WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
strong indictment of the charlatanry of Joe Smith. Bennett appears to have joined the sect with the intention of learning their secrets and exposing them.[1] He declared that men and women lived in sexual promiscuity in Utah. Another hostile critic was John D. Lee, who firmly believed that polygamy was an admirable institution, although he left the sect. In "Mormonism Unveiled," Lee states that the prophet Smith preached plural marriage privately after a revelation in 1843. Lee confesses that he had several wives, nineteen in all, who bore him sixty-four children.
Brigham Young was more explicit than Joseph Smith in the teaching of polygamy. In the publication "Times and Seasons," he made this declaration: "And I would say, as no man can be perfect without the woman, so no woman can be perfect without a man to lead her. I tell you the truth as it is in the bosom of eternity; and I say to every man upon the face of the earth, if he wishes to be saved, he cannot be saved without a woman by his side. This is spiritual wifeism, that is the doctrine of spiritual wives."
Biblical sanction, even in the teaching of Jesus Christ, was discovered by the promulgaters of polygamous unions.[2] W. A. Linn says that most of
- ↑ "Story of the Mormons," Linn.
- ↑ Op. cit. Linn.
303
