THE ANTI-MORMON CRUSADE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 6, 1 July 1911, Page 9

THE ANTI-MORMON CRUSADE.

FACTS AND FALLACIES. (English Review of Reviews). There was at one time some talk of appointing Bishop Welldon, Dean of Manchester, to the Bishopric of Southwark, which has now been filled by the appointment of Dr. Burge, headmaster of Winchester. The Dean is a good man and a staunch friend of peace. But the part which he took last month in heading the anti-Mormon crusade justifies the Prime Minister in passing him over. It is almast inconceivable that a man of his experience and knowledge of the world should have so far forgotten the elementary principles of religious toleration as publicly to demand that Parliament should pass a law prohibiting the teaching of the tenets of the Mormon faith in any part of the United Kingdom. it is astonishing to find such evidence of tne atavistic tendency on the part of bishops to revert to the type of Archbishop Laud. The Bishop of London is almost as kid, and as for Father Bernard Vaughan, nothing will satisfy him but the summary enforcement of lynch law against any Mormon or defender of the right of Mormons to free speech. The whole pitiful exhibition of religious intolerance is a melancholy illustration of the ease with which even good men succumb to the sensational appeals of unscrupulous journalists. It was "good copy" to attack the Mormons. They are in the minority. Their tenets are unpopular. A cry could easily be raised against them on the sanctimonious plea of a pious zeal for the sanctity of the home. Therefore, "Down with them! Down with them!" It is a disreputable form of the "Hep, Hep," which has so often hounded savage mobs to the massacre of the Jews. That Mormons in their heart of hearts believe that polygamy is a divine ordinance may be as true as.it is undoubtedly true that many Roman Catholics hanker after the right to save the souls of men by dealing summarily with the bodies of heretics. But that is no reason for persecuting either of them. There are more so-called Christian Englishmen living in non-legal polygamous relations with women in the United Kingdom at this moment than there were Mormons living with plural lives in all the world, before polygamy was abolished in Utah. The Mormon wife is honored. She bears her husband's name; her children are recognised and carefully brought up. The English Christian's mistress is despised; she is allowed to call herself by the name of the man to whom he bears children; and these children are branded as bastards and. disowned by their father. It fs probable, nay, absolutely certain, that there are more prostitutes in London to-day than there are plural wives in all Utah. Why, then, this Pecksnifflan zeal to save innocent English girls from the horrors of Salt Lake, while not a word is said about the dangers of Piccadilly? The Mormons in this country are not polygamists. They do not preach polygamy; they repudiate it. No English girl has yet been proved to have tracted a plural marriage as the result of their teaching. The parsons and priests and bishops who have been befooled by the Daily Express and Daily Mail ought to be thoroughly ashamed of •themselves. If Bishop Ingram and Father Vaughan were to stand in sackcloth and ashes, at Charing Cross for a whole day the experience would do them good, and be an edifying object-lesson to the roan in the street.

PLAYING WITH FIRE. Nothing is more easily roused thnn the demon of religious intolerance. Nothing is so futile as religious persecution that stops short of extermination. If the Mormons had not been persecuted in tneir birthplace the Church of the Lat-ter-Day Saints would have perished in its infancy. It was the blood of the martyrs—even such a sorry martyr as Joseph Smith—which was the seed of that church. But what is quite inconceivable is that Papists and papistic-ally-inclined Anglicans should not realise that they are playing with Are when they attempt to harry the Mormons out of the land by mob violence., The savage passions that brought about the 1 Lord George Gordon riots in the eighteenth century and the Orange riots in our own time are still smouldering under the surface. Father Vaughan longs Ito see every Mormon seized by the scruff of the neck and flung into the sea. For one Englishman who wishes to drown a Mormon there are hundreds who would Ike to drown a Jesuit, and tne clamor that is raised about emigrating girls to Utah is nothing to the fiendish yells that might be roused at any time bv a Newdigate redivivus ■who would set on foot a crusade against convent bastille in whicn imprisoned ladies were said to suffer the worst outrages from shaveling monks. It is rather discreditable to our pulput and our press that I have been left almost alone to raise a protest in the name ol religious liberty against Mormon baiting. I suppose people arc afraid of being called pro-Mormons, a sobriquet which was, of course, immediately applied to me.

THE REAL MORMON DANGER. , There ia a Mormon danger, and a real Mormon danger, but it has nothing to do with ns, and it is strengthened and increased by those absurd heretics about polygamy, which conceal the real peril., The real Mormon danger lies in the fact | that, strange and almost incredible though it s«ems, the Mormons do really believe in their extraordinary religion, and prove their faith by the punctual payment of tithes for its maintenance.; They have by their faith and their tithes, and by the' keen business foresight of their leaders, realised in their own way ue cherished ideal of Cecil.Rhodes. He : dreamed of a great political secret so-' ciety composed of fanatical believers in the Imperial idea, whose chiefs should have the control of £80,000,000. With this fund at their disposal, Mr. Rhodes believed the -directors of his secular Society of Jesus—minus Jesus—would be able to dominate political parties and save the Empire as Loyola saved the Church of Rome. The' Mormons have sutetituted for the Imperial idea of Mr. Rhodes the political religious ideas of Brigham Young. They have created a secret oath-bound organisation, and they have accumulated a capital which is estimated at £100,000,000, Their position in the Western States enables them, although in a minority, to exercise a casting vote in State elections. They have already one Mormon Senator. Soon they will control the election of a -dozen. And the end is not yet. It is not their polygamy, but their faith, their industry, their sobriety, and their readiness to pay tithes and obey orders which make them a danger to the Republic. And the more their religion is attacked the greater will be their power.