Chapter X (2)

“Now let us look at some of the works of Sarah, for which she is so
highly commended by the apostles, and by them held up as a pattern
for Christian ladies to imitate. ‘_Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, bare
him no children; and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name
was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath
restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid: it may
be that I may obtain children of her. And Abram hearkened unto the
voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the
Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and
gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife._’ See Gen., xvi., 1-3.

“According to Jesus Christ and the apostles, then, the only way to be
saved is to be adopted into the great family of polygamists by the
Gospel, and then strictly follow their examples.

“Again, John the Revelator describes the Holy City of the heavenly
Jerusalem, with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob inscribed on
the gates. Rev., xxi., 12.

“To sum up the whole, then, I find that polygamists were the friends
of God; that the family and lineage of a polygamist were selected
in which all nations should be blessed; that a polygamist is named
in the New Testament as the father of the faithful Christians of
after ages, and cited as a pattern for all generations; that the
wife of a polygamist, who encouraged her husband in the practice of
the same, and even urged him into it, and officiated in giving him
another wife, is named as an honorable and virtuous woman, a pattern
for Christian ladies, and the very mother of all holy women in the
Christian Church, whose aspiration it should be to be called her
daughters; that Jesus Christ has declared that the great fathers of
the polygamic family stand at the head in the kingdom of good; in
short, that all the saved of after generations should be saved by
becoming members of a polygamic family; that all those who do not
become members of it are strangers and aliens to the covenant of
promise, the commonwealth of Israel, and not heirs according to the
promise made to Abraham; that all people from the east, west, north,
or south, who enter into the kingdom, enter into the society of
polygamists, and under their patriarchal rule and government; indeed,
no one can even approach the gates of heaven without beholding the
names of twelve polygamists (the sons of four different women by one
man) engraven in everlasting glory upon the pearly gates.

“My dear sister, with the Scriptures before me, I could never find it
in my heart to reject the heavenly vision which has restored to man
the fullness of the Gospel, or the Latter-Day prophets and apostles,
merely because in this restoration is included the ancient law of
family organization and government preparatory to the restoration of
all Israel.

“But, leaving all Scripture, history, or precedent out of the
question, let us come to Nature’s law. What, then, appears to be the
great object of the marriage relations? I answer, the multiplying of
our species, the rearing and training of children.

“To accomplish this object, natural law would dictate that a husband
should remain apart from his wife at certain seasons, which, in the
very constitution of the female, are untimely; or, in other words,
indulgence should be not merely for pleasure or wanton desires, but
mainly for the purpose of procreation.

“The mortality of nature would teach a mother that, during Nature’s
process in the formation and growth of embryo man, her heart should
be pure, her thoughts and affections chaste, her mind calm, her
passions without excitement, while her body should be invigorated
with every exercise conducive to health and vigor, but by no means
subjected to any thing calculated to disturb, irritate, weary, or
exhaust any of its functions.

“And while a kind husband should nourish, sustain, and comfort the
wife of his bosom by every kindness and attention consistent with her
situation and with his most tender affection, still he should refrain
from all those untimely associations which are forbidden in the great
constitutional laws of female nature, which laws we see carried out
in almost the entire animal economy, human animals excepted.

“Polygamy, then, as practiced under the patriarchal law of God, tends
directly to the chastity of women, and to sound health and morals in
the constitutions of their offspring.

“You can read in the law of God, in your Bible, the times and
circumstances under which a woman should remain apart from her
husband, during which times she is considered unclean; and should her
husband come to her bed under such circumstances, he would commit a
gross sin both against the laws of nature and the wise provisions
of God’s law, as revealed in his word; in short, he would commit an
abomination; he would sin both against his own body, against the body
of his wife, and against the laws of procreation, in which the health
and morals of his offspring are directly concerned.

“The polygamic law of God opens to all vigorous, healthy, and
virtuous females a door by which they may become honorable wives
of virtuous men, and mothers of faithful, virtuous, healthy, and
vigorous children.

“And here let me ask you, my dear sister, what female in all New
Hampshire would marry a drunkard, a man of hereditary disease, a
debauchee, an idler, or a spendthrift; or what woman would become a
prostitute, or, on the other hand, live and die single, or without
forming those inexpressibly dear relationships of wife and mother,
if the Abrahamic covenant, or patriarchal laws of God, were extended
over your State, and held sacred and honorable by all?

