REVELATION OF CELESTIAL MARRIAGE--SECRECY THE PRICE OF SAFETY--JOSEPH
TESTS HEBER AND MAKES HIM HIS CONFIDANT--HOW VILATE KIMBALL WAS
CONVERTED--HEBER AND VILATE GIVE THEIR DAUGHTER HELEN TO THE PROPHET
IN CELESTIAL MARRIAGE.
A startling innovation, a test designed to try, as never before, the
faith and integrity of God's people now came upon them. Not in the
shape of fire and sword, nor toilsome pilgrimage, nor pestilence, nor
wealth, nor poverty. Ah! no; something far different from these, and
far more difficult to bear.
A grand and glorious principle had been revealed, and for years had
slumbered in the breast of God's Prophet, awaiting the time when, with
safety to himself and the Church, it might be confided to the sacred
keeping of a chosen few. That time had now come. An angel with a
flaming sword descended from the courts of glory and, confronting the
Prophet, commanded him in the name of the Lord to establish the
principle so long concealed from the knowledge of the Saints and of
the world.
That principle was the law of celestial or plural marriage!
Well knew the youthful Prophet the danger of his task. Well knew he
the peril and penalty of disobedience. Fearing God, not man, he bowed
to the inevitable, and laid his life--aye, was it not so?--upon the
altar of duty and devotion.
Among those to whom Joseph confided this great secret, even before it
was committed to writing, was his bosom friend, Heber C. Kimball. Well
knowing the integrity of his heart, so many times tested and found
true, he felt that he ran no risk in opening to Heber's eyes the
treasured mysteries of his mighty soul.
But why careful, among so many friends, to select only a few as the
recipients of such a favor? Would not the Saints have died to a man in
defense of their Prophet--God's seer and revelator? Alas, none knew so
well as Joseph the frailty of man, the inherent weakness and
wickedness of the human heart.
"Many men," said he, "will say, 'I will never forsake you, but will
stand by you at all times.' But the moment you teach them some of the
mysteries of the kingdom of God that are retained in the heavens, and
are to be revealed to the children of men when they are prepared for
them, they will be the first to stone you and put you to death.
"It was this same principle that crucified the Lord Jesus Christ, and
will cause the people to kill the Prophets in this generation."
What! would even the Saints have so done? Did not some of those who
_were_ Saints then, so do?
Had not Joseph said many times--are not men now living who heard him
say: "Would to God, brethren, I could tell you who I am! Would to God
I could tell you what I know! But you would call it blasphemy, and
there are men upon this stand who would want to take my life."
"If the Church," said he, "knew all the commandments, one half they
would reject through prejudice and ignorance."
No wonder, then, that he should choose his confidants; for their sakes
no less than his own. For these also are Joseph's words:
"When God offers a blessing, or knowledge to a man, and he refuses to
receive it, he will be damned."
Revelation is ever the iconoclast of tradition; and such is the
bigotry of man, his natural hatred of the new and strange, as opposed
to his personal interests or private views, that the very lives of
those whose mission is to introduce and establish new doctrines,
though designed as a blessing to humanity, are ever in danger from
those whose traditions would thus be uprooted and destroyed.
Joseph was not a coward; it was he who said that a coward could not be
saved in the kingdom of God; but neither was he lacking in caution,
especially when warned of the Lord of the necessity for its exercise.
Therefore, was he now revealing, to a chosen few, whom God had
prepared to receive what he should tell them, one of the grand
principles of the everlasting Gospel, "unlawful to be uttered" to the
multitude, yet one day to be thundered from the house-tops in the ears
of all living, with many other mighty truths locked in the treasure
house of future time, of which eternity still holds the key.
Before he would trust even Heber with the full secret, however, he put
him to a test which few men would have been able to bear.
It was no less than a requirement for him to surrender his wife, his
beloved Vilate, and give her to Joseph in marriage!
The astounding revelation well-nigh paralyzed him. He could hardly
believe he had heard aright. Yet Joseph was solemnly in earnest. His
next impulse was to spurn the proposition, and perhaps at that
terrible moment a vague suspicion of the Prophet's motive and the
divinity of the revelation, shot like a poisoned arrow through his
soul.
But only for a moment, if at all, was such a thought, such a suspicion
entertained. He knew Joseph too well, as a man, a friend, a brother, a
servant of God, to doubt his truth or the divine origin of the behest
he had made. No; Joseph was God's Prophet, His mouth-piece and oracle,
and so long as he was so, his words were as the words of the Eternal
One to Heber C. Kimball. His heart-strings might be torn, his feelings
crucified and sawn asunder, but so long as his faith in God and the
Priesthood remained, heaven helping him, he would try and do as he was
told. Such, now, was his superhuman resolve.
Three days he fasted and wept and prayed. Then, with a broken and a
bleeding heart, but with soul self-mastered for the sacrifice, he led
his darling wife to the Prophet's house and presented her to Joseph.
It was enough--the heavens accepted the sacrifice. The will for the
deed was taken, and "accounted unto him for righteousness." Joseph
wept at this proof of devotion, and embracing Heber told him that was
all that the Lord required. He had proved him, as a child of Abraham,
that he would "do the works of Abraham," holding back nothing, but
laying all upon the altar for God's glory.
The Prophet joined the hands of the heroic and devoted pair, and then
and there, by virtue of the sealing power and authority of the Holy
Priesthood, Heber and Vilate Kimball were made husband and wife for
all eternity.
Heber's crucial test was in part over. Vilate's trial was yet to come.
The principle of celestial marriage was now known to them, so far as
their own eternal covenant was concerned, but the doctrine of
plurality of wives which it involves, was yet to be revealed. How
Heber and Vilate received and embraced this feature of the principle
is thus tenderly told by their daughter Helen:
"My mother often told me that she could not doubt the plural order of
marriage was of God, for the Lord had revealed it to her in answer to
prayer.
