The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-17

have been bravely trying to avert 1t by
 the only thorough going remery. A
 few weeks ago delegation of this
 council had hearing before the judi
 ciary committee of the house, and we
 venture to believe tlat that learned
 and honorable body never heard more i brilliant or a more convincing argu-
 ment than that of Mrs. Katherine Jones
 Bennett the secretary of the council. Her argument was based upon history,
 the salient facts of which she so pre- l sented, and from them drew such con- ] clusions as to put her case on a very
 strong foundation in the minds of her | hearers This was evident from the
 searching questions that were asked af-
 ter Mrs. Bennett and the other women had spoken. They were evidently put
 in the honest desire to establish the
 truth of the facts presented.
 These things being so, and the women l having carried the matter to this point, all that is needed to crown it with suc- cessful issue is great movement of public interest Precisely here is the | importance of the statement put forth by the home missionary secretaries. It | is being published, we trust, in every religious paper in the country, and | many secular journals have given or will give it place. The public will no longer be in ignorance of the facts, and, being informed it is impossible that a great wave of public protest shall not sweep over the land Every represen- tative in congress should hear from his constituency without delay. The one thing needful in this matter is for the people to have a mind to do away with the great danger which has now become threatening.
 church the whole country is beginning to know. Their missionaries are every where. In Brooklyn there is a Mormon church, in Chicago another A conven- ton of these missionaries will shortly be held in an eastern city These meth- ods are entirely legitimate. The Chris tian church has something to learn from the Mormons as to methods of evangelization. It is not their activity that is at fault but the pernicious character of their teachings. and worse still the motive of the propa ganda, which is religion with a political pur- pose. With the church of the Latter
 
 ment has nothing to do, and our churches only so far as they may reach it's errors by missionary methods But the Mormon church is hierarchy which sets up it's authority against the law of the land which not winks at us, but insists upon that which our laws and the laws of all civilized countries count as crime, To permit the exis- tence in any state of an authority | which sets itself up against the author ity of the state is simply suicide. An 1 archy has no such menace to our na- tional life as Mormonism has Anarchy | is indeed powerless, however much dis aster it may here and there work, for the spirit of our institutions is beyond ! the reach of knife or bullet or any sort of disorder But the Mormon error is aimed at that very spirit; it is corrupt ing in its very essence. And it can no I longer be ignored as merely local in it's influence, It was publicly asserted at the last general conference of the Nor non church and printed in their official organ, that the membership of the Mormon church amounts to 310,00O; with 62.444 members of the priest hood, md 264,204 belonging to auxiliary asso- ,iations; that the annual increase is to hat of the Presbyterian, Congregations Il and Methodist churches in propor- ion to membership as two hundred to welve and one-half f-Editorial in the New York Evangelist.