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various societies, and other places where Gospel work is carried on more or less regularly. Notice very briefly briefly what the churches are doing for their fellow Protestants and for the evangelization of the immense Roman Catholic majority by which they are rounded. Here is a summary of their missionary and evangelization societies, their societies for religious instruction, for relief and charity, and for philanthropic purposes:

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There are two Bible societies at work-that of Paris and that of France for the circulation of the Scriptures among the churches, and for the revision of the versions. They do not carry on any colportage work, that being only undertaken by the British and Swiss societies.

The Foreign Missionary Society is working in Africa-in the Lessouto, on the Zambesi, and on the Kongo; in Madagascar; in Maré; in Senegal; in Tahiti, etc.-and requires not far from £40,000 a year for its support. It is true that British, Swiss, and Dutch Christians send a great deal of help, but the bulk is supplied by the French themselves.

Then there is a work for the freed slaves, for the Kabyles, and for the Jews in Algiers, etc.

Home mission work is carried on by the Société Evangélique, and the honored names of Edmond de Pressensé, Georges Fisch, Jules Delaborde, and H. Lutteroth will always be associated with this society. Its income is about £4,000.

The Société Centrale is the home mission work of the Eglise Réformée. It was founded in 1835, and has made great progress of recent years. Its object is to get hold of the scattered Protestants, and to group them together, form churches, and train up the children, and it has been very successful in this. From spending in its first year £85 it has come to require not less than £21,000 for its maintenance. It has a section for work in

the Colonies, in Algiers, in Tunis, in New Caledonia, and in Tonkin.

The Free Church has its home mis, sion work also, and needs some £2,600 for its support; while the Lutheran Church has a smaller work at its charges, and several other organizations are kept up in various localities.

The two organizations working among the priests are also to be mentioned.

The Societé des Traités Religieux has been established for over eightyyears, and has been regularly helped by the R. T. S. of London. With very limited means at its disposal it has done excellent work, publishing almanacs, magazines, and books, besides tracts of all kinds.

Another society is at work to help the formation of primary schools, and has normal schools for the training of teachers.

The well-known Société des Livres Religieux de Toulouse has done much to provide books for school libraries, and has also been helped from London. It was founded by Messrs. Courtois, of Toulouse, and has lately passed into other hands, upon the death of M. Courtois de Viçose.

There has been a great deal of useful work carried on by the Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, in making known the history of the Protestant churches, the story of their persecutions and sufferings, and of their religious life; and it was through this society that

the late Pastor Bersier was able to raise the sum of £4,000 for the erection of the beautiful monument to the memory of Gaspard de Coligny that is to be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near by the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, whence sounded the tocsin giving the signal for the massacre on the fatal night of St. Bartholomew.

The Sunday-school Union of Paris has succeeded greatly in developing the young, and while in 1853 there were but 143 Sunday-schools in al

France; now their number exceeds 1,500.

The French are proverbial for their charitable enterprises, and the Protestants are not behindhand in this. The best known of their works of mercy are the homes founded by the late beloved John Bost. In 1848 the beginning was made, and now the Asiles John Bost have a worldwide fame. The names of these homes tell their own story: La Famille, for orphan or destitute Protestant girls; Bethesda, for idiot and incurable girls; Ebenezer, for epileptic young women; Bethel, for epileptic lads; Shiloh, for idiot and incurable lads; La Compassion and La Miséricorde, for boys and girls suffering from certain skin affections; Le Repos, for aged governesses, and La Retraite, for aged servants. Some £10,000 a year are needed for this most interesting work.

The Agricultural School for boys at Ste. Foy takes in children who have come before the magistrates, and some 150 are trained there.

Homes for the blind and for the deaf and dumb are also in existence.

The Deaconess House in Paris, with its refuge for girls, its hospital, its work among female prisoners, and all its round of useful service, is known to many in Great Britain. Then there are many orphanages and homes, for children and others, at Paris, Courbevoie, Brest, Die, Ferney, Lyons, Marseilles, Montbéliard, Nerac, Orléans, Montauban, Sedan, Lemé, Castres, Nimes, Saverdun, Tonneins, etc. It is not possible to give a detailed account of all that is being carried on in the way of philanthropic and charitable work. throughout France by individuals or by churches.

The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations have been greatly developed in the last quarter of a century, and also temperance work, and efforts to rouse public opinion on great moral and social questions, etc.

It has been estimated that about a quarter of a million pounds is subscribed by the French Protestants for the support of all their societies and works-not a small sum, considering the limited number of subscribers.

