The ordinance that has given so much unpleasant notoriety to this church is that of polygamy, or plural marriage as the Mormons designate it. There are three kinds of marriage; the marriage for this world as in other churches, "till death do us part;" the marriage for this world and for eternity combined; and the marriage for eternity alone, independent and separate from this world's relationship.
The Mormon woman has no place in the future state excepting as she enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family, the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in Heaven. His sealed wives are said to number two hundred and fifty.
Joseph Smith has also been very popular and has had scores sealed to him.
To uphold this peculiarly constituted church, various crimes have been committed, varying in hue, but the Mountain Meadow Massacre, when one hundred and nineteen men, women and children were butchered in cold blood under a flag of truce, surpasses in atrocity any act of the savage tribes by whom they are surrounded, and has stained indelibly the Mormon church. Before the advent of the Union Pacific Railroad, to breath a word against the church organization or any of its acts or resist one of their tenets or accumulate more wealth than was acceptable to the leaders, has always brought down instant and the severest punishment, and the perpetrators could never be brought to justice as they were emissaries of Brigham Young and his councillors.
It is polygamy, however, more than all their other deeds and revelations that has entailed misery, suffering and degradation. It has been the parent of more crime, more disloyalty, more deceit and sin generally than all the other causes combined. It is claimed that the revelation of polygamy came to the prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 at Nauvoo, and it was secretly practised by him and by other members of his church; but it was not published to the world until 1852, when Brigham Young made it known in Utah, thinking no doubt that he was beyond the pale of civilization and the terrors of the law. It was not made obligatory, but those who practised it were to have greater exaltation in the next world. A woman conforming in other respects is entitled to a seat in Heaven, but it is reserved for the polygamist to be one with the Father. Of course there is no room for Gentiles in the Mormon Heaven, excepting as hewers of wood and drawers of water to some Mormon saint.