POLYGAMY. THE DEBATE AT SALT LAKE CITY. ELDER PRATT QUOTES SCRIPTURE—THE QUES-TION STATED—MARRIAGE DEFINED—THE MORMON ARGUMENT—DR. NEWMAN'S REPLY—THE ARGUMENT TO PROVE THAT THE JEWS PRACTICED POLYGAMY—HOW IT WAS AN-SWERED—DR. NEWMAN'S ARGUMENT SUMMED UP. SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 15.—After six days of negotiation, the debate on polygamy, between the Rev. Mr. Newman and Elder Orson Pratt, was agreed on at noon of the 12th, the question to be, "Does the Bible sanction polygamy?" Elder Pratt to take the affirmative. Mr. Newman the negative. Three sessions, of two bours each, equally divided between the disputants, and to take place on three successive days, commencing on the 12th, were agreed on. Elder Pratt chose Judge Snow as Moderator; Mr. Newman chose Judge Hawley, and they together chose Marshal Patrick. The preliminaries had been settled only two hours previous to the opening of the debate, and so only about 2,000 people were present. Elder John Taylor opened the session with prayer, and then Elder Pratt commenced, citing Deut. xxi., 15,16,17: "If a man have two wives," &c.; Ex. xxi., 7-10 : "If a man sell his daughter," &c.; Deut. xxv., 5 and onward: "If brethren dwell together," &c.; Numb. xxxi., 17,18, concerning saving the Midianitish virgins ; Deut. xxi., 10-13 : "When thou goest forth to war," &c., as sanctioning and commanding polygamy, because, as he affirmed, the 12 tribes of Israel originated in polygamy and practiced it down to the coming of Christ, both monagamous and polygamous marriage being recognized among them and these texts were of general and not special application. If the contrary could be shown, he would have to yield the point, but until it should be, they had the right to construe these passages as not only sanctioning, but absolutely com-manding polygamy. Neither could the Christians ex-clude them from the Church, because it would be incon-sistent to cut them off from the Gospel for their obedi-ence to the law of God. He cited Exodus, xxii, 16,17, re-quiring a man who should seduce a maid to marry her; and Deut. xxii, 28,29, requiring the same in ease of rape, and claimed that there was no exception in these laws in favor of married persons, forgetting, apparently, that the cohabitation of a married man with a woman other than his wife was adultery, punishable, not by compul-sory marriage of his victim, but by death.
His next point was made in IId Chron. xxiv., 2, 3,15,16, which relates that Jehoiada, the priest, gave two wives to Joash the King, and then says that Joash did right all the days of Jehoiada, and that the latter lived to a ripe old age, died, and was buried among the kings because he had done right both toward God and toward His house. Next we were referred to Hosea, chapters ii. and iii., where it is said that God commanded Hosea to take a harlot and an adulteress to wife, and it was claimed that God commanded polygamy, and also some-times suspended His own laws, and even ordered them to be broken, not for our example and imitation, said Mr. Pratt, but for a special purpose. His law requiring a man to espouse the widow of a deceased brother, which is in opposition to the law of consanguinity, and his command to Abraham to slay Isaac, in contravention of the law against murder, were other instances of the same kind, showing that the Lord has a right to change His law if He so please. And if He so command us, we must obey. Suppose, said he, it should be proved that the Bible sanctioned polygamy? That would be no reason why we should practice it. We must have a command of our own. The people in these valleys do not practice polygamy because Moses au-thorized it, nor because the eminent men of Bible times practiced it. They did it-
Here the hammer fell. Elder Pratt, if he had not fully met the expectations of his friends, had presented his texts and maintained their pertinency and force, so far as he had time, in a good deal of the same style as the minister did who argued against high head-dresses from the text, "Top not come down," from "Let him that is on the house-top not come down." His manner was calm and courteous in the superlative degree.
MR. NEWMAN'S REPLY.