We have not referred to such works as Miss de Broen's, the Salvation Army, the McAll Mission, and others, whose support come almost entirely from outside France.

The separation of Church and State throws a heavy financial burden on the churches, as the Eglise Réformée and the Lutheran Church receive State aid to the amount of

£80,000 a year for the support of their pastors and colleges, and for the maintenance of the buildings. This is now withdrawn, and the churches must rely entirely upon themselves. It is hoped by many that the Free Church will be able to join with the disestablished Eglise Réformée, and thus unite their forces. But there are many difficult questions to be decided as to the future organization of the churches, and the presence of the Rationalist minority. in the Eglise Réformée makes the question complicated.

The situation is one of the greatest interest and solemnity. Will the French people, now that their minds are being stirred by these religious questions, be turned to the Gospel and to faith in the Lord Jesus? Or will they drift away from all belief, and sink into utter materialism? Is there power in Protestant Christians to go forward and evangelize the country, and bring the light to all parts to those districts where as yet nothing has been done to preach the Truth? It behooves all who love the Gospel and who love France to bestir themselves and to see what share. they can have in the work of bringing the Gospel to this great and interesting nation, where there are so many true and faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and where so much good seed has been sown.

BY REV. BRUCE KINNEY, SALT LAKE CITY

The various denominations working in Utah are doing more and better work than ever before. Christianity, as represented by the evangelical churches, has a greater influence than ever. Growth is very slow, but the progress is real. Few converts are made directly from from Mormonism, but the Christian church, school and home and the public school and press have spread the spirit of true Americanism. This has had a modifying, sapping and disintegrating influence on Mormonism. When for any reason people become disgusted with and separated from Mormonism then they are won into Christian churches in considerable numbers. If they are not thus won they usually drift into atheism -not the bold, blatant kind, but the sad, hopeless, helpless kind. There are more pronounced atheists in Utah in proportion to the population than in any other State of this Union. Mormonism is responsible. The people are so deceived and be trayed by their leaders that when they once give up their faith they have no confidence in anything religious.

Even in remote districts where Mormonism has had no organized religious or political opposition there is a surprising number of people who have quietly ceased to pay their tithes and gradually withdrawn from the Mormon church. Careful inquiry in one such town revealed the fact that while it was supposed to be solidly Mormon, about one-fourth of the people had definitely abandoned that faith.

The Smoot investigation may be responsible for it, but the fact is that they are not making the converts at home or abroad they once did. The time was when whole trainloads of Mormon converts were brought across the continent into Utah.

It is a very rare thing to

* Condensed from The Watchman.

see a car-load to-day. At the an-
nual conferences of the Mormon
church there is a note of discour-
agement in the reports of all the
returned missionaries. Their almost
universal testimony is about like
this: "We are working hard, but
have not had the baptisms that we
had hoped for, but we are trusting
that the seed we
that the seed we are sowing will
bring a harvest in good time."

Social and Moral Conditions

The conditions are about as bad as they could be in the strictly Mormon communities. Plenty of facts could be furnished in support of this were it not that many of them are unprintable. The worst of it is their ideals are so low that they do not realize that anything is wrong. The social and moral ideas of the average Mormon town are such as would not be tolerated among other non-Christian Americans. Things unspeakable among unspeakable among Christians OCcasion no comment in a Mormon town or are passed as a joke.

The church thrives directly from the revenues of vice. Apostle Smoot's drug store sells all kinds of liquors for beverage purposes. Salt Air Beach is owned and controlled exclusively by "Joseph F. Smith, Trustee, in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." In other words, it is controlled by the Mormon church through its president as trustee. Yet there is maintained in that famous pavilion a regular saloon where all kinds of intoxicating drinks are sold under a concession signed by Joseph F. Smith. Here are hundreds of bathing rooms with no regulations as to their use by the 'sexes. It is alleged that they are regularly used for the worst purposes by those so disposed.

Whole sections of the city given over to the saloon and the brothel

are owned by high ecclesiastics of the church or by corporations controlled by the church or its priesthood. For twenty years a saloon has been located on property that has been owned all this time by Apostle John Henry Smith or some of his family. It is said that one of the Patriarchs of this church daily collects in person the per diem rental from the unfortunates who conduct houses of ill-fame on his property.

Commercial and Political

The church would like to dominate everything and attempts to do so. There are some signs of the decadence of this power. It is said that the Utah Light and Power Company is on the financial rocks and that the Utah Sugar Company has been obliged to sell a controlling interest to the Sugar Trust. Both of these are church institutions. Here is one good thing the trusts are doing for Utah. The church could control things in competition with ordinary corporations, but can not get the best of our modern Trusts.