“Dear sister, in your thoughtlessness you inquire, ‘Why not a
plurality of husbands as well as a plurality of wives?’ To which I
reply, 1st. God has never commanded or sanctioned a plurality of
husbands; 2d. ‘_Man is the head of the woman_,’ and no woman can
serve two lords; 3d. Such an order of things would work death and
not life, or, in plain language, it would multiply disease instead
of children. In fact, the experiment of a plurality of husbands,
or rather of one woman for many men, is in active operation, and
has been for centuries, in all the principal towns and cities of
‘_Christendom!_’ It is the genius of ‘_Christian institutions_,’
falsely so called. It is the result of ‘_Mystery Babylon, the great
whore of all the earth_.’ Or, in other words, it is the result of
making void the holy ordinances of God in relation to matrimony,
and introducing the laws of Rome, in which the clergy and nuns
are forbidden to marry, and other members only permitted to have
one wife. This law leaves females exposed to a life of single
‘_blessedness_,’ without husband, child, or friend to provide for
or comfort them; or to a life of poverty and loneliness, exposed to
temptation, to perverted affections, to unlawful means to gratify
them, or to the necessity of selling themselves for lucre. While the
man who has abundance of means is tempted to spend it on a mistress
in secret, and in a lawless way, the law of God would have given her
to him as an honorable wife. These circumstances give rise to murder,
infanticide, suicide, disease, remorse, despair, wretchedness,
poverty, untimely death, with all the attendant train of jealousies,
heartrending miseries, want of confidence in families, contaminating
disease, etc.; and, finally, to the horrible license system, in which
governments called Christian license their fair daughters, I will
not say to play the beast, but to a degradation far beneath them;
for every species of the animal creation, except man, refrain from
such abominable excesses, and observe in a great measure the laws of
nature in procreation.

“I again repeat that Nature has constituted the female differently
from the male, and for a different purpose. The strength of the
female constitution is designed to flow in a stream of _life_, to
nourish and sustain the embryo, to bring it forth, and to nurse it
on her bosom. When Nature is not in operation within her in these
particulars and for these heavenly ends, it has wisely provided
relief at regular periods, in order that her system may be kept pure
and healthy, without exhausting the fountain of life on the one hand,
or drying up its river of life on the other, till mature age and an
approaching change of worlds render it necessary for her to cease
to be fruitful, and give her to rest a while, and enjoy a tranquil
life in the midst of that family circle, endeared to her by so many
ties, and which may be supposed, at this period of her life, to be
approaching the vigor of manhood, and therefore able to comfort and
sustain her.

“Not so with man. He has no such drawback upon his strength. It is
his to move in a wider sphere. If God shall count him worthy of a
hundred fold in this life of wives and children, and houses, and
lands, and kindreds, he may even aspire to patriarchal sovereignty,
to empire; to be the prince or head of a tribe or tribes; and,
like Abraham of old, be able to send forth, for the defense of his
country, hundreds and thousands of his own warriors, born in his own
house.

“A noble man of God, who is full of the Spirit of the Most High,
and is counted worthy to converse with Jehovah or with the Son of
God, and to associate with angels and the spirits of just men made
perfect--one who will teach his children, and bring them up in the
light of unadulterated and eternal truth--is more worthy of a hundred
wives and children than the ignorant slave of passion, or of vice and
folly, is to have one wife and one child. Indeed, the God of Abraham
is so much better pleased with one than with the other, that he would
even take away the one talent, which is habitually abused, neglected,
or put to an improper use, and give it to him who has ten talents.

“In the patriarchal order of family government the wife is bound
to the law of her husband. She honors, ‘_calls him lord_,’ even as
Sarah obeyed and honored Abraham. She lives for him, and to increase
his glory, his greatness, his kingdom, or family. Her affections are
centred in her God, her husband, and her children.

“The children are also under his government worlds without end.
‘_While life, or thought, or being lasts, or immortality endures_,’
they are bound to obey him as their father and king.

