What have you to say on the Mormon question?

_Answer_. The institution of polygamy is infamous and disgusting
beyond expression. It destroys what we call, and all civilized
people call, "the family." It pollutes the fireside, and, above
all, as Burns would say, "petrifies the feeling." It is, however,
one of the institutions of Jehovah. It is protected by the Bible.
It has inspiration on its side. Sinai, with its barren, granite
peaks, is a perpetual witness in its favor. The beloved of God
practiced it, and, according to the sacred word, the wisest man
had, I believe, about seven hundred wives. This man received his
wisdom directly from God. It is hard for the average Bible worshiper
to attack this institution without casting a certain stain upon
his own book.

Only a few years ago slavery was upheld by the same Bible. Slavery
having been abolished, the passages in the inspired volume upholding
it have been mostly forgotten, but polygamy lives, and the polygamists,
with great volubility, repeat the passages in their favor. We send
our missionaries to Utah, with their Bibles, to convert the Mormons.

The Mormons show, by these very Bibles, that God is on their side.
Nothing remain now for the missionaries except to get back their
Bibles and come home. The preachers do not appeal to the Bible
for the purpose of putting down Mormonism. They say: "Send the
army." If the people of this country could only be honest; if they
would only admit that the Old Testament is but the record of a
barbarous people; if the Samson of the nineteenth century would
not allow its limbs to be bound by the Delilah of superstition, it
could with one blow destroy this monster. What shall we say of
the moral force of Christianity, when it utterly fails in the
presence of Mormonism? What shall we say of a Bible that we dare
not read to a Mormon as an argument against legalized lust, or as
an argument against illegal lust?

I am opposed to polygamy. I want it exterminated by law; but I
hate to see the exterminators insist that God, only a few thousand
years ago, was as bad as the Mormons are to-day. In my judgment,
such a God ought to be exterminated.

_Question_. What do you think of men like the Rev. Henry Ward
Beecher and the Rev. R. Heber Newton? Do they deserve any credit
for the course they have taken?

_Answer_. Mr. Beecher is evidently endeavoring to shore up the
walls of the falling temple. He sees the crac