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Show TOO ONESIDED. Yesterday in conversation with a republican who stands well up in the church, we heard an honest confession in answer to our protest against apos-talic apos-talic stumping. Said our republican friend: "If your party had not nominated nomi-nated Apostle Moses Thatcher.Apostle John Henry Smith would not have taken the stump this season for the republican party. He went on the stump expreESly to offset that nomination. nomina-tion. "Therein lies a tacit concession of that for which we have all along contended, viz: that apostles take the stump because of the weight their influence in-fluence carries with them as apostles. When charged with that, our friend remarked; ''Well, youi party has ApoBties Moses Thatcher, Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards, Brigham Young, Heber J. Grant and others, all democrats, and whose influence on your side ought to reconcile your party to the work done by President Joseph F. Smith and Apostle John Henry Smith," To which we reply; Apostle Thatcher has made but three, not ex-ceedingfour ex-ceedingfour addresses since the division divis-ion on party lines. And nil but pnc, and that not exceeding "ten minutes in his home city, have been addresees to conventions in which but a comparitiyely small number of people were prt aent. So far as the other democratic apostles are concerned, they have been of no earthly use to the democratic party, as among all that number, Heber J, Grant has made only one short speech. On the contrary, Apostle Smith has been on the stump, by the "consent" of his superiors, nearly all the time during each campaign, while President Smith has been an avowed partisan from almost the first moment of division, di-vision, and, as it is presumed, by the "consent" ot his duperiors. But the first apostle that appears even as a si' lent candidate for the democrats, must needs be "disciplined" for not first obtaining the "consent" of his republican repub-lican superiors (?). Now, cannot our apostolic friends Bee two distinct propositions in the foregoing? First that it was an act of gross injustice to Messrs. Thatcher and Roberts to "discipline" those gentlemen gen-tlemen for entering politics and at the same time to "consent" to republican apostles taking tne stump? Was it not also a gross injustice to the democratic demo-cratic party to select so inopportune a time and place in which to perform the "disciplining" (?) and taking all the circumstances involved in this entire ecclesiastical influence in politics, from beginning to end, is there not justj cause for a mighty kick from the democrocy for that which to unbiased minds is apparently unjust? The other proposition to which we desiie to call the attention of our ap-ostalic ap-ostalic brethern is this: Can they not see the dangers to the church that have come and will continue to come through apostles entering politics? Can they nut see that their presence on the stump will always be taken advantage advant-age of by both sides, and that there wi 11 be an everlasting quarrel as to which end of the political scales has the preponderance of apotolic weight? Unless the quorum of the apostles Is split exactly in two in tho middle (politically) and each one tate the stump and make a certain number of speeches during each campaign, there will always be jealously on the part of the rank and file ot both parties? TheDi'spatch doesn't expect any answers to the foregoing, and merely asks those questions to show how the people feel and to Eet the apostles to thinking. |