Independent

              JOSEPH COOK'S MONDAY LEC-TURES.* 
[DELIVERED IN THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON, JAN. 5TH.] 
CARLYLE'S EVERLASTING YEA, OR THE VALUE OF SECRET PRAYER. 
THE PRELUDE.— DISLOYAL MORMONISM. 
THE Old South was thronged at noon Mon-day, January 5th, to its uppermost gallery with an audience anxious to listen to Mr. Cook's renewed discussion of "Disloyal Mor-monism." Large public interest in this theme had been awakened by the President's recent public references to Mormonism, by late events in Utah, by the new anti-polygamy laws now proposed in Congress, and by Judge Boreman's letter, read in the Monday Lecture-ship. Mr. Cook defended the President's plan of dealing with the Mormon problem, and it was warmly approved by the audience. The address on "Carlyle's Everlasting Yea, or the Value of Secret Prayer," closed a course of ten lectures on "Culture," and was the culmination of the course of thought begin-ning with the discussion of the question: "After Emerson—What? or, the Consequences of Concord Theism." 
THE PRELUDE. 
Bluebeard asks for a seat in the Senate. He stands with one hand locking the door of his chamber of horrors, and with the other be knocks for admission to the supreme legislative assembly of the foremost Christian republic of all time. He has stood in this attitude for twenty-three years and is becoming importu-nate. 
How large is the territory over which the Mormon Bluebeard exercises sway? Here is a superb iron relief map of the United States, kindly loaned to me from among their wonders of illustrative apparatus by the New England School Furnishing Company (A. R. Beal. Man-ager, 31 Franklin Street, Boston). Its sections are divisible, and I take up Utah in one hand and Vermont in the other and place the latter on the former. It is literally true, as you notice, that Vermont can be hidden away in one of the valleys of Utah and be no larger than a babe in a bed of full size. Utah has 84,476 square miles of territory; Vermont only 9,612. I take up Massachusetts, and find that I can hide her away in one corner of this polyg-amous couch. [Laughter.] You say that I am too suggestive in my metaphors, and yet this is your territory, directly under the con-trol of Congress, and its legal condition de-pends upon national legislation as much as softened wax depends for its form upon the fingers which manipulate it. This territory under your laws sends to Congress a polyg-amous delegate, who sits down at the side of your representatives on equal terms. 
We are poorly perceptive in the East of the capacities of the region called the Basin States. Take up Idaho, or Arizona, or Nevada—re-gions into which Mormonism is extending its political power—and observe how small Massa-chusetts is, placed anywhere on these gigantic stretches of the mining districts and the pas-tures between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas [illustrating]. Here is Prof. Brewer's map of the forests of the Union [re-ferring to "Walker's Statistical Atlas of the United States," open on the platform], and I beg you to notice that a thickly-wooded region occupies great portions of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Colorado has a large extent of forests, not as dense as those of Oregon and Wisconsin and Maine; but still, as this map shows, about equal in density to the woods that cover Ohio and Indiana. Utah, as you notice, has more forests than Nebraska. I beg you to study Prof. Hayden's fascinating map of Colorado, a piece of the finest geographical work ever done in America or anywhere in the world [referring to the new Government map of Colorado, open on the platform]. You will find in it at a glance proof that Colorado and Utah are not deserts. We think of the Basin States as if they were a dry land, where no man is and in which no great multitude of human beings can ever find a prosperous home. This spotted tract of yellow [referring to the map of Colorado] represents a stretch of sage-brush. When irrigated, that land is tropically fertile. This other shade of yellow represents * Copyright, 1879, by the Rev. JOSEPH COOK. The copyright of this course of Lectures has been purchased by THE INDEPENDENT, and newspapers gen-erally are requested to respect It. Liberal terms will be given to any newspaper wishing to publish ex-tracts. good pasture-land. Here grows the strangely nutritious buffalo grass, which amazed me by its sweetness when I plucked tufts of it near Cheyenne. On the rivers, where the color deepens, you have good agricultural land. But notice the large stretch of forests along the skirts of the mountains. The different colors of green show the pines, the cedars, and the quaking aspens. If you look at the other indications on this map, you will find whole tiers of counties underlaid with coal, and these mountain ranges thickly sifted in all their rifts with iron and silver and gold. The same is true of Nevada and Utah. The silver mines of Utah have yielded $40,000,000 worth of ore in the last ten years. A Salt Lake daily news-paper publishes five columns of mining news. The American Bluebeard rules over the Amer-ican Potosi. 
