TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS—FIFTY THOUSAND WOMEN WITH THE BALLOT—THEIR GRAND MISSION TO THE NATION—A FORESHADOWING OF THE FUTURE OF THE WOMEN OF MORMONDOM.

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"

The Daughter of Zion!

Fifty thousand daughters of Zion! Each with her banner!

Her banner, female suffrage!

It is the great battle of woman for woman's rights. The Lord of Hosts is with her.

The rights of the women of Zion, and the rights of the women of all nations.

Her battle-field: America first; the great world next. And the God of Israel is in the controversy.

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The chiefest right of woman is in the shaping and settlement of the marriage question. The voice of civilization well enunciates this supreme doctrine. To commit this all-sacred matter to a congress of politicians, or to leave it to the narrow exactitude of the law-making department, is as barbaric as any monstrous thing the imagination can conceive. Not ruder was it in the warlike founders of Rome to seize the virgins as spoil, and make them wives to accomplish their empire-founding ambitions, than for a congress of American legislators to seize and prostitute the marriage question to their own political ends and popularity.

Can there be any doubt that the men of Washington have seized polygamy for their own ends? And are these men of the parliamentary Sodom of modern times the proper persons to decide the marriage question?

Will woman allow her sanctuary to be thus invaded and her supremest subject thus defiled?

If there is anything divine in human affairs it is marriage, or the relations between man and woman. Here love, not congressional law, must be the arbitrator. Here woman, not man, must give consent. It is the divine law of nature, illustrated in all civilized examples. What is not thus is barbaric.

Woman is chief in the consents of marriage. It is her right, under God her father and God her mother, to say to society what shall be the relations between man and woman—hers, in plain fact, to decide the marriage question.

The women of Mormondom have thus far decided on the marriage order of the patriarchs of Israel; for they have the Israelitish genius and conception of the object of man's creation. In the everlasting covenant of marriage they have considered and honored their God-father and God-mother.

In turn, the Gentile woman must decide the marriage question for herself. The law of God and nature is the same to her. The question still is the woman's. She can decide with or without God, as seemeth her best; but the Mormon woman has decided upon the experience and righteousness of her Heavenly Father and her Heavenly Mother.

A certain manifest destiny has made the marriage problem the supreme of Mormonism. How suggestive, in this view, is the fact that Congress, by special legislation, has made polygamy the very alpha and omega of the Mormon problem. The Mormon women, therefore, must perforce of circumstances, by their faith and action greatly influence the future destiny of Mormonism.

The enfranchisement of the Mormon women was suggested by the country, to give them the power to rule their own fate and to choose according to their own free will. Nothing but their free will can now prevail.

Their Legislature enfranchised them—gave them the power absolute, not only to determine their own lives, but to hold the very destiny of Utah.

If it was Brigham Young who gave to them that unparalleled power, no matter what should be declared by the enemy as his motive, then has he done more for woman than any man living. But Mormon apostles and representatives executed this grand charter of woman's rights; and George Q. Cannon's noble declaration at the time—that the charter of female suffrage ought to be extended to the entire republic—is deserving the acclamations of the women of America.

New civilizations are the chiefest boons of humanity. Never was a new civilization more needed than now, for in the last century the world has rushed over the track-way of a thousand years. A train dashing forward at the rate of one hundred miles an hour would not be in more danger than will soon be society, unless a safety-valve—a new civilization—is opened.

This is the woman's age. The universal voice of society proclaims the fact. Woman must, therefore, lay the corner-stone of the new civilization. Her arm will be most potent in rearing the glorious structure of the future. Man cannot prevent it, for in it is a divine intending.

There is a providence in the very attitude of the Mormon women. The prophesy is distinctly pronounced in the whole history of their lives, that they shall be apostolic to the age.

A new apostleship is ever innovative. The Mormon women have established an astounding innovation in polygamy. It has been infinitely offensive. So much the better! For it has made a great noise in the world, and has shaken the old and rotten institutions of Christendom. That shaking was not only inevitable, but necessary, before a new civilization.

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We have seen the daughters of Zion, with her sons, establish their institutions upon the foundation of new revelation. We have seen them rearing temples to the august name of the God of Israel. We have seen their matchless faith, their devotion, their heroism.

We have seen them, because of their fidelity to their religion, driven from city to city and from State to State.

We have seen them in the awful hour of martyrdom.

We have seen them in the exodus of modern Israel from Gentile civilization, following their Moses.

The daughters of Zion were going up to the chambers of the mountains, to hide from the oppressor till the day of their strength.

Their banners were then their pioneer whips. Their banner now is female suffrage—on it inscribed, "Woman's Rights! in the name of the God of Israel!"

Fifty thousand of the daughters of Zion! Each with her banner!

We have seen them on the cross, with their crown of thorns. We shall see them on their throne, with their crown of glory. In this is divine and everlasting justice.

They have sown in tears they shall reap in gladness.

With their pioneer whips in their hands they came up to the chambers of refuge, as exiles.

With the scepter of woman's rights, they will go down as apostles to evangelize the nation.

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"

The Daughter of Zion!