Mr. Newman said he had desired nine hours for the discussion of this question, but having been reduced to three by mutual consent, he would proceed at once to define the question, Does the Bible sanction polygamy? does it now, not did it formerly? Does the Bible, in the received English translation, in the Septuagent or Greek translations, or in the original Hebrew, sanction—sanc-tion—that is command, not tolerate, not suffer or regu-late, but command polygamy? Here followed an exposi-tion of the derivation and meaning of the word, being a plurality of wives or husbands, not of wives only. The correct word for that was polygamy. There was another word closely connected with these—polygandry—a plurality of husbands. It seemed to him that if a man might legally and rightfully have many wives a woman might have many husbands. [Applause from the women—'sh—'sh—'sh and hisses from the men.] Mr. Newman maintained that the Bible as it stands is authentic, the fact that the original manuscripts had been lost being of no consequence; that it was composed of history, biography, prophecy, law, poetry, instruc-tion, &c., and that we should not confound historical statements with precept and injunction. The New Tes-tament was a commentary on the Old. For example, Christ, commenting on the law of Moses, bringing out its hidden meaning, showed us that a man is not only an adulterer who marries more women than one, but who looks on a woman with lust. [Sensation.] He held further that if any part of the Bible had been in effect repealed, then it is not now of binding force.
He then passed to a close analyzation of the marriage established by by God in the time of man’s innocency—be-tween one man and one woman, in its nature, its ele-ments, its design, its rights, and obligations, and its defenses—and maintained that polygamy, invented by man since his apostasy, struck down and destroyed this Bible-marriage in all its essential features. It defeated its three fold object, by lessening his capacity for com-panionship and by causing a preponderance in births of one sex, thus tending to the ex-tinction of the race, and defeating pro-creation; by giving man more license in sexual intercourse, and thus encouraging lasciviousness. It relieved man of his obligat-tions of reciprocal love and mutual affection; it aug-mented his authority while lessening his power to pro-tect woman. In view of the usual distribution of goods, none but kings, nabobs, and priests could afford it, and herein it robbed the poor for the benefit of the rich. In the course of this exposition of the true and exposure of the spurious marriage, he drew a picture of the monoga-mous home, and, sharply contrasting it with that of the polygamist, compelled an involuntary burst of applause.
He next turned his attention to Elder Pratt's texts, referring to Deuteronomy xxv, 5, and onward; he went back to the antediluvians after his opponent, and exposed the absurdity of attacking the assumption, that because God made and married but one woman to the first man, therefore that was the model for all subsequent mar-riages ; by such reasoning as that offered, namely: if that be so, then, because God gave them but one garden to till nobody should ever till two gardens ; or because God clothed them with skins nobody should ever use anything else for clothing. In this there was a failure to distinguish between the essentials and the incidentals of marriage. He maintained that when Cain murdered Abel he was not married, and therefore his crime could not have grown out of monogamy; while, on the other hand, Lamech, the first polygamist, slew a man on the assumption that he had come to claim his rights. The first marriage in Eden was not a historical fact merely, for, coming down the stream of time, we find it referred to by Malachi, by Jesus, and St. Paul, as the ex-pression of a great law. And so the hammer fell.
Mr. Newman had not referred to Elder Pratt's texts much, and the Mormons seemed to think, therefore, that he could not answer them. But it was only because he had not had time. He had to define the question, and to give his idea of Bible marriage as contradistinguished from polygamous marriage first. As the assembly dis-persed a cheerful murmur of conversation rose from the crowd in anticipation, I suppose, of further victory on the morrow.
SECOND DAY—AFFIRMATIVE.
There were about 4,000 people present. After prayer, Mr. Pratt began by insisting that the original manuscript copy of the Bible was lost. He, however, accepted it as it stands, as conclusive evidence of polygamy. He de-nied that the Savior said that marrying more than one woman constituted adultery, and challenged the proof. He admitted Mr. Newman's definition of the term sanc-tion, in its full force. He had brought force yesterday, passage after passage from King James's Bible, in which polygamy was commanded under penalty of the heaviest curse of the law. If this was not sanc-tion he did not understand Webster or Newman. He had waited in vain for some rebutting testimony, but abso-lutely none had been adduced. He maintained that the crimes of Lamech, of Cain, the transgression of Adam or anybody else had no connection with the form of mar-riage. They merely proved, historically, that both polyg-amists and monogamists might be wicked men. All the remarks of his friend Newman about marriage were as applicable to plural as to single marriage. He refuted the idea that polyandry was as justifiable as polygamy, because it tended to produce sterility rather than fertil-ity of the woman, and destroyed all knowledge of the father. Mr. Pratt then went into an elaborate argument to prove that God was better pleased to see a few righteous men marry many wives, and beget and bring up troops of children, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, than he was with the monogamous marriage of the wicked, in which He had no part, except that He per-mitted it, who would lead their children to destruction by their evil teaching and example. The assumption of self-righteousness on the part of the polygamists in this did not seem to strike him as absurd, nor the fallacy of his assertion that God dispensed His blessings unevenly, as, for example, to the righteous many wives, to the wicked none, which, as well as the last proposition mentioned, he claimed the Scriptures bore witness to. He was happy, he said, to have Dr. Newman and his friends, full of philanthropy, as it were, come here and endeavor to re-claim them from their beastly habits, rather than enact laws to imprison their men and leave their women to suffer. He ended by a severe arraignment of monog-amous nations for their prostitution, infanticide, &c., alluding to New-York in particular, a part of whose creed it was to have but one wife around, and then to de-bauch themselves and each other in dens of prostitution. He called upon his distinguished friend to lay before the people the refutation of those passages of the Bible he had adduced the day before sanctioning polygamy. He asked him to prove that those laws were limited, if they were limited.
