Defense of Polygamy, by a
Lady of
Belinda Marden
Pratt
Millennial Star, July 29th, 1854
Dear Sister,
Your letter of Oct. 2 was received
on yesterday. My joy on its reception was more than I can express. I had waited
so long for your answer to our last, that I had almost
concluded my friends were offended, and would write to me no more. Judge, then,
of my joy when I read the sentiments of friendship and of sisterly affection
expressed in your letter.
We are all well here, and are
prosperous and happy in our family circle. My children, four in number, are
healthy and cheerful, and fast expanding their physical and intellectual
faculties. Health, peace, and prosperity have attended us all the day long.
It seems, my dear sister, that we
are no nearer together in our religious views than formerly. Why is this? Are
we not bound to leave this world, with all we possess therein, and reap the
reward of our doings here in a never-ending hereafter? If so, do we not desire
to be un-deceived, and to know and to do the truth? Do we not all wish in our
very hearts to be sincere with ourselves, and to be honest and frank with each
other?
If so, you will bear with me
patiently, while I give a few of my reasons for embracing, and holding sacred,
that particular point in the doctrine of the Church of the Saints to which you,
my dear sister, together with a large majority of Christendom, so decidedly
object. I mean, a "plurality of wives."
I have a Bible, which I have been
taught from my infancy to hold sacred. In this Bible, I read of a holy man
named Abraham, who is represented as the friend of God, a faithful man in all
things, a man who kept the commandments of God, and who is called, in the New
Testament, "the father of the faithful." See James 2:23; Rom. 4:16;
Gal. 3:8,9,16,29.
I find this man had a plurality of
wives, some of which were called concubines. See Book of Genesis; and for his
concubines, see 25:6.
I also find his grandson Jacob
possessed of four wives, twelve sons, and a daughter. These wives are spoken
very highly of, by the sacred writers, as honourable
and virtuous women. "These," say the Scriptures, "did build the
house of
Jacob himself was also a man of
God, and the Lord blessed him and his house, and commanded him to be fruitful
and multiply. See Gen. 30 to 35 and particularly 35:10,11.
I find also that the twelve sons of
Jacob, by these four wives, became princes, heads of tribes, patriarchs, whose
names are had in everlasting remembrance to all generations.
Now God talked with Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob frequently; and His angels also visited and talked with them, and
blessed them and their wives and children. He also reproved the sins of some of
the sons of Jacob, for hating and selling their brother, and for adultery. But
in all His communications with them, He never condemned their family
organization; but, on the contrary, always approved of it, and blessed them in
this respect. He even told Abraham that He would make him the father of many
nations, and that in him and his seed all the nations and kindreds
of the earth should be blessed. See Genesis 18:17-19; also 12:1-3. In later
years I find the plurality of wives perpetuated, sanctioned, and provided for
in the law of Moses.
David the Psalmist not only had a
plurality of wives, but the Lord Himself spoke by the mouth of Nathan the
Prophet, and told David that He (the Lord) had given his master's wives into
his bosom; but because he had committed adultery with the wife of Uriah, and had caused his murder, He would take his wives
and give them to a neighbour of his, &c. See 2
Samuel 12:7-11.
Here, then, we have the word of the
Lord, not only sanctioning polygamy, but actually giving to king David the
wives of his master (Saul), and afterward taking the wives of David from him,
and giving them to another man. Here we have a sample of severe reproof and
punishment for adultery and murder, while polygamy is authorized and approved
of God.
But to come to
the New Testament. I
find Jesus Christ speaks very highly of Abraham and his family. He says,
"Many shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and
from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the
Again he said, "If ye were
Abraham's seed, ye would do the works of Abraham."
Paul the Apostle wrote to the
saints of his day, and informed them as follows: "As many of you as have
been baptized into Christ have put on Christ; and if ye are Christ's, then are
ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." [Gal 3:29]
He also sets forth Abraham and
Sarah as patterns of faith and good works, and as the father and mother of
faithful Christians, who should, by faith and good works, aspire to be counted
the sons of Abraham and daughters of Sarah.
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 harkened unto the voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abram's
wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the
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
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 honourable 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 God; 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 the 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
matrimony and 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 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 very exercise conducive to health and vigour,
but by no means subjected to anything 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 the offspring are directly
concerned.
The polygamic
law of God opens all vigorous, healthy, and virtuous females a door by which
they may become honourable 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 honourable
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; 2nd, "Man is the head of the
woman," and no woman can serve two lords; 3rd, 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 principle 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 inducing
the laws of
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 awhile, 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 vigour 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 an 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 Defence 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 hundred wives and
children, than the ignorant slave of passion, or for 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 by the law of her husband. She honours, "calls him lord," even as Sarah obeyed
and honoured Abraham. She lives for him, and to
increase his glory, his greatness, his kingdom, or family. Her affections are
centered 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, not take
liberties with any woman except his own, who are secured to him by the holy
ordinance 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, &c., 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 honourable 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.
O 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 bosom, 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 for ever 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
O 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 hands of an Apostle, according to
promise, and forsake the world and the pride thereof. 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
"licentiousness;" that it is "abominable,"
"beastly," &c; "the practice of only the most barbarous
nations, or of dark ages, or of some great or good men who were left to commit
gross sins." Yet 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 king Saul's wives into
king David's bosom; and afterwards by taking David's wives from him, and giving
them to his neighbour. I must consider Jesus Christ,
and Paul, and John, as either living in a age, as full
of the darkness and ignorance of barbarous climes, or else willfully abominable
and wicked, in fellowshipping polygamists, and representing them as fathers of
the faithful, and rulers in heaven. I must doom them all to hell, with
adulterers, ignorant persons, who, knowing 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, my 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 a 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 upwards of twenty-five children. All
these mothers and children are endeared to me by kindred ties, by mutual
affection, by acquaintance and association; and 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
Now, as to visiting my kindred in
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 the Romans he did as the Romans did.
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
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
Dear sister, do not let your
prejudices and traditions keep you from believing the Bible; nor 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 deepest
affection and kindred feeling, I remain, dear sister, your affectionate sister.
Belinda Marden
Pratt
Millennial Star, July 29th, 1854
