You are to take Hellenism at its best from Praxiteles and Phidias. You are to take moral culture at its best. From what? From whom? From the climax of moral culture in man. You think there is a Divine Spirit lying behind art; you believe that the nations have been led from point to point of development until certain ideals of beauty have acquired power over us, and that in this development God has exhibited himself as the author of beauty. You think that it is artistic blasphemy to go back to the uncouth ideals of the savages. You must agree with God in His highest manifestations of beauty; you school your souls to whatever you find the highest outcome of the unfathomable spirit of beauty in the universe; and why have I not as good a right, in the name of mere science, to ask you to take the highest revelations of the moral law and school yourselves into submission to their dictates? There was in the Acropolis, you say, a divine spirit of beauty. Well, but the Acropolis of man's development is this character, of which man's history predicates sinlessness. There is the place for you to cause to stand on high Minerva, with her shield lifted against all spears of scepticism. You can go further still. You can go as far as to have scientific confidence that God is in you, and that God was in the Christ, and that as you must agree with God, you must agree with conscience, and with that climax of man's nature in the Christ foreseen from the beginning and constituting the culmination of the creation.

This is the religion of ethical science as it stands to-day. This is the serious, straightforward, earnest thinking of many a German theologian of the evangelistic and also of the rationalistic school. I am insisting on the points in common between evangelistic and rationalistic teachers, in order that you may stand on them, and in subsequent discussion go higher. If we can come up only to this modern commanding point of view, we rise far above the clatter of what calls itself culture. We arrive at the true culture, and at a scientific roundness of conception concerning our relations to the universe. We arrive, by serious thought, at some perception of our relations to God in us, and the God in Christ. We yield to the demand of pure self-evident truth. Our harmonization with ourselves and our harmonization with the God who was in the climax of human nature require that we should love what God in us loves, and hate what the God in that climax hated. There is nothing but similarity of feeling with the God here and the God there to give us peace with the one or the other. Just as yonder door cannot be open and shut at one and the same time, so you and I cannot have harmonization and at the same time dissonance with the God in us or the God in

Christ. We must be open or shut to divine leadership; and Science herself, in the present attitude of scholarly thought in the world, demands our entire submission to the plan of creation revealed in the climax of human nature called the Christ. I am too serious to ask you to give me support by anything other than your prayers; but I believe that, in giving support by petition, adoration, and total self-surrender to the light you already have, there will burst upon you a flood of radiance, a lofty summit will be reached by you from which you will look down on these lower tracts of culture, these provincial, fog-ridden fields of liberalistic arrogance, and feel yourselves in God's bosom, while they are to presence through your own self-sacrifice. the low platitudes of culture falsely so culture rightly so called; but in the faith of science you will demand that culture be something other than a water nixie, especially when it becomes didactic.

be lifted by you into God's You will not sneer even at called if ever you attain

THE NEW BIRTH A SCIENTIFIC NECESSITY.

THE PRELUDE.-MORMONISM AND STATE RIGHTS.

THERE is no law in Utah against seduction or adultery. Brigham Young had a brother who lived in open polygamy with his own grand-daughter. A Mormon frequently marries the sisters of his own wife, and sometimes a mother and daughter at once. It is literally true that the opening of the gates of the Rocky Mountains has revealed in Utah a Blue Beard's chamber full of headless women and dead men's bones, and all uncleanness. This unspeakable closetnow petitions for admission to the Union on the same footing with Massachusetts and New York, or any other State. The exigencies of party create an enormous pressure in certain political circles in favour of the passing of an enabling act to make an American sovereign commonwealth out of the Mormon Blue Beard's chamber. What temptations can Utah bring to bear upon politicians at Washington to induce them to admit her as a State before the presidential election of 1880 ?

1. The vote of Utah will be pledged to that political party which favours her admission. She will give that party two votes in the Senate, and her State delegation in the House. In case the presidential election of 1880 is thrown into the House for decision, Utah will of course have three electoral votes, and will count for as much as New York or Massachusetts. In the general election three electoral votes might be enough to determine the result in a close conflict, and would have determined the last contest. The party which most fears defeat in 1880 would be greatly tempted by offers like these.

2. It will be said that it is arbitrary and unjust in the highest degree to keep Utah, with her one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, out of the Union, when Nevada and other individual territories have been admitted with forty or fifty thousand.

3. It will be claimed that the interests of the Nation, as well as those of the people of Utah, require her admission at once.

4. The Mormon vote is already a controlling political power in Idaho, and is acquiring influence rapidly in Arizona and Colorado, so that the political party which secures for itself the Mormon vote is likely to gain strength in four States of the Union.

5. Utah may actually call a convention and pass a constitution nominally abolishing polygamy, and so attempt to avoid the moral indignation likely to be awakened by any attempt to admit her to the Union with polygamy.

Those are the whispers which will be sounded in the ears of party caucuses at Washington during the coming winter, as they have been during the last five years. They will have peculiar emphasis the coming season because of the nearness of a great election in the nation. One of the deepest political conspiracies that needs to be exposed to-day by the independent platform is the effort of certain

unscrupulous politicians to bring Utah into the Union, and obtain her vote in the contest of 1880. Mormon schemers profess that they hope to divide Utah into four States, and so quadruple the pay they can give their friends in Congress. This may not be a promise with enough hope of fruition behind it to tempt shrewd politicians, but the fact that men in Utah, in the church, are plotting for the division of the territory into four States as soon as it shall be admitted, ought to make us pause when we sneer at the idea that there is not bait enough in the Basin States to tempt these political foxes at Washington. It takes but little bait to tempt them. Besides Utah, Idaho might be easily manipulated under Mormon politicians. If Mormonism find her dreams prophetic of reality, she will be able to give the representation of six Basin States, before twenty-five more years pass, to any party in Congress that will favour her cause.