MR. NEWMAN'S SECOND SPEECH.
Mr. Newman devoted about five minutes to a notice of Mr. Pratt's scattering remarks, and then, asked if the gentleman had adduced a law sanctioning polygamy. Law, he said, was the expression of the legislative will. In legislating on any subject there must be a grand or-ganic act referring to that subject, in the light of which the general code and all particular laws must be inter-preted. No such law had been, or could be, produced commanding polygamy, but, on the other hand, in Le-viticus xviii. 18, we had such a law prohibiting it—"Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other in her lifetime," or, as the marginal reading is, " take one wife to another." This rendering was sustained by Cookson, Bishop Jewel, Dr. Edwards, a rid Dr. Dwight. According to Dr. Edwards, the Hebrew words translated "a wife to her sister," were found in the original but eight, times, and in each case they referred to inanimate objects, such as the wings of the cherubim, mortices, tenons, &c., and signified coupling together, one to an-other. They denoted the exact likeness of one thing to another, and here forbade, as the margin expressed it, the taking of one wife to another in her lifetime. But sup-pose, said Mr. Newman, as the polygamists claim, that it means to prohibit the marriage of two literal sisters, the Mormon practicing that must admit that he was living in violation of God's law.
Mr. Newman then examined the texts quoted by Mr. Pratt on the day before, showing that his construction of them was based on a gratuitous assumption on his part that the Israelites were a polygamous nation when the law of Moses was given. This assumption lie did not prove, and could not prove, consequently the argument fell through. Not one of these vaunted texts mentioned polygamy, nor, construed in the light of the great pro-hibition of polygamy he had presented, could any sanc-tion of it be tortured from them. He examined them seriatim, and showed conclusively that they bore no such construction as Mr. Pratt had given them, consid-ered by themselves.
Mr. Newman then made a telling allusion to Mr. Pratt's having given up the question at issue at the close of his hour, on the day before, by saying in effect that the Mor-mons claimed no right to practice polygamy because God commanded it, and His people practiced it in ancient times, but because they had been expressly commanded of God for themselves to do it, and asked him why, then, he had endeavored to drag the Bible into the question, in The Seer, in his correspondence with him in a New-York journal, and from this stand. He then charged that Mr. Pratt had brought nothing but downright assumptions as yet, unsupported by a particle of evidence, to the support of the affirmative of the question under debate. He had assumed that the Hebrews were a polygamous nation in the wilderness ; that these laws were given to regulate an institution al-ready existing; that they were general in their applica-tion, applying to all, which he (Dr. Newman had proved they were not; and none of these assumptions had he proved. He denied that the Hebrews were a polygamous nation at that time, and challenged the proof of the contrary. He reaffirmed that among the laws God gave them after He has called them for a. special purpose, regulating the commerce of the sexes, was the great law. Thou shalt not take one wife to another. That was the great law of marriage as established by God in the time of man's in-nocence, reestablished at the time of the flood, recorded by Moses, reenacted by Christ and St. Paul, and denied that Mr. Pratt had adduced one word from the Bible that directed or permitted any other kind of marriage. It was no evidence to bring passage after passage, which his learned friend knew, if construed in favor of polygamy, would be in direct op-position to the great central law on this subject. No abstract can do justice to Mr. Newman's argument of this day. His rendering of Leviticus xviii., 18, and his positive denial that the Israelites in the wilderness were polygamous as a nation, seemed to startle the audience, and altogether the effort impressed them so that they had little to say on dispersing.
