The Mormon Menace | Page 3

he was murdered.
Mormonism is not, when a first fanaticism has subsided, a religion that
would address the popular taste. It is a religion of gloom, of bitterness,
of fear, of iron hand to punish the recalcitrant. It demands slavish
submission on the part of every man. It insists upon abjection,

self-effacement, a surrender of individuality on the part of every
woman. The man is to work and obey; the woman is to submit and bear
children; all are to be for the Church, of the Church, by the Church,
hoping nothing, fearing nothing, knowing nothing beyond the will of
the Church. The money price of Mormonism is a tithe of the member's
income - the Church takes a tenth. The member may pay in money or
in kind; he may sell and pay his tenth in dollars, or he may bring to the
tithing yard his butter, or eggs, or hay, or wheat, or whatever he shall
raise as the harvest of his labors.
In the old time the President of the Church was the temporal as well as
spiritual head. No one might doubt his "revelations" or dispute his
commands without being visited with punishment which ran from a
fine to the death penalty. When outsiders invaded their regions the
Mormons, by command of Brigham Young, struck them down, as in
the Mountain Meadows murders. This was in the day when the arm of
national power was too short to reach them. Now, when it can reach
them, the Church conspires where before it assassinated, and strives to
do by chicane what it aforetime did by shedding blood. And all to
defend itself in the practice of polygamy!
One would ask why the Mormons set such extravagant store by that
doctrine of many wives. This is the great reason: It serves to mark the
Church members and separate and set them apart from Gentile
influences. Mormonism is the sort of religion that children would
renounce, and converts, when their heat had cooled, abandon. The
women would leave it on grounds of jealousy and sentiment; the men
would quit in a spirit of independence and a want of superstitious belief
in the Prophet's "revelations." Polygamy prevents this. It shuts the door
of Gentile sympathy against the Mormon. The Mormon women are
beings disgraced among the Gentiles; they must defend their good
repute. The children of polygamous marriages must defend polygamy
to defend their own legitimacy. The practice, which doubtless had its
beginning solely to produce as rapidly as might be a Church strength,
now acts as a bar to the member's escape; wherefore the President, his
two counselors, the twelve apostles and others at the head of Mormon
affairs, insist upon it as a best, if not an only, Church protection.

Without polygamy the Mormon membership would dwindle until
Mormonism had utterly died out. The Mormon heads think so, and
preserve polygamy as a means of preserving the Church.
What the Mormon leaders think and feel and say on this keynote
question of polygamy, however much they may seek to hide their
sentiments behind a mask of lies, may be found in former utterances
from the Church pulpit, made before the shadow of the law had fallen
across it.
President Heber C. Kimball, in a discourse delivered in the Tabernacle,
November 9, 1856 (Deseret News, volume 6, page 291), said: "I have
no wife or child that has any right to rebel against me. If they violate
my laws and rebel against me, they will get into trouble just as quickly
as though they transgressed the counsels and teachings of Brother
Brigham. Does it give a woman a right to sin against me because she is
my wife? No; but it is her duty to do my will as I do the will of my
Father and my God. It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her
husband, and unless she is I would not give a damn for all her queenly
right and authority, nor for her either, if she will quarrel and lie about
the work of God and the principles of plurality. A disregard of plain
and correct teachings is the reason why so many are dead and damned,
and twice plucked up by the roots, and I would as soon baptize the
devil as some of you."
October 6, 1855 (volume 5, page 274), Kimball said: "If you oppose
any of the works of God you will cultivate a spirit of apostasy. If you
oppose what is called the spiritual wife doctrine, the patriarchal order,
which is of God, that course will corrode you with apostasy, and you
will go overboard. The principle of plurality of wives never will be
done away, although some sisters have had revelations that when this
time passes