Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/453

Rh the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.' See Gen., xvi., 1–3.

"According to Jesus Christ and the apostles, then, the only way to be saved is to be adopted into the great family of polygamists by the Gospel, and then strictly follow their examples.

"Again, John the Revelator describes the Holy City of the heavenly Jerusalem, with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob inscribed on the gates. Rev., xxi., 12.

"To sum up the whole, then, I find that polygamists were the friends of God; that the family and lineage of a polygamist were selected in which all nations should be blessed; that a polygamist is named in the New Testament as the father of the faithful Christians of after ages, and cited as a pattern for all generations; that the wife of a polygamist, who encouraged her husband in the practice of the same, and even urged him into it, and officiated in giving him another wife, is named as an honorable and virtuous woman, a pattern for Christian ladies, and the very mother of all holy women in the Christian Church, whose aspiration it should be to be called her daughters; that Jesus Christ has declared that the great fathers of the polygamic family stand at the head in the kingdom of good; in short, that all the saved of after generations should be saved by becoming members of a polygamic family; that all those who do not become members of it are strangers and aliens to the covenant of promise, the commonwealth of Israel, and not heirs according to the promise made to Abraham; that all people from the east, west, north, or south, who enter into the kingdom, enter into the society of polygamists, and under their patriarchal rule and government; indeed, no one can even approach the gates of heaven without beholding the names of twelve polygamists (the sons of four different women by one man) engraven in everlasting glory upon the pearly gates.

"My dear sister, with the Scriptures before me, I could never find it in my heart to reject the heavenly vision which has restored to man the fullness of the Gospel, or the Latter-Day prophets and apostles, merely because in this restoration is included the ancient law of family organization and government preparatory to the restoration of all Israel.

"But, leaving all Scripture, history, or precedent out of the question, let us come to Nature's law. What, then, appears to be the great object of the marriage relations? I answer, the multiplying of our species, the rearing and training of children.

"To accomplish this object, natural law would dictate that a husband should remain apart from his wife at certain seasons, which, in the very constitution of the female, are untimely; or, in other words, indulgence should be not merely for pleasure or wanton desires, but mainly for the purpose of procreation.

"The mortality of nature would teach a mother that, during Nature's process in the formation and growth of embryo man, her heart should be pure, her thoughts and affections chaste, her mind calm, her passions without excitement, while her body should be invigorated with every exercise conducive to health and vigor, but by no means subjected to any thing calculated to disturb, irritate, weary, or exhaust any of its functions.