ligious intolerance pure and simple. New York, where Joe Smith began his ministry, suffered a free-love colony to exist in its midst in peaceful prosperity; but the Mormons were aggressive proselytizers and thereby evoked the undying enmity of other religious sects. Polygamy, as subsequently practiced, appears to have had no place in the Mormon cult until after the murder of Joe Smith; but they were hated and harried as vindictively by their Christian neighbors before as after it became an accepted tenet of their faith. They were expelled, not because of their immorality, but because of difference with their neighbors anent religious dogma. They abandoned their magnificent city of Nauvoo, their fruitful farms and pleasant homes in Illinois and Missouri, and tramped resolutely a thousand miles into the wilderness, hoping that they might there enjoy that religious liberty to which they were entitled as American citizens. Tireless industry soon retrieved their fallen fortunes, but with prosperity came the development of polygamy. Utah was at once denounced as a moral plague-spot demanding heroic treatment, and the Federal officials became the agents of the new persecution. I rejoice that polygamy exists no longer on American soil; but the remedy adopted was infinitely worse than the disease. Religious liberty and local selfgovernment are the very pillars of this Republic, and the integrity of both was fiercely assailed in our dealings with the Latter Day Saints.

It is questionable whether we have done the monogamic doctrine any real good by the persecution of a few polyg amists. Our crusade sufficed to call the world's attention to the fact that, while dominated by the polygamous Saints, Utah was a veritable Arcadia, practically free of pimps and prostitutes, bloated millionaires and groveling mendicants-strange contrast to those communities where

our religious ideas and code of social ethics have long been paramount. It has served to remind untold millions that, while accepting the Hebrew prophets and patriarchs as God's anointed, we have persistently hounded as public enemies a people who molded their social life by those divine models. True, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in an age of general ignorance; but if they had GræcoRoman wrestling matches with angels, fed those feathered songsters and washed their feet, we may presume that they learned how many female bosses are permitted to the average pilgrim-whether polygamy is displeasing to the Lord. Of course the old dispensation has passed away; still it is difficult to imagine the Almighty permitting a sawed-off dude like King Solomon to have a thousand pretty women and compelling a fine lusty animal like the Rev. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill to worry along with

one.

Furthermore, the anti-Mormon crusade has set the anthropologists to prattling again; and, shocking as it may seem to our modern civilization and its monogamic ideas, they are inclined to agree with Solomon that it is difficult for a man to get too much of a really good thing. Science does not show much respect for modern creeds and cults, environment and education; but tells us plainly that man is naturally a polygamous animal-even intimates that a thousand years of monogamy, strictly enforced, would sweep the human race from the face of the earth. Progressive physicians inform us sub rosa, of course that loss of virility is the reward of male virtue-even prescribe an occasional violation of moral law as a preventative of impotency. This is indeed a serious matter, and I submit it to my brother ministers and humbly ask: What are we going to do about it? Does the Seventh Commandment repeal the imperative order issued to Adam and Eve

to be fruitful and multiply? That is a knotty theological problem which should be decided without delay, and I move that it be referred to the faculty of Baylor University.

Monogamy has become with us a sacred thing, the citadel of social purity; and I am in nowise responsible for the demoralizing example of King David, the beloved of the Lord, nor for the conclusions of science that it runs counter to the law of man's life.

If the conclusions of the anthropologists be correctwhich I am not prepared to admit, and it were presumption to deny the question naturally arises: Were it better for the race considered either morally or physically, that man should have a plurality of wives, or only one legal mate and many mistresses? that he should legitimatize all his children and accord them a father's care, or disown a part-turn them adrift to grow up as best they may beneath a social blight? Were it better that their mothers have a legal claim upon him for life, and feel that they are within the pale of respectability, or remain the mere creatures of his caprice and suffer a social ostracism that is more demoralizing than the worst of marriage systems? The seraglio or the bagnio-which shall it be, oh brother ministers mine? Is the courtesan more desirable to our civilization than the concubine? We have answered this

important question in one way, the Mormons in another. I believe that the Gentiles are in the right. I opine that a handful of women, who are true wives, are worth more than untold millions living lives of legalized concubinage. I believe that of monogamic marriage were born the bravest and brainiest men that ever fronted destiny. Still, candor compels the admission that the polygamists have both science and the cumulative wisdom of sixty centuries on their side, while we are little more than experimentalists, who may be riding to a fall. In the discussion of all

problems of such import, we should be rigidly honest with both our opponents and ourselves. In considering the relation of the sexes we should remember that marriage, the most sacred of our human institutions, had its origin in selfish lust. When men attempt to live together in communities that they may be mutually helpful, they must, perforce, make rules for the measurement and conservation of individual rights. The institution of marriage, like the law against theft, was originally intended to guarantee to each male member of the community peaceable possession and enjoyment of his property. From such an unseemly grub sprung the winged Psyche which we now worship. Female purity was not handed down from heaven like Promethean fire; it was born behind the warclub and developed with the criminal code. It is sometimes necessary to a proper understanding of the phenomena with which we are confronted, to examine the compost from which springs the Rose of Sharon. Careful examination into the origin and development of social and religious phenomena signs the death warrant of dogmatism and makes us tolerant of the ideas of others. The more a man knows the more he doubts. Wisdom stammers while Ignorance out-bawls Stentor. Fools approve or condemn according to the creeds and customs to which they are born; the philosopher rises superior to his environment and education and views human institutions and habits by the light of the whole world's history.

Polygamy has gone, but America has forever lost her reputation for religious tolerance. Columbia can pose no longer as the champion of liberty of conscience. The man who desires to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience had best charter a balloon. The Mormons are drifting to Mexico, and while these home-builders and desert-subduers are going out at one gate, the

anarchists and ignorami of Italy and Russia are rolling in at the other. Even the Mormons who remain, and have renounced polygamy, are subjected to gross indignities. We send our missionaries among the Mohammedans and Buddhists of Asia to destroy the time-honored faith of their fathers, and shield them from insult with doubleshotted guns. If one of them chance to catch an o'er-ripe egg in his ample ear, we shriek about "Moslem fanaticism " and demand that the government let loose the dogs of war; but let a Mormon elder come into a Christian community and begin proselyting for his faith-even since shorn of polygamy-and he is given time to leave town. Should he stand upon the order of his going, instead of humping himself down the plank turnpike with his back to the burg, he is treated to a coat of tar and feathers, supplemented by a ride on a triangular rail. The fact is that despite our boasted civilization and prattle anent freedom of thought, we are about the most narrow-brained bigots and intolerant fanatics to be found on God's footstool. Our very atheists are dogmatists in their denial; our agnostics are pharisees in their pride of ignorance, while the American definition of a liberalist is a man who thinks as he durn pleases and protests against others exercising the same prerogative.

***

THE JEW-BAITER ABROAD.

THE daily papers announced some time ago that "Herr Doktor Ahlwardt, the world-renowned Jew-baiter," had arrived in this country for the purpose of delivering a series of anti-Semitic lectures. One or two papers printed his picture-that of a pudgy little porpoise with a wooden face, a scrubbing-brush mustache and “fair