"In Nauvoo, shortly after his return from England, my father, among
others of his brethren, was taught the plural wife doctrine, and was
told by Joseph, the Prophet, three times, to go and take a certain
woman as his wife; but not till he commanded him in the name of the
Lord did he obey. At the same time Joseph told him not to divulge this
secret, not even to my mother, for fear that she would not receive it;
for his life was in constant jeopardy, not only from outside
influences and enemies, who were seeking some plea to take him back to
Missouri, but from false brethren who had crept like snakes into his
bosom and then betrayed him.
"My father realized the situation fully, and the love and reverence he
bore for the Prophet were so great that he would sooner have laid down
his life than have betrayed him. This was one of the greatest tests of
his faith he had ever experienced. The thought of deceiving the kind
and faithful wife of his youth, whom he loved with all his heart, and
who with him had borne so patiently their separations, and all the
trials and sacrifices they had been called to endure, was more than he
felt able to bear.
"He realized not only the addition of trouble and perplexity that such
a step must bring upon him, but his sorrow and misery were increased
by the thought of my mother hearing of it from some other source,
which would no doubt separate them, and he shrank from the thought of
such a thing, or of causing her any unhappiness. Finally he was so
tried that he went to Joseph and told him how he felt--that he was
fearful if he took such a step he could not stand, but would be
overcome. The Prophet, full of sympathy for him, went and inquired of
the Lord; His answer was, 'Tell him to go and do as he has been
commanded, and if I see that there is any danger of his apostatizing.
I will take him to myself.'
"The fact that he had to be commanded three times to do this thing
shows that the trial must have been extraordinary, for he was a man
who, from the first, had yielded implicit obedience to every
requirement of the Prophet.
"When first hearing the principle taught, believing that he would be
called upon to enter into it, he had thought of two elderly ladies
named Pitkin, great friends of my mother's, who, he believed, would
cause her little, if any, unhappiness. But the woman he was commanded
to take was an English lady named Sarah Noon, nearer my mother's age,
who came over with the company of Saints in the same ship in which
father and Brother Brigham returned from Europe. She had been married
and was the mother of two little girls, but left her husband on
account of his drunken and dissolute habits. Father was told to take
her as his wife and provide for her and her children, and he did
so.[A]
[Footnote A: Heber was told by Joseph that if he did not do this he
would lose his Apostleship and be damned.]
"My mother had noticed a change in his manner and appearance, and when
she inquired the cause, he tried to evade her questions. At last he
promised he would tell her after a while, if she would only wait. This
trouble so worked upon his mind that his anxious and haggard looks
betrayed him daily and hourly, and finally his misery became so
unbearable that it was impossible to control his feelings. He became
sick in body, but his mental wretchedness was too great to allow of
his retiring, and he would walk the floor till nearly morning, and
some times the agony of his mind was so terrible that he would wring
his hands and weep like a child, and beseech the Lord to be merciful
and reveal to her this principle, for he himself could not break his
vow of secrecy.
"The anguish of their hearts was indescribable, and when she found it
was useless to beseech him longer, she retired to her room and bowed
before the Lord and poured out her soul in prayer to Him who hath
said: 'If any lack wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all men
liberally and upbraideth not.' My father's heart was raised at the
same time in supplication. While pleading as one would plead for life,
the vision of her mind was opened, and, as darkness flees before the
morning sun, so did her sorrow and the groveling things of earth
vanish away.
"Before her was illustrated the order of celestial marriage, in all
its beauty and glory, together with the great exaltation and honor it
would confer upon her in that immortal and celestial sphere, if she
would accept it and stand in her place by her husband's side. She also
saw the woman he had taken to wife, and contemplated with joy the vast
and boundless love and union which this order would bring about, as
well as the increase of her husband's kingdoms, and the power and
glory extending throughout the eternities, worlds without end.
"With a countenance beaming with joy, for she was filled with the
Spirit of God, she returned to my father, saying: 'Heber, what you
kept from me the Lord has shown me.' She told me she never saw so
happy a man as father was when she described the vision and told him
she was satisfied and knew it was from God.
"She covenanted to stand by him and honor the principle, which
covenant she faithfully kept, and though her trials were often heavy
and grievous to bear, she knew that father was also being tried, and
her integrity was unflinching to the end. She gave my father many
wives, and they always found in my mother a faithful friend."
Helen also refers in her narrative to the sensation caused in Nauvoo,
one Sabbath morning, prior to the return of the Twelve from England,
by a sermon of the Prophet's on "the restoration of all things," in
which it was hinted that the patriarchal or plural order of marriage,
as practiced by the ancients, would some day again be established, The
excitement created by the bare suggestion was such that Joseph deemed
it wisdom, in the afternoon, to modify his statement by saying that
possibly the Spirit had made the time seem nearer than it really was,
when such things would be restored.
These facts serve to show something of the nature and extent of the
sacrifice made by the Saints in accepting this principle, and likewise
the pure, lofty, religious motives actuating both men and women who
could thus heroically embrace a doctrine against which--as is
generally the case with the gospel's higher principles--their
traditions and preconceived notions instinctively rebelled.
Soon after the revelation was given, a golden link was forged whereby
the houses of Heber and Joseph were indissolubly and forever
joined.[A] Helen Mar, the eldest daughter of Heber Chase and Vilate
Murray Kimball, was given to the Prophet in the holy bonds of
celestial marriage.
[Footnote A: The Prophet Joseph, I am informed, in blessing Heber C.
Kimball, told him that his inheritance in Zion should adjoin his on
the north.]