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
in dungeons! No, my friends, if I can say a word to induce humane and
kind legislation toward the people of Utah I shall do it, and do it
most gladly. But I assert this principle, that civil government has the
right to limit religious liberty within due bounds.
There was another point that I desired to touch upon, and that is as
to the longevity of nations. We are told repeatedly here, in printed
works, that monogamic nations are short-lived, and that polygamic
nations are long-lived. I am prepared to go back to the days of Nimrod,
come down to the days of Ninus Sardanapalus, and down to the days of
Cyrus the Great, and all through those ancient polygamic nations, and
show that they were short-lived; while on the other hand I am prepared
to prove that Greece and Rome outlived the longest-lived polygamic
nations of the past. Greece, from the days of Homer down to the third
century of the Christian era; and Rome at from seven hundred and fifty
years before the coming of Christ down to the dissolution of the old
empire. But that old empire finds a resurrection in the Italians under
Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi; and England, Germany and France are all
proofs of the longevity of monogamic nations. Babylon is a ruin to-day,
and Babylon was polygamic. Egypt, to-day, is a ruin! Her massy piles
of ruin bespeak her former glory and her pristine beauty. And the last
edition of the polygamic nations--Turkey--is passing away. From the
Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, from the Danube, and the Jordan and the
Nile, the power of Mahommedanism is passing away before the advance of
the monogamic nations of the old world. Our own country is just in its
youth; but monogamic as it is, it is destined to live on, to outlive
the hoary past, to live on in its greatness, in its benificence, in its
power; to live on until it has demonstrated all those great problems
committed to our trust for human rights, religion, liberty and the
advancement of the race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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