p. 328, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

PRESIDENT WOODRUFF, on September 24, published a manifesto denying that plural marriages were still solemnized in Utah, and saying:—

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I do hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws and use all my influence with the members of the church, over which I preside, to have them do likewise. There is nothing in my teaching to the church or in those of my associates during the time specified, which can reasonably be construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy, and when any elder of the church has used language which appeared to convey such teaching he has been promptly reproved; and I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-Day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.

On the 6th inst., the Mormon Conference, in session in Salt Lake, resolved by a unanimous vote to sustain President Woodruff in his action in abolishing polygamy. Not a dissenting voice was heard in the entire assembly of 10,000 persons.

Many will still doubt the sincerity of the Mormons in thus renouncing polygamy, and the Government will doubtless still keep them under surveillance for some time to come, or until they bring forth in this respect “fruits meet for repentance;” but so long as the Mormons abstain from plural marriages the Government cannot properly treat them differently from other religionists. Polygamy is rightfully prohibited by civil law, but aside from the practice of polygamy, the Mormons have just the same rights as the Catholics and the National Reformers, whom they resemble in their ideas of Church and State.