Polygamy

“ I. Was Polygamy lawful to the Patriarchs ? It will be conceded by all, that, under the Patriarchal Dispensation, there is no express permission of Polygamy, on record. Previous to the promulgation of the Levitical Code, there is no law or dictum relating even remotely to the subject, except the Great Original Law Of Marriage, found in Genesis, ii. 24, " Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh." ”

“ Take the influence of polygamy upon what may be properly called the rights of marriage, and these rights are two-fold:—authority on the part of the man, and protection on the part of the woman. The man is the head of the family; the man is the high priest of the family; the man is the legislator and executive of the family. He is to have reverence from his wife; she is to obey him; and I never performed the marriage ceremony without including that word when I address the woman, "Wilt thou obey the man?" ”

“ Let us speak for a few moments upon another point connected with this subject—that is, the reason why God has established polygamy under the present circumstances among this people. If all the inhabitants of the earth, at the present time, were righteous before God, and both males and females were faithful in keeping His commandments, and the numbers of the sexes of a marriageable age were exactly equal, there would be no necessity for any such institution. Every righteous man could have his wife and there would be no overplus of females. ”

“ I hear old Malachi repeating the same words, referring to this institution of marriage in the garden of Eden, reproving the Jews for their practice of polygamy, putting the pungent question to their conscience—"Why have ye dealt treacherously with the wife of your youth?"—your first wife, the one with whom you went to the bridal altar and swore before high Heaven that you would forsake all others and cleave unto her so long as you both live. ”

“ I will pour the fury of the Lord upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together; for even the husband with the wife shall be taken ; the aged with him that is full of days." As the prophet intends by this language to denote the comprehensive extent of the divine fury, had Polygamy been lawful, he must have said,—"the husband with his wives." ”

“ But until that great law that we have quoted can be proved to be not a law: until it can be proved that there is no distinction between law and practice; until it can be proved that there is a positive command for polygamy; until it can be proved that Christ did not refer to the original marriage; until it can be proved that Paul does not demand that every man shall have his own wife and every woman her own husband; until it can be proved that polygamy is a prevention of prostitution; until it can be proved that monogamic nations are not as long-lived as polygamous nations ”

“ The results of the sinful practice of polygamy, especially for the children and consequently for the state, would be less sad to contemplate, were it not that the polygamist exchanges his wife as readily for another as he who can afford but one wife at a time. ”

“ The arrangement was for the highest elevation of the race.
"'Polygamy is in direct conflict with the ordinance of God. Of course God never ordained it. On the contrary, the appointment in Eden was equivalent to a prohibitory act, which Jesus Christ revived, forbidding polygamy, and the Apostles have enjoined upon us that we observe the law of marriage as given in paradise.
"'So much for polygamy. God never recognized it. The edict requiring the marriage of a childless widow to the brother of her husband, takes it for granted that a man would leave but one widow. ”

“ The unfortunate women who practise polygamy and the children begotten from it, even if they become malcontent, yet know themselves to be caught in a net from which they see no escape; and they remain in their place and practise, because, though their hearts are broken, their homes are saved by a religious sanction from foul disgrace. And even the thousands who are not polygamists (for not more than one tenth of the Mormons are polygamists) will uphold polygamy, because some near relatives, as sisters or daughters, are practisers of it. ”

“ We admit that polygamy existed among the corrupt nations, just as any other evil, or vice, or crime existed, and now when God had chosen the Hebrews for His own people, to separate them from the heathen, He gives them for the first time a code of laws, and especially on the subject of the commerce of the sexes. And what is the central principle of that code on this subject? Read Leviticus xviii, 18—"Neither shall a man take one wife unto another." ”

“ It is attested and proved by competent authority, which no one doubts, that polygamy, or that social system which permits a plurality of wives, has always prevailed in most countries and in all ages of the world, from time immemorial ; but this form of marriage, being foreign to the customs of modern Europe and her colonies in America, is very naturally regarded throughout these enlight- ened regions as something heathenish and barba- rous. And modern writers, whose works are the exponents of European civilization, have hitherto said every thing against it, and nothing for it. ”

“ It is questionable whether more than one was recognized as the bona fide wife, the others simply being wives by right of concubinage. But if polygamy was in its strictest sense the legal custom, it soon grew unpopular, for no trace of it is met in the records of the New Testament, where all the passages referring to marriage imply monogamy as alone lawful. ”

“ What respect, therefore, can we have for the gentleman's argument, drawn from the teachings of Moses, in support of polygamy?
He refers us to the multiplication of horses. I suppose a king may have one horse or two, there is no special rule; but there is a special rule as to the number of wives. Neither shall the king multiply wives. God, in the beginning, gave the first man one wife, and Christ and Paul sustain that law as binding upon us. And now, supposing that that is not accepted as a law, what then? Why there is no limit to the number of wives, none at all. How many shall a man have? ”

“ Although polygamy is permitted by their customs, very few have more than a single wife, and she is brought immediately after the marriage into the husband’s family, where she resides until increasing numbers oblige them to seek another house. ”

“ He then proceeded to account for, or to justify, polygamy among the Orientals in a very ingenious manner. “It never existed,” he said, “in the West: the Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Britons, never had more than one wife. In the East, on the other hand, polygamy has existed in all ages: the Jews, the Assyrians, the Tartars, the Persians, the Turcomans, had all of them several wives. Whence could this universal and invariable difference have arisen? Was it owing to accident and to mere caprice? ”

