abstaining from those
things towards clothing those children that are very thinly clad."

It is in this way that Mormonism has spread. It has come to the poorest
of the poor, and used their own language. Its phraseology is that dear
to the natural heart. We are all too prone to throw our responsibility
on others: It is the Lord who saves me. It is the devil who makes me
bad; and it is a great help to the ignorant and uneducated, not merely to
have spiritual states shadowed forth in earthly language, but to feel
that, after all, heaven is here in the shape of comfortable dwellings,
wives and children, raiment to wear, and a bellyfull. "This is great
encouragement to the saints in their pilgrimages here in old Babylon, and
stimulates them to more diligence in building up the kingdom of God, and
delivering themselves from the yoke of tyranny and oppression, to enjoy
the liberty of the people of God in the valleys of the mountains." Thus
writes one of the elders with reference to certain manifestations of the
gift of tongues; but I quote the passage here as applicable in an eminent
degree, and as illustrating the religious phraseology, affected no doubt
for certain ends by the Mormons. The kingdom of God, for instance, of
the theologians may be difficult of apprehension to the illiterate and
the rude; but if it means to me a good house and good living in Utah, it
at once assumes an attractive form. If to live in England is to live in
Babylon, of course it is my duty to emigrate; and if Brigham Young is the
Lord's deputy on earth, then to disobey his call is an act of sin. So
degraded are many of our brethren and sisters in this Christian land,
where we have one parson at the least in every parish, that they are
utterly unable to contemplate anything apart from its accidental forms.
Their God is a God of parts and passions; their religion is one of
sensation; their heaven a loss of physical pains and the presence of
physical delights; they become at once an easy prey to the Mormonite
preacher when for ten pounds he offers them the realization of their
hopes, not at the end of life, but now, and tells them that in the Land
of the Saints they shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more.

CHAPTER XVIII.
ADVANCED RELIGIONISTS.

The Church of Progress.

At length, if I am to believe what I hear and see, the religious problem
of the age has been solved, and I am presented with a form of worship
which is i