ll death do us part;" the marriage for this world and
for eternity combined; and the marriage for eternity alone, independent
and separate from this world's relationship.
The Mormon woman has no place in the future state excepting as she
enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or
sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or
those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the
life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family,
the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families
excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in
Heaven. His sealed wives are said to number two hundred and fifty.
Joseph Smith has also been very popular and has had scores sealed to
him.
To uphold this peculiarly constituted church, various crimes have been
committed, varying in hue, but the Mountain Meadow Massacre, when one
hundred and nineteen men, women and children were butchered in cold
blood under a flag of truce, surpasses in atrocity any act of the savage
tribes by whom they are surrounded, and has stained indelibly the Mormon
church. Before the advent of the Union Pacific Railroad, to breath a
word against the church organization or any of its acts or resist one of
their tenets or accumulate more wealth than was acceptable to the
leaders, has always brought down instant and the severest punishment,
and the perpetrators could never be brought to justice as they were
emissaries of Brigham Young and his councillors.
It is polygamy, however, more than all their other deeds and revelations
that has entailed misery, suffering and degradation. It has been the
parent of more crime, more disloyalty, more deceit and sin generally
than all the other causes combined. It is claimed that the revelation of
polygamy came to the prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 at Nauvoo, and it was
secretly practised by him and by other members of his church; but it was
not published to the world until 1852, when Brigham Young made it known
in Utah, thinking no doubt that he was beyond the pale of civilization
and the terrors of the law. It was not made obligatory, but those who
practised it were to have greater exaltation in the next world. A woman
conforming in other respects is entitled to a seat in Heaven, but it is
reserved for the polygamist to be one with the Father. Of course there
is no room for Gentiles in the Mormon Heaven, exceptin
|