MORMON MARRIAGES.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 906, 5 January 1881, Page 2

MORMON MARRIAGES.

An intelligent gentleman, who has recently spent several weeks at Salt Lake City, supplies the following facts to a San Francisco paper:—“The Mormons have only, for eternity only, for both time and eternity, and by four kinds of marriages, namely, for time proxy. If a Mormon marries a Gentile woman, it is for time only. At death he goes to heaven, and she goes to purgatory or perdition. He can call her out if he chooses, but her union with him does not ensure her salvation, as it would if she were a believer. If a Mormon wants to save an unmarried woman, but does not want to add her to his harem, he has her sealed to him for eternity only. After the ceremony of sealing, they have no special relations to each other, or reciprocal rights and duties in this life. But in the life to come the Mormon maiden secures a place in heaven through her spiritual union with a masculine believer; for the Mormon theory is, that unmarried men and women are imperfect, and as such not immortal. Marriage is necessary to complete a personality that will survive “ the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”

The usual Mormon marriage is between believers, and for both worlds and the more wives a Mormon has’ the holier heJs. But this does not apply, vice versa, to the women. The proxy marriages are based on the provisions of the Mosaic Code—that if a man die childless, his brother should take his wife and raise up seed to his deceased brother. An old Mormon dies without children. This fact is supposed, in some way, to offset his celestial felicity. So in order that his bliss may be perfected, some young Mormon takes his wife, as a proxy, in addition tn whatever wives he has

already, homing that children may be born who will be counted not as his, but as belonging to his deceased brother Mormon. Wonderful are Mormon ideas of marriage!