THIRD DAY—MR. PRATT.
This was Sunday, and there were about 6,000 persons present. The debate was opened by singing as well as prayer. Mr. Pratt admitted that arguments had now been adduced on both sides. In answer to Mr. New-man's challenge, he entered into an arithmetical calculation to prove that the Israelites were polygamous in the days of Moses. He took Mr. Newman's statement of the entire number of them—2,500,000. He claimed that from the law of Pharaoh commanding the destruction of the male infants of the Hebrews, and on account of its execu-tion in one out of every 500 cases each year, for 80 years, there were 400,000 more marriageble women than men. In Numb, i, 46, he found the number of men above 20 years of age stated at 603,550, and he calculated the whole num-ber of families at 30,000 from the 22,273 families whose first-born were males, given in Numb. iii. 43. From these statistics he deduced that there were 1,003,550 women and 603,550 men older than 20 years, and 892,900 children under 20 years, divided into 30,000 families.. He then appor-tioned to each of the 30,000 heads of families seven wives and 70 children, leaving 573,550 unmarried men, and 793,550 unmarried women over 20 years of age, and con-cluded that he had thereby established that Israel was both polygamous and monogamous in the time of Moses. He next attempted to demonstrate that if the regula-tion of an institution was not sanction, nor was it con-demation; for while it was claimed that God gave laws regulating monogamy, it would hardly be admitted that this regulation condemned it. He next took up what Mr. Newman claimed to be the great law prohibiting polygamy. Levit. xviii., 18. Ac-cording to King James's translation, it read: "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister." His friend New-man, together with Messrs. Dwight, Edwards, and others, disagree with that translation, and somebody had inserted a different reading in the margin, viz.: "Thou shalt not take one wife to another." Mr. Newman held to this marginal reading, and not the text, to be correct. These great commenta-tors who thus alter King James's translation, as well as the translators were monogamists—monogamists con-tending with each other. Mr. Newman argued that the Hebrew contained something a little different from King James's translation. He had examined the text in the Hebrew, and he affirmed that there was no word in the original of the text that could be translated wife. It was manufactured serinture, for which there was no reason out that the translators were monogamists, and were afraid they should not find anything in the Bible condemning polygamy, and, therefore, manufactured it. If they had the right to manufacture a word to sustain them, then he had the same right, and to make it read, "Shalt not take one sister to another." This was the true rendering. It was a part and portion of the law of consanguinity which filled the rest of the chapter, prohibiting the marriage of sisters in that day, because of the tendency to quarrel between blood re-lations. He defied Mr. Newman and all the world of Hebrew scholars to find any word in the original to be translated wife, if the rendering be given that is in the margin, because there is no noun preceding the words "one to another."
He referred again to the unlimited nature of the com-mands adduced by him from the Bible on the first day of the debate. Mr. Newman had judged all those passages by the great foundation principle he claimed to have found in Levit. xviii., 18, which he had proved that Mr. Newman had misapprehended. That failing, therefore, those passages stood good, unless something else could be adduced against them.
If the passage forbidding the king to multiply wives unto himself confined him to one wife, then the same command confined him to one horse. The married kins-man of Boaz acknowledged that the law was binding on him by saying, "Go and redeem my right." The passages from Matthew and Malachi, made so much of by Mr. Newman, referred to divorce and not to polygamy. The marrying of a second wife without putting away the first was not adultery. The words "duty of marriage" meant more than betrothal. ac-cording to Gibbs, Professor of Theology in Yale College, it meant cohabitation. Hosea did not divorce one harlot before he married the other. Here was a law of God, general in its nature, or if limited, it couldn't be proved. There was no law against it. It stood as immovable as the Rock of Ages, and would stand when heaven and earth should pass away. It was a law that was binding on ancient Israel. He was sorry he had not more time, but, having discussed the subject, would leave it to all candid persons to judge.
MR. NEWMAN CLOSES THE DEBATE.
