The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1907-07-03
CRIME IS NOT RELIGION.

1t seems to be quite Impossible for
the Deseret News to bring itself into
a condition of fairness in its attack
upon the ministers here. After having
the utter absurdity of it's ideas exposed,
with reference TO q comparison between
the utterances of John Calvin and those
of the Mormon priesthood, it returns
to the attack with an equally untena
BILE proposition. This time the News
quotes Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who lived
in the early part of the seventeenth
ceutury-over two centuries before the
authorities of the Mormon church who
have been cited by the ministers.
The church organ quotes this compar
atively ancient divine in a description
of the torments of hell, and asks if the
Christian ministers of today would care
to be bound by the words of Taylor
While Calvin S doctrine was presented
to the world about a century before
Taylor preached, both lived in time
of the world s development along re-
igious lines. Taylor can no more be
taken as authority in every respect of
modern theological discussion than can
John Calvin. Besides, no conference,
or assemblage, or sect, or anybody, ever
sustained either Calvin or Taylor
as prophet, seer and revelator, 1t
would be just as reasonable for
the News to taunt the citizen
ship of the United States with the
memory that the original colonists
burned witches at the stake. and TO ask
the Congress of the United States If
it cared to be bound in this day by that
uneDlightened practice. In discussing
the Mormon church manifesto, the
Christian ministers quoted only from
modern writers for the church. These
could not be anything but modern
from the standpoint of date-because
even the church itself is very young
in years, to speak comparatively.
However, the object of the News
seems to be TO misrepresent the whole
situation, as is a most common prac
tice with that delectable organ of the
Mormon lord, 1t knows that the
saints, who are the largest readers Of
its columns, never see any other news
paper which would expose the folly and
deceptiveness of its utterances 1t
realizes that the members of the church
will accept its crooked unreasoning,
without taking the trouble to learn
whether Jeremy Taylor lived last week,
last month, last year, or in the year one.
l.11 l.
the faithful, as the News is aware, and
they will be thereby strengthened in
the faith, as the church organ would
say; and IT knows that there Will be
no effort on their part to discover that
they are being treated to lot of de
ceptive chaff
But the News pretends to look upon
the reflections of the ministers as being
an attack upon the Mormon religion.
IT has taught IFS people, ever since the
day of its first publication, that their
beliefs have been made the objects of
attack, and that the hardships which
have come 10 the church have been the
direct result of antagonism TO their
religion.
The great trouble has always been
that the Mormon leaders have insisted
upon adopting the practice of crime and
lawlessness as part of their religion.
That is, they have determinedIy urged
their people to follow their own exam
pies in offense against the civil and
criminal law, and have made the claim
when the law and community senti-
ment took these matters into hand
that they were only Giving their re-
ligIon,' and that opposition TO them
was religious persecution.
Absurd as it may seem to the intel
lgent mind, they have charged the
world with bounding them to miseries
on account Of their religious beliefs,
while at the same time they have in
dulged in and taught the practice Of
lawlessness, under the claim that such
offensiveness was part of their creed.
They have declared TO be their religion
such lawless acts as are not recognized
to be n part of any religion in the
Christian world-acts that come clearly
under the criminal code. They hold up
their prophets, scers and revclators to