Edward W. Tullidge

“ It was to them the poetess and high priestess addressed her hymn of invocation; and Brigham's proclamation that Adam is our Father and God is like a hallelujah chorus to their everlasting names. The very earth shall yet take it up; all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve shall yet shout it for joy, to the ends of the earth, in every tongue!
Eve stands, then, first—the God-Mother in the maternal trinity of this earth. Soon we shall meet Sarah, the Mother of the covenant, and in her daughters comprehend something of patriarchal marriage—"Mormon polygamy." ”

“ I have a hope that our brothers and sisters will also embrace the fullness of the gospel, and come into the new and everlasting covenant; I trust their prejudices will give way to the power of truth. I would gladly have them with us here, even though they might have to endure all kind of tribulation and affliction with us and the rest of the children of God, in these last days, so that they might share in the glories of the celestial kingdom. As to myself, I can truly say, that I would not give up the prospect of the latter-day glory for all that glitters in this world. ”

“ As the Hebrew poets rose to the height of their great subject they symbolized her as a veritable woman, with a ministry in the earth; and chiefly symbolized her as the woman of the future.
David, the great psalmist, led the theme, for Zion was his daughter; then glorious Isaiah swelled the volume of earth's epic hymn. What a culmination and personification is this: "For thy Maker is thy husband; the Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called." ”

“ They brought the lamp without the light—nothing more. Better the light without the evangelical lamp—better a conscientious intellect than the forms of sectarian godliness without the power.
Without the power to unlock the heavens, and the Elijah faith to call the angels down, there could be no new dispensation—no millennial civilization for the world, to crown the civilization of the ages.
Light came to Sidney Rigdon from the Mormon Elijah, and he comprehended the light; but Alexander Campbell rejected the prophet when his message came; he would have none of his angels. ”

“ At his first coming the kingdom of heaven was likened to twelve fishermen—not ten virgins—and he said unto them, "Take up your nets and follow me and I will make you fishers of men."
But when the cry shall go forth, "Behold the bridegroom cometh," commotion is to be among the virgins of the earth—the virgins of Zion and the virgins of Babylon. Each will trim their lamps. Each will have their "five wise" and "five foolish." Every one will have her familiar spirit. But the God of Israel will send his spirit to inspire Zion, for her Maker is her husband. ”

“ Let the united force of this assembly give the lie to the popular clamor that the women of Utah are oppressed and held in bondage. Let the world know that the women of Utah prefer virtue to vice, and the home of an honorable wife to the gilded pageantry of fashionable temples of sin. Transitory allurements, glaring the senses, as is the flame to the moth, short-lived and cruel in their results, possess no charms for us. ”

“ Remember, O Lord, the presidents, even all the presidents of thy church, that thy right hand may exalt them, with all their families, and their immediate connections, that their names may be perpetuated, and had in everlasting remembrance, from generation to generation. Remember all thy church, O Lord, with all their families, and all their immediate connections, with all their sick and afflicted ones, with all the poor and meek of the earth, that the kingdom which thou hast set up without hands, may become a great mountain, and fill the whole earth ”

“ Scarcely had Brigham and the twelve effected the exodus of the saints from Missouri to Illinois, ere Joseph, having escaped from prison, sent the twelve with its president to England, on mission.
On each side of the Mississippi, in cabins and tents, the Mormon people lay, exhausted by their many expulsions; the multitude sick, many dying, the vigor of life scarcely left even in their strong-willed leaders. Thus lying on the river-side at Commerce and Montrose, they presented a spectacle no longer suggestive of irresistible empire-founders. ”

“ Not ruder was it in the warlike founders of Rome to seize the virgins as spoil, and make them wives to accomplish their empire-founding ambitions, than for a congress of American legislators to seize and prostitute the marriage question to their own political ends and popularity.
Can there be any doubt that the men of Washington have seized polygamy for their own ends? And are these men of the parliamentary Sodom of modern times the proper persons to decide the marriage question?
Will woman allow her sanctuary to be thus invaded and her supremest subject thus defiled? ”

“ She saw these elders upon the altar of sacrifice for a Christian cause. Out in the wilderness of society were they, during the best years of youth, preaching without purse or scrip, trusting in Providence for their daily bread as truly as do the sparrows whom the Great Father feeds. Wandering through the world were these devoted men, often with blood in their well-worn shoes, preaching the glad tidings of a new dispensation which the angels had opened to bring immortality to mortals, and establish the order of heaven on earth. ”

“ My sisters, let us, inasmuch as we are free to do all that love and duty prompt, be brave and unfaltering in sustaining our brethren. Woman's faith can accomplish wonders. Let us, like the devout and steadfast Miriam, assist our brothers in upholding the hands of Moses. Like the loving Josephine, whose firm and gentle influence both animated and soothed the heart of Napoleon, we will encourage and assist the servants of God in establishing righteousness; but unlike Josephine, never will political inducements, threats or persecutions, prevail on us to relinquish our matrimonial ties. ”

