The primary design of marriage, to "multiply and replenish the earth" and not to gratify lust, is upheld by the Latter-day Saints as in no other community. The consequence is twofold. Infanticide, foeticide and illegitimacy are very rare. The two former practices, so common in the world and adopted to lessen the responsibility of child-bearing while increasing the facilities for lustful gratification, are esteemed by this people as abominations in the sight of God, little short of outright murder in heinousness. Parties known to be guilty of such acts would not be fellowshiped in any sense, but would be cast out of the church without hesitation. The result of such high regard for the purposes of the Lord in marriage is, that the percentage of children in every family is much larger on the average than it is among any other Christian community of equal population. Because the children are numerous they are not weaker but usually stronger in body and intellect than in communities where the blighting curse of a reprehensible modern custom prevails. The wives of men thus taught and convinced of the sacredness of their procreative functions are healthier and happier in the home than are the wives and mothers in other communities. Prof. Phineas Priest, a non-"Mormon" phrenologist who traveled among the "Mormon" people in Idaho and Utah, said that in all his travels he had not found so large a percentage of healthy and intelligent children, with a corresponding condition of health and happiness on the part of the mothers, as he had among the "Mormon" people. As to the eternity of the marriage covenant, a helpmeet was provided for man before death entered the world and therefore death could not prevail against the covenants of the Lord. "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an helpmeet for him." (Gen. ii:18.) The Savior came and offered up a sacrifice to redeem man from the fall, to destroy death and all the effects thereof. If His atonement simply redeemed the body from the grave, without restoring the condition of the Paradise lost, it would be altogether incomplete, and the words of Paul would be without effect wherein he said to the Corinthians, "O, grave, where is thy victory? O, death, where is thy sting?" If death destroyed and the grave buried the covenants of the Lord, we would indeed be, as Paul says, "of all men most miserable." God is eternal, and "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever." (Eccl. iii:14.)