The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1882. MORMONISM AT LE BON'S.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 592, 17 March 1882, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1882. MORMONISM AT LE BON'S.

"Thank Heaven we live in »n age of civil and religious iber y'P has been the exclamation ©f many an enlightened dweller on ihie earth during ibis nineteenth century of ours, but we question if there are many people of such advanced thought as to deem it advisable that, whilst bigamy .id treated as a crime, our Government schools should he need for the purpose of disseminating the doctrines of polygamy!

In another part of these columns will be found a marvellous narrative from a correspondent at Le Bon's Bay. It relates that one evening liwt week two Mormon ttldora baptized a whole family into the Mormon faith. They afterwards asked .the local Sjlh/oI Committee for the use of 'the schooh'som for holding a Mormon service, a Teqticst which was actually granted. • and the chairman and greater part of the ■ School Committee absolutely recognised it by their presence, while the schoolmaster lifted his Just endeavours to keep the meeting as orderly as possible !

Had we not had every faith in the correspondent who sends uh the news, we Khould have strongly doubted the veracity of his HtateinentH. School committees) have often been laughed ai for incapacity, but that any body of men should allow a building erected by the State at great cost, for the purposes of education, to he used as a plnce where the vile doctrines of incest and adultery were to be promulented, passes all comprehension, and we call upon tho Board of Education to interfere, and put a stop to any such scandalous proceedings in future. It is truly terrible to contemplate that our d<;ar ones may be enticed from our midst by these wretched creatures in any way, but it is still more terrible to think that men who are the leaders of the people should aid them in

doing so.

The only charitable construction wo can put on it is, t v iat they are totally ignorant of the principles of Morinanism, that they do not know thnt the Apostles of the creed will marry a girl and then her sister and then her mother. How Brigham Young has stated that he believed it no, crime for brothers and sisters to ir.tennir ry an! that only prejudice prevents it, and to quote an able American writer on the subject :—

41 This dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one fonl nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own mother in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he reMrn, tho higher tho place they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer may be, though th"y do not seem to flay anything about that."

Even viewing it in a fairly practical manner eliminating every vestige of sentiment, fancy allowing these artful dtciples of Joseph Smith to entice people a way. who have been brought here at /rre-it fxpensß by the Government and are useful settler , *. It is not as if these poor people were really to be benefited by their exodus. Many a weary mile lies between them and the great city of the Salt Lake and on their arrival tlifre what will he their fate ? If all that vim tors have written be true, dreury indeed is the lot oftherank and file at Utah, and small the ho|>e of that competence ever being realised, which with steady labor is here a certainty.

We should be the last to interfere with the liberty of the subject, to say, you shall

iot *o hen; or th«re, but we do think that we should do all in our power to prevent poor, ignoram, deluded people from being led astray, and not use our Educational Institution* for the propagation of nucha . liiileous be'ief Hβ tint of the Mountain Meadow Murderers.