The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-04-12
DON'T JUDGE HASTILY.

Inc stranger FlSlUlnS our city To-Day Will
of course attend service at the great Nor
mon tabernacle. He will see there assem-
bled quiet, sober, devout people, who in
dress, manner and general intelligence will
compare favorably with Christian congre-
cations in New England or in our middle
and western states. True, the stranger
has heard II UGH to prejudice him against
our Mormon citizens, for SANDER has been
busy with their reputation; religious big
otry has misrepresented both the Mormon
people and their creed, while self-seeking
and interested demagogues have DETAINED
that they might prey upon them. The
stranger, however, if he be Christian,
will be fortified against any bias to the
prejudice of our Mormon citizens by
remembering that they Of his own
faith in the early centuries Of their expe-
rience, were not held in any higher esteem
by the world than are the Mormons to-day.
Enough may be found in the New Tesla
n.ont itself to Justify this statement.
From those pages alone, we learn that the
Christions were the one sect everywhere
! spoken against. The founder of the relig-
ion himself. said to his followers:
Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and
when they shall separate you from their COM
pany and shall reproach you, and cast out your
name as evil, for the Son OF Mans sake. Re-
joice We in that day, and leap for joy; for be-
hold, your reward is great in heaven; for in like
manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
= Woe unto you when all men speak
well of you Foc so did their fathers to the false
prophets.
If we turn from scripture to history we
find such indictments drawn up against the
early Christians as would make Salt Lake
anti-Mormon green with envy. 1t is we'll
known that in consequence of the severe
laws enacted against the Christians they
had to hold their meetings in secret and
after dark, or in some instances just before
dawn. 1t therefore frequently happened
that the heather husband, whilst it was yet
dark, missed his wife from his side, and
vaguely suspected evil. Arguing from the
heather rites, it was thought that the
Christian mysteries must be impure. A
respectable author speaking of those dark
days for the Christian faith says:
The ceremony of initiation into the society, it
is said, was an abominable crime. The Neo-
phyte was caused to stab unawares an infant to
death, and then all, in greedy haste, tore it
limb from limb and devoured 1t. The feastiDg
was carried to excess AT a given signal the
light was put out and all INDUCED in promiscu-
Gus lust.
Let the enemies of the Mormon people do
their worst, they never have and they
never can say anything of them worse than
this, though they have said many things
equally untrue. Hence we say that the
Christian stranger with these recollections
of what has been said of the early founders
CHRIST, will be ready to suspend his
Judgment Of the Mormon people
and their religion, until he can investigate
the character of the former and the princi-
pies of the latter.
If he will do this, we venture the sugges-
ton that he will find the Mormon people
quite different from what report has held
them up to be- and much in their religion
which is commendable. In fact there never
was more absurd notion than that people
honest, religious, conscientious people,
such as the Mormons are-can be held to-
gether as they have been by trickery and
fraud for more than half century. The
very persistence of the creed; the
cohesion in the body religious, under
all the trying conditions through
which it has passed. testify in
a voice to be heard above ell the clamor of
falsehood raised against 1t, that there is
truth in it; something good must be at it's
base; and the theologian, the philosopher,
no less than the stranger who will saunter
into the tabernacle to day to witness the
services, will find in this strange religion
something worthy of his candid considera-
ton, and something in the quiet, earnest
people who have been gathered by its
doctrines to these mountain valleys and
who have made Utah, to admire and es-
TEEN.