Many citizens of the East think that after Utah is admitted to the Union, with a constitution prohibiting polygamy, the Mormon problem is solved. We then shall have put our foot into the trap. Under the protection of State Rights, the Mormon problem will suddenly acquire gigantic proportions, and will be found more difficult of solution than ever before. I hold in my hand a very important communication from Judge Boreman, of the United States Court in Utah, written to me, with permission to make it public, and in reply to questions which I sent back to Salt Lake City, after a recent visit there. I have received answers to the same enquiries from the ladies of the Anti-Polygamy Society, who, when I was in Salt Lake City, were so much in earnest that they passed resolutions asking the Boston Monday Lectureship to aid in breaking up the illusion of any who believe the Mormon question may be settled by the admission of Utah as a State, with a constitution prohibiting polygamy. My great point is to show that such an admission of Utah, under such a constitution, would be no settlement, but only an exacerbation of all the difficulties of the Mormon problem. Judge Boreman is one of the Justices who brought John D. Lee, the Mountain Meadows butcher, to justice, and has the unlimited confidence of the whole Gentile population of Utah. His communication is at present of really national importance.

REV. JOSEPH COOK, Boston, Mass.

Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 5th, 1879.

DEAR SIR,-There has been handed to me by the Rev. R. G. McNeice, a halfdozen questions respecting Utah, with your written request that I give brief answers thereto. I take pleasure in complying with your wish.

Your first question reads as follows:

I. If Utah were admitted into the Union, without polygamy, would the Gentile population be able to secure justice at the polls and in the courts ?

To this I answer most earnestly and unreservedly that in Utah, as a State urder Mormon rule, it would simply be impossible for Gentiles to obtain justice either at the polls or in the courts. The admission "without polygamy," would avail nothing, as the State would be overwhelmingly Mormon.

II. What discrimination would probably be made in favour of Mormons by the election laws and courts of Utah, under a Mormon governor ?

I answer that under a Mormon state government the Utah election laws, elections, and courts, would all be used, without reserve and without conscience, to foster the church power, to build up Mormon interests, to favour Mormons in all civil contests, and to screen them in every prosecution. And these same agencies would, likewise, be used to cripple and crush every Gentile enterprise, to destroy Gentile interests, and to drive out Gentile residents. The church would dictate

the election laws, and rule in the elections. An independent judiciary could not exist—it would be an impossibility. An asserted inspiration would dominate and overshadow every other power. Every branch of the civil authority would be forced to prostrate itself before the exacting despotism of the spiritual head. The rights of the Gentiles would, with impunity, be violated and disregarded at the polls and in the courts; and there would be no redress.

III. How would you recommend evidence of the fact of polygamy to be obtained ?

If Utah were admitted as a State, no law of Congress could be applied to eradicate polygamy. This can only be done while Utah is a Territory. And now, whilst it is a Territory, the statutes of Congress should make polygamy a continuous offence, existing as long as the parties live together as man and wife. In that case the statute of limitations would not begin to run until the parties cease to live together. If the offence be not treated as continuous, the statute of limitations should be repealed as to it; for the time is too short, such prosecutions being barred in three years by congressional enactment. Living together as man and wife, and recognizing each other as such, should be sufficient to warrant conviction. No ceremony should be required to be proved. The marriages are performed in sworn secrecy, in the "Endowment House," as they call it; and Mormons consider all such church oaths as more binding than any oath in a "Gentile" court, or before a "Gentile" officer. If, after a party's conviction and punishment, he should again return to his polygamous life, as is certain to always be the case, it should be deemed a new offence.

The law should require every marriage to be recorded in some public record. Particular classes of persons should be designated to perform these ceremonies, but every such person should be required to obtain a permit to act from some proper authority; and no marriage should be allowed to take place without a licence therefrom having first been obtained. We are without any statute whatever upon the subject of marriage.

IV. What would become of Gentile schools and what would Mormons do for education, if Utah, under Mormon rule, were in the Union?

The Gentile schools would die out and be closed, for want of support. The Gentile children would, of course, remove with their parents from the territory, and the Mormon children would be forced out of the Gentile schools. The Mormon schools are very inferior now, but far in advance of what they were before the advent of the Gentiles; and if the Gentile schools were out of the way, the Mormon schools would relapse into their former very low condition. I have no doubt but that the Mormons, if left to themselves, would have the “Deseret " alphabet, instead of the English, used in their schools, and thus gradually shut out the light of English and American civilization from the rising generations. The leaders of the Mormon church stand in deadly hostility to general education, and are especially bitter against free schools.

V. Were Utah admitted to the Union with a Constitution prohibiting polygamy, and the prohibitory clause should not be executed by the Mormon governor, what remedies should be applied to eradicate this evil, existing under State rights ?

If Utah were admitted into the Union as a State, I know of no remedy that could be applied by Congress to eradicate polygamy, without an amendment to the United States Constitution prohibiting it. Congress would be powerless without such an amendment. Utah might be admitted into the Union with a Constitution prohibiting polygamy, yet as soon as she should be in the Union, she