MORMONISM EXPOSED.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1172, 11 October 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

MORMONISM EXPOSED.

Ax ex-priest of Mormonism has been < letting the outside world behind the j scenes of Mormonism. The following | is worthy of perusallt is a serious thing to contemplate that every three mouths or so a number of young girls from England, and even a larger proportion from Wales are shipped off to Salt Lake City, to become the victims of a system which is founded on gross and sensual wickedness, and from which they cannot escape. How are j they caught for such a purpose ? ‘ The ■ sisters here,’ says ex High Priest Haw- I kins, ‘ become acquainted with young j (iris, and take them to the meeting- | ouses. After a while, they ask them | to be baptised. If the girls say that ■ their parents will object, the elder quotes Scripture to the effect that whosoever does not leave father and mother for the Lord’s sake is not worthy of him. Last year,’ he adds, * 125 girls arrived at Salt Lake City, and only in 10 cases did their parents know what had become of them.’ Thus under cover of a frightful religion, there is practised in Loudon and throughout England a system of deception that is only comparable in its results to those Belgian abductions, which so recently moved the horror of English people. The method of ‘sealing ’ in the Mormon Church seems devised to specially impress the minds of girls who may thus be lured away. The ceremony of ‘ endowments,’ as it is called, which usually lasts from 7 o’clock in the morning to about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, is if ex-High Priest Hawkins may be believed, blasphemous almost beyond the power of imagination. The bride and bridegroom are bathed and anointed, end afterwards ‘ endowed ' with white garments lUI aprou of fig-leaves, and a ‘ new

name.’ They are led through one room after another : they listen, awestricken. whilst ‘Elohim ’ repeats passages of Scripture to the Archangel Michael. In turn they are introduced to Adam and Evo. to Satan (who squirms about on the floor in token of his defeat), and to the Apostle Peter, who snips pieces from the wedding raiment with a pair of scissors ! The ceremony is completed by taking oaths to which reference has already been made.’’