The friendship and intimacy existing between the Prophet and Bishop Whitney was strengthened and intensified by the giving in marriage to the former of the latter's eldest daughter, Sarah, in obedience to a revelation from God. This girl was but seventeen years of age, but she had implicit faith. She was the first woman, in this dispensation, given in plural marriage by and with the consent of both parents. Her father himself officiated in the ceremony. The revelation commanding and consecrating this union is in existence, though it has never been published. It bears the date July 27, 1842, and was given through the Prophet to the writer's grandfather, Newel K. Whitney. whose daughter Sarah became the wife of Joseph Smith for time and all eternity. The ceremony preceded by nearly a year the written document of the revelation on celestial marriage, first committed to paper July 12, 1843. But the principle itself was made known to Joseph some years earlier. Among the secrets confided by him to Bishop Whitney in Kirtland, was a knowledge of this self-same principle, which he declared would yet be received and practiced by the Church; a doctrine so far in advance of the ideas and traditions of the Saints themselves, to say nothing of the Gentile world, that he was obliged to use the utmost caution, lest some of his best and dearest friends should impute to him improper motives. The original manuscript of the revelation on plural marriage, as taken down by William Clayton, the Prophet's scribe, was given by Joseph to Bishop Whitney for safe keeping. He retained possession of it until the Prophet's wife Emma, having persuaded her husband to let her see it, on receiving it from his hands, threw it into the fire and destroyed it. Bishop Whitney, foreseeing the probable fate of the manuscript, had taken the precaution before delivering it up, to have it copied by his clerk, the late Joseph C. Kingsbury, who executed the task under his personal supervision. It was this same copy of the original that Bishop Whitney surrendered to President Brigham Young at Winter Quarters in 1846-7, and from that document "polygamy" was published to the world in the year 1852.