe way is to seek in prayer and
supplication the guidance of divine Providence; they are, also taught
to so live in daily walk and conversation that their heavenly Father
will answer their prayers. To feel sublimely impressed that marriage is
for all eternity, and that God is directly interested in us, tends to
make people more careful and considerate, more prayerful in choosing
a husband or wife, than otherwise they would be. The result of such
teaching is a far greater percentage of happy unions and a much smaller
percentage of divorces among the Latter-day Saints than among other
Christian communities.
The primary design of marriage, to "multiply and replenish the earth"
and not to gratify lust, is upheld by the Latter-day Saints as in no
other community. The consequence is twofold. Infanticide, foeticide
and illegitimacy are very rare. The two former practices, so common in
the world and adopted to lessen the responsibility of child-bearing
while increasing the facilities for lustful gratification, are esteemed
by this people as abominations in the sight of God, little short of
outright murder in heinousness. Parties known to be guilty of such
acts would not be fellowshiped in any sense, but would be cast out of
the church without hesitation. The result of such high regard for the
purposes of the Lord in marriage is, that the percentage of children
in every family is much larger on the average than it is among any
other Christian community of equal population. Because the children are
numerous they are not weaker but usually stronger in body and intellect
than in communities where the blighting curse of a reprehensible modern
custom prevails. The wives of men thus taught and convinced of the
sacredness of their procreative functions are healthier and happier in
the home than are the wives and mothers in other communities. Prof.
Phineas Priest, a non-"Mormon" phrenologist who traveled among the
"Mormon" people in Idaho and Utah, said that in all his travels he had
not found so large a percentage of healthy and intelligent children,
with a corresponding condition of health and happiness on the part of
the mothers, as he had among the "Mormon" people.
As to the eternity of the marriage covenant, a helpmeet was provided
for man before death entered the world and therefore death could not
prevail against the covenants of the Lord. "And the Lord God said, It
is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an helpmeet
for him." (Gen. ii:18.) The Savior came and offered up a sacrifice to
redeem man from the fall, to destroy death and all the effects thereof.
If His atonement simply redeemed the body from the grave, without
restoring the condition of the Paradise lost, it would be altogether
incomplete, and the words of Paul would be without effect wherein he
said to the Corinthians, "O, grave, where is thy victory? O, death,
where is thy sting?" If death destroyed and the grave buried the
covenants of the Lord, we would indeed be, as Paul says, "of all men
most miserable." God is eternal, and "I know that whatsoever God doeth,
it shall be forever." (Eccl. iii:14.)
When the ceremony of marriage is performed by a true servant of God,
and the parties to the agreement are under the same covenant, he
pronounces them one for time and all eternity. If this were not true
of what avail was the authority delegated to Peter, when the Lord said
unto him, "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven."
(Matt. xvi:19.) The apostle Peter, performing the marriage ceremony
for members of the Church of Christ, would not pronounce them husband
and wife "until death do you part;" for death was to be banished and
"immortality brought to light" through the atonement of Christ.
All Christians pray and sing and preach about going to heaven. Will
they be in the Lord there? If so, and they have embraced the true
Gospel here, they will be united as husband and wife for all eternity,
and that covenant will prevail there; hence, the apostle Paul says,
"Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman
without the man in the Lord." (I. Cor. xi:11. ) If they are in the
Lord, then they are united; if not in the lord, they are damned.
Again the same apostle tells us, "For the husband is the head of the
wife, even as Christ is the head of the church." (Eph. v:23.) Will any
man say that Christ was the head of the church for time only, during
His few years of brief mortality, and that then the church is left
without a head? No; Christ is the head of the church for all eternity
and God so designed the husband to be the head of the wife.
The doctrine of marriage until death, appears to be a Sadducee
doctrine, for they denied the resurrection. It was the Sadducee who
asked the Savior whose wife should the woman be who had seven husbands
in this world. The answer was undoubtedly designed to apply to those
who rejected the Gospel of Christ, while pretending to cling to the
laws of Moses. They virtually made a covenant with death. Isaiah says,
"And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement
with hell shall not stand. When the overflowing scourge shall pass
through, then ye shall be trodden down by it." (Isa. xxviii:18.) In
making a covenant with death they broke the "everlasting covenant"
and dishonored God, for He is everlasting and His ordinances endure
forever, unimpaired by death, hell or the grave.
The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because
they have "transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the
everlasting covenant." (Isa. xxiv:5.) As a result of this condition
the prophet says: "Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and
they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the
earth are burned and few men left." (Isa. xxiv:6.) Among the causes of
this great desolation yet to come upon the earth is the breaking of the
everlasting covenant. The earth is to be burned and few men left. Jesus
says that except "those days shall be shortened there should be no
flesh saved." To shorten those days and provide the way for honorable
women to fill the measure of their creation in holy wedlock, God has
restored this everlasting covenant and will yet cleanse the earth of
wicked men by His judgments, until few men shall be left. Whoredoms,
adultery and all sexual abominations will be swept away, and the words
of Isaiah in the fourth chapter will be verified. They that are the
"seed of Abraham will do the works of Abraham." As the apostle Paul
says, "And if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs
according to the promise." (Gal. iii:29.) That all honorable women,
who desire wifehood and motherhood under the laws of God may have this
privilege and not be left to live and die as spinsters, nor become a
prey to wicked, lustful men, God will fulfill the prophecy found in
Isaiah, chapter iv., verses 1, 2: "In that day seven women shall take
hold of one man, saying, we will eat our own bread and wear our own
apparel; only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach.
In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and
the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are
escaped of Israel."