is in abeyance, it is not its wrong but its expediency that furnishes the justification of its momentary neglect.
Before the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, slavery as well as polygamy existed in Utah. The nation, by the stern arbitrament of the sword, settled the one, and the other is now in controversy. Both institutions, in the Mormon faith, are ordinances of God.
No antiquity, however, is respected by the Mormon teacher, unless it is harmonious with the inspirations of the modern priesthood. This is exemplified in the unceasing use of the Old Testament in support of polygamy, the "Blood Atonement," [i. e., shedding of the saintly sinner's blood as an atonement for adultery or apostacy] and kindred teaching, while the New Testament is unceremoniously set aside when it militates against the establishment of "a literal kingdom of God" upon the earth.
The breathings of every anguish-burthened soul among the Hebrews, in its longing for the restoration of monarchy and glory to Israel, are accepted as Divine inspiration and revelation pointing directly to the times in which we live. That disturbing dream of the King of Babylon, interpreted by Daniel, has been a perennial fountain of living waters to the Mormon preacher. The anxious monarch and the heaven-gifted interpreter may not have anticipated in that hour of solicitude in the land of Shinar, that "the stone cut out of the mountains without hands," which was to "break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold" of the "great image" of the king's dream, was to find its fulfilment in the discovery of the stone box containing the plates of the Book of Mormon, by Joseph Smith, in western New York, in the year of grace 1820! It requires considerable faith to accept the statement that the migrations of the Mormons from Fayette County, New York, to Kirtland, Ohio; thence to Jackson County, Missouri; to Nauvoo, Illinois; on to the Rocky
