Show RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL SOME of the circumstances connected with an attempt on the part of some of the citizens of provo to have a methodist university established in that town are still fresh some of these who favored the movement took that position tion because they had been assured that it was to be a nonpartisan non partisan institution in the fullest sense of the term we have before us a report and set of resolutions adopted by the methodist conference at ogden which closed its session on monday afternoon in the report is this significant para graph we recognize in our schools one of the great civilizing as well as the evangelising evange lising forces that are bringing about the present daylight day light in utah According to the report one of the results of the education of mormon young men in schools of the methodist persuasion is that they become voters against their own party this is one of the grounds upon which the erection of the proposed new methodist university is urged the anticipated effects of the institution are dual religious and political thus our contention that the anti and mormon crusade partakes of or both elements is constantly proved by declarations and facts from the otter otner side in which church and state are wedded for a common purpose the one working into the hands of the other each party to the crusade contract has its own particular end to serve the one seeks to protect its religious craft which is endangered by the existence of a vitalized vitali zed religion and the other desires to climb into political power by trampling upon the rights of a people who have been by slander rendered religiously unpopular it is a little curious to note that professedly at least the methodists are adopting some of the leading points of mormon doctrine for instance the latte rd saints believe in present revelation without which religion is nothing better than a corpse minus the intelligent tell igent animating spirit the idea of god taking any immediate direction of human affairs has been for ages repudiated by the sectarian sectarians Sect Sec arians tarlan churches including the methodist methodist yet here is a paragraph from the conference report on afra affairs irs IX in utah that the church methodist and her representatives are here by divine appointment and that god will not allow alloy his word to return to him void now if the methodist church and its representatives are here by divine appointment the only way in which that proceeding could be made known is byl by revelation of course this does not agree with the common position taken by all the sectarian churches that the days of rV revelation and miracles have long si since nee ceased but certain it is that the representatives of the methodist church could not receive a divine appointment without a divine notification of the fact and that would be a revelation of course we do not believe the claim to be based on th the slightest foundation in truth but the announcement of it is some thing hing new perhaps it is merely imitative there can however be no counterfeit of the fact |