Mr. Newman said that it was unfortunate that his dis-tinguished friend, in his wonderful numerical calcula-tion, had based it on the assumption that the slaying of the male children of the Hebrews continued through 80 years and failed to prove it. Until he could prove that, his argument had no more foundation than a vision. Re-specting the great law prohibiting polygamy, he reaffirmed that the marginal translation was perfect to a word, "the gentleman had labored hard to show that God didn't mean what he said—"One woman to another." He ad-mitted the translation seven o| the eight passages to be correct, why not in the eighth? His admission knocked his argument to pieces. He challenged him to meet him on paper, any time or anywhere, on the Hebrew of this text. The marginal was the true rendering. He referred in his opening speech to the margin to strengthen his argument, and it was a poor rule that wouldn't work both ways. Suppose it meant what Mr. Pratt claimed. Dr. Newman proved yesterday that this law of Moses is not kept by the Mormons. Where was his solemn denunciation of this violation of Divine law? Yesterday he pronounced a curse on him that confirmeth all the words of this law to do them. Did not that curse rest on him and his people? To save polygamy, he stood here in the sight of God and His angels, and before this intelligent audience acknowl-edged that this people set God's law at defiance. What respect was due his argument from the teachings of Moses in support of polygamy? Respecting the parallel between the King's multiplying wives and horses, there was no law in regard to horses, but there was in regard to wives. If on an equal footing, then there was no limit to the number of wives a man might have. A passage of Scripture was often quoted in favor of polygamy to the effect that if a man forsake his wife he shall have a hundred. If it was good to forsake his wife, in that sense, it would be better to forsake the hundred. Then he shoud have 10,000. This is the argu-ment in Mr. Pratt's book, "The Seer." Why, such a man would keep the Almighty busy creating wives for him. [Sensation.] He regretted that he hadn't time to notice all the points made by his opponent; he desired to do so; he had pleaded for more time ; so had his friends, but it had been denied him.
He would now take up his argument where he left it yesterday, and apply the great law he had proclaimed on that occasion, in the Bible there were at most 25 or 30 cases of polygamy recorded out of the millions of people of whom it was the history, and upon the example of these the polygamists of our day rested their case. In considering them he divided the period before the law was given from that afterward. He then showed that Abraham was not a polygamist; that Hager was brought to him by his wife, Sarah, and that immediately there-after sue saw her wrong, but laid it on him; and that God sent the polygamous child away, the parents consenting. Abraham married Ketmah after Sarah's death, not before, &c. This remark-able patriarch was a monogamist, not a polyg-amist. [Sensation.] Jacob, he said, was inveigled into polygamy before he was converted at the brook Jabbok, and only lived in it 22 years of the 147 of his life. Moses, it was said here, was a polygamist, and Miriam was struck with leprosy because she murmured at it. Zip-porah, the daughter of Jethro, and the Ethiopian woman, were the same person, Midiah and Ethiopia the same part of Arabia. Moses then stood forth as a monogamist—this lawgiver of a polygamous nation, who should by all means have had a hundred wives. As to Gideon, he was an idolater as well as a polygamist, and if his polygamy was a law for us, then equally was his idol-atry. The Bible was silent as to both. For Elkauah, he could prove that Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was his first wife, and God's hearing her prayer, was a blessing on monogamy. Sacred writ says Hannah, being barren, Elkanah took another wife. Then David, the warrior, king, and poet, he had 10 wives, and was an adulterer and a murderer. If God's words to him, as was claimed, "I gave thee thy master's wives into thy bosom," sanctioned polygamy, then God's words, "I will take thy wives and give unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with them," sanctioned adultery and incest. David repented and put away his wives eight years before his death. What of Solomon, the great polygamist—the man with a thousand wives? It was said his greatness was predicted, and his polygamous birth and marriages thereby approved. But the greatness of Christ was also predicted. Did that justify and approve his betrayal and crucifixion? Again, he was told that if his doctrine was true Solomon was a bastard, and by the law couldn't come into the house of God at all, yet he built the Lord a house. This arose from a misunderstanding of the word. With us it meant off-spring born outside of lawful wedlock—monogamous matrimony. But it couldn't be proved from Jewish law that the offspring of a Jew and Jewess was a bastard. It was the offspring of a Jew and a Pagan that was meant by bastard. So that Solomon and others were exoner-ated. The geometrical progression of the evil of polyga-my was seen in the cases of Saul, David and Solomon. Saul had one wife and one concubine, David had ten, Solomon a thousand! And it broke the kingdom asun der. Now, said Mr. N., let us see; we have polygamists, Lamech the murderer, Jacob the liar and cheat, David the murderer and adulterer, Solomon turned