Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/76

 racy, religion permeates and governs in all the concerns of life. Nothing is above its dictation—nothing too trivial for its watchful care. The laws of Moses were far more minute, both as regards questions of morals and matters of commercial law, and the every-day affairs of life, than the statutes of any of our States: and all this legislation was a portion of the Jewish religious faith

Inlike manner, to-day, the President of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, and his elders, preach to their followers, not only upon questions of ethics, but upon almost all the concerns of our daily life. In the great Tabernacle, one will hear sermons upon the culture of sorghum; upon infant baptism; upon the best manure for cabbages; upon the perseverance of the Saints; upon the wickedness of skimming milk before its sale; upon the best method of cleaning water - ditches; upon bed-bug poison; upon the price of real estate; upon teething in children; upon the martyrdom of Joseph Smith; upon olive-oil as a cure for the measles; upon the ordination of the priesthood; upon the character of Melchisedec; upon worms in dried peaches; upon abstinence from plug tobacco; upon the crime of foeticide; upon chignons and the Grecian Bend. While civil laws are recognized and enforced, this is virtually considered as in deference to public opinion, in consequence of the presence among and around them of unbelievers, and because of the present imperfection of their own faith and lives. So soon as the world shall be converted to the true faith, and religious theory and practice made to accord, the necessity of civil laws and judicial tribunals will cease —the world will be one great brotherhood, and the laws of God as expounded by the priesthood will be the only needed rules of life and morals.

Religion, and a deference to its dictates, being thus the recognized standard whereby all the occupations of life

are measured, many peculiar results have followed. All amusements are conducted with a singular mingling of frolic and devotion. Dancing," say the Saints, "is a diversion for which all men and women have a native fondness." So dancing - parties, during the winter months especially, are numerous, and are usually under the care and supervision of some of the church dignitaries. Round dances are ostracized, as involving too large an amount of miscellaneous hugging. When the frolickers are assembled, some one calls them to order and opens the exercises with a fervent prayer. The fiddles then strike up; cotillions and old-fashioned square dances have the floor. The Mormons are opposed to all asceticism in religious life: the most religious man, having best fulfilled the object of his existence, is, therefore, entitled to the greatest percentage of fun in the world; and one of the Twelve Apostles, or a President of the Quorum of Seventies, will dance oftener, and with greater unction and relish, than a man of lesser sanctity. When the party is about to break up, order is again restored, and the dancers dismissed with a benediction. So of theatrical performances. "As all people have a fondness for dramatic representations," say the Saints, "it is well to so regulate and govern such exhibitions, that they may be instructive and purifying in their tendencies. If the best people absent themselves, the worst will dictate the character of the exercises." So, in the elegant theatre at Salt Lake City, may be seen at all performances many of the leading officers of the church; many of the actresses are their wives and daughters, against whose purity no one has breathed a whisper; and the plays presented are uniformly of a character to instruct and amuse, but not to demoralize the taste. The founders of Mormonism were all from Puritan New England; and it would be an interesting