ty." Every
wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed"
ecclesiastically only, not civilly. It follows, as a legitimate
consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the
"spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and
unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may
and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is
performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which
is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of
divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact,
for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted. When a polygamist
dies, it becomes the duty of his "next friend" to care for his wives.
Thus, when Young became the President of the Church, he succeeded to all
the widows of Joseph Smith.

Every year some modification of the system is effected, which tends to
increase still further the confusion in the relations of the sexes. The
latest is the doctrine, (which, like polygamy in its earlier stages, is
believed, but not avowed,) that absence is temporary death, so far as
concerns the transference of wives. This is intended to apply to the two
or three hundred missionaries who are dispatched yearly to all parts
of the globe, from Stockholm to Macao. It is astonishing that these
missionary efforts, which have been pursued with unremitting zeal for
the last twenty years, should not have ingrafted upon Mormonism some
degree of that refinement which is supposed to result from travel. On
the contrary, they seem to have elaborated the natural brutality of the
Anglo-Saxon character; and especially with regard to polygamy, their
effect has been to acquaint the people of Utah with the grossest
features of its practice in foreign lands, and encourage them to
imitation. Every Mormon, prominent in the Church, however illiterate
in other respects, is thoroughly acquainted with the extent and
characteristics of polygamy in Asiatic countries, and prepared to defend
his own domestic habits, in argument, by historical and geographical
references. Not one of their missionaries has ever been admitted to
intercourse with the higher classes of European society. Their sphere
of labor and acquaintance has been entirely among those whom they would
term the lowly, but who might also be called the credulous and vulgar.
The abuse of a knowledge of the machinery of the Maso