to idolatry; and on the other hand, monogamists, Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, all the great prophets, Christ and the holy apostles. You are accustomed to hear that all the patriarchs, kings, and prophets of the Bible were polygamists. I assert to the contrary. Mr. N. then dwelt on Paul's words, "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife," &c., to prove that the New Testament condemned polyg-amy. It taught the mutual duties and rights of husband and wife. It agreed perfectly with Levit. xviii, 18. and the two constituted a statute clear and unquestionable against polygamy and for monogamy, it was uni-versally admitted that these passages from Paul proved the mutual nature of tlie re-lation—that the wife has as good a right to a whole husband, as the husband has to a whole wife. The words of the same Apostle, "Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith He, shall be one flesh," had been urged against the idea of exclusive monogamous wedlock. But Paul was showing the true relation of the body to Christ under the figure of marriage. Moreover, he affirmed that if a man married, not simply cohabited, but married a harlot, he did be-come one flesh with her. It was said that Paul's words, "The Bishops should therefore be blameless, the husband of one wife," was an indication that polygamy was prev-alent in the time of Christ; but this was a palpable con- tradiction of that other assertion of polygamists, that monogamy came from Greece and Rome, Palestine being a part of the Roman Empire at that time. This injunc-tion of the Apostle was the complement of "Let every man have his own wife," &c. He had been challenged to prove that polygamy was adultery. Here Mr. N. made an elaborate analysis of adultery, and kindred words, in the Greek and Hebrew, and ended by affirming that under the Jewish dispensa-tion he cohabitation of a man with any other woman than his wife was regarded as adultery; the word includ-ing, as they used it, fornication, adultery, and even the salacial lusts of the heart. Therefore, as a Christian minister, he proclaimed the fact that polygamy in adultery. [No, no, no, from the audience.]
He had been challenged to prove that polygamy was no preventive of prostitution. He had not time, but he was prepared to prove that prostitution was more prevalent in polygamous than in monogamous countries. The polygamists claimed the right, under the Federal Constitution, to practice it as religion. He was as proud as his opponent of our religious liberty. But the law of limitation applied to it the same as to the movements of the heavenly bodies. The Hindoo mother might come here, and throw her infant into the lake, and, according to the Mormon theory, the civil government could not prevent it. Yes, it could, they say, because it is murder. It is not murder, said Mr. Newman, it is divested of every attribute of murder. It is a religious act. Yet we have the right to prevent it. So we have the right to legislate with regard to marriage—to restrict men to one wife each. He was not in favor of harsh legislation, and would exert his in-fluence to prevent it should it be proposed. But he as-serted the principle that the civil government had the right to limit religious liberty within the bounds of de-cency, and so far as might be needful to secure the well-being of society. He alluded to the bearing of polygamy on the perpetuity of the national life, denying what waa claimed for it, and naming Greece, Rome, France, Ger-many, England, as living proofs to the contrary, while Turkey, the latest edition of a polygamous country, was fast passing away. Our own country was just in its youth; it was destined to outlive the hoary past; it would go on and on in greatness and power and glory until it had solved all those great problems of religious liberty and civil lights intrusted to it? These were the arguments for monogamy. When they could be overthrown we might receive polygamy as taught here. But until it could be proved that the orig-inal law of marriage had been abrogated; that there was no distinction between law and practice; that polyg-amy was a preventive of prostitution and was not adul-tery; that it tended to the perpetuity of the national life and the elevation of woman—until then we could not give up this grand idea that God's law condemns polygamy and commands monogamy; that the dearest interests of men and women and of the rising generation as well, demand of us the establishment and maintenance of monogamous mar-riage in our country. Then would be realized the happy picture of the Scriptures, where the husband and wife were one and the two were equivalent, where parents should bring up their children in the nurture and ad-monition of the Lord, where men should provide for their families, for we are told that he who will not do this is worse than an infidel—then, then indeed would monog-amy stand forth as the grand truth. The great discussion was closed. Before the railroad era such an event would have been impossible. In gen-eral, it may have served but to confirm the partisans of each system, but it cannot be that the intelligent and honest have not been impressed with the superior grandeur and strength of our side of the question. What is most singular in it all, I think, after all, is that there has not been a blow struck on account of this debate. I hope that the disputants will give us the contest over the passage in Leviticus, on which the direct Bible argument seems to hang chiefly, on paper.