Put your ear, then, on the Wasatch Hills; listen to the subterranean conspiracies in pol-itics at Washington; fasten your attention on the throbbing of the heart of Christian Amer-ica; and summarize, if you can, this whole Mormon case in a series of propositions, one flowing from the other. 
1. The present anti-polygamy laws of the United States do not make polygamy an of-fense in all cases, but only polygamy which is not yet three years old. The statute of limita-tions bars prosecutions for polygamy after three years from the date of the ceremony of the polygamous marriage. 
2. Weak and toothless as this law is, it re-mained a dead letter on the national statute-books until the decision of the Supreme Court in the Reynolds case proved it to be constitu-tional. 
3. Under the present law, the leaders of the Mormon hierarchy who took plural wives more than three years ago cannot be prosecuted. The Mormon delegate in Congress, unless he has taken a fifth wife within three years, can-not be reached by this enactment. In prac-tice, polygamous marriages take place in Utah every month, are kept secret, and the violators of the law expect at the end of the three years of concealment to confess the marriages and laugh at the law. Judge Van Zile, of Salt Lake City, whose opinion is everywhere re-spected among the Gentile population of Utah, lately said: "Removing the limitation clause and making polygamy a continuous offense is my pet measure. As it is now, an old man marries a young girl secretly, lets her live with her parents three years, and then claims her, and snaps his fingers at the officials." 
4. The present national laws against polyg-amy have another weakness, in the fact that they require evidence of the ceremony of a plural marriage as proof of polygamy. The ceremony usually takes place in the secrecy of a Mormon Endowment House, and trust-worthy evidence as to what is done there can-not be obtained from a Mormon before a Gen-tile jury. 
Not long ago a Mormon official was im-prisoned three days for refusing to reply to questions put to him on cross-examination be-fore a Gentile jury about a ceremony per-formed in a plural marriage in an Endowment House. When the time of punishment was over, a vast procession of Mormons met him at the prison-doors, to welcome, as they said, Daniel from the lion's den. That collection of the followers of the false American prophet trampled the American flag under their feet within three days of the time when I saw the streets of Salt Lake City, and the tremor which their disloyal proceedings had caused was felt not only there, but from side to side of the Union wherever the news was understood. 
5. It has been proved by the confessions of apostate Mormons and by the experience of Federal courts in Utah that the oaths taken in the Mormon Endowment Houses are considered by Mormons to be of paramount authority over any oaths taken before a Gentile court under state or national law. 
6. It has been proved by long experience that the Mormon Endowment House is a nursery of disloyalty. 
The new Endowment House in process of erection on the Temple area in Salt Lake City is surpassed by not more than two or three build-ings on this continent in cost and magnificence. It has narrow windows and walls of granite nine feet thick. It looks like the Bastile or Cologne Cathedral without its towers. It may in fifty years become serviceable as a state house for a loyal legislature, but whoever sees it will not be likely to conclude that Mormon-ism is to vanish in an hour. 
7. The oaths of the Mormon Endowment House cannot be violated without penalties which extend from the confiscation of goods to the severance of the windpipe. [Sensation.] 
Brigham Young was often profane in the pulpit, and sometimes made there a gesture intended to symbolize the cutting of the throats of apostates. "They are wicked men," he would say, "and they ought to be cut off"; and, with these words, he would draw his hand across his neck, with the ex-tended thumb rubbing against the throat [sensation], and the secret police well under-stood his meaning. You say I am here tres-passing on the region of the imagination; but I hold in my hand an important document, just issued at Salt Lake City, entitled "The Mor-mon Endowment House. A graphic exposure of the treasonable institution where polyga-mous marriages are solemnized. By an eye witness." Judge Boreman, who sent it to me, writes on it, in his own hand: "All apostate Mormons say that this statement is true, and I learn through private sources that the Mor-mons admit its correctness." According to this document, four grips are given in the course of the ceremonies in the Endowment House. As I read here, "the penalty for re-vealing the first grip is that you will have your throat cut from ear to ear and your tongue torn from your mouth. The sign of the penal-ty is drawing the hand, with the thumb point-ing toward the throat, sharply across the neck" (p. 6). What did Brigham Young mean by this gesture, repeated again and again in public, a week or two before certain secret murders? The penalty for revealing the sec-ond grip is "to be sawn asunder and your members cast into the sea. The sign of this penalty was drawing the hand sharply across the middle of the body" (p. 6). 