“He also has a head to whom he is responsible. He must keep the
commandments of God and observe his laws. He must not take a wife
unless she is given to him by the law and authority of God. He must
not commit adultery, nor take liberties with any woman except his
own, who are secured to him by the holy ordinances of matrimony.

“Hence a nation organized under the law of the Gospel, or, in
other words, the law of Abraham and the patriarchs, would have no
institutions tending to licentiousness; no adulteries, fornications,
etc., would be tolerated. No houses or institutions would exist
for traffic in shame, or in the life-blood of our fair daughters.
Wealthy men would have no inducement to keep a mistress in secret,
or unlawfully. Females would have no grounds for temptation in any
such lawless life. Neither money nor pleasure could tempt them, nor
poverty drive them to any such excess, because the door would be
open for every virtuous female to form the honorable and endearing
relationships of wife and mother in some virtuous family, where
love, and peace, and plenty would crown her days, and truth and the
practice of virtue qualify her to be transplanted with her family
circle in that eternal soil where they might multiply their children
without pain, or sorrow, or death, and go on increasing in numbers,
in wealth, in greatness, in glory, might, majesty, power, and
dominion, in worlds without end.

“Oh my dear sister, could the dark veil of tradition be rent from
your mind--could you gaze for a moment on the resurrection of the
just--could you behold Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives
and children, clad in the bloom, freshness, and beauty of immortal
_flesh and bones_--clothed in robes of fine white linen, bedecked
with precious stones and gold, and surrounded with an offspring
of immortals as countless as the stars of the firmament or as the
grains of sand upon the sea-shore, over which they reign as kings and
queens forever and ever, you would then know something of the weight
of those words of the sacred writer which are recorded in relation
to the four wives of Jacob, the mothers of the twelve patriarchs,
namely, ‘_These did build the house of Israel_.’

“Oh that my dear kindred could but realize that they have need
to repent of the sins, ignorance, and traditions of those
perverted systems which are misnamed ‘_Christianity_,’ and be
baptized--_buried_ in the water, in the likeness of the death and
burial of Jesus Christ, and rise to newness of life in the likeness
of his resurrection; receive his Spirit by the laying on of the
hands of an apostle, according to promise, and forsake the world and
the pride thereof. Thus they would be adopted into the family of
Abraham, become his sons and daughters, see and enjoy for themselves
the visions of the Spirit of eternal truth, which bear witness of
the family order of heaven, and the beauties and glories of eternal
kindred ties, for my pen can never describe them.

“Dear, _dear_ kindred: remember, according to the New Testament,
and the testimony of an ancient apostle, if you are ever saved in
the kingdom of God, it must be by being adopted into the family of
polygamists--the family of the great patriarch Abraham; for in his
seed, or family, and not out of it, ‘_shall all the nations and
kindreds of the earth be blessed_.’

“You say you believe polygamy is ‘_licentious_;’ that it is
‘_abominable_,’ ‘_beastly_,’ etc.; ‘the practice only of the most
barbarous nations, or of the Dark Ages, or of some great or good men
who were left to commit gross sins.’ Yet you say you are anxious for
me to be converted to your faith; and that we may see each other in
this life, and be associated in one great family in that life which
has no end.

“Now, in order to comply with your wishes, I must renounce the Old
and New Testaments; must count Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their
families, as licentious, wicked, beastly, abominable characters;
Moses, Nathan, David, and the prophets, no better. I must look upon
the God of Israel as partaker in all these abominations, by holding
them in fellowship; and even as a minister of such iniquity, by
giving King Saul’s wives into King David’s bosom, and afterward by
taking David’s wives from him, and giving them to his neighbor. I
must consider Jesus Christ, and Paul, and John, as either living in a
dark age, as full of the darkness and ignorance of barbarous climes,
or else willfully abominable and wicked in fellowshiping polygamists,
and representing them as fathers of the faithful and rulers in
heaven. I must doom them all to hell, with adulterers, fornicators,
etc., or else, at least, assign to them some nook or corner in
heaven, as ignorant persons, who, knowing but little, were beaten
with few stripes; while, by analogy, I must learn to consider the
Roman popes, clergy, and nuns, who do not marry at all, as foremost
in the ranks of glory, and those Catholics and Protestants who have
but one wife as next in order of salvation, glory, immortality, and
eternal life.

