Really, after thinking of a man living in Utah for twenty-five years with exceptional opportunities to study the "Mormon system," one becomes quite disheartened when he witnesses such an exhibition of stupidity in apprehending, or a willingness to misrepresent as is exhibited in the foregoing quotation. First, if your correspondent had intelligence to understand the most simple proposition, he never would have made the statement that Mormonism is based on polygamy. Mormonism existed ten years and had spread through nearly all the states of the American Union, into Canada and Great Britain, before plural marriage was ever introduced into the Church. And notwithstanding that under the requirements of the laws of the land, the Church has discontinued the authorization of plural marriages, Mormonism still survives--much to the chagrin of such characters as your correspondent, and the Mormon Church was never more alive or prosperous than it is today. The doctrine of the rightfulness of plural marriage is in every sense but an incident in the "Mormon system" rather than a basic principle. Salvation in the Mormon religion is not made to depend upon a plurality of wives. On the contrary it teaches that either man or woman can be saved without marriage at all. That those in monogamous marriage relations may be saved, but it also is a fact that it has taught that men with a plurality of wives, if they have taken them under the sanction of God's law--a law which existed in the days of the Bible patriarchs as well as in these last days by special dispensation through Joseph Smith--may also be saved. Mormonism does teach, however, that marriage is essential to man's exaltation and progress in his saved condition, and that special blessings doubtless attended those who entered into plural marriage relations within the conditions and limitations referred to a moment since, but to regard plural marriages as the basis of Mormonism is not only ridiculous but an absolute misrepresentation of our faith.