When the chief power of the Mormon Church is summarized in one man like Brigham Young, and he says that the followers of Joseph, the son of Joseph Smith, who do not believe in polygamy, should be cut off, and makes these definite gestures before an aud-ience who have all gone through a Mormon Endowment House, is that anything you can laugh at, my surprising friends? This is your territory. This is what has happened under your sweet and holy laws. The graves of those who have been buried in Utah after secret murders are so numerous that, with the Federal Judges of Salt Lake City, I believe that, if the winding-sheets of these victims could be put together into one banner, the shadow of the black flag would cover half Utah. Twenty years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, John D. Lee, one of the principal tools of the Mormon priesthood in that ghastly slaughter, expiated his crimes by his execution on the spot of their occurrence; but men more guilty than he yet go in Utah unwhipped of justice. 
8. Were it not for the presence of Federal troops in Utah to-day, these penalties, includ-ing the death of apostates by what is called "Blood Atonement" (that is, the shedding of the blood of an apostate to save his soul), would be executed by the priesthood, as they were executed in the bloody years of the supremacy of Brigham Young. 
"Blood Atonement" Brigham Young preached from the pulpit again and again, and not in rash extemporaneous language. The utterances of Brigham Young concerning "Blood Atonement" were fully reported by stenographers, and then revised and pruned by his own secretary and published in the official Mormon newspaper in Utah; and not only there, but in the Journal of Discourses, a Mormon publication issued at Liverpool. Judge Cradlebaugh on the floor of Congress read passages out of these speeches and they are cited at large in the best books on Mor-monism. (See Stenhouse, "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 299). This measurelessly mon-strous doctrine was not only preached; but again and again, in the days when Mormonism was isolated from the Federal power, "Blood Atonement" was practiced by those who thought that the shedding of the blood of an apostate was the only way to save his soul. 
9. It is evident, from the experience of the Federal courts in Utah, that the laws against polygamy need amendment in three respects: 
(1.) Polygamy should be made a continuous offense, existing as long as the parties live to-gether as man and wife. 
(2.) The statute of limitations should not begin to run until the parties cease to live to-gether. 
(3.) Living together as man and wife and recognizing each other as such should be suf-ficient to warrant conviction. No ceremony should be required to be proved. 
10. But Mormonism, as based on the En-dowment House oaths, has two tap-roots—polygamy and priestly despotism; the latter supported by the tithing system, the police system of spies, and the power of life and death. 
11. Under a state constitution prohibiting polyg-amy, the second of these chief roots would still exist, and it would exist even if there were passed an amendment to the National Constitution prohibit-ing polygamy. 
12. Admitted to the Union, under state and national constitutional provisions prohibiting polygamy, Utah, manacled by this priestly des-potism, with its tithing system and the power of life and death, would have a Mormon governor, and state officers, and Mormon state judges. Every murder and like felony in the state would be tried before these judges and before Mormon juries. 
13. It is the opinion of the Federal judges now in Utah that this set of circumstances might not only prevent all future trials of Mormon murderers, but inaugurate a reign of terror. 
14. Gentile mining, smelting, railroad, and agricultural operations under a Mormon gov-ernor and legislature would be taxed so as to become unprofitable. Gentile schools and churches would be so discriminated against by the state law that they would cease to exist. 
15. This aspect of the Mormon question has great significance for those who are giving money to establish Gentile schools and church-es In Utah. At present there is no security and no certainty that these institutions will be allowed to exist in Utah as a state under the theocratic power of the Endowment Houses and the Mormon priesthood. 
