OCR Text |
Show The True Business EARLY IN the present week a Mormon bishop called at the home of a Mormon woman and said to her, "You must vote the Re publican ticket this year." The lady replied that it would be against her political convictions, and she would not do it. The bishop said it was the will of the authorities of the church that she would vote the Republican ticket. Then the lady lost her temper and replied: "Bishop, I am a bet ter Mormon than you, five times better, but my political Ideas are my own, and no man under heaven, I do not care how high in authority he may be, can compel me to vote any ticket. It is something no chmch has anything to do with; it is no part of religion, and the elder of the church who attempts to coerce the political acts of members of the church, lowers his religion to the meanest possible worldly standpoint." The bishop went away with a new idea in his mind. If there were five thousand more Mormon Mor-mon women of that stamp in Utah, we should, a year hence, have an American state here. And the high-priests would gain in prestige and power by surrendering their assumed right to dictate politics to their people. That rule, when enforced, en-forced, has never failed to bring degeneration upon a nation. The fathers perfectly understood thrl'i fact, when they formed our government and decreed in the organic law perfectly religious liberty, but in the same paragraph forbade any religious interference in-terference with the state. |