p. 5 | Futile Reform Efforts by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1903

Futile Reform Efforts

By L. A. S.

Among other resolutions relating to Mormonism passed by the late Presbyterian General Assembly, was the following:—

This assembly also calls upon the people and Congress, in both houses, and each member of each house, to employ and exhaust all legal means to secure such an amendment to the Federal Constitution as shall define legal marriage as monogamic, and make polygamy under every guise and practice a crime against the United States, punishable by adequate penalties, including disfranchisement and disqualification to vote or hold office in the United States, or in any State or Territory under the jurisdiction of the United States.

If the legislation here sought were secured and impartially enforced, the results would, we think, be such as the assembly did not contemplate; for “polygamy under every guise and practice” means very much more than is contained within the bounds of Mormonism, if we may believe what physicians and the divorce court records tell us. According to these statements, the American people themselves, who are called upon to rise up and suppress a feature of Mormonism, need themselves to be reformed quite as much as do those

against whom this legislation is sought.

We are constantly hearing from clergymen and others, about the awful proportions to which the divorce evil has grown in this country. What may be called “consecutive polygamy”—dropping the first wife (or husband) when the second is taken, etc.—is practiced through these courts. Or again, there is secret polygamy—marital infidelity—which upon good authority is said to be so prevalent as almost to honeycomb society.

And these very people, whom the phrase “polygamy under every guise and practice” would make transgressors, are called upon by the Presbyterian Assembly to suppress polygamy; to legislate against themselves. Such legislation would be sadly wanting in that force which consistency gives, to say the least.

It is an illustration of a reformation that will not reform. The object aimed at is superficial, and the remedy applied is inadequate. What is most needed in America, as no doubt in civilized lands the world over, is the application, not of human laws to the person, by the power of man, but of God’s law to the heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is for this that Presbyterians and other religious bodies should earnestly work and pray.

L. A. S.