Page:History of Utah.djvu/423



that these spirits have bodies as speedily as possible, that they become saints on earth and in his kingdom, those who keep this commandment thus to multiply being as gods; otherwise these spirits will take refuge in the bodies of unbelievers, and so sink to perdition.

But civilization has pronounced polygamy a curse and a crime, a retrogression, an offence against society and against morality, a beastly abomination, immoral, incestuous, degrading, a relic of barbarism, a sin, a shame, a vice, and as such has discarded it and passed laws against it. And the issue between polygamy and monogamy is one purely for civilization to determine ; Christianity has not a foot of ground to stand upon in the matter.

Culture cares nothing for religion ; it is what a man does, not what he believes, that affects progress. It will not do to break the law in the name of religion. Suppose a man's religion authorizes him to commit murder: does that make it right? Civilization seeks the highest morality ; and the highest morality, it says, is not that of the bible, of the book of Mormon, or of any other so-called holy book. The highest morality is based on nature, and by a study of nature's laws men may find it. Long before Christ, civilization awoke to the evils of this custom, which is not in accord with its morality. The religious reformer, Buddha, who died 470 years before Christ was born, and whose followers now number about one third of the whole human race, preached against polygamy. When Greece and Rome were the foremost nations of the world, they did not practise polygamy, nor has ever the highest civilization entertained it. Polygamy is to monogamy as Greece to China, or as England to India.

All very religious people, as well as science fanat- ics, are partially insane. This insanity may be pas- sive and harmless, or aggressive and hurtful. We have innumerable instances of both kinds in the his- tory of the Christian church. But as t