Page:History of Utah.djvu/424

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progresses, religion becomes less dogmatic, and the insanity assumes more and more the milder form. Thus it is with the Mormons as with others; they would not feel justified in doing now some things which were done by their predecessors, any more than gentile Cliristians would wish to burn here- tics, or slaughter millions in the name of the re- deemer; or any more than they would accept Joseph Smith as a prophet from God, or believe in his metal book of Mormon, or his pretended revelations.

But admitting man's obligation to follow the pre- cepts and example of the bible, which, if done literally, would lead him into all manner of contrarieties and absurdities, even as it does the Mormons to-day, the scriptural argument in support of polygamy does not go for much. Among the half-savage Israelites the custom obtained, but as they grew more civilized, it died out. The first apostles had none of them two wives, and St Paul maintained that it was best not to have any; the spirit of the new testament is all against plurality of wives, and, though it nowhere in so many words condemns the system, the books of Mormon and doctrine and covenants do.

Thus we see that holy books are contradictory and unreliable, not being consistent in themselves, or pro- ducing consistent followers. Codes of morality de- pending on the divine will are without foundation : are, indeed, not codes of morality, which to be genuine must be based on nature as the law-giver and punisher; for otherwise all men to whom the will of God has not been revealed, or who do not believe in any god or revelation, would be without any knowledge of right and wrong, or any standard of morality.

Innate perceptions, supernatural intuitions, or a con- science divinely given, instead of one evolved from the ever-increasing accumulation of human experiences, are not safe guides to right conduct, as the doctrines and doings of the Mormons clearly show. By the re- sult of an act, not by supernatural revelation, we know