A QUAINT SERMON BY BRIGHAM YOUNG.
He Urges His Followers to a "Thor-ough Reformation in Eating and Drinking," Accuses His Bishops of Laziness, and Exalts the Whole Fe-male Sex.
Brigham Young made a quaint speech at the New Tabernacle, in Salt Lake City, one day last month. From a report published in his official newspaper organ, we take the fol-lowing curious sentences:
A thorough reformation is needed in re-gard to our eating and drinking, and on this point I shall freely express myself, and shall be glad if the people will hear, believe, and obey. If the people were willing to receive the true knowledge from heaven in regard to their diet they would cease eating swine's flesh. I know this as well as Moses knew it, and without putting it in a code of command-ments. When I tell you that it is the will of the Lord to cease eating swine's flesh, very likely some one will tell you that it is the will of the Lord to stop eating beef and mut-ton, and another that it is the will of the Lord to stop eating fowls and fish, until the minds of the people become bewildered, so that they know not how to decide between right and wrong, truth and error. The beef fed up-on our mountain grasses is as healthy food as we need at present. Beef, so fattened, is as good as wild meat, and is quite different in its nature from stall-fed meat. But we can eat fish; and I ask the people of this commun-ity, who hinders you from raising fowls for their eggs? Who hinders you from cultivat-ing fruit of every variety that will flourish in the different parts of this territory? There has not been a day through the whole winter that I have not had fresh peaches, and plenty of apples and strawberries. Who hinders any person in this community from having these different kinds of food in their families? Fish is as healthy a food as we can eat, if we except vegetables and fruit, and with them will become a very wholesome diet. What hinders us from surrounding ourselves with an abundance of those various articles of food which will promote health and produce longevity? If it is anything, it is our own neglect; or, in other words, which will an-swer my purpose better, the want of knowing how.
It is the duty of the Bishop's to take a course to make their lives, characters, doings and sayings fit examples in all things to the people of their wards. Some of our Bishops have made no improvements for eighteen years. I have asked the Bishops to sow a little rye, to make straw for hats and bonnets. A few have done so. I have asked them to do the same thing this spring, that the sisters of their wards may have straw to manufac-ture. If the Bishops have not time to do this, or have not the ground, get some of the brethren to do it who have time and ground, and let there be an acre of rye sown to each ward, and then ask the sisters to gather it in the proper season. Some say that wheat straw is as good as rye, if properly prepared. Gather the straw, and make your bonnets and hats, and wear them when you come to this tabernacle; and make hats for your husbands and sons to wear, and for your brothers and sisters, your daughters and your mothers, and let us see all the sisters and all our breth-ren and all our children wearing hats and bonnets of material produced and manufac-tured by ourselves. I have been pleading for this for years and years.
Ever since I knew that my mother was a woman I have loved the sex, and delight in their chastity. The man who abuses or tries to bring dishonor upon the female sex is a fool, and does not know that his mother and his sister were women. Women are more ready to do and love the right than men are; and if they could have a little guidance, and were encouraged to carry out the instincts of their nature, they would effect a revolution for good in any community a great deal quicker than men can accomplish it. Men have been placed on the earth to bear rule and to lead in every good work, and if they would do their duty to-day in our own gov-ernment, and then throughout the world, they would stop whining about the "Mor-mons" marrying so many wives, and the la-dies would have somebody to protect them and they would not need to flee to the "Mor-mon" Elders for protection. But outside of this community they are destroying the sex, ruining all they can, and then they boast of their villainy.
I wish the whole people of the United States could hear me now, I would say to them, let every man in the land over eighteen years of age take a wife, and then go to work with your hands and cultivate the earth, or labor at some mechanical business, or some honest trade, to provide an honest living for yourself and those who depend upon you for their subsistence; observing temperance, and loving truth and virtue; then would the wo-men be cared for, be nourished, honored and blest, becoming honorable mothers of a race of men and women, farther advanced in phys-ical and mental perfection than their fathers. This would create a revolution in our coun-try, and would produce results that would be of incalculable good. If they would do this, the Elders of this Church would not be under the necessity of taking so many wives. Will they do this? No they will not; and there are many who will continue to ruin every virtuous woman they can, buying the virtue of woman with money and deception, and thus the lords of creation proceed from one conquest to another, boasting of their victo-ries, leaving ruin, tears and death in their path-way; and what have they conquered? A poor, weak, confiding, loving woman. And what have they broken and crushed and de-stroyed? One of the fairest gems of all God's creation. O man! for shame. If the men of the city of New York alone had done for the last twenty years as the men of this commun-ity have done, from two to four thousand females, from sixteen years of age and up-wards, who se dishonor and ruin are merci-fully covered in the grave, would now be in life and health, moving in the circles of hap-py homes, prayed for, respected, loved and honored.
