and for all eternity."[3] This constitutes celestial marriage.
The thought that plural marriage has ever been the head and front
of "Mormon" offending, that to it is traceable as the true cause
the hatred of other sects and the unpopularity of the Church, is
not tenable to the earnest thinker. Sad as have been the
experiences of the people in consequence of this practise, deep
and anguish-laden as have been the sighs and groans, hot and
bitter as have been the tears so caused, the heaviest
persecution, the cruelest treatment of their history began before
plural marriage was known in the Church.

[Footnote 3: For treatment of Celestial Marraige and other Temple
ordinances, see "The House of the Lord," by the present author,
Salt Lake City, Utah, 1912.]

There is no sect nor people that sets a higher value on virtue
and chastity than do the Latter-day Saints, nor a people that
visits surer retribution upon the heads of offenders against the
laws of sexual purity. To them marriage is not, can never be, a
civil compact alone; its significance reaches beyond the grave;
its obligations are eternal; and the Latter-day Saints are
notable for the sanctity with which they invest the marital
state. It has been my privilege to tread the soil of many lands,
to observe the customs and study the habits of more nations than
one; and I have yet to find the place and meet the people, where
and with whom the purity of man and woman is held more precious
than among the maligned "Mormons" in the mountain valleys of the
west. There I find this measure of just equality of the sexes--
_that the sins of man shall not be visited upon the head of
woman_.