The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5

by Various

Prayer has always played an important part in both secular as well as religious assemblages, used as a means to impress and overawe these superstitious disciples of an all absorbing faith. Every ball, every party, all social gatherings and even the theatre in the olden time, opened and closed with prayer. In the dedication of a building they bless the different parts even to shingles and nails. A full hour was consumed when the large tabernacle was dedicated, in enumerating and blessing the different materials that made up its construction. One other very peculiar tenet of the church is baptism for the dead. They are women principally who enter with enthusiasm in practising this rite, and they have been immersed as many as twenty times in one day to insure the future of departed friends. It was the boast of one poor simple Scotch woman that she had secured places in Heaven for Sir William Wallace and Robert Bruce. In accordance with a purpose of the priesthood, children bore a prominent part in public affairs. They were called Utah's best crop—and less than ten years ago—they formed conspicuous portions of the audiences that gathered in the tabernacle and theatre. Their youthful voices in concert rivalled those of the tabernacle choir, the latter no mean institution as it numbered over 300. At the theatre, too young to hold up their heads, their mothers tended them on pillows. This custom has gradually been abolished until now an apostle can harangue by the hour on his favorite topic of "come up and pay your tithing without an infant's cry to interrupt the monotonus strain."

This theocratic government, where one man calls himself God's vicegerent and imposes his revelations on a narrow minded fanatical class of men, carries its own hand into all its branches, nothing being too small or petty for its fingers to grasp, and implicit obedience is to-day, as it always has been, the watch-word of the church. At church conferences there is never a dissenting voice and at the polls always the same unanimous vote. The following quotations give an idea of how the power is placed in Utah and of what theocracy consists:—Brigham Young said in the Tabernacle in 1869, "what is the greatest miracle that can be wrought before God, our Saviour, the angels, the inhabitants of the earth and the infernal regions? Is it raising the dead or healing the sick? No—it is not—it is bringing a people to strict obedience to the rule of the priesthood."

Orson Pratt, the learned apostle, has always taught that "people cannot govern themselves by laws of their own making or by officers of their own choosing, for that would be in direct rebellion to the law of God. Absolute power vested in one man is the best and most efficient human government. There is one kind of government that will secure permanent prosperity and happiness, and that is theocracy or the government of God through his prophet, seer and revelator."

President Kimball said in the tabernacle:—"Have not the majority of this congregation made most solemn covenants and vows that they will listen, obey and be subject to the priesthood? Have not the sisters made the same solemn covenant before God, angels and men that they will be subject to their husbands?"

President Taylor says:—"You want to pay your tithing fairly and squarely, or you will find yourselves outside of the pale of the church of the living God. You must also uphold the co-operative institutions."

Col. Hollister, a gentleman thoroughly acquainted with Mormonism, writes thus:—"There is no rule of the people intended in the Mormon church. There is no state government contemplated because it has every organ of despotic state government in and of itself. It takes no account whatever of the natural right of man to life, liberty, property, freedom of opinion or of conscience. Its bill of rights, its constitution, its laws are the revelations of the prophet. It has not a single idea or institution common to free government or free men. As long as they hold this theocratic idea, to force democratic government upon them, is a farce. Its political party is the church and into that political party no one can enter excepting through the church."

Polygamy disgraces us in the eyes of the world, and fills the home where it enters with untold misery; but a theocratic government, thoroughly equipped, unanimously responsive in all its branches, far-reaching in its designs and expanding as rapidly as that of the Mormon church, presents a great political enigma to the American people even when shorn of its most obnoxious feature. Congress and the country at large have their attention fixed upon the question of polygamy, and the proposed legislative commission, if endorsed by Congress, would bring the Mormon Church itself face to face with it. It is so embedded in the very roots of their organization that many Mormons insist that it would be utterly impossible for the church to dispense with it; and the Deseret News, the church organ in the issue following the President's Message, declares that "neither commissions, edicts or armies, or any earthly power can affect plural marriages of the Mormons for they are 'ecclesiastical, perpetual and eternal.'" No doubt there will be a convulsive effort made to retain the government of the Territory in their own hands, and they might be forced to abandon polygamy to save such a catastrophe, but would they do it in good faith?

What would their fanatical followers say if the "absolute command of God" to Joseph Smith is no longer to be regarded. If polygamy can, however, be happily abolished, there still remains a solid phalanx of determined men and women manipulated by the hand of wily priests and bishops, who do not believe in our institutions, who deny the right of individual feeling or action, who teach the doctrine that the Latter Day Saints will rule eventually the whole country and the world. Such compact power, so guarded, so absolute, is certainly an unparalleled achievement when the few years of its conception and execution in a barren desolate waste is considered. A similar case has never been witnessed before in the heart of any country on the globe, and it is safe to say that no other civilized nation would have tolerated such an anomaly in its midst. Germany even has forbidden Mormon missionaries to come within her borders. England is profuse in condemnation of our Government for permitting such an institution as polygamy, which she fosters however by sending one-half the recruits that come yearly to our shores to practise it. Scandinavia and our own land contribute the balance, and it is confidently asserted that Massachusetts alone gives more converts to Mormonism than are converted from it in Utah, Worthy mechanics and skilled laborers in our manufacturing towns are joining this standard which holds out temptations of temporal prosperity that are difficult to resist.

The Mormon church is fast peopling the immediate surrounding territories. Idaho is dangerously invaded and the balance of power threatened, while Colorado and Arizona have large, growing settlements.