Improvement Era, January 1928

Improvement Era Vol. XXXI JANUARY, 1928 No. 3 Complete Marriage — Righteousness : Mutilated Marriage — Sin By Elder B. H. Roberts Editors Improvement Era: RESPONDING to your request to write you an article on Mar- riage, I have concluded to write under the above caption — Complete Marriage and Mutilated Marriage; the first right- eousness, the second sin. It is chiefly with the second phase of the dual-titled subject that I shall deal, because at the present there seems to be an organized effort against Complete Marriage to the enlarge- ment and justification of sensual, sex indulgence, under a proposed pseuc/o-marriage system. Two things enter into Complete Marriage: companionship and offspring — perpetuation of family — of race; and these arise from God's law in the creation. After creation had proceeded up to the point of bringing forth vegetable and animal life to its fulness, and every such thing had been created and was commanded to reproduce "after its kind," then God said to those Intelligences associated with him in the creation: "Let us make man in our image, after our like- ness," that is to say, "after our kind;" and dominion was to be given them over the rest of the creation. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruit- ful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion — over every living thing. * * * * And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good." (Gen. 1 ) . In the second account of the creation, or in the carrying out of the plan in material form of what in the first account was the spirit- ual creation, the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed, and gave him the law respecting the forbidden fruit. But the Lord God saw that it was not good that man should be alone, and therefore he made an help