READ the infamous order of Moses in the 31st chapter of Numbers--an
order unfit to be reproduced in print--an order which I am unwilling
to repeat. Read the 31 st chapter of Exodus. Read the 21 st chapter of
Deuteronomy. Read the-life of Abraham, of David, of Solomon, of
Jacob, and then tell me the sacred Bible does not teach polygamy and
concubinage. All the languages of the world are insufficient to express
the filth of polygamy. It makes man a beast--woman a slave. It destroys
the fireside. It makes virtue an outcast. It makes home a lair of wild
beasts. It is the infamy of infamies. Yet this is the doctrine of the
Bible--a doctrine defended even by Luther and Melancthon. It is by the
Bible that Brigham Young justifies the practice of this beastly horror.
It takes from language those sweetest words, husband, wife, father
mother, child and lover. It takes us back to the barbarism of animals,
and leaves the heart a den in which crawl and hiss the slimy serpents
of loathsome lust. Yet the book justifying this infamy is the book upon
which rests the civilization of the nineteenth century. And because I
denounce this frightful thing, the clergy denounce me as a demon, and
the infamous _Christian Advocate_ says that the moral sentiment of
this State ought to denounce this Illinois Catiline for his blasphemous
utterances and for his base and debasing scurrility.