"The text is, the right of heirship. I will, however, make an addition to the scripture, before I proceed further with my remarks, and say, 'the right of heirship in the Priesthood.'"
After asserting that the right of heirship belongs to the first-born son, he says:—
"There are sisters in the church that have been bereaved of their husbands, who died full of faith in the Holy Gospel, and full of hope for a glorious resurrection to eternal life. One of them is visited by a High Priest, of whom she seeks information touching her situation, and that of her husband. At the same time the woman has a son, twenty-five years of age, who is an Elder in one of the Quorums of the Seventies, and faithful in all the duties connected with his calling. She has also other sons and daughters. She asks this High-Priest what she shall do for her husband, and he very religiously says to her, 'You must be sealed to me, and I will bring up your husband, stand as proxy for him, receive his endowments, and all the sealing, keys, and blessings, and Eternal Priesthood for him, and be the father of your children.' Hear it, ye mothers! The mother that does that, barters away the sacred right of her son. Does she know it? No. But you that will hear, and be made to understand the true principles that govern this matter, go from this place, and do hereafter as has been done in by-gone days; instead of the children being robbed of their just rights, the woman shall lose her children, and they shall yet stand in their place, and be put in possession of their rights. Let mothers honor their children. If a woman has a son, let her honor that son."[174:A]
But we will not pursue these disgusting details further.
Capt. Robert Burton, the famous English traveller, thus epitomizes the Mormon faith:—
"In the Tessarakai Decalogue above quoted, we find syncretized the Shemitic Monotheism, the Persian Dualism, and the Triads and Trinities of the Egyptians and the Hindoos. The Hebrews also have a personal Theos; the Buddhists, avataras and incarnations; the Brahmins, self-apotheosis of man by prayer and penance; and the East generally holds to quietism,—a belief that repose is the only happiness, and to a vast complication of states, in the world to be.
"The Mormons are like the Pythagoreans, in their procreation, transmigration, and exaltation of souls; like the followers of Leucippus and Democritus in their atomic materialism; like the Epicureans in their pure atomic theories, their summum bonum, and their sensuous speculations; and like the Platonists and Gnostics in their belief of the Æon, of ideas, and of moving principles in element. They are Fetichists in their ghostly fancies, their evestra, which became souls and spirits. They are Jews in their theocracy, their ideas of angels, their hatred of gentiles, and their utter segregation from the great brotherhood of mankind. They are Christians, inasmuch as they base their faith upon the Bible, and hold to the divinity of Christ, the fall of man, the atonement, and the regeneration. They are Arians, inasmuch as they hold Christ to be 'the first of God's creatures,' a 'perfect creature, but still a creature.'
"They are Moslems in their views of the inferior status of womankind, in their polygamy, and in their resurrection of the material body. Like the followers of the Arabian Prophet, they hardly fear death, because they have elaborated 'continuation.' They take no leap in the dark; they spring from this sublunary stage into a known, not into an unknown world; hence also their worship is eminently secular, their sermons are political or commercial, and—religion being with them not a thing apart, but a portion and parcel of every-day life—the intervention of the Lord in their material affairs becomes natural, and only to be expected.
"Their visions, prophecies, and miracles are those of the Illuminati; their mysticism that of the Druses, and their belief in the Millennium is a completion of the dreams of the Apocalyptic sects.
Masonry has evidently entered into their scheme; the Demiurgus whom they worship is 'as good at mechanical inventions as at any other business.'