The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-23
BOARDING THE LION.

From the ~ Y. Tribune.
Since the days of chivalry we do not know
that anything pluckier has been recorded than
the visit of the Rev. j. p. Newman to Salt
Lake City to do battle, logical and exegetical,
with the wicked and obscene Dragon of Poly
gamy. 1t must have required good deal of
enthusiasm to go all that distance to refute
what all virtuous persons consider to be an
immortality and all sensible persons an alb
surdity. But Mr.. Newman was in a manner
constrained TO 90. He had preached a SER
mon on the subject, which was heard of in
Utah; whereupon the Utah Telegraph asked
why he did not come to that Territory to
preach it Tin the new Tabernacle before
10000 Mormons with Orson Hyde or some
other prominent Mormon to answer" Mr..
Newman immediately packed his trunk,
bought his railway ticket, aud
started very much as Don Quixote
would have done under like circum-
stances. But it was one thing to go to Utah,
and quite another thing to get either Brig
ham or his man Orson to meet him in debate.
Young, coolly, for August, replied that he
had given no challenges; nor did the great
Orson show any desire to enter the lists.
Apparently, MIR. Newman had his long Jour
ney for his pains. But Young was too shrewd
a man not to see that he had lost ground by
declining the contest; and he therefore sent
MIR. Newman an invitation to come and
preach in the Tabernacle. Mr.. Newman re-
piled that he had already made arrangements
to preach in the NJ. Z. meeting. house. And
he did preach there ''for three mortal hours"
in ''sweltering August afternoon, sermon
brimful of texts, to prove that there might
be concubinage among the Jews but that, in
our sense of the word, they had no polygamy.
Since then the battle royal itself has finally
been arranged and fought.
We do not here attempt any abstract of
the arguments Much as we respect Mr..
Newman, we do not consider that such of
them as were drawn from the manners and
customs of the Jews had any pertinence or
consequence. We believe that with Chris
tianity came better and a nobler and
purer dispensation. The polygamy of the
Jews, or the concubinage, was temporary and
local, and not of Divine ordination. If
otherwise, why do not the Jews, as body,
now practise it? They virtually acknowledge
that there was no command of perpetual
validity to maintain polygamy; for while in
matters of their law they are nearly as strict
as ever they cheerfully obey our laws of
marriage. To be sure, they could not do
otherwise without being sent to the peniten-
tiary; but we have no reason to believe that
they wish to do otherwise.
We prefer to base our hostility to polygamy
upon the fact that all modern civilized nations
arc 81 ldI dS tubt WOTu Implies
having one wife at q time. Mr.. Newman
shows that such is the doctrine of Christianity,
and such being its doctrine, there is no room
left for an argument. The example of Utah
alone shows how inconsistent is poygamy
with refinement, with intellectual culture,
with the happiness of woman. The preach
ing in the Tabernacle is coarse and rude, and
often blasphemous; the feminine instincts
perpetually revolt against this desecration of
the institution of marriage; and there is no
man who looks at the matter nationally who
does not see that there can be nothing per-
manent in the custom. 1t may not be easy
to put it down, but SO long as it lasts it is a
national shame and reproach. Nothing but
the great distance of Utah from the seat of
government has saved it; but now that a con-
siderable party in Utah itself has been organ
lied against it, We may consider it as doomed
1t must pass away at least with the present
generation.