virtuous, and religious, than these Mormons. With all its impositions and absurdities, a religion which will produce results like these must have in it of good-something. Yes, a great deal."

Other travellers thither have given like testimony of the excellent moral habits and condition of the people. It has been said again and again, that among the Mormons there are no thefts, no bad debts, no insolvencies; no gambling, idleness, nor divorce; no adultery, seduction, and abandonment; no fœticide, infanticide, nor prostitution. "A good tree," said the divine Author of Christianity, "cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." "Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them." With this rule of Jesus for a criterion, no unprejudiced person can truthfully deny the goodness of the Mormon trees, or institutions which annually produce harvests of the good fruits mentioned by Capt. Codman and other travellers.

But it is said that polygamy is an "iniquity," "a monstrous evil," and "a stigma." Chancellor Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., in "The Independent" of March 10, 1881, recommended that "Utah should be dynamited. It is a stenchheap," said he, "and needs a brimstone cure." Was it a spirit from beneath, or above, that uttered such invectives, and animated him in giving such counsels? Jesus turned and rebuked James and John when they proposed to bid fire to come down from heaven and consume certain Samaritans, saying, "Ye know not of what manner of spirit ye are of." 1 Having been reared and educated amid evangelic influ

1 At a recent meeting in New York to protest against Russian persecution of the Jews, many of whom are polygamists, it is specially interesting to learn that Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby said, "It was a most marvellous thing that religious hatred was the most diabolical thing on the face of the earth." Would that he and his fellow-religionists would be no less tolerant to Mormons than to the Jews; and that the Evangelical Alliance of the United States would remonstrate against the persecution of the Mormons for conscience' sake, as it has against that of the Jews, and pray the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (all of whom were polygamists) that he will graciously so incline the hearts of the President, Senators, and Representatives of the United States, and all who make, interpret, and execute laws, that they may be restrained from imposing disabilities and oppressive restrictions upon the Mormons on account of their religious belief.

ences in New England, I naturally imbibed its religious and social opinions. I was taught, and believed, that monogamic marriage was the only Christian and the only proper marriage; that polygamy was unchristian and barbarous. As I had not carefully examined into the subject, by thoughtful study, or by travel and observation of polygamy where it existed, my opinions in respect to it were, of course, mere pre-judgments. They were judgments formed before knowledge of it had been acquired. In other words, they were prejudices. Thus I was prepossessed (as probably a large part of the American people are from like influences) in favor of monogamic marriage, and prejudiced against polygamy. Not so strong, however, was my prejudice as to call polygamy "odious;" certainly my taste and my judgment would have restrained me from designating it as a “stenchheap." But when, within the last few weeks, the persistent, universal, and vigorous efforts of ministers, priests, and churchpeople, to instigate persecution (which is a cruel and deceitful way of uprooting other religions, and to plant their own) against the Mormons and polygamy, attracted my attention, I resolved to rid myself of my pre-judgments or prejudices as much as possible, and candidly, without bias, to examine the Mormon question. Cicero says, Vulgus ex veritate pauca, ex opinione multa æstimat.” I would, if possible, learn the truth of Mormonism, and not merely reiterate other persons' opinions about it. "He hears but half who hears one party only." Accordingly the first part of the Mormon problem for me to solve, was not, how to abolish polygamy, but whether polygamy is an "evil," an "abomination," a "stigma," and a "stench-heap," as is charged upon it by zealous ministers of Christian sects.

66

Accidentally or providentially, not many months since, while in the library of Brown University in Providence, R.I., I there saw a book entitled, "Thelypthora, or a Treatise on Female Ruin, in its Consequences, Prevention, and Remedy, considered on the basis of Divine Law, under the heads of Marriage, Whoredom, and Fornication, Adultery, Polygamy,

Divorce; with many other incidental matters, including an Examination of the Principles and Tendencies of Statute George II., c. 33, commonly called the Marriage Act," by Rev. Martin Madan, D.D., published in London, 1780. The work is in three volumes; and on the fly-leaf of its second volume, which had been presented to the library by Judge E. R. Potter, there was written in his handwriting and over his signature, as follows: viz., “I wish the subject could be ventilated anew. Upon these matters the clergy seem to act like the goose who hid her head in the wall.-E. R. POTTER."

Now, as I not long ago learned from certain ministers who are quite enthusiastic in the crusade against the Mormons,1 and are equally zealous in their opposition to legislative divorce except for one cause, that they had never seen Dr. Madan's book (and they asked me for information respecting it and its author), it is possible, as the book is a somewhat scarce one in the United States, that other ministers and professional religious guides may not have studied it, and that your readings of it may not be fresh in your memories: I desire, therefore, herein to give some extracts from it, to show some of the opinions and arguments of a very learned, candid, and courageous minister, one who had carefully studied his subject, and had arrived at conclusions different from those hitherto expressed in American religious journals. Perhaps a consideration of such extracts may serve to open the door to the ventilation wished for by Judge Potter.

