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Show - THE UTAH EVANGELIST - <br><br> THE UTAH EVANGELIST. <br> THE UTAH EVANGELIST. PUBLISHED BY THE EVANGELIST PUBLISHING COMPANY, Salt Lake City, Utah. <br> The UTAH EVANGELIST is published in the interest of [t]he Evangelical work in Utah Territory, on the 15th of every month. <br> Terms, single copy, one year … $ .50 <br> Three copies … 1.00 <br> Fifteen copies … 5.00 <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> THE EVANGELIST is the organ of the Utah Presbytery of the Presbyterian church. Its object is twofold: first, to discuss, in a fair and candid spirit, the peculiar doctrines and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons; secondly, to furnish news of the Mission Work and its progress to the teachers engaged in the work, and to friends in the East, who support it. <br> The aim of THE UTAH EVANGELIST is to state facts, and not to abuse or misrepresent. Should any of our Mormon friends take exceptions to any of its utterances, they may use our columns, to a reasonable extent, to show wherein we are wrong. Let the truth prevail. <br><br> EDITORIAL. <br> The second volume of the Evangelist* begins with this July number. At the opening of the second volume we wish to return thanks to the persons who have shown an interest in our little enterprise, by giving us encouraging words and adding names to our subscription list. There are numbers who have done this. To each, and to all, we wish to say that we intend to stretch every endeavor, to make the Evangelist* acceptable in its particular line, viz., in giving facts with regard to Mormons and Mormonism, and discussing the particular tenets of their faith. In these questions we are all interested. The time has past by when Americans can sit calmly down and witness the spread of a pernicious system of morals, whose only tendency is to undermine everything good in the land, and to establish on the ruins of virtue and true religion, the most oppressive despotism, the world has ever seen. Mormonism is terribly aggressive. ‘‘It means business." It sends out missionaries by the score every year, to drag in proselytes from every country on the earth. When one of their people receives notice to go on a mission, he must leave his business, home, friendship, everything, and go forth without "bag or scrip," to drag in deluded accessions to their ranks. As a result of this, scarcely a month passes but several hundred of ignorant fanatics are brought in on the emigrant trains to this Territory. Thousands of new converts are coming every year, and it is only a question of a few years, till they will have settled all the available land in Utah and all the surrounding Territories, and thus have political control of them. <br> It is the duty of every intelligent American citizen, therefore, to be well posted as to what Mormonism is, and what it is doing, and the Evvngelist* [sic] will do all in its power to supply information on these subjects. <br><br> THE SCHOOLS. <br> We presented our readers last month with reports from nearly all our schools in this Territory. We supplement that list with several others this month. We are glad to see that there is a steady advance all along the line. Our percentage of increase in numbers is very large. The characters of our teachers have won respect and admiration wherever they have gone, even where the opposition to their school work has been very bitter. The teachers themselves have generally good health and are happy and contented. <br> It is a glorious work, and let it move on, till not a village or hamlet is left without a witness of the gospel-not of Joseph Smith- but of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. <br><br> AN ERROR. <br> It is an error to suppose, 1st.,that Mormonism is on the wane. The political power of the Mormons is as strong now, if not stronger, than it ever was. <br> 2d. That polygamy is decreasing. By their own confession there are more plural marriages entered into now than ever before. Their leaders openly proclaim that polygamy must be practiced, no matter whether the United States Government forbids it or not. <br> 3d. That the Mormons are a virtuous and law abiding people. Every country has its own peculiar crimes. In some sections it is murder, in some theft, in Utah a combination but especially the debasing indulgence of the sexual appetites. There is no place in the United States where there is so much sexual immorality and general lewdness as in Utah. The whole Territory might be justly characterized as a vast bawdy-house, so loose are the people in their practices. <br> 4th. That polygamy is a good natured joke. It is a fearful and stern reality. Under its yoke there is more heart-suffering, more terrible and fearful anguish, than the world can show outside. Polygamist women are not happy; with their own lips they confess that it is a life of unutterable misery. <br> 5th. That Mormonism is harmless. The day, is not far distant, if things continue as they are now, when it will hold the balance of political power in the United States. Woe betide that day when it arrives! <br> Several valuable articles arrived this month too late for publication, which will appear in our next. <br><br> MORMON THEOLOGY OF THE GODHEAD. <br> (From "The Kingdom of God," Part I, by Orson Pratt.) <br> The God-head consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is a material being. <br> The substance of which he is composed is wholly material. It is a substance widely different, in some respects, from the various substances with which we are more immediately acqainted [sic]. <br> In other respects, it is precisely like all other materials. The substance of His person occupies space the same as other matter. It has solidity, length, breadth and thickness, like all other matter. The elementary materials of His body are not susceptible of occupying at the same time the same identical space with other matter. The substance of His person, like other matter, cannot be in two places at the same instant. <br> It also requires time for him to transport Himself from place to place. It matters not how great the velocity of His movements time* is an essential ingredient to all motion, whether rapid or slow. It differs from other matter in the superiority of its powers, being intelligent, all-wise, and possessing the power of self-motion to a far greater extent than the coarser material of nature. "God is a Spirit." But that does not make him an immaterial being- a being that has no properties in common with matter. The expression, "an immaterial being," is a contradiction in terms. Immateriality is not another name for nothing. It is the negative of all existence. A "Spirit"* is as much matter as oxygen or hydrogen. It has many properties in common with all other matter. Chemists have discovered between fifty and sixty kinds of matter; and each kind has some properties in common with all other matter, and some properties peculiar to itself, which the others do not inherit. Now no chemist in classifying his substances would presume to say: "This substance is material; but that one is immaterial, because it differs in some respects from the first." <br> He would call them all material, though in some respects they differed widely. So the substance called spirit is material, though it differs in a remarkable degree from other substances. It is only the addition of another element of a more powerful material than any yet discerned. He is not a being "without parts*," as modern idolators [sic] teach, for every whole is made up of parts. <br> The whole person of the Father consists of innumerable parts, and each part is so situated as to leave certain relations of distance to every other part. <br> There must also be, to a certain degree, a freedom of motion among these parts, which is an essential condition to the movements of his limbs, without which he could only move as a whole. <br> All the foregoing statements in relation to the person of the Father are equally applicable to the person of the Son. <br><br><br> * words are italicized <br><br> |
