Amasa M. Lyman

“ When those charms have faded from her form—when youth is passed and followed by decrepid old age, she becomes the loathsome thing that no one claims or desires, for which none manifests any warm sympathy and affectionate regard. This is the fate of a class of women who were born pure and innocent as you, my sisters, were born, situated as you were, bearing the same relationship to high heaven by creation as you bear, yet she drags out her miserable existence to her resting place, the grave, when death terminates her suffering and wretched existence ”

“ In the same locality edifices, whose lofty towers point to heaven, and wherein are held sacred the paraphernalia of Christian worship casts its lengthening shadows over the dens of corruption and crime, where the victims of passion and unhallowed lust live to drag out a miserable existence; in the reeking corruption which is the result of their own sins. The religious sanctuary and the brothel flourish together; they have their development there; in that land we see woman in her most wretched condition. ”

“ They will compliment us to-day for our persevering industry, for the toil that we have endured, and for the perseverance that we have evinced in working our way, not to where we expected to find hidden treasures of gold and silver, but to the desert, to find a place so poor, so barren, and so forbidding in its aspect that none others would desire it, but that we might, in its desolation and isolation from the rest of the world, enjoy the poor privilege of living there without having our right questioned. ”

“ It is found in every community where it is declared that a man shall marry one wife only, and it shall be considered a virtue; but to marry a second wife while the first wife is alive, is considered a crime and punishable by confinement in prison, or the payment of a fine, because it is a sin. What, this in a Christian land? Yes, this in a Christian land! Christianity of the most approved kind is advocated where it exists. In the same thoroughfare the victims of corruption and vicious passion, and the devotees of Christianity jostle against each other. ”

“ Why, look at the evil and the corruption, and consequent wretchedness that curse the condition of that broad margin of women that never are made to feel the responsibility, comforts and blessings resulting from a pure, and healthy, and virtuous marriage. Where is this state of things to be found? In every Christian community that I know anything about. It is the root of that festering corruption that is eating out the core and vital energies, and sapping the foundation of life in the race of man. ”

“ The Gospel that we have received is something that, as I view it, bears a direct relationship to our condition here and hereafter, and that it proposes to so direct our actions and our conduct in life, that they may all be made to assume a proper character. When our actions are right they have the character of virtues, and virtues commend us to God and to one another. Virtue, when practiced by us, is the surest and best foundation that we can have for confidence, not only in God, but in ourselves, and in one another, a degree of which is necessary to our happiness, to our comfort and joy. ”

“ This is unquestionably the fault with a Christianity that does not extend the mantle of salvation to all who should be the recipients of its blessings. If all men and all women in a community were honorably married, you can readily understand one thing, that there would be no prostitution of women in that community, there would be an end of the corruption of man in that community, there would be no illegitimacy there. ”

“ We say, then, if this is the reason why in Heaven's wisdom it was ordained that man and woman should be married, it was simply to regulate the actions of man and woman in the most sacred, holy, high, and responsible relationships that exist between them, to preserve in man and woman the fountain of life in purity, that there might be given to earth a people in purity, and free from the taint of inherent corruption. ”

“ That you may understand the truth and know its value, and secure to yourselves the blessings that only can accrue from the knowledge of the truth. That doctrine is safe and can take care of itself; and if you make an application of the truth to yourselves, it will take care of you; it will secure you from corruption, wretchedness, and death, and give you life and immortality; while others will still sink under the accumulating weight of corruption, until they go down to hell. ”

“ Let us pray always and never faint, and ask God to bless us in all that we do, and never do anything that is not sufficiently holy that we can ask God to bless; carrying the purity of Heaven's religion and ordained principles of salvation into every relationship of our lives, and let the Zion of our God extend forth upon all the earth from this point. What will become of the world? They will live in their corruption until they sink and die in it. Our blessings are to build up the kingdom of God in purity and in its perfection in these mountains. ”

“ We meet with her when she has progressed, when she has trod far in the path of folly, degradation, wretchedness, and sin; but she is innocent no more. Are the blessings of home extended around her any more? No. Has she the blessings of the warm sympathy of kind friends any more? No; they are frigid and cold; the warm heart gushing out the blessings of friendship is closed against her; she is not fit to be associated with any more; she is unfit to be welcomed to the society of her more fortunate sisters ”

“ When the great nation with which we are connected politically begin to make our faith the subject of special legislation, is it not time that we should know and say something about it? They do not complain of any dishonesty and corruption among us; they do not tell us that the land is sowed broadcast with iniquity; they are not alarmed about this, but they are alarmed because men out here in Utah dare marry a wife honorably and fearlessly, and then publicly own her as his wife. ”

“ I want to know, see, read, and understand, as it is evinced in the physical condition of the race that these are truths, whether the books refer to them or not. If there was no revelation to reach us from foreign quarters, it is a revelation that is before our eyes; its truth is demonstrated within the circle of our own being—within the narrow limits of our own observation it is made plain, and we should understand and comprehend. When we know this, then we know what the Bible may say with regard to polygamy being true, because we find the evidence of it in truth itself. ”

