the writings of St. Paul quoted in the last chapter—has been made a part of practice, vicarious marriage for the departed also enters into the Mormon scheme. Like certain British Dissenters of the royal burgh of Dundee, who in our day petitioned Parliament for permission to bigamize, the Mormons, with Bossuet and others, see in the New Testament no order against plurality,[1] and in the Old dispensation they find the practice sanctioned in a family, ever the friends of God, and out of which the Redeemer sprang. Finally, they find throughout the nations of the earth three polygamists in theory to one monogame.
The "chaste and plural marriage," being once legalized, finds a multitude of supporters. The anti-Mormons declare that it is at once fornication and adultery—a sin which absorbs all others. The Mormons point triumphantly to the austere morals of their community, their superior freedom from maladive influences, and the absence of that uncleanness and licentiousness which distinguish the cities of the civilized world. They boast that, if it be an evil, they have at least chosen the lesser evil; that they practice openly as a virtue what others do secretly as a sin—how full is society of these latent Mormons!—that their plurality has abolished the necessity of concubinage, cryptogamy, contubernium, celibacy, mariages du treizième arrondissement, with their terrible consequences, infanticide, and so forth; that they have removed their ways from those "whose end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword." Like its sister institution Slavery, the birth and growth of a similar age, Polygamy acquires vim by abuse and detraction: the more turpitude is heaped upon it, the brighter and more glorious it appears to its votaries.
There are rules and regulations of Mormonism—I can not say whether they date before or after the heavenly command to pluralize—which disprove the popular statement that such marriages are made to gratify licentiousness, and which render polygamy a positive necessity. All sensuality in the married state is strictly forbidden beyond the requisite for insuring progeny—the practice, in fact, of Adam and Abraham. During the gestation and nursing of children, the strictest continence on the part of the mother is required—rather for a hygienic than for a religious reason. The same custom is practiced in part by the Jews, and in whole by some of the noblest tribes of savages; the splendid physical development of the Kaffir race in South Africa is attrib-
- ↑ Histoire des Variations, liv. iv. "L'Evangile n'a ni révoqué ni défendu ce qui avait été permis dans la loi de Moïse à l'égard du mariage: Jesus Christ n'a pas changé la police extérieure, mais il a ajouté seulement la justice et la vie éternelle pour récompense." So, in 1539, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, wishing to marry a second wife while the first was alive, was permitted to "commit bigamy" by the eminent reformers, M. Luther, Kuhorn (M. Bucer), Melancthon, and others, with the sole condition of secrecy. In the present age, the Right Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D. and Bishop of Natal, "not only tolerates polygamy in converts, but defends it on the ground of religion and humanity."
