As this dogma is made a strong-hold of faith with these deluded people, a brief investigation of its evidences may perhaps be useful and interesting:
I affirm,
- Polygamy is anti-scriptural.
- Polygamy is anti-natural.
- Polygamy is irrational.
- Polygamy is anti-Mormon.
I. Polygamy is anti-scriptural.
1. In investigating this position, it is necessary to view the whole of the Scriptures, neither limiting ourselves to the ante-Abrahamic nor the ante-Christian periods. God's dealings are to be viewed as a whole. In the beginning Adam was created pure and holy, and God bestowed on him one wife. If polygamy had been the Lord's way of "peopling the earth," then, of all other times, polygamy would have been instituted. Why was it not? Malachi, ii. 15, tells us the reason: "And did he not make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore, take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth." God had the residue of the Spirit; had it pleased omniscient wisdom to have created more, omnipotent power would have performed it. He did not do so, "because he sought a godly seed." The only inference that can be deduced from this passage, is, that as the seed of monogamy is godly, because of the monogamy, then the seed of polygamy must be ungodly. History, sacred and profane, will sustain this position. Polygamy produced men like Ishmael, whose first greeting was a curse, "His hand shall be against every man, and every man's
