THE WAY OF THE MORMONS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 295, 8 May 1911, Page 3

THE WAY OF THE MORMONS

A FAMILY OF FORTY-THREE . CHILDREN. There two Joseph Smiths connected with the Mormon Church. One is Joseph F. Smith, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the other is Joseph Smith, head of the Reorganised Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who lives in Missouri, and is opposed to polygamy. It is not wholly clear to which a recent message refers, though it is the practices of the Mormons of Utah which nave been the subject of much criticism of late.

In 1890 Utah was admitted to statehood by the American Congress consequent on the making of a declaration by Mr. Woodruff, then head of the Mormon Church, that the Mormons were not teaching or encouraging polygamy, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice. On the strength of this declaration, Utah was granted the privilege of statehood; but the charge is now made, and is widely accepted as true, that the Mormons have never lived up to their agreement. "Even before 1901," says Mr. Hendrick, in MeClure's Magazine, "polygamous households had been re-es-tablished on a considerable scale, and with the succession of Joseph F. Smith to the presidency of the Church the restoration of old conditions became practically open." The indictment proceeds: "More than any of the prophet's successors has Mr. Smith brought back to' the Church the spirit of Brigham Young. He has not Brigham's ability or his capacity for leadership, but he has all of Brigham's fanaticism, all his aggressiveness, all his fiery devotion to the Mormon Church.

"In his eyes only one thing really counts, and that is Mormonism. 'From my youth up to the present,' he says, 'I have not believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet, for I have known that he was. In other words, my knowledge has superseded my belief.'

"In Mormonism the doctrine that is nearest President Joseph Smith's heart is unquestionably polygamy. Upon that subject he is an unyielding fanatic. 'Some people have supposed,' he said in a sermon preached on July 7. 1878,' that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity or non-essential to the salvation or exaltation of mankind. In other words some of the saints have said, and believe, that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious if he is faithful, as he possibly could' with more than one. I want nere to enter my solemn protest against this idea, for I know it is false. I understand the law of celestial marriage to mean that every man in this church who has the ability to obey and practise it in righteousness, and will not, shall be damned. I say I understand it to mean this and nothing less, and I testify in the name of Jesus that it does mean that. The marriage of one woman to a man for time and eternity by the sealing power, according to the law of God, is a fulfilment of the celestial law of marriage in part—and I is good so far as it goes. But this is] only the beginning of the law, not the whole of it.'

, "Mr. Smith has practised his own doctrine. His first marriage; t.hat'Nvjth Levira A. Smith, in 1859, turned put un-, happily. He has married five wives besides this one—two of them sisters—and up to date has had forty-three children. It is not strange that, under the presidency of a man of this type, there should be a resumption of polygamy."