| 372 gave a very favorable notice of the chapel and the Reorganization 2
About this time one W. K. Lay, who claimed to be the Elijah, published the Prophetic Warning at State Center, Iowa. He succeeded in making quite a stir and unsettled some for a time, but his influence was short lived, and passed quietly away. At last advises he was residing at Columbus, Nebraska, but making no especial effort to promulge his claims. Though never himself a member he succeeded in disturbing some of the members for the time.
2 To-day in their own church, in this city, the Josephites will, for the first time, hold a service. They believe in the Book of Mormon and the divinity of Joseph Smith, in everything which was claimed to be a part of the Church of Latter Day Saints at first. There is nothing in their faith which conflicts with the laws of the land or outrages the sense of decency in modern civilization. This Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints has gathered one hundred and seventy members in this city, the most of them coming out from the church over which John Taylor and his apostles rule. It seems to us that this church presents a way in which young Utah can extricate itself from the toils surrounding it. It offers the same means of salvation that the Mormon church offers, except that it does not impose the abject slavery upon its followers that the other church does and does not permit polygamy. For these two features alone, every respectable young man and woman in the Mormon church intelligent Mormons here who do not know that some ten years ago Brigham Young was all ready to have another revelation, that in the opinion of the Almighty further polygamy was unnecessary. Brigham, at any time in his old age, would have had this revelation could he have secured statehood for Utah through having it. That fact shows exactly how sacred polygamy was in his eyes. Then again it is clear that this year or next or sometime in this generation there will be an open clash between the Government and this Mormon church, unless the church itself removes the barriers which it at present persists in keeping upreared between the Mormon people and the Government of the United States. Should such a conflict come, it would be a most sorrowful one for this people. . . . And if this were not to come, the inevitable could not be long postponed. If there were no Gentiles to talk, if the church was shielded from all criticism and all danger from without, there would come a power from within which would overthrow the brutal features which at present place it in antagonism with civilization. So surely as cause leads to effect, so surely this system called the Mormon church holds within itself the elements of its own destruction; for it rests on a foundation which makes the debasement of women, the slavery of men, and the annihilation of all that is sacred in home necessary.
In this new church, which opens its doors to-day, are many men who of old were polygamists and many women who were polygamous wives. They have given up their former relations; have made honest and reasonable divisions of property, there has been no trouble, and by the change all have been exalted. If the same thing were but to become general, all contention and strife would cease here; this city would take on a glory which now it can never know; this Territory would receive the crown of statehood within a year; the honors and the opportunities which are within the grasp and reasonable hope of other American boys would wait the same way upon Mormon boys, and the whole face of Utah would be transfigured.
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