CHRISTIANITY AND PROFANITY.
THERE is a consonance in sound, a rhyming, between the two words at the head of this article, but it indicates no association or harmony between the two things named. There is absolute antagonism between Christianity and profanity. If a man has the genuine first, he has not the second. If he has the second and receives the first, the second is bound to go. If a man has not enough Christianity to destroy his profanity, he has hardly a salvable quantity. And yet, according to the Salt Lake Tribune of October 5, among the prominent growing evils among the Latter-day Saints, as discussed in their seventy-second annual meeting, were profanity and the use of tobacco. In the Tribune's report we read:— President Smith referred to the evils among the Saints, including the breaking of the Sabbath day and the taking of the name of the Lord in vain, both of which he said were incompatible with the teachings of the Gospel. Another growing evil which President Smith said is becoming all too apparent is that of the use of tobacco among the youth. Apostle Cowley also took up and denounced the practice of profanity among the Saints, and said an authority of the church had recently said to him that there was more profanity on the streets of Salt Lake in a short time than in the cities of England in a long time. The apostle said, too, that he had spent nearly five years in the South, and during that time he seldom heard the name of God taken in vain; that while those people were probably worse in some respects, they would be an example for the Latter-day Saints to follow in their freedom from profanity. Others tell us that profanity is common. It is no wonder that membership increased under promise of temporal prosperity and lax discipline. Another speaker, “Apostle” Clawson, familiar with Mormonism in Salt Lake City,—called attention to the increasing use of tobacco among the Saints, and said it would appear from the actions of some of the elders that they think more of their cigarettes and of their chew of tobacco and of their filthy habits than they do of their families and of the priesthood of the Son of God.