“Now, dear friends, much as I long to see you, and dear as you are
to me, I can never come to these terms. I feel as though the Gospel
had introduced me into the right family, into the right lineage, and
into good company. And, besides all these considerations, should
I ever become so beclouded with unbelief of the Scriptures and
heavenly institutions as to agree with my kindred in New Hampshire in
_theory_, still my practical circumstances are different, and would,
I fear, continue to separate us by a wide and almost impassable gulf.

“For instance, I have (as you see, in all good conscience, founded
on the Word of God) formed family and kindred ties which are
inexpressibly dear to me, and which I can never bring my feelings to
consent to dissolve. I have a good and virtuous husband whom I love.
We have four little children which are mutually and inexpressibly
dear to us. And, besides this, my husband has seven other living
wives, and one who has departed to a better world. He has in all
upward of twenty-five children. All these mothers and children are
endeared to me by kindred ties, by mutual affection, by acquaintance
and association; and the mothers in particular, by mutual and
long-continued exercises of toil, patience, long-suffering, and
sisterly kindness. We all have our imperfections in this life; but
I know that these are good and worthy women, and that my husband
is a good and worthy man; one who keeps the commandments of Jesus
Christ, and presides in his family like an Abraham. He seeks to
provide for them with all diligence; he loves them all, and seeks to
comfort them and make them happy. He teaches them the commandments
of Jesus Christ, and gathers them about him in the family circle to
call upon his God, both morning and evening. He and his family have
the confidence, esteem, good-will, and fellowship of this entire
Territory, and of a wide circle of acquaintances in Europe and
America. He is a practical teacher of morals and religion, a promoter
of general education, and at present occupies an honorable seat in
the Legislative Council of this Territory.

“Now, as to visiting my kindred in New Hampshire, I would be pleased
to do so were it the will of God. But, first, the laws of that State
must be so modified by enlightened legislation, and the customs and
consciences of its inhabitants, and of my kindred, so altered, that
my husband can accompany me with all his wives and children, and be
as much respected and honored in his family organization and in his
holy calling as he is at home, or in the same manner as the patriarch
Jacob would have been respected had he, with his wives and children,
paid a visit to his kindred. As my husband is yet in his youth, as
well as myself, I fondly hope we shall live to see that day; for
already the star of Jacob is in the ascendency; the house of Israel
is about to be restored; while ‘_Mystery Babylon_,’ with all her
institutions, awaits her own overthrow. Till this is the case in New
Hampshire, my kindred will be under the necessity of coming here
to see us, or, on the other hand, we will be mutually compelled to
forego the pleasure of each other’s company.

“You mention in your letter that Paul the apostle recommended that
bishops be the husband of one wife. Why this was the case I do not
know, unless it was, as he says, that while he was among Romans he
did as Romans did. Rome at that time governed the world, as it were;
and, although gross idolaters, they held to the one-wife system.
Under these circumstances, no doubt, the apostle Paul, seeing a great
many polygamists in the Church, recommended that they had better
choose for this particular temporal office men of small families, who
would not be in disrepute with the government. This is precisely our
course in those countries where Roman institutions still bear sway.
Our elders there have but one wife, in order to conform to the laws
of men.

“You inquire why Elder W., when at your house, denied that the Church
of this age held to the doctrine of plurality. I answer that he might
have been ignorant of the fact, as our belief on this point was not
published till 1852. And had he known it, he had no right to reveal
the same until the full time had arrived. God kindly withheld this
doctrine for a time, because of the ignorance and prejudice of the
nations of mystic Babylon, that peradventure he might save some of
them.

“Now, dear sister, I must close. I wish all my kindred and old
acquaintances to see this letter, or a copy thereof, and that they
will consider it as if written to themselves. I love them dearly, and
greatly desire and pray for their salvation, and that we may all meet
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.

“Dear sister, do not let your prejudices and traditions keep you from
believing the Bible, nor the pride, shame, or love of the world keep
you from your seat in the kingdom of heaven, among the royal family
of polygamists. Write often and freely.

“With sentiments of the deepest affection and kindred feeling, I
remain, dear sister, your affectionate sister,

“BELINDA MARDEN PRATT.”