The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?Newman, John Philip
Religion
The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?
Newman, John Philip
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines; Polygamy -- Religious aspects
Another good effect of the institution here is that you may travel
throughout our entire Territory, and virtue prevails. Our young live
virtuously until they marry. But how is it under the monogamic system?
Temptations are numerous on every hand and young men fall a prey to
vice. An eminent medical professor in New York recently declared, while
delivering a lecture to his class in one of the colleges there, that if
he wanted a man twenty-five years of age, free from a certain disease,
he would not know where to find him. What a terrible statement to make!
In this community no such thing exists. Our boys grow up in purity,
honoring and respecting virtue; our girls do the same, and the great
mass of them are pure. There may be impurities. We are human, and it
would not be consistent with our knowledge of human nature to say that
we are entirely pure, but we are the most pure of any people within the
confines of the Republic. We have fewer unvirtuous boys and girls in
our midst than any other community within the range of my knowledge.
Both sexes grow up in vigor, health and purity.
These, my brethren and sisters, are some of the results which I wanted
to allude to in connection with this subject. Much more might be said.
There is not a man or woman who has listened to me to-day, but he and
she have thoughts, reasons and arguments to sustain this principle
passing through their minds which I have not touched upon, or, if
touched upon at all, in a very hasty manner.
The question arises, What is going to be done with this institution?
Will it be overcome? The conclusion arrived at long ago is that it is
God and the people for it. God has revealed it, He must sustain it,
we can not; we cannot bear it off, He must. I know that Napoleon said
Providence was on the side of the heaviest artillery, and many men
think that God is on the side of the strongest party. The Midianites
probably thought so when Gideon fell upon them with three hundred men.
Sennacherib and the Assyrians thought so when they came down in their
might to blot out Israel. But God is mighty; God will prevail; God will
sustain that which he has revealed, and He will uphold and strengthen
His servants and bear off His people. We need not be afflicted by a
doubt; a shadow of doubt need not cross our minds as to the result. We
know that God can sustain us: He has borne off His people in triumph
thus far and will continue to do so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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