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Show towns or states in which its adherents have an overwhelming majority and have valuable church property, or in which, as lesser or larger minorities, they can more than hold their own. <br> Some of the Mormons are devoutly religious, but the vast majority of the rank and file pin their faith to the Mormon church as an organization which assures them special privileges in the world to come and certain social, economic and political dividends in the world that now is. They are knit together and over-socialized by isolation, discipline, intermarriage, enforced co-operation, easy moral standards and a type or religion which is quite attractive to the ordinary natural man. <br><br> Teachings Modified But Not Changed <br> The church is, at least outwardly, sloughing off some of its grosser features. We do not hear, as formerly, defense of Brigham's declaration that Adam is the god of the human race, or Spencer's contention, still published under church auspices, that Mary and Martha were the wives of Jesus, or the claim, still staked off in the Mormon hymn book, that the Eternal Father has a wife or wives. And, of course, the world has been told that the laws concerning plural marriage as set forth by Joseph Smith are now held in abeyance by the manifesto of the late President Woodruff in which he advised the Latter Day Saints to refrain from marriages forbidden by the laws of the land, but the principle or doctrine of plural marriage is still endorsed and upheld by the Mormon leaders "as a high privilege conferred under special conditions directly under commandment of God." All the presidents of the Mormon church have claimed the right to this privilege, and Heber J. Grant, the present president, and his priesthood, still maintain that the principle of plural marriage is right and holy, and that the practice will undoubtedly be restored when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. <br> While the practice of polygamy has been discountenanced and certain crudities of doctrine are being sloughed off, the Mormon leaders still hold to the assumptions on which their cult is founded with uncompromising tenacity. They iterate and reiterate their contentions that Joseph Smith was divinely authorized to re-establish the church and that he received revelations from God which were essential to the re-establishment of the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth; that Joseph Smith was given certain golden plates on which were written in reformed Egyptian an inspired account of an attempt to establish a Christian church in ancient America and that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired to translate these plates which he published as the Book of Mormon; that, when Joseph Smith had organized the church, he was inspired of God to add other scriptures or divine revelations to the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and that these <br> [Continues on next page.] <br><br> |