The ever increasing mining and railroad interests of this region are bringing an unusually large number of non-Mormons here to live.

This

will help to break the power of the dominant church. It has recently been announced that the Mormon church is to give up its business enterprises.

Joseph F. Smith is a bigoted fanatic. Never since the days of Brigham Young has the authority of the priesthood been more strenuously taught and enforced. "When a says that a priest may direct him spiritually but not temporally, that man lies in the presence of God." This official utterance seems to be the keynote of Smith's reign. Never since Young have the doctrines peculiar to the Mormon church been so uncompromisingly insisted upon. All this is favorable to our cause. Ecclesiastical domination is one of the main causes now operating to

make so many of the more intelligent Mormons think for themselves, and that separates them from the church almost de facto.

In the fall of 1904 the American Party of Utah Party of Utah was organized to fight against the domination of the church in political affairs. In the fall of 1905 they won a signal victory, electing their entire municipal ticket. This in spite of the factperhaps because of the fact that Apostle Smoot left his own little town of Provo on election day and came to Salt Lake City and made an unconcealed attempt at the polls to turn the tide away from the American Party. Many think that Smoot's conduct contributed in no small degree to the success of the American Party. I have seen a statement that 1500 Mormons voted the American ticket. There must have been many, and I personally know of several. At least one Mormon in good standing in the church has been a candidate on the American ticket and made a vigorous personal campaign. This victory has accomplished several things. It has given strength to the weak-kneed Gentiles. Men are declaring themselves, even if it does "hurt business." It has cleansed the city government and partly stopped ecclesiastical grafting. It has heartened conscientious Mormons to throw off priestly domination.

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Smith, took oath that the Manifesto forbade both of these crimes. They received amnesty individually and collectively on condition that they would obey these laws.

Now, what are the facts? In regard to the first crime Joseph F. Smith testified before the Senate committee that he had had born to him thirteen children since the Manifesto by five different wives. Apostle Penrose swore that he received special amnesty from President Cleveland on condition that he refrain from violation of these laws and then admitted that he had not kept his covenant. More than half of the present Apostles are living in polygamy, and Brigham H. Roberts still flaunts his polygamous relations before the public gaze. At the funeral services of the late Apostle Merrill eight wives, four on either side of the coffin, publicly mourned their departed spouse. In an interview in 1902 President Smith admitted that there were still 897 polygamous families. In some com

munities these relations are acknowledged with no attempt at conceal

ment.

Without doubt there have been many plural marriages since the Manifesto. These are much harder to prove, as most of them take place out of this country and all of them in secret. The son of an Apostle testified in Washington that he had taken a plural wife in 1892, tho he had one whom he married in 1888 and that he had had children by both of them since that time. Mabel Barber Kennedy testified that she became the plural wife of a man who was a counselor to the President of their State. Apostle Smoot testified that it was likely that two of the Apostles had taken new plural wives since the Manifesto and promised that he would have the matter investigated, but nothing has been done in the case up to date. One thing we know is that children are being born to women who are too

young to have been wives before the Manifesto and yet who have no visible husband.

Professor Wolfe, who taught in Mormon schools up to the time of his recent apostasy, says there is more polygamy practised to-day than at any time since the Manifesto. He also testified that Apostle John Henry Smith told him that the Manifesto was "a trick to beat the devil at his own game."

In order to secure statehood the leaders of the church, among them Joseph F. Smith, swore that they had given up polygamy as an article of Faith as well as practise. As we have seen, they now publicly declare their polygamous practises. They publicly defend polygamy as a principle and without doubt privately teach it as a practise. I predict that unless Smoot is expelled from the Senate and strenuous measures are taken by the national government to stamp out polygamy, the Mormon hierarchy will soon publicly restore the practise of polygamy. They are getting ready for this step.

With all of our knowledge of the transgressions of the laws against polygamy, with all the confessions of the same by the guilty parties, there are no prosecutions. The courts are in the hands of Mormons or subservient Gentiles who fear to lose their office if they act. When they think the time has come they will reestablish polygamy and snap their fingers in the face of Congress and say, as Smith did, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" What ate we going to do about it?

What is the Remedy?

A constitutional amendment giving Congress the authority to legislate to correct this matter is the only remedy. The advantage is that this will take the matter out of the hands of truculent state officials and give jurisdiction to Federal officials who do not owe their official position to the votes of Mormons. In the eighties.

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