1880-09-27-New York Sun-Talmage on the Mormons
Talmage on the Mormons
- New York Sun, 27 September 1880, p. 3
Talmage on the Mormons
He Wants the Seventh Commandment Thundered by Big Bore Cannon.
"Mormonism" was Dr. Talmage's topic yesterday morning. "Sodom and Salt Lake City are synonymous," said the preacher; "you can hardly think of one without thinking of the other. Both in fertile valleys; both near an offensive, fishless dead sea; both famous capitals of the most accursed impurity; both doomed. This summer I had an opportunity to ispect this iniquity. In regard to the alleged subsidence of Mormonism, I tell you that 750 Mormons arrived at Salt Lake City just before I got there. Ten thousand were added last year; and there will be more than that this year. They have 300 missionaries in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Germany, England, Ireland and Scotland. Many Scotch Prebyterians were recently brought there. Emigrants are deluded by false promises of gain, and when they get to Utah they are taxed until the blood comes. There is no escape for them but in the grave. Mormonism is one great prolonged cruelty. I was shown a cellar where a mother and her two sons were butchered because they had revealed the secrets of Mormonism. The Mormons have a peculiar phraseography by which they describe this putting to death. They say: 'He was put out of the way.' 'They met with a bad accident.' 'They were used up.' 'They were cut off just under their ears.' [Laughter.] These outrages are stopped only because a regiment of United States soldiers is now overlooking the city, ready to destroy it if it dares repeat such atrocities. I charge Mormonism with being a great blasphemy. Brigham Young declared in one of his sermons that Christ himself was a practical polygamist; that Mary and Martha were Christ's plural wives. Brigham Young said in the same sermon that when Christ turned the water into wine it was the occasion of one of his own marriages. I charge upon Mormonism that it is disloyal to the United States Government. Mormonism would like to see this Government perish today. I charge upon Mormonism that it is organized filth. It is built on polygamy. There is a man in Salt Lake City who has three wives—mother, daughter, and granddaughter. It was related to me that when a man takes a new wife there his house is enlarged, but no house was ever large enough to hold two women married to the same man. [Great laughter.] Think of a system that teaches that the more wives a man has the higher will be his seat in heaven! Think of a system that commends a man for living in marriage at the same time with three sisters!
"I tell you it is one great surging licentiousness, the seraglio of the republic, the centre of corruption, hell enthroned. It is a power in American politics. It receives $1,000,000 a year with which it can influence national legislation. In the last Congress the matter was referred to a committee, and one of the members of that committee said: 'Why do you make all this fuss about polygamy? The Mormons make a religion of having four or five wives. All that is practised by members of Congress without any religion.' [Sensation.] I would not interfere with any man's religion. The Mormons might believe that Joseph Smith was God or that Brigham Young was the second person in the Trinity. You have no right to interfere with such beliefs. But Mormonism is not only antagonistic to Christianity but to Christian morals. Christianity stands side by side with infidelity in assailing that which antagonizes good morals.
"The tendency of Mormonism is as a foe to free institutions. I tell you that Mormonism will never be destroyed until it is destroyed by the United States Government. Why did they not let Gen. Johnston with his 2,500 troops destroy it in 1857? there never has been moral courage in the United States to clean out this national stable. [Applause.] We have all gone to look at it. Grant, Thompson, and Hayes went and looked at it. The Mormons receive everybody graciously. They bow you in and bow you out. If there could be a transmigration of souls, I should hope that the soul of Andrew Jackson would get into the body of some of our Presidents, who would make proclamation that at such a day and hour each Mormon shall have no more than one wife or shall go to jail or leave the country. [Applause.] If the Mormons would not submit I would send out troops, and let them make the Mormon Tabernacle their headquarters, and with cannon of the biggest bore thunder into them the seventh commandment. [Applause.] Arbitration by all means, if that will do; a proclamation, if that will do. But I am sure that bullets and cannon would be necessary at the back of it all. The United States Government cannot survive the existence of a community in its midst founded on a desolated, destroyed, imbruted womanhood. I call the attention of the American Congress to this subject. The hour has come. This thing has got to be done. Let some man come forth and speak the word in the name of God, and he will make his political fortune. Instead of exhuming the entombed mummy of negro slavery in these Presidential elections, why not bring up this live question of Mormonism?
"Now I ask you as the jury who have considered the evidence against Mormonism. What shall the sentence be? It must not bre simply incarceration; it must not be slight censure. It must be the death and extinction of the abomination. But where and when shall the execution take place? The scaffold should stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada. Upon the grave shall be erected a stone with the inscription: 'Here lies Mormonism—the outlaw, the libertine, the murderer, the hero of the Mountain Meadow massacre. Born Feb. 2, 1827.'" Died 1882. [Great applause.]
