1880-09-27-New York Tribune-Sunday Sermons The Mormon Iniquity

Sunday Sermons

New York Tribune, 27 September 1880, p. 2

The Mormon Iniquity

The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage at the Brooklyn Tabernacle (Presbyterian).'

Hundreds of people were turned away from the doors of the Brooklyn Tabernacle yesterday morning, unable, owing to the crowd, to gain admission. The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, in accordance with previous announcements, spoke on the Mormon question. He took his text from Genesis xix., 24: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven."

He spoke in substance as follows: Sodom and Salt Lake City are synonomous. You can hardly think of one without the other. Both are situated in fertile valleys. Both are near a salt, fishless and dead sea. Both are famous capitals of the most accursed impunity. Both are doomed. Mr. Talmage then sketched the departure of emigrants from Arkansas and Missouri in 1857 for California. He told how they had been attacked by the Mormon militia and massacred under orders of Brigham Young. Mr. Talmage proceeded:

It is the presiding spirit of the Mountain Meadow massacre I arraign before you Americans. Gory, hideous, infernal Mormonism, stand up and look into the faces of the American jurors who are to try you. This summer I had an opportunity of inspecting this iniquity, and many prominent Gentiles asked me to present the case to the people on this coast, and I fulfil the promise to do so this morning. In regard to the alleged decrease of Mormonism, I tell you it is not so. While I was there 750 emigrants arrived, and, another party was on the way. Last year their population was increased 10,000. Their missionaries go all over the world. You ought to see the poor people carrying tithes to the head of the Church. They are taxed till the blood comes. Their cooperative stores are only a pretext for extorting taxes. It was for years the land of assassination and bloodshed. No one doubts the story of the Heckman butchery, and all remember how a mother and two sons were slaughtered for divulging secrets of the order. Then there was the extermination of the Atken party. In the delicious vernacular of the country." they met with a bad accident." And why was all this butchery stopped? Because a regiment of United States soldiers was encamped on the hill overlooking the city. I charge Brigham Young with blasphemy. He preached that Christ was a practical Mormon. I have been told that Brigham Young swore like a fishwoman in Billingsgate Market. I charge that the Mormons are disloyal to the Government of the United States. Nothing is more abhorrent to them than a Fourth of July celebration. I charge that Mormonism is nothing more nor less than an organized filth. It is built on polygamy. There is a man in Salt Lake City who has three wives—a mother, daughter, and granddaughter. They build an addition to their houses whenever they take a new wife, forgeting the fact that no house is large enough to hold two women married to the same man. [Laughter]. Think of a system which wrecks the happiness of every woman who touches it. Every honeset woman knows she has the entire right to the throne of her husband's affections. [Applause.] It is a most pitiable thing to see an aged woman among the Mormons. The old are honored among us, but among the Mormons she is shoved back and out in order to make room for another who has taken the throne. Mormonism is one great surge of licentiousness. This miserable corpse has been rotting in the sun for forty years, and the United States Government has not had the courage to bury it. You have no idea of what influence it has at Washington. It receives millions a year, and it has plenty of money to affect legislation. Members of Congress refuse to grapple the question. One Congressman has said that its practices are based on religion, and he added; "some of us members of Congress practice iniquity without religion." There is a movement to admit Utah as a State to the Union. If Congress does so, it will put the stamp of the country on the iniquity.

"What's to be done?" some one asks. Execute the law. What right has the law to smite libertinism in one part of the country while Mormonism remains in Utah unmolested! It is an insult to every home and church in the land, and the curse of God will smite the Nation unless it is extirpated. Interfere with religion? No; but with Mormonism. It is not only antagonistic to Christianity but to good morals, and infidels and Christians stand side by side in denouncing it. Moral suasion would be very well if it were possible, but it will not do. Bombshells, and shot and shell are required. It will never be destroyed until by the guns of the United States Government. It would not be a war. I am opposed to war. It would be a National police duty. [Applause.] All the Presidents and high officials go to look at it, and they get well treated. It is one of the arts of the Mormons to be gracious. If the Mormons will submit to the law, all right. If not, send troops to Salt Lake City and make their headquarters in the Mormon temple, Then, with cannon of the biggest bore, thunder into them the Seventh Commandment. I call the attention of Congress to this evil. Let some Senator or member of the House, with powerful tongue, lift the anti-Mormon standard. Let us have one true question in the Presidential contest. Are you ready for the verdict? Guilty? What shall be the sentence? Not a small incarceration and a slight censure. Only extinction and the death of Mormonism. What scaffold large enough to carry out the execution? One end of it must rest on the Rocky Mountains and the other on the Sierras, and over the grave of this many-footed, many-headed, many-horned and many-fanged corpse should be engraved in stone these words: "Here lies Mormonism, the outlaw, the libertine, the murderer, the hero of Mountain Meadow massacre. Born 1840; Died 1882. Genesis xix., 24: Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven." I plead for womanhood in Utah, crushed till it cannot weep—for womanhood torn with the swine's suout of incestuous abomination. Men who have wives and daughters and mothers, will you not war against it in every possible way? The best cornerstone for a Republic is the hearthstone. May God keep it inviolate. [Applause.]