16. An amendment to the National Constitu-tion prohibiting polygamy, although useful and desirable, would, therefore, not be suffi-cient to settle the Mormon question. If Utah were admitted as a state, with the theocratic power of her priesthood unbroken, Mormon-ism would yet live on that second tap-root. Such a constitutional amendment prohibiting polygamy might tempt political parties in need of the electoral votes of Utah to admit her to the Union, with her disloyal Endowment House oaths in full power over the people, and, by be-ing used as an excuse for an enabling act and blinding the public to the actual perils of the case, work positive mischief. 
17. Effective legislation against Mormonism must cut both its tap-roots; and, therefore, the legislation needed should strike both at polygamy and at the disloyal hierarchy sup-ported by the tithing system and the disloyal oaths of the Endowment Houses. 
18. President Hayes proposes to Congress the disfranchisement of Mormons for violating the national laws against polygamy, and also disfranchisement for aiding and abetting those who violate these laws. In detail (See New York Tribune, December 26th, 1879), the Pres-ident recommends the establishment by Con-gress of a Board of Registration, consisting of the governor of the territory and the judges of the district courts, or persons who should be appointed by them. The duty of this Board would be to pass upon the qualifications of every person who desired to vote in any elec-tion or to exercise any of the rights or priv-ileges of citizens. Something like the follow-ing examination would take place, as President Hayes thinks: 
Are you a Mormon? Yes. 
Are you a practical polygamist? No. 
Do you support or countenance any one who is a practical polygamist? No. 
Are you a member of the Mormon Church? Yes. 
Do you pay tithes for its support? Yes. 
Who are the officers of the Mormon Church? 
John Taylor, George Q. Cannon, and others. 
Are they polygamists? I do not know. [Laughter.] 
On such a showing as this, the President thinks the Registration Board would have to refuse the applicant. President Hayes hopes that by applying such a test as this Gentiles only would be able to be registered. Accord-ing to this plan, no one not registered would be allowed to vote, or hold any office under the United States, the territory, or local gov-ernment, or to sit on juries. Under these ar-rangements juries could be trusted and the ter-ritory would be taken out of the hands of the Mormons. One of the first results which the President expects would flow from a political revolution in Utah such as he would bring about would be the election of a Gentile legislature, which would act in harmony with the governor of the territory. 
Little by little, under a pressure like this, the President thinks that not only polygamy, but the payment of tithes, would soon become very unpopular among the Mormons in Utah. (See New York Tribune, Dec. 26th, 1879.) Prominent Gentile residents of Salt Lake City have assured him that neither the institution of plural marriages nor the theocratic power of the Church could survive five years under this proposed legisla-tion, which may God bless and speed! [Ap-plause.]
19. There are two parties among the Mor-mons: one a radical party, representing the hierarchy; and the other a conservative party, made up of men of business and property, who would have much to lose by a collision with the Federal power. 
20. President Hayes's plan strikes at the tithing system, as well as at polygamy. It is calculated to divide against each other the Mormon Church, by bringing the radical and conservative parties into open antagonism, and is, therefore, admirably adapted to break up the power of the disloyal hierarchy. 
21. This plan has the vehement approval of Federal judges in Utah; and, without its ex-ecution, their opinion is that the Gentile pop-ulation there, under a state government, would have no adequate protection in respect to life, property, and education. The Mormon pop-ulation of Utah is now estimated at 150,000 by the Mormons themselves, and the Gentile at only 10,000 or 12,000. 
22. It is not likely that a Congress which allows a seat to a leprous polygamist will leg-islate on the Mormon question as the case re-quires; and, therefore, the duty of the press and pulpit and independent platform is to arouse public sentiment and bring it up to the height of demanding the practical measures recommended by the Federal judges in Utah and by the National Executive. [Applause.] 
