Show THE BIBLE AND OF WIVES this is confessedly an age of bibles when when ahe the sacred volume is disseminated widely and aud millions million of copies are annually comparatively given away and we think however much the bible may he disbelieved by professing christians and men having education and opportunities tuni ties that they should read it sufficiently to know something of its contents before pretending to say what is or what is not contained in it an I 1 I 1 intelligent writer in a popular periodical said some years ago aga 0 that it was useless trying to oppose polygamy from the bible it was so strongly sustained by that book but seme some some of tho wideawake polemics have lately found out that I 1 the bible does not contain a word approving of polygamy while they profess to accept the scriptures as a basis of all revealed religion we have neither time nor space at a present to reproduce arguments on the subject which have been so often presented to the public and for those opposed to us and our faith to so assert argues either the we most culpable ignorance on points which they claim to have studied or a still worse condition of mind by making assertions by proof in the face of facts which are incontro avertable ver table it will be sufficient naw now to briefly state that god commanded plurality of wives wives approved of it legislated for it declared by the mouth of his prophet eliat lie jie had given a number of wives to 0 one e of his servants and that everywhere in the bible it is spoken of as an institution approved by him all this is in in the bible the accepted foundation of jurisprudence principles of government and revealed religion by all christendom the Almighty gave a direct command to his people that if a married man should die childless his brother should take the widow to wife and raise up children to the name of the deceased and this whether previously married or not where previously married the injunction commands polygamy he legislated for the inheritance of the first born son of a polygamist husband if that son should happen to be the child of a wife not so well beloved as another he might have he declares exemption from certain duties for a man who took a new wife intimating by construction the husband having a wife elife or wives living at the time of sueh such mar ariage he declared to david through nathan the prophet when ire fre proving reproving him for the crime of adultery and murder 1 I gave unto thee thy masters house and thy masters ui wives tes ves into thy bosora sorn 11 and if these things had nol noil been enough theford said he would have given david more but because of his crimes crims of murder and adultery the sword was never to leave ats his house and his wives were to bo be taken and defiled which predictions were fulfilled to the very letter for any person to say ray bay say that teat the bible does not sustain plurality of wives and that god never approved of it in the face of such facts as these and a host of others which might be adduced is so childish as os to be scarcely worth the notice of anybody this attempt at argument glossed up in the flimsiest flims iest sophistical form is almost beneath contempt why not come out in language as in fact and throw the bible alde aide discard physiological and moral facts and assert the superiority of monogamy on the strength of prejudice and the custom of a few nations the reese neese river rev Sev cilie cille put the matter in its most honest shape some time ago when it said the age is against polygamy whether it be correct or incorrect constitutional or unconstitutional moral or immoral the at age le is against it and so expositors expository exposi tors of religion expositors expository exposi tors of law and expositors expository exposi tors of politics must make themselves silly in trying to find arguments where none can be found to sustain the erroneous and unholy prejudice of an age 0 which is drifting more rapidly to th the e depths of social degradation than any one which has preceded it while rejecting the only means by which its downward course might be arrested |