“ But, it is said, you believe in polygamy, and we cannot receive the gospel from your hands. We have been told a great many times that polygamy is not according to Christianity. The Protestant reformers believed the doctrine of polygamy. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, one of the principal lords and princes of Germany, wrote to the great reformer Martin Luther and his associate reformers, anxiously imploring them to grant unto him the privilege of marrying a second wife, while his first wife, the princess, was yet living. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, he had none to give, and therefore the assertion made yesterday is true, that during the sojourn of the children of Israel in the wilderness there is but one instance of polygamy recorded.
Now we come to the law that I laid down yesterday—"Neither shalt thou take one wife to another." I reaffirm that the translation in the margin is perfect to a word. He labors to show that God does not mean what He says. That the phrase "one wife to another," may be equally rendered one woman to another, or one wife to her sister. ”

“ Elder B. This doctrine is believed in by the Latter-day Saints. It is practised by them in the Territory of Utah. There is no law there to forbid polygamy. But they do not practise it in England, or in any country where the law of the land forbids the practice. Your feelings, and your ideas of propriety and morality, are induced by your education. In this country, men and women are educated to believe that polygamy is flagrantly immoral, and nothing more or less than licentiousness. ”

“ The polygamy of New York, of Chicago, of London, of Paris, of Vienna and of other parts of the Christian world, like that of Solomon's three hundred, is a system of concubinage in which the woman possesses no legal rights, the mistress neither being recognized as wife, nor her children as legitimate ”

“ Had polygamy been an invention of our husbands, or a system which they capriciously adopted, we might have been grieved, but we should have known how to act, for we were in a Christian country, where women had rights as well as men ”

“ Christian converts profess an abhorrence, and in many cases I am satisfied a sincere abhorrence, of polygamy, but the fact remains that this causes more trouble in the Christian Churches in West Africa than all other evils put together. In the purely pagan areas there is no doubt that the woman regards polygamy as a desirable condition; she argues that the position of the husband is gauged by his many possessions—wives and cattle, and that she prefers being the wife of a great man to that of some insignificant fellow who can afford to keep but one! ”

“ The nation was founded in polygamy in the days of Jacob, and was continued in polygamy until they became very numerous, very great and very powerful, while here and there might be found a monogamic family—a man with one wife. Now if God gave laws to a people having these two forms of marriage in the wilderness, He would adapt such laws to all. He would not take up isolated instances here and there of a man having one wife, but He would adapt His laws to the whole; to both the polygamic and monogamic forms of marriage throughout all Israel. ”

“ They exhibit an account of lawful wedlock, as it actually existed in every period of biblical history, among the Patriarchs, the Israelites, and the Jews. The writer or speaker, in every instance, lakes his countrymen and their marriages 'is he found them. Every reader will at once say, that such an account of the subject could not possibly have been written respecting a state of society, in which Marriage was Polygamy. It presupposes, that Marriage is in itself, and was, as it actually existed, the union of one man with one woman. ”

“ There is no word in either of these passages which permits or directs a married man to take more than one wife at a time. I challenge the gentleman for the proof. It is no evidence of the sanction of polygamy to bring passage after passage, which he knows, if construed in favor of polygamy, polygamy must be in direct conflict with the great organic law recorded in Leviticus xviii, 18. ”

“ I interjected, with some mirth. “It’s the word of abuse in England from an injured wife to her husband—‘You—Mormon!’”
“Well, the idea of polygamy does make a strong appeal to the male,” said the poet. “And the women feel happy in it when it is an accepted convention.”
“You mean, women only object to clandestine polygamy?”
“There is always jealousy,” said my companion. “But that is another matter. What I meant about the future of Mormonism did not refer to polygamy so much. But it’s our first real American religion. It started in America. It pretends to give American religious traditions. ”

“ I could easily perceive that each man had a wife; but polygamy did not appear to exist amongst them; perhaps more on account of their poverty, and the difficulty of supporting a plurality of wives, than from any idea they may entertain of the impropriety of the practice itself. ”

“ Nowhere do we find men passing abruptly from polygamy to monogamy, and long before arriving at the latter, when first custom and then law restrains and regulates the loose polygamy of the earlier ages, the change is only at first effected in the form; a man has a small number of wives, who, with their children, enjoy certain privileges, but by the side of these titular wives he possesses concubines in greater or less number. ”

“ None of the Patriarchs lived in a regular state of society, governed by established laws ; but each was the head of his clan—a petty chieftain, acknowledging no superior. The surrounding chieftains, also, as well as the tribes whom they governed, all practised Polygamy. With these things in view, let us see what the Practice of the Patriarchs actually was, on this subject, both before and after the Deluge.
1. Adam was placed in a situation, in which Polygamy was neither lawful, nor possible. ”

“ Here then Moses, or rather God himself, when making laws relative to marriage, as it then existed, and as it would lawfully exist in Israel in successive generations, not only represents each husband as having one wife, and each wife as having one husband; but uses language, which could have no meaning, in a country where Polygamy was general or lawful. ”

“ They further report that while there can not be found upon the registration lists of voters the name of a man actually guilty of polygamy, and while none of that class are holding office, yet at the last election in the Territory all the officers elected, except in one county, were men who, though not actually living in the practice of polygamy, subscribe to the doctrine of polygamous marriages as a divine revelation and a law unto all higher and more binding upon the conscience than any human law, local or national. ”