Arizona republican., 1890-06-29
THE MORMON SIDE.
AN INTERESTING LETTER BY B. F.
 JOHNSON OF TEMPE.
A Graphic Review of the History of Mormonism From Its Inception Down to Date by an Old Member.


 To TIE ARIZONA REPUBLICAN Will you kindly give space for a few facts with common sense, scripture and req son in reply to your Mormon as an issue?" agree with you that all or ganizations, social, moral, political and religious. should like the tree be judged by their fruits. But, sir, when you in alluding to the Mormon church affirm that Its members while held in fellow ship were stage robbers and criminals, 1 deny the charge, for it is false. Those who were tried on the "Wham robbery atough Found not guilty" have few friends and no fellowship with us. But, sir, suppose that grave charges could be sustained against individuals of the the Mormon church, would that prove it's principles false? If so, what about the ancient church which produced a Judas, an Ananias, and other members guilty of great crimes. And did not its founder say that the Gospel net gathered both good and bad? And then in which of all modern Christian churches are there not found the dishonest and i'm moral? And even among the preachers those guilty of seduction and crime. But these should be regarded as the blight and not the true fruit by which to judge the tree.
 Now let us take more general view and note few of the present fast ripen- ing fruits of that Christian civilization which is the national boast, which is to- day so apparent and formidable through out Christendom in it's millions of bayonets and broadswords, its Win chester repeaters and colossal artillery, its huge war ships ahoat upon every sea from all the nations called Christian, while millions of Christian soldiery upon land are drilling in the arts of war to be the better qualified according to the rules of civilization to shed each others blood and each Christian army division with it's paid chaplain or priest to pray to the same God for the power to kill each other, as was the case so recently in our own Christian land, for getting that their Christ had said, "lf re are not one ye are not mine." And then let us look into the crowded prisons, jails, house of correction. poor houses, asyluns, etc., throughout Christendom; think of the worlds great crime against woman, who, deprived of marriage, are filling nunneries, factories and sewing garretts by the million, faded, sick and often hali-starved-all slaves to capital and to the lust and cruelty of her brother man; politically below the negro-phys- icaly worse treated than the female brute; look into the gambling hells, whisky dens, houses of assignation and prostitution with all their damning phases of abortion, infanticide and child murder. to the lowest depths of pollu- ton, which, together with fearful dyna- mite and torch. with robbery, murder and suicide fast increasing in every Christian land; while, because of the contradictions, strife and hatred among Christian sects, with hireling priests preaching for doctrine the precepts of men, from which thinking people turn in disgust and repudiate the Christian Bible, owing to which inlidelity, like mighty wave, is now making more con yerts than are all the Christian churches together. All these things, transpiring tlc very SlluuoN oi SoIStouS churches and temples, endowed with salary greater than that of the Presi- dent of the United States. At the same time the extreme of ignorance, poverty and wretchedness, with all their fester- ing vices, on every hand are breeding parasites upon honest labor; perpetuat- ing and increasing class distinction--the rich hapnp,inn riphnr and tho poorer and more desperate, until an tagonism between capital and labor ap- pears almost ready for that grapple and death struggle which prophets see and all rulers fear must result in general collapse of your modern Christian civilization, which civilization today, Mr. Editor, we find so cruelty arrayed by special legislation to rob, imprison, disfranchise, and perhaps again exile or exterminate. the Mormons. But who, MT. Editor, can not see in their past and present prosecutions that it is but history repeating itself. Only continuation of that intol- erant hatred by which devout Catholic Christians, with most excruciating tor lures, put to death their fellow Chris tans by the million under the sanction of the law. In turn, the Protestants persecute, burn and destroy the Cath olics and each other in great numbers until, in their zeal and frenzy, hungry for carnage, they raised the cry "burn the witches," which according to his tory, was not allayed until many hundreds of thousands of innocent people throughout Christian Europe were barbarously burned at the stake, and all this by good Christian law. And by the same Christian civilization our ioreiathers were ,persecuted for their re- ligion and fled on the Mayfower to save their lives from other good Christians who had power over them under the law. And they, our Puritan fathers, true to the fraternal zeal and cruelty, persecuted and hung the Quakers, burnt many innocent people as witches. All this by their good Christian law, for which crimes we, as their children, blush in shame and regret. Even with In my recollection of sixty five years