"The Latter-day Saints regard the marriage ceremony performed exclusively within temple precincts as the one and only perfect contract of matrimony," wrote Elder James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve in The House of the Lord.
"They recognize the full legal validity and moral obligation of any marriage entered into under the secular law; but civil marriages and indeed all marriages made without the binding authority of the Holy Priesthood they regard as contracts for this life only, and therefore lacking the higher and superior elements of a complete and perpetual union."They hold that the family relationships of earth may be made lasting and binding beyond the veil of death. They say that under the perfect law operative in the celestial worlds, the earthly relation of husband and wife, parent and child, will endure in full force and effect, provided such relationship has been sealed on earth by the power and authority of the Holy Priesthood. The ordinary rite of matrimony as established by secular law, and as prescribed by sectarian rule, unites the man and the woman for this world only; the higher law of marriage as divinely revealed joins the parties for time and eternity."
