| Show WHAT NATURE AND revelation SAY THE Rocky bocky mountain christian christiana advocate for june contains a lecture delivered by rev W carver of the M E church entitled y reus 11 it is intended as an argument agans fc Mormon mormonism iam lam in general and plurality of wives in particular 1 ci la Is the weakest effort of the kind hind we have ever seen in print and CollS consists ts principally in a series of assertions without argument oril or illustration lu the lecturer ann aun announces ounces that his bis t is to look at the family relation from the standpoint of nature maini mainly he exalts na nature ture turo very highly and says 41 THE B BEST GOOD is 13 fou found lid ild upon her finger boards also who fights against nature fights against god 17 he further lurther says god in in revelation must agree avree c with god in nature he lle then eels forth a number of I 1 naked reckless assertions such as these polygamy has not one solitary or com mouda tiou in nature history or revelation revelation 1 nature has baa made no provision provi fion for polygamy goldor bad monogamy lono iono ramy zamy versus polygamy the divine law of marriage the gentleman must bo be very deaf to the voice of nature and very blind tott 10 those iose lose same sam efinger finger boards on which he finds inscribed the best grood good 1 e if he does not hear bear and see that her are polygamous rather than monogamous laws have been framed 1 in comparatively modern times against the ancient general and natural practice of plural marriage and prejudice prejudices a hostile to it have been formed in the hearts of a minority of tho race but nature untrammeled by those enactments and restriction sj speaks through the ahe whole animal kingdom as well as the human family in favor of male polygamy the thu divlus law as recognized by mr carver is also in its favor the mosaic code makes special provisions ll 11 for the poly gamio famil family re lation tatlo n under it a man with two wives must endow his first born son whether of the first or plural wife with a double inheritance 1 that law recognizes the tho point that a married man may take a new wire wiro it also requires tinder under certain fixed penalties the brother of a deceased married man to take the widow and raise up seed to the dead brother whether he bo be himself a married or a single man nature in the earliest times established plural marriage deity delty in the written law afterwards confirmed and regulated the practice the same law mado made deat death h the punishment for adultery A man might marry more wives than one under the law but ho he might not take away another mans mana wife the via gla distinction between plural marriage and adultery could not be more clearly defined than in the case cue of king david As a reward for his good deeds god gave him already a polygamist the wives of the dead saul into his bosom As a punishment for taking a living mans wife he took all his wives away god blessed him in n his polygamy but cursed him in his adultery now the gentleman says god in revelation must agree with god in nature therefore if the bible be true and be he preaches that it is god in revelation sanctions and blesses and directs polygamy etro erro nature mature sanctions blesses and directs polygamy and now let him produce one general commandment of god again against sta a man having more wives than one or one proof that nature forbids it it is easy to that it is unnatural for a it woman to have more than one husband at the same time but impossible to establish the carver proposition the only approach to lin an argument exhibited in the gent lemans lecture is in its latter part here be he cites statistics but they have no bearing whatever upon the question to prove that nature is against polygamy he quotes from census reports and other tables the relative number of male and female births in various places this is merely throwing the dust of figures into the eyes of his audience to blind them on the merits of the case if statistics had tiny any important bearing on the question which we do not admit the relative numbers of marriageable males and females should be quoted the births have nathl nothing t to d do 1 0 with it if it statistics be a admitted fiig 1 d the question should be are there I 1 more mom fe twan than males of a mar age and condition I 1 in a given comm unity units the answer caust be truthfully given in the affirm atre as regards almost every part of the voad except mom settled regions remarks are continually made concerning the large number of unmarried females to be found in all thickly populated places from an article in the last issue of the nineteenth century on womans comans Wo mans rights in england 1 we war quote the following soe Soc social lal lai and political difficulties as a rule have their beginning in the beginning of society itself 1 we can scarcely think away any existing social evil without mentally renouncing a corresponding good but we can think away the woman question and its intricacies by simply imagining the proportion of our marrying men to be ber as great groat as it once was this may seem at first sight only to postpone the difficulty because the failing falling off in the number of possible english husbands is itself a complex in the conditions of our modern national nati annl anal life the existence ol 01 a large class clam of supernumerary per women is 18 an hn accomplished fact the most important antecedent if it not the di cause of the movement for female emancipation has been the increasing rarity of marriage no impartial person can deny i that the womans comans rights amov movement ement bears on the face of it the impress of the celibate female femie interests which it is so largely calculated tl to promote women is an ugly und unnatural phrase ii it ia is a libel on the fair sex there would bo be no women to whom such a term could be applied if statutory law lav was not hostile to natural law in preventing those ladies from ob tain husbands in marriage ia is to be found the best good for woman if there are not husbands enough to go round nature will say let two or more marry the same husband if it they so choose and all agree to the compact nature would say bay the same in a case where two women have a supreme af affection for the same man whether they be 11 or not nol and landhere herb here Is where we throw out the question of statistics polygamy is not so much a question of figures as of affection and choice thero there are many men totally unworthy of one wife no virtuous woman should bo be compelled to select between celibacy and the embraces of a brute bruto or tho companionship of a debauchee none but the good deserve the fair now kowler let lel mr carver truly take nature and revelation for fon foghis hia his guide not his perversions and wresting 8 of either and he will nind find that figures history social requirements biblical admonitions and moral moral and physiological progress are all against enforce enforced or monogamy let him throw his birth statistics aside and cast his bigotry and prejudices to the winds let him read the bible without his methodist spectacles and give nature a chance to speak without a dectar sectarian ian muzzle and he will find that his lecture is aa as far from the truth as a crumbling carcass of a celibate priest is from a living vigorous patriarch p standing at the tho head of a numerous family prospered of nature blessed of god and ani loved by all his household |
