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Show -THE UTAH EVANGELTST.- <br><br> THE UTAH EVANGELIST. <br> PUBLISHED BY <br> THE EVANGELIST PUBLISHING COMPANY, <br> Salt Lake City, Utah. <br> The UTAH EVANGELIST is published in the interest of he [sic] Evangelical work in Utah Territory, on the 15th of every month. <br> Term, single copy, one year … $ .50 <br> Three copies … 1.00 <br> Eight or more copies, per copy … .25 <br> Will not the friends of Utah missions give the UTAH EVANGELIST a wide circulation? It will give the monthly information which Sabbath Schools and missionary societies need to keep up the interest in the missionary work, and it therefore solicits the earnest co-operation of pastors, Sabbath School superintendents, and officers of mission bands. <br><br> PERE HYACINTH ON POLYGAMY. <br> One of the most eloquent and electrical speeches ever delivered in this city was that given by the great French reformer, Pere Hyacinth, at the Methodist church on Sunday evening last. The church was crowded with a very intelligent audience, most of whom were sufficiently conversant with the French language to follow the argument of the speaker, and even those who could not understand a word, as was the case with the pastor of the church, Mr. Iliff, were charmed and spellbound by the magnetic eloquence of the learned Pete's gestures and his convincing voice. <br> He began by reading from the V. Chapter of Ephesians, 31st to 33d verses, in which Christ speaks of the relation of man and wife, and then proceeded with his address on the "Relation of Polygamy to Christianity." After paying a high tribute to the industry, perseverance, and general character of the Mormons, he said that he felt it to be his duty while here to point out to them what he considered to be their great error. Sophistry and fanaticism could make men and women believe anything, and it was often the very best part of humanity that was subjected to the worst impositions under the influence of these two forces. The martyr-like sincerity of the Mormons could only prove one thing, that they are the victims of their credulity; they have accepted doctrines and practices which have been foisted upon them as being revelations from heaven, but which are in realty the most cruel inventions of men. Their minds and their natures have become warped by this priestly system. All honor to them for their noble sacrifices, for their conquest over a desert, for their zeal in spreading the gospel (if they teach only the gospel); let them have due credit for all the good they have accomplished, but never for a moment lay the flattering unction to their souls that polygamy is Christian, or that it can ever be aught else than an abomination. Their illusion or delusion in this matter is sincere, but sincerity cannot excuse such an awful wrong. Sincerity cannot conceal the broken hearts of truly good religious women, it cannot cloak the evils which are inevitable under the polygamous system. <br> The Pere then proceeded to comment at some length on the respective duties of husband and wife, to show how impossible it was for true happiness to exist where either party went away from the other to include a third in the union, saying woman's love in general is stronger and purer than man's, and that she can less easily brook a slight than man can. The evils which exist in the world to curse the relations between the sexes, are no more Christian than polygamy is: both polygamy and fornication are anti-Christian, as I will show further on. A pretended new revelation, contrary to the teachings of Christ, is simply ridiculous, and it could not have been forced upon the simplicity of so large a number of honest beings had they only read the New Testament with their eyes open. <br> The speaker then cited the model given by the Creator when he placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and gave him Eve for a companion. That is the perfect union in the beginning which was verified by Christ when he said "They two* shall be one flesh." He did not say that three or four should be one flesh; but two, the number first placed together in the world by the Deity. Polygamy cannot have any relation to a truly divine affection, and a man who says that he can and does sincerely love two women at the same time with a pure, ideal love knows not what he says, and is totally ignorant of the gentle emotions of a woman's heart. Passion can fancy several, imagination can desire them, but the pure Christian heart cannot and ought not to love them as Christ has said a man must love his wife. <br> Christianity alone has realized the union which exists between God and the human soul by religion, and the union of man with woman by coujugal love. There exists an intimate relation between these two results of the same gospel, for the union of the husband and the wife, if it is perfect in its purity and sublimity, is a living symbol of the union of God with our soul, and the union of Christ with his church. It is a grand mystery. Outside of Christianity, polygamy, the plurality of wives or concubines, recognized by law and by religion, is a fact nearly universal. It is found throughout the Gentile world, and it is found <br> ASSOCIATED GENERALLY WITH POLYTHEISM, <br> as if the inability of man to love one only woman on earth, was a direct reason why they could adore one only God in heaven; as if, passing across a clouded, capricious, and sensual imagination, the pure rays of divine unity, and of conjugal unity ought to be shattered at the same time, the one in the reason, and the other in the heart, and abandon man, according to the forcible language of the Saints, to all kinds of fornications, and the practices of Baal or of Astarte. <br> Speaking of the accounts of the Old Testament, they present a strange spectacle, which often troubles the feeble, polygamy surviving polytheism among God's chosen people. The most holy men practiced it, we say, and Moses gives it a place is his law, so difficult was it to purify the hearts and senses of men, even after their intelligence had received the true light. This fact only confirms my proposition, that polygamy is a practice so universal outside of Christianity that it is even found among the people of God. It is pagan or Jewish. <br> Why is this? It is because man is naturally a polygamist. Understand me well: I do not say that the original nature of man was so corrupted, or that he was a stranger to monogamy; very far from this. In the most generous and ideal aspirations of our moral being, we still find the unity of love and its perpetuity, which is the direct consequence of the existence of that pure state before the fall of man. And love to-day which is worthy of the name, when it enters into the heart of a young man like a holy enthusiasm, causes to mount from his heart to his lips the words of love, which are often belied afterwards by his conduct; but in all cases they are repeated throughout the ages, "Thou only I love, and thou only forever." <br> But man has become flesh, and the flesh, as says St. Paul, is not under the restrictions of the laws of God. This is why, in the ancient Bible, when man had not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, polygamy was tolerated by the religious law. Moses had said, in excuse for the practice, choosing the least of two evils, ‘‘There shall be no harlots in Israel." To <br> PREVENT THE EXISTENCE OF PROSTITUTES <br> he recognized concubinage, and "concubines" was the only name that was given to the woman of the second degree. I confess that I prefer the polygamy of the Jew or the Mussulman, practiced openly, what may be called loyal polygamy, restrained by law and religion, obliged to care for and respect the rights of each woman and of each child; I prefer this to the hypocritical polygamy of so many so-called Christians, who in the large cities of Europe and America, make so many women first their slaves and then victims to their passions, abandoning them to the hazards of existence, the children to the horrors of infanticide, for which children they are responsible before God and man. But I see in the polygamy of the ancient Israelites only what Jesus Christ taught us to see in it, a condescension to the hardness of their hearts, which condescension should cease of itself after the Holy Spirit creates in the true Christian a new heart to replace the heart of stone which man in his unregenerate condition has inherited from his fathers. <br> Let me be permitted here to state freely the point on which I reproach the Mormons, simply from the standpoint of a Christian teacher, for I will not touch on the question of the laws made by the United States. What I reproach them for is not the mere fact that they have engrafted polygamy into their system. On this point I should have no fault to find with them if they inhabited the Orient, or if they were Jews or Mussulmans [sic]. But they are Christian by baptism and by faith, and they pretend to practice the plural - <br> [Continues on next page.] <br><br><br> * word is italicized <br><br> |
