Scrap Book of Mormon Literature, Volume 2 (of 2). Religious Tracts

by Unknown

The Secret Opened.

In 1897, the Mormons, aided and abetted by many of the most influential non-Mormons, made a non-partisan effort to secure much needed municipal reforms. The movement was largely successful, but was hotly denounced by the office seekers of the republican and democratic parties as a "trick" of the church to restore political control over its people. In Salt Lake City the feeling was bitter and an attempt was made to resurrect the anti-Mormon "liberal" party. Failing in that, the excited politicians appealed to the clergy. A Presbyterian paper in Salt Lake began the publication of sundry articles running back into early Mormon literature, culling the crudities, slips and discrepancies to be found therein and using them to condemn the Mormons and Mormonism of today—a course that would be paralleled by attacking the Presbyterians of the present with the fanaticism, folly and worse of "no papacy" days. This publication was scattered over the country and started up the smouldering non-Mormon fire. The smoke encouraged the clergy in Utah to believe that there actually might be something in their sensational talk about polygamy. Then they got together in the summer of 1898 and adopted a series of resolutions declaring that plural marriages are still being contracted, that the Mormons control the state, injure the public schools, and that old Mormon Utah is on deck again. A few weeks later came the state democratic convention to nominate candidates and B. H. Roberts was nominated for congress. He was one of the men who were in polygamy when plural marriage was stopped. From the day of Roberts' nomination the writer of that petition found his opportunity and from then until now has not ceased to vilify the Mormons. He insisted that the election of Roberts would create a storm and then created it himself—a very common trick of false prophets. He revelled in his petition. That is, he sprung the trap he himself had set. I think he was trying to force the Mormon church to declare for the election of the republican ticket, for there was to be another election of a senator in 1899.

In addition to his use of the petition he reprinted the testimony of President Woodruff before a Master of Chancery and tried to prove that the manifesto of 1890 prohibited cohabitation among those then in polygamy. He knew that the president of the church could not annul a marriage. He knew that the hearing was held preliminary to a decree restoring what remained of the escheated church property. He knew that property was worth millions of dollars and the church needed it. There was not an attorney engaged in that hearing who did not want the church to get back its property. There was not a non-Mormon in Utah then mean enough to wish that the church might not get it. But there must be a record to the effect that polygamy had been given up. So President Woodruff consented to say that he included "cohabs" in his manifesto. At that time the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune was friendly, as I have shown, and although it now seeks to brand President Woodruff as a liar it said then that the manifesto "went only to the point of plural marriages," and added "we believe that the rule laid down has been as sacredly kept by this people as it would have been done by any other people; that the Mormons and Gentiles have a right to say that the change amounts to a transfiguration." The measureless infamy of the disappointed office seeker now seeking to pile odium upon the honored dead will be a fitting monument to his malodorous memory in Utah for years to come; and if our good old friend did stretch the truth to save that property it was a lie like that of Hugo's nun, the recording angel dropped a tear upon the slate and rubbed it out.

All this insanity of excitement through the country over alleged polygamous marriages has been created by a few men who are now laughing over their success in fooling the people. They have hunted these mountain states over—have imported special aid from New York—have declared that plural marriages are being contracted, and yet have not been able to find one case. Defeated in that they have arrested several men for "unlawful cohabitation" and advertised that as proof of polygamous marriages.

Avowing, with maledictions upon it, that polygamy is the "twin-relic of barbarism" and must die, they yet will not let it die, but drag it from its senile sleep, enhorse and caparison it like a waxen image of some old Catholic saint and lead it in triumphal procession through the land to excite the clamor of women gone hysterical through brooding in nightly loneliness over the clandestine amours of their monogamous husbands with other women more charming than themselves!

If polygamy were permitted to die a natural death the evangelical churches would lose their last foothold against the rising tide of Mormonism. It is not polygamy that disturbs them, but the steady growth of the Mormon church. Right or wrong, there is a current running to the Mormon church with increasing volume and velocity. The Mormon church and faith have been a boon to hundreds of thousands as poor as were those who heard Jesus gladly. It is today nearer to being a successful effort to inaugurate the Brotherhood of Man than anything ever tried.

In Conclusion,

I want to say that what is here presented does not err from truth and was not written with either knowledge or consent of any member of the Mormon church. It stands upon my personal knowledge. I am not a member of any church, and view all sects philosophically. I cannot perceive that any religion has been of divine origin, in the theological sense of the terms. To my mind they are all human, very human, in their origin. But, conceding to all the rights of intellectual liberty I claim for myself, I question not the right of the people to any religion that satisfies them. In so far as creeds and dogmas impose upon credulity, I claim the right to protest. Thus I have long protested against Calvanism in all its varieties as a wholly unjustifiable cruelty forced upon humanity through its ignorance and fear. I gladly admit that theology, like everything else, is subject to the progressive influence of the ages, and realize that the God of Calvin is not as mean as he was 400 years ago—has been much improved in the last 100 years under our free government and public education. I cheerfully concede that all theologians mean to be honest in the dogmas they create, and I believe that all churches sincerely endeavor to hold their people to defined standards of moral life. But I lay this against them—that they would have men and women practice moral living, not for itself, but to secure a definite reward after we have ceased to live here, a reward called "salvation" from threatened ills and horrors that exist only in the excited imagination of ignorance and superstition. It is childish—it is the mother bribing her boy with bread and jam, or frightening him with threats of "the bad man."

You see, then, that I am one of that class of persons called by all the professors of all the thousand and one varieties of so-called Christianity "an infidel." It is the easiest thing in the world to call people by opprobrious names, as the history of these unpopular Mormons makes manifest. In fact, no new thought appears that is not infidelity to some older one—no new issue that is not maligned by the satisfied believer in some old one. The term "infidel," as applied to persons who think for themselves, do their own business with the Infinite, and decline proffered rewards based on fear of God, is one of merit rather than reproach. Jesus was the great infidel of his time—crucified for truth derided by the prevailing orthodoxy of his day.

There are two kinds of infidelity in the world. One comes by growing up out of existing beliefs, the other by falling below them. The only harmful infidelity exists in the churches, and consists of professing one code of morals and living another. For instance, all Christians call Sunday the Lord's day and pretend to keep it holy, a sacred day devoted to the worship of God. Yet half of them, in this country, keep it as a day of frolic and dissipation. That does not harm the day, does not injure God, but it makes hypocrites of professing Christians. They are infidels who have fallen below their religion. For instance, again, take the seven million names of American people who petitioned congress to expel the Utah congressman. It is safe to say a large percentage of the signers were children who did not know what they were doing, but whose names were taken by Christian adults with intent to deceive.