obedience to the
rule of the priesthood."

Orson Pratt, the learned apostle, has always taught that "people cannot
govern themselves by laws of their own making or by officers of their
own choosing, for that would be in direct rebellion to the law of God.
Absolute power vested in one man is the best and most efficient human
government. There is one kind of government that will secure permanent
prosperity and happiness, and that is theocracy or the government of God
through his prophet, seer and revelator."

President Kimball said in the tabernacle:--"Have not the majority of
this congregation made most solemn covenants and vows that they will
listen, obey and be subject to the priesthood? Have not the sisters made
the same solemn covenant before God, angels and men that they will be
subject to their husbands?"

President Taylor says:--"You want to pay your tithing fairly and
squarely, or you will find yourselves outside of the pale of the church
of the living God. You must also uphold the co-operative institutions."

Col. Hollister, a gentleman thoroughly acquainted with Mormonism, writes
thus:--"There is no rule of the people intended in the Mormon church.
There is no state government contemplated because it has every organ of
despotic state government in and of itself. It takes no account whatever
of the natural right of man to life, liberty, property, freedom of
opinion or of conscience. Its bill of rights, its constitution, its laws
are the revelations of the prophet. It has not a single idea or
institution common to free government or free men. As long as they hold
this theocratic idea, to force democratic government upon them, is a
farce. Its political party is the church and into that political party
no one can enter excepting through the church."

Polygamy disgraces us in the eyes of the world, and fills the home where
it enters with untold misery; but a theocratic government, thoroughly
equipped, unanimously responsive in all its branches, far-reaching in
its designs and expanding as rapidly as that of the Mormon church,
presents a great political enigma to the American people even when shorn
of its most obnoxious feature. Congress and the country at large have
their attention fixed upon the question of polygamy, and the proposed
legislative commission, if endorsed by Congress, would bring the Mormon
Church itself face to face with it. It is so embedded in the very roots
of their organization that many Mor