Question. What have you to say on the Mormon question?

Answer. The institution of polygamy is infamous and disgusting beyond expression. It destroys what we call, and what all civilized people call, "the family." It pollutes the fireside, and, above all, as Burns would say, "petrifies the feeling." It is, however, one of the institutions of Jehovah. It is protected by the Bible. It has inspiration on its side. Sinai, with its barren, granite peaks, is a perpetual witness in its favor. The beloved of God practiced it, and, according to the sacred word, the wisest man had, I believe, about seven hundred wives. This man received his wisdom directly from God.

It is hard for the average Bible worshiper to attack this institution without casting a certain stain upon his own book.

Only a few years ago slavery was upheld by the same Bible. Slavery having been abolished, the passages in the inspired volume upholding it have been mostly forgotten; but polygamy lives, and the polygamists, with great volubility, repeat the passages in their favor. We send our missionaries to Utah, with their Bibles, to convert the Mormons.

The Mormons show, by these very Bibles, that God is on their side.

Nothing remains now for the missionaries except to get back their Bibles and come home. The preachers do not appeal to the Bible for the purpose of putting down Mormonism. They say: "Send the army." If the people of this country could only be honest; if they would only admit that the Old Testament is but the record of a barbarous people; if the Samson of the nineteenth century would not allow its limbs to be bound by the Delilah of superstition, it could with one blow destroy this monster. What shall we say of the moral force of Christianity, when it utterly fails in the presence of Mormonism? What shall we say of a Bible that we dare not read to a Mormon as an argument against legalized lust, or as an argument against illegal lust?

I am opposed to polygamy. I want it exterminated by law; but I hate to see the exterminators insist that God, only a few thousand years ago, was as bad as the Mormons are to-day. In my judgment, such a God ought to be exterminated.

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"Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains upon the body is as nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain." -- R.G. Ingersoll

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