eenth century, that a people
should have come up from nothing; that a man of low family,
himself a worthless character, should have come up with a lie in
his mouth and a stolen manuscript in his hand, and be found
dictating terms to a strong government, and become an absolute
despot in a republic, is the most amazing fact of history. It
took the Methodist Church forty years to get a membership of
138,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems
incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief space of
time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our
institutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in
Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent
these things, and give the Church supremacy over the State and
the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their
overthrow have been year after year allowed to fall to the ground
without action upon them.

Our public men can only pronounce against the crime of polygamy;
the press can see only polygamy in Utah; the public mind is
impressed with only the heinousness of polygamy. Back of polygamy
is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils more dear to
the Mormon rulers. They do not care for all the sentiment or law
against this one fruit of the tree, if the tree itself is left to
stand. The tree--the prolific cause of so many and so great evils
in Utah, the greatest curse of the territory, the strength of
Mormonism, and its impregnable wall of defence against
Christianity and civilization, is that arbitrary, despotic, and
absolute hierarchy known as the Mormon Priesthood.

Mr. Lyford has partial insight into the truth when he says "back of
polygamy is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils"; but in
defining that tree as the hierarchy--the priesthood--he has not
reached the entire truth. He does not touch the ground which supports
the tree. Polygamy is but one development of the doctrine of woman's
created inferiority, the constant tendency of which is to make her a
mere slave, under every form of religion extant, and of which the
complex marriage of the Oneida Community was but another logical
result.

When woman interprets the Bible for herself, it will be in the
interest of a higher morality, a purer home. Monogamy is woman's
doctrine, as polygamy is man's. Backofen, the