Over the gate of Brigham Young's grounds In Salt Lake City there is a rude representation of an eagle, striking its talons into a bee-hive. This is an excellent symbol of Mormonism—rapacity preying on industry! [Applause.] I have much sympathy with the bee-hive; none at all with the eagle. [Laughter.] I pity the Mormon people; and, because I foresee for the Basin region a great future, I wish the talons of the voracious hierarchy to be taken swiftly out of the honey gathered in Utah by the energy of these peasants brought over from Europe. But the symbol above the gate is not complete. You must wind around that humming straw hive some emblem of the Mormon secret, deadly police. Let a viper with poisonous fangs coil around the hive and take his directions from the eagle above him, and your symbol is more perfect than it was. And yet it is not complete. You must add the bird of the night (the owl), which often lives, it is said, in the same hole with the rattle-snake. This winged creature will represent the subtlest misleading element in Mormon-ism—priestly fanaticism, the solemn pretense of possessing individual access to God's se-crets, personal inspiration, the idea that God speaks through the prophet, the revelator, and seer at the head of the Mormon hierarchy. There is one other bird that must be added, and the symbol will be complete—the strutting barnyard fowl, emblem of polygamy. [Laugh-ter and applause.] Mormonism is the poultry philosophy. [Applause.] The Latter Day Swindle arranges human beings as if they were poultry. It gives women not a home, but a harem and a coop. 
The Bible in favor of polygamy! Orson Pratt, when he had a debate on that topic, admitted that he depended on modern revela-tions for the ultimate defense of plural mar-riages. The Jews to-day are not a polygamous people and they have no sacred guide but the Old Testament. It is perfectly well under-stood that the regulations concerning polyg-amy in the Old Testament were intended to girdle the tree and make it fall; and it has fallen with the very people who take those Scriptures as their only authority. The un-scriptural, the loathsome, and the lawless thing in Mormonism is polygamy. The high-est of the ecclesiastics in the Mormon hier-archy, when they are forced to entire frank-ness, say that they know polygamy is to be defended because of modern, rather than by ancient revelation. "Thou shalt not take one wife to another to vex her." This is the true sense of a law in Leviticus (chap. xviii, verse 18). "God shall make of these twain," and not of more than twain, "one flesh." Divorce, adapted to the hardness of men's hearts, was, indeed, permitted; but it was not so from the beginning. The nature of things, the mysterious divine law which brings the two portions of the human race into the world in substantially equal numbers, is the proclamation of the divine origin of monogamy. When the Mormon ecclesiastics have opportunity to reach out their loathsome hands into the sweet homes of Scandinavia, Belgium, and France, and the peasant population of England, and pluck thence the brightest flowers, they may find that polygamy is not assailed as a monopoly. But what if there could be no such supplies from sources outside of their own circles? What if the course of immigration did not alter the natural distribution of populations, and polyg-amists were to depend on the law of coequal heredity? If they were to be called on to supply their own circles, it would be found that, of all the accursed monopolies on the earth, polygamy is the worst, for it takes away from thousands the opportunity of founding homes, in order that the few may riot in de-bauchery, under the thinnest of religious dis-guises. 
If there is anything that ought to call down on the American people the thunderbolts of God's justice, it is laughter, indifference, cool political calculation as to the chances of par-ties when electoral votes are for sale in Utah. It is bargaining with this strutting, polyga-mous fowl; bargaining with this eagle who is striking his talons into the bee-hive; bargain-ing with this viper which coils around the feet of the birds who are his mates; bargaining with the whole loathsome group and bringing them into the Union to heep company in a happy family with the Puritan dove! God avert such a result! [Applause.] 
You think that by holding the blazing lan-ten of Christian schools before the eyes of these birds you can frighten them away; but are you sure you are to have the opportunity to hold the lantern there after Utah comes into the Union? I have defended the cause of Colorado College; I wish to-day to lift up my voice, feeble as it is, in support of all enter-prises for Christian schools in Utah; but there are great and indispensable preliminaries to the success of these institutions. Once ad-mit Utah to the Union, even with polygamy prohibited by the state and the National Con-stitution, and let a Mormon hierarchy, with a tithing system and the power of life and death, manage affairs under state rights, and these schools for which you are paying money will be starved to death and taxed out of ex-istence. These are the opinions of Federal judges in Salt Lake City. These views accord with letters from Utah hardly dry from the hands that spread the ink upon the paper, and which I might read here. These are the secret solemn convictions of those who have studied the great problem on the spot. It is for us here on the Atlantic seaboard to join hands with the oppressed populations of the Basin States, and so arouse the patriotic and Chris-tian sentiment of the whole land that any political party which bargains with that group of birds and with that viper shall be crushed under the heel of public execration. [Ap-plause.]