A NEW ZEALAND CONVERT ON MORMONISM.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 906, 5 January 1881, Page 2

A NEW ZEALAND CONVERT ON MORMONISM.

Mr. J. T. Lunnon, late priest of . the Canterbury (New Zealand) Mormon Conference, has addressed the following letter to an officer of the s.s., Australia, with a request that he would obtain it publication in the New Zealand journals. Mr. Lunnon left under the care of Elder Pearce, who was for some time in Auckland, and who took charge of a number of emigrants chiefly from the neighbourhood of Timaru. Mr. Lunnon when he left promised to write. He has kept his word, but the story he has to relate is somewhat different from what he expected. He says : —“ To the Editor, Sir, —As I have been informed that there is another exodus of poor, deluded Mormon victims shortly leaving New Zealand for Utah, and as I have some experience of the Mormon Church and consider it my duty before God and man to inform my fellowcountrymen what class of society they intend joining, and a few doctrines of the Mormon faith, which are not taught to them in New Zealand. The Mormon priesthood, as a rille, consists of liars, debauchees, and murderers, who are shaking with fear that the truth should come to light. I will begin with John Taylor, the present President of the Mormon Church, who stated in a public debate, while in France, that a plurality of wives was not either taught or practised in Utah, and read a passage from their Book of Doctrines to prove, while at the same time he had four wives-living.iu Utah. Orson Pratt, the apostle, and their champion debater on Polygamy has advised and counselled many young girls to marry into polygamy to old men that they might be saved, as the young men were not tried in the Kingdom of God and could not save them. In many instances he has caused young women to break of engagements with young men whom they loved, to gratify a bishop's preference, a missionary’s feelings, or an elder’s desires. I have written this as information for the deluded ones in New Zealand, and should they let this go unheeded they will be like the last batch of Mormons from that Colony who arrived here and have now left Utah for other States of America, grieving for the homes which they have broke up in New Zealand. Mormonism is nothing but a well-organised system of disloyalty and deception, which is luring thousands to poverty every year. If some of the Mormon elders had their deserts they would have been in gaol, even while in New Zealand, for indecent assault or something worse. I could tell a long story of their action in New Zealand, and were I there I would expose each one of them, but distance prevents my doing more than giving the present warning to the public.”