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The Scriptures inform us that God created this earth as a habitation for man, and He placed man on it that he might have joy, a joy that is to be eternal. To accomplish these purposes, the preparatory one of peopling the earth, and the ultimate one of man's eternal happiness, He, the Creator, established marriage, and commanded those He first placed here on earth to be fruitful and multiply. This institution He regulated by strict laws given through His servants to His people in their various dispensations; and His son, our Savior, emphasized these commandments by most unequivocal teachings with regard to the sacredness of the marriage covenant, and of the sinfulness of divorce for other than the most grave departures from the spirit and intent of that covenant. In this is wisdom, for the experience of the world, in all its ages, proves that where lax ideas exist with regard to marriages and divorce, more especially where those ideas find expression in lax legislation, there we discover peoples and nations whose code of morals is inferior, and where sexual irregularities and sins increase, until that righteousness, which has been so truthfully said 'exalteth a nation' (Proverbs 14:34), ceases to have an existence in their midst. To a people who believe as we do, that true marriage was divinely instituted for the multiplication of mankind, and is not a union for time alone, but reaches into the eternities, the disruption of families by divorce is an evil of no ordinary character, not only bearing a harvest of sorrow and suffering in this life, but also having a far reaching influence into the world beyond the grave, and possibly involving others in the ruin who had no voice in the separation or power to avert its occurrence. For this reason the Latter-day Saints of all people should be most loath to sunder sacred ties once formed, and most determinedly opposed to the severance of unions made in holy places in God's appointed way, for light and trivial causes. (Oct. 6, 1886, MS 48:716).Share
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