When Brigham Young passed from earth, he was mourned of the people as deeply as was Moses of Israel.  And had he not proved himself a Moses, aye and a Joshua, too?  He had led the people into the land of holy promise, and had divided unto them their inheritances.  He was a man with clear title as one of the small brotherhood we call great.  As carpenter, farmer, pioneer, capitalist, financier, preacher, apostle, prophet—­in everything he was a leader among men.  Even those who opposed him in politics and in religion respected him for his talents, his magnanimity, his liberality, and his manliness; and years after his demise, men who had refused him honor while alive brought their mites and their gold to erect a monument of stone and bronze to the memory of this man who needs it not.  With his death closed another epoch in the history of his people, and a successor arose, one who was capable of leading and judging under the changed conditions.

-----------

But perhaps I am suspected of having forgotten or of having intentionally omitted reference to what popular belief once considered the chief feature of “Mormonism,” the cornerstone of the structure, the secret of its influence over its members, and of its attractiveness to its proselytes, viz., the peculiarity of the “Mormon” institution of marriage.  The Latter-day Saints were long regarded as a polygamous people.  That plural marriage has been practised by a limited proportion of the people, under sanction of Church ordinance, has never since the introduction of the system been denied.  But that plural marriage is a vital tenet of the Church is not true.  What the Latter-day Saints call celestial marriage is characteristic of the Church, and is in very general practise; but of celestial marriage, plurality of wives was an incident, never an essential.  Yet the two have often been confused in the popular mind.

We believe in a literal resurrection and an actual hereafter, in which future state shall be recognized every sanctified and authorized relationship existing here on earth—­of parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife.  We believe, further that contracts as of marriage, to be valid beyond the veil of mortality must be sanctioned by a power greater than that of earth.  With the seal of the holy Priesthood upon their wedded state, these people believe implicitly in the perpetuity of that relationship on the far side of the grave.  They marry not with the saddening limitation “Until death do you part,” but “For time 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.