No people hold more sacred the principle of marriage, nor esteem more highly the possession of chastity, than do the Latter-day Saints. Among no people, either Catholic or Protestant, is a lapse of virtue so rare as among this people. We consider sexual crime the most blighting curse that infests the earth today. Adultery is considered as next in the catalogue of crime to murder. Individuals guilty of fornication or adultery are promptly excommunicated from the church, unless the sin is followed by the most profound repentance and the best reparation which can possibly be made. The children around the family altar, in Sunday school, Mutual Improvement Associations, Primary Associations, and all the institutions of the church, are taught to hold their virtue more sacred to them than life itself. When they attain to years of maturity and enter the holy state of matrimony, they vow before God, angels and living witnesses that they will never violate the marriage covenants. We believe that God ordained the union of the sexes in marriage, not only for time but for all eternity. It is greatly due to this fact and the deeply religious element which enters into marriage among our people, that divorces are so rare. Young men and women are taught that, while pure love and perfect congeniality should exist between the parties to the marriage covenants, passion and infatuation should not be the ruling motive, but principle should control; and that in the weakness of humanity the dangers of mistakes in the mating of the sexes are so great, the only safe way is to seek in prayer and supplication the guidance of divine Providence; they are, also taught to so live in daily walk and conversation that their heavenly Father will answer their prayers. To feel sublimely impressed that marriage is for all eternity, and that God is directly interested in us, tends to make people more careful and considerate, more prayerful in choosing a husband or wife, than otherwise they would be. The result of such teaching is a far greater percentage of happy unions and a much smaller percentage of divorces among the Latter-day Saints than among other Christian communities.