| 88 medley of absurdity and contradiction; but it falls upon the masses like the moon's rays upon the frosty plain. It does not warm the soul into action; it only shows a wrong-a great wrong truly-a terrible picture; but those who would turn from it must look upon -. What? Upon vacancy; for scientists fail to offer a balm for the evil-a reverse picture to beckon them from the ugly one which they have revealed.
Whether "nature abhors a vacuum," or not, evidently the religious soul does. The truth is the whole and sole cause of the evils under which Utah groans, is a perverted religion; a perverted priesthood; out of which grows a perverted morality and social system; and whoever fails to take in this idea in their design to improve the condition of the people of Utah at most can only give temporary and partial relief-lop a few branches off the bitter tree.
For this reason the efforts of the spiritualists, the other branch of liberals, are also powerless to reach the cause.. Dancing tables, rope-tying tests, throwing furniture, and flying mediums, or talking spirits, contradicting each other, will never satisfy a people who believe in the existence of a power to reveal itself "with all deceivableness of unrighteousness and lying wonders."
Much less can the advocates of the current theology of the age, whether Catholic or Protestant, rise to the occasion and correct the errors of Utah.
The people of Utah have been proselyted from those various faiths and creeds, and a return to them savors of "wallowing in the mire," after having "been washed" for remission of sins. Catholicism is by them regarded as a form without life or substance, and Protestantism as devoid of even the form.
In short, none of these parties possess an antidote for the Utah contagion, though each and all may offer a cordial of relief, and receive a reward for so doing with him who "gives a cup of water" in the goodness of his heart.
We have alluded to the lack of qualifications on the part of some who are laboring in good earnest in this field of missionary enterprise. To ignore or repudiate the Book of Mormon completely unfits any party to deal with the question at issue. To speak of "Joe Smith and his crowd of villains, escaping from justice," etc., is not a passport to the judgments, and much less the hearts of the Mormon people. And every Mormon-man, woman, and child-knows that instead of "Joe Smith" escaping from justice, he was, together with his brother, against whom no accusation lay, brutally murdered while in the custody of the authorities of the state of Illinois. These considerations and facts clearly indicate that the "gray-haired reverend men" who met at Grand Opera House, Chicago, on November 1, 1874, to discuss ways and means to "advance the cause of Christianity" in Utah did not appreciate the situation, as will further appear from the following extracts from their speeches: One "had known a minister [missionary] in Utah, who had to go into the pulpit with the Bible in
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