"It appears to the writer that modern Christians must either learn to tolerate polygamy or give up forever the glorious hope of resting in Abraham's bosom. That which he approves, and so strikingly approves, must be not only not bad, but positively good, pure and holy."--Improvement Era, May, 1898, pages 472, 475, 478, 482. We quote from the poem written by Apostle Orson Whitney to the Women of the Everlasting Covenant: "Up with the guardian of social purity, The marriage system of futurity-- Asylum of reform and penitence;-- God-given home to homeless innocence; And down with wayward Rome's economy, Parent of nameless ills, monogamy; Concomitant of empire crushing vice, Immolating virtue at the shrine of price, Let innocence no more be child of shame; Let nature's needs the laws of nature frame; Let marriage vows be honorable in all, Untrammelled by a monogamic wall Of selfishness and rank hypocrisy, The gift of Pagan aristocracy." --Apostle Whitney's Poems. The declaration made by B. H. Roberts concerning his determination to continue his polygamous living is of a piece with that made under oath by President Joseph Smith and Apostle F. M. Lyman. Mr. Roberts said: "These women have stood by me. They are good and true women. The law has said that I shall part from them. * * * But the law cannot free me from the obligations assumed before it spoke." (It spoke before he was born.) "No power can do that; even were the church that sanctioned these marriages and performed the ceremonies to turn its back upon us and say that the marriage is not valid now and that I must give these good and loyal women up--I will be damned if I would."--Case of B. H. Roberts of Utah, page 13. Considerable space has been devoted in the "Address" to a defense of the loyalty of the Mormon Church to civil government. It is not recalled that any Christian church in this country has found itself under a like necessity, for the teachings and practices of the Christian churches have never been such as to raise an issue between church authority and allegiance to civil statutes. "Gentiles" will bear willing testimony to the fact that the Mormon people, as a body, are by no means naturally disposed to contest civil ordinances.