Dr. Madan was chaplain of Lock Hospital and Asylum, an institution founded 1747 by Rev. Thomas Scott, the biblical commentator, for the cure and reclamation of profligate persons, and had, therefore, exceptionally good and large opportunities of learning from its inmates, the causes of their

1 I have been credibly informed that many ministers in New England obtain the signatures of their Sunday-school scholars to petitions to Congress for hostile legislation against the Mormons. Two religious newspapers, edited by ministers, recently refused to me to publish articles asking toleration for the Mormons, their editors intimating that they felt they could not afford to.

fall. He was a brother of Rev. Dr. Spencer Madan, Bishop of Bristol and Peterborough, and was somewhat short of sixty years of age when he published his book. As I intend to give only, as it were, a clew to his general views and arguments, my extracts from his work must be few, short, and far-between. He writes:

"The institution of marriage may be found in Gen. i. 28, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,' but the essence of it is in Gen. ii. 24: Et ad hærebit in uxore sua, et erunt in carnem unam.' Our translation, shall cleave to his wife, does not convey the idea of the Hebrew original. This is the one simple, divine ordinance, and the obli gation resulting from it is indissoluble. Wherefore, saith Christ,' what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' The same thing is expressed in Deut. xxii. 29, She shall be his woman,' or wife as we call it (sa femme, Fr.), because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away, all his days. (Vol. ii., p. 136.)

66

...

By polygamy I mean the having more than one wife at a time. It was this which was allowed of God, consequently practised by his people (Deut. xxii. 29, 19; Exod. xxi. 10)." (Vol. i., p. 75.)

From p. 269 to p. 273 of "Thelypthora," Dr. Madan gives a paradigm of the passages of the Old Testament recognizing and allowing polygamy, and on p. 273 remarks, "The conclusion of all which appears to be, that either we do not worship the same God which the Jews did, or the God we worship, does not disallow or disapprove polygamy.

"The true meaning of the word 'adultery' in Exod. xx. 14,- - Thou shalt not commit adultery, — is to denote defilement of a betrothed or married woman." (Vol. i., p. 61.) "Nor is it used but where a married woman is concerned." (pp. 281, 383, note 2; vol. ii., 3, 219.)

"So far from Jesus Christ ever condemning polygamy, which, as a new law-giver, he is supposed to have done, he never mentioned it during the whole course of his ministry, but left it, as he did all other moral actions of men, upon the footing of that law under which he was made, and to which for us men, and for our salvation, he became subject and obedient unto death." (pp. 287, 288.)

"Josephus says it was the custom of the Jews to live with a plurality of wives, the custom of their country, derived from their fathers." (p. 392.)

"A divorce which declares the nullity of a polygamous marriage is

not only without all foundation from God's word, but is an arraignment of the wisdom and holiness of God." (Vol. ii., p. 13.)

"Were a missionary to go into those countries where polygamy is allowed, and open his commission with declaring, that though polygamy was allowed under the law, yet Christ forbade it under the gospel, he would go with a lie in his right hand." (Vol ii., p. 81.)

"We may boast of our monogamy, and condemn polygamy: but there is not a nation under heaven where polygamy is more openly practised than in this Christian country; for, though a man can marry but one at a time, he may have as great a variety of women as he pleases without ever marrying at all. This is so inveterated by custom, that those laws of Heaven which were made to prevent it, seem to be totally forgotten.” (Vol. ii., p. 85.)

"How polygamy became reprobated in the Christian Church is easily accounted for, when we consider how early the reprobation of marriage itself began to appear. The Gnostics condemned marriage in the most shocking terms, saying it was of the Devil. . . . Better people soon after condemned marriage as unlawful to Christians, and this under a wild notion of greater purity and perfection in keeping from all intercourse with the other sex. This opinion divided itself into many sects, and gave great trouble to the Church, before it was discountenanced. second marriages were held infamous, and called no better than lawful whoredom. Nay, they were not ashamed to write that a man's first wife being dead, it was adultery, and not marriage, to take another. Amidst all this, polygamy must necessarily receive the severest anathema.” (Vol. i., p. 275.)

...

Still,

For,

"If women, taken by men already married, were not lawful wives in God's sight, then the issue must be illegitimate, and it would lead even to the bastardizing the Messiah himself. It is sufficient to prove one link in the chain of Christ's genealogy from David, faulty, to defeat all his title to the appellation of the Son of David, King of Israel. Solomon the ancestor of Joseph, and Nathan the ancestor of Mary, through whom our Lord's line runs back to David, being the children of Bathsheba (whom, when David married, he had also other wives by whom he had children), must fail in their legitimacy." (Vol. ii., p. 15.)

"If God's word be the criterion of right and wrong, our laws have no more authority to say that a man shall not have two wives, than Popish laws have to say that a priest shall not have one." (Vol. ii., p. 69.)

"Our notions relative to the commerce of the sexes are by far more friendly to polygamy, than the Turkish system of polygamy is. A Turk may take one or more wives, but then they are kept in his harem as his inviolable property; no eye of a stranger can ever behold them; and they are maintained and provided for as liberally as the man's circumstances will permit. Whereas, among us, a man may take as many women as he