If you go into the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, it is said, one is reminded, in looking at the faces of the people, of what we can see in Castle Garden. The marks of ignorance are stamped upon their very countenances. It has been aptly said: "The illiteracy of the average Mormon is denser than a London fog." In an article published in the _Presbyterian Review_, April, 1881, Rev. Dr. McNiece, of Salt Lake City, said that, so far as he knew, "after three years' observation in Utah, there are only three persons among the entire body of Mormons who can make the least claim to scholarship. One of these is a woman of notoriously immoral character; one of the others is always spoken of as a religious monomaniac; and the character of the third is such as to compel one to believe that he supports Mormonism simply because of the lucrative office which it gives him." According to the teachers engaged in the Christian schools there, the ignorance met with is simply appalling. In many cases neither men nor women know how to read. Children are plenty who never heard of God, and know no more of Christ than a beggar in the city of Nineveh in the days of Jonah. History and geography are to a great extent unknown and untaught; even our own country outside of Utah is unknown. The Mormon leaders take great pains to keep their people in ignorance. Learning, intelligence, are everywhere at a discount. The civilized world recognizes the fact that the diffusion of knowledge elevates humanity. Shakespeare says: "Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." One of the chief features of this age is the desire for universal education, and every true reformer seeks to place it within the reach of all. _But the Mormon Church is the recognized opponent of free education._ Notwithstanding the fact that the Mormon priesthood has had control of Utah for well-nigh forty years, that Territory is the only one in the United States that has not a system of free schools, open to the poor as well as the rich. The teachers with few exceptions are young, untaught, and without experience; and the schools are scarcely worthy the name. The main object of the Mormon school system seems to be to prevent the people from learning to think and acquiring information. Now, why is this? The only reason is that it is necessary for the Mormon Church to keep her subjects in ignorance to enable her to control them. This was the position taken by Brigham Young, and is the position taken by the hierarchy to-day. The plea of poverty cannot be justified, for the Church collects over a million dollars annually; but this tax of ten dollars a year for every man, woman, and child in the Mormon Church is spent, not for free schools, which would develop manhood and fit the taxpayer to be an honorable citizen of the commonwealth, but for that which rivets tighter the chains that bind the people.