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Show For Our Conference Friends. Ladies and gentleman who from the outside aro attending conference, you may have heard since your coming hero that your church is founded on a rook, that by and by is going to roll out of the mountains and crush all the enemies of your religion. If you have, stop a minute and let us tell you something. There are no enemies of your religion in this free land. Ninety-five out of every hundred people have not the slightest desire to interfere with your worship, and do not judge whether your faith is a sound one or not. But thlB is a land of liberty, which means enlightened enlight-ened liberty, that is liberty under the law. All the trouble that Iisb come to your people here or elsewhere has come through the determination deter-mination of your chiefs to be a law unto them- selves. That will not do. There will be friction just as long as it is persisted in. There is a clause in the Constitution of Utah which declares m that there shall be in Utah absolute separation I of church and state, and that no religion shall I usurp or interfere with the functions of the state. I This your ecclesiastical chiefe agreed to, but they have not obeyed it. When the News tells you that there has been no Interference, you have I only to search your own memories to get a proper estimate of the truthfulness of your organ. Before the coming of the Savior it was a rule under the Mosaic law to get tho best of enemies if possible. But that was not what the Messiah taught, and your chief insist, that they are following fol-lowing Ihto Savior rather than Moses. . This matter of free government is one over which the American people are most sensitive and jealous. Tho fathers who framed our Government left to the country nothing for its protection, short of the sword, except the ballot. Their theory was that when a patriotic people, of their free will, cast their ballots, a divinity would guide them aright and that their decrees would be blessed or heaven. That Vox Populi would be Vox Dei. Now when the majority-of the people of a State cast their ballots at thoy are directed, to, they dishonor tho ballot and violate the most vital principle of the Government. They violate, too, the Constitution of this State, for by the act they subordinate tho State to their church. It is this that has kept Utah a storm center for almost all the sixty years singe the first immigrants came. The mon who have been fighting against this usurpation have not been fighting a religion, but have been struggling to make tho just laws of tho land supremo, for no people who disobey necessary neces-sary laws aro safe for a moment. To gain statehood your chiefs made solemn promisos to never more interfere with you in politics; that thenceforth you should be free to think and vote as you pleased. Did that mean that before tho State should be ten years old, Reed Smoot should name all the State officers and because he was an apostle should be obeyed? This matter is i to you. You can keep the agitation agi-tation up until it culminates in war, if you so desire, but do not say your church is being per-seoutod, per-seoutod, for that is not true. |