“ I have entered upon this work, which we denominate the work of God, and which comprises the building up of the kingdom of God and the extension of the government of God over all the earth, carrying with it the blessings of the rule of righteousness and peace, and it promises that I am going to be a prince and a ruler over countless millions of intelligent beings like myself. ”

“ Our business here in the mountains is to develop a community in which man and woman shall find, through the extension of honorable, pure, just, and virtuous marriage, the legitimate position that Heaven ordained them to occupy as wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, and a response to every requirement of nature, without stepping aside from the path of virtue and honor. ”

“ If a woman were associated in the relationship of wife with an honorable man who kept his marriage vow, would it change the fact that there would be purity, innocence, truthfulness, and virtue in this that could not be found elsewhere—that could not occur without the same intimate relationship between man and woman—aside from the covenant that makes them man and wife. ”

“ The world wants a religion that will address itself to this task, because it will enter into the relationship that exists between man and woman, that will purify them and establish within them the seed of eternal life. ”

“ We fought our way to this country against all the hardships and obstacles that stood in our path, and, through God's blessing, we have overcome them; we have cultivated the land and done the best that we could under the circumstances, and we have provided for ourselves and for our wives and children as well as we could, and we have been contented. If the husbands of Utah were poor, their wives were willing to share that poverty with them ”

“ After making experiments that have turned out rather futile, they have found out that with all their mistaken notions of their deluded fellow-citizens in the mountains, the virtue of woman and the sanctity of the marriage relationship cannot be invaded with impunity—it is guarded with jealousy. The same men that were brave in coming over the plains, and energetic in making the roads and in building the bridges, etc., are still here, and continue to be brave. They have not dared so much in the past that they will stop daring now.
Are you going to say something in support of plural marriage? ”

“ Our business here is to save men and women by teaching them to live lives of purity. These are self-evident truths. When we count up the men and women that are in the world, we shall find a broad margin more of women than men; and there is a numerical difference in the sexes, as they are developed in our community and every other community. Women must be saved, if the task should devolve on a man to marry two or three of them, and treat them as honorable wives, bless them, and bless their children, provide for them, and teach them principles of purity. ”

“ That cannot be; for as the human race is fast wearing to an end, there would not any of my children be left in a few generations more. You are, no doubt, mathematicians enough to see this. I give the Lord credit in my feelings for having known this long before I did; and hence I say that plural marriage is the great necessity of the age, because it is a means that God has introduced to check the physical corruption and decline of our race; to stop further contributions to the already fearful aggregate of corruption that has been developed as the result of sin in man and woman. ”

“ People have been preaching, praying, paying tithes, building cathedrals and churches, and the deadly work of physical degeneracy is still going on until the race is nearly upon the brink of extinction. Christianity, as it now is, and has been for centuries, has proved entirely insufficient to stop the great evil—to check it in its fearful growth. ”

“ Whether we have much or little to say with regard to the great good there is to be secured and enjoyed, I would hope that in our efforts we might be blessed and favored in making some suggestions to the audience that will be calculated to awaken in their minds good thoughts that will lead them to God, and to a knowledge of the principles that are involved in its work. ”

“ We need not be discouraged, for we can count thousands that are pledged to this work, which is established to re-people the world, to fill the earth with virtuous, pure, and holy men and women. That is the work that devolves upon us. ”

“ Does our constant begging and praying for admittance into the Union ever awaken a feeling of sympathy in them towards us? It does not. Yet they make out to be so alarmed for our moral safety that they seem to have forgotten all the festering corruptions of the great cities of the east. ”

“ They begin to look round for a peculiar kind of institution that flourishes so well in Christendom, where such prevail, where they make ample provisions for the gratification of lustful passion no odds how foul, black, and damning in its consequences, still it can find its gratification at those favored institutions. Those Federal gentlemen began to look for similar accommodations in Utah; but instead of finding them they found school houses and houses for the public worship of God, dedicated to the best interests of humanity, for the improvement of the condition of our race. ”

“ I am not here to treat you to empty romance. The tithing of all the misery, wretchedness, and crime that exist among the female sex, or our race, in the great Christian cities and heathen cities of the world, cannot be told ”

“ There is a feature in our religion that I have thought was but little understood; it is like many other things that would be of much more value to us if they were well understood; our understanding of it is limited as a people, and about that very feature in our religion I feel disposed to make a few suggestions, as the results of my own thoughts and reflections, and of all that has been opened up of the matter in my mind with regard to it. ”

“ They can but acknowledge that we have been brave in conquering the dangers of pioneering our way into an untried land and country; a land that was barren of comfort, barren of these things that were necessary to the sustaining of human life. ”

“ I believe that the servants of God, in their efforts generally, reveal to the people the workings of their own minds, under the influences of the Spirit of God, and are able to bestow upon them for their comfort, encouragement, and aid in the great work in which they are engaged, the results of their experience, of their reflection and thought. ”

“ It appears to me that the man or woman, whose course of life is such that he or she has no confidence in his or herself, properly can have but very little in God. As brother Hyde has remarked, the time is near when we are to encounter the realities of our religion. ”