“ We say Mother now, first, for we are tracing this everlasting theme of motherhood, in the Mormon economy, without which nothing of the woman part of the divine scheme can be known—next to nothing of patriarchal marriage, to which we are traveling, be expounded.
Eve—immortal Eve—came down to earth to become the Mother of a race.
How become the Mother of a world of mortals except by herself again becoming mortal? How become mortal only by transgressing the laws of immortality? ”

“ In the early rise of the Church abroad the disciples knew nothing of the society-founding successes of Brigham Young, which to-day make Mormonism quite potent in America and a periodical sensation to the American Congress. Nothing of this; but much of the divine, much of the spiritual, much of the angels' coming to reign with them in a millennium, with Christ on earth.
Such was Mormonism abroad. Such has it ever been, with the sisters, at home. Its success in making converts among women, both old and young, has no parallel in the history of churches. ”

“ If fortitude and nobility of soul be cultivated in your own bosoms, you will transmit them to your children; your sons will grow up noble defenders of truth and righteousness, and heralds of salvation to the nations of the earth. They will be prepared to fill high and responsible religious, judicial, civil and executive positions. I consider it most important, my sisters, that we should struggle to preserve the sacred constitution of our country—one of the blessings of the Almighty, for the same spirit that inspired Joseph Smith, inspired the framers of the constitution ”

“ Meet we now Sarah the mother of the covenant. In her is incarnated the very soul of patriarchal marriage. In her is the expounding of the patriarchal relations of her Mormon daughters. Sarah, who gave to her husband another wife, that the covenant which the Lord made with him might be fulfilled.
O woman, who shall measure thy love? And thus to give thyself a sacrifice for thy love! Thus on the altar ever!
It is thy soul-type in nature that makes nature beneficent. Had not nature the soul of woman she had been infinitely selfish; an infinite love had not been born ”

“ We can only understand the Mormon sisterhood by introducing them in this cast at the very outset; only comprehend the wonderful story of their lives by viewing them as apostles, who have heard the voices of the invisibles commanding them to build the temples of a new faith.
Let us forget, then, thus early in their story, all reference to polygamy or monogamy. Rather let us think of them as apostolic mediums of a new revelation, who at first saw only a dispensation of divine innovations and manifestations for the age. ”

“ Man is nowhere where woman is not. Mormonism has restored woman to her pinnacle.
Presently woman herself shall sing of her divine origin. A high priestess of the faith shall interpret the themes of herself and of her Father-and-Mother God!
At the very moment when the learned divines of Christendom were glorying that this little earth was the "be-all and the end-all" of creation, the prophet of Mormondom was teaching the sisters in the temple at Kirtland that there has been an eternal chain of creations coming down from the generations of the Gods—worlds and systems and universes. ”

“ Indeed, it is questionable whether any other people in the world could have cozened themselves into a happy state of mind amid such surroundings, with such a past fresh and bleeding in their memories, and with such a prospect as was before both themselves and the remnant of their brethren left in Nauvoo to the tender mercies of the mob. In his diary, Apostle Orson Pratt wrote that night: "Notwithstanding our sufferings, hardships and privations, we are cheerful, and rejoice that we have the privilege of passing through tribulation for the truth's sake." ”

“ Every woman in Utah may have her husband—the husband of her choice. Here we are taught not to destroy our children, but to preserve them, for they, reared in the path of virtue and trained to righteousness, constitute our true glory.
"It is with no wish to accuse our sisters who are not of our faith that we so speak; but we are dealing with facts as they exist. Wherever monogamy reigns, adultery, prostitution and foeticide, directly or indirectly, are its concomitants. It is not enough to say that the virtuous and high-minded frown upon these evils. We believe they do. ”

“ The friends of woman, by their honest work, prevented action being taken on the bill, and perhaps saved the country the disgrace of having done such a great wrong, which it could not soon have undone. There was something more vital to the well-being of the nation in this, than some of our legislators were willing to admit. Had they passed this act they would probably have laid the foundation for the ruin of the nation. If Congress has the power to disfranchise one class, it undoubtedly has the power to disfranchise another, and what freeman in such a case is secure in his rights? ”

“ But exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair, and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such a marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. ”

“ Thou knowest, O Lord, that they have been greatly oppressed and afflicted by wicked men, and our hearts flow out with sorrow, because of their grievous burdens. O Lord, how long wilt thou suffer this people to bear this affliction, and the cries of their innocent ones to ascend up in thine ears, and their blood come up in testimony before thee, and not make a display of thy testimony in their behalf? Have mercy, O Lord, upon that wicked mob, who have driven thy people, that they may cease to spoil, that they may repent of their sins, if repentance is to be found ”