The Religious Life of LondonRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Religion
The Religious Life of London
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
London (England) -- Religion; Religious thought -- England -- London
“A church without apostles is not the church for me,
It’s like a ship dismasted, afloat upon the sea,
But I’ve a church that’s always led
By the twelve stars around its head,
A church with good foundations—oh! that’s the church for me!
Oh! that’s the church for me! oh! that’s the church for me!
* * * * *
“The heaven of sectarians is not the heaven for me,
So doubtful its location, neither on land nor sea,
But I’ve a heaven on the earth,
The land that gave me birth,
A heaven of light and knowledge—oh! that’s the heaven for me!
Oh! that’s the heaven for me! oh! that’s the heaven for me!”
Such are the songs sung, with a fervour unknown in better attended and
genteeler places of worship.
The Mormons speak of us as Gentiles, yet in reality they take our creed
and add to it polygamy and communism. Their belief as regards Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost is almost orthodox, and if they claim to be divinely
ruled and to have the power of working miracles, do not other sects the
same? Like the Quakers, they can dispense with religious forms. Like
the ancient Israelites, they are a peculiar people, but what is peculiar
to them, and that which constitutes the secret of their success, is
this—that they preach to the poor, and wretched, and starving, that the
kingdom of God has been founded upon earth, that it belongs to the
saints, and that they are the saints. Man, they say, is part of the
substance of God, and he will become God. He was not created by God, but
existed from all eternity. He was not born in sin, and is only
accountable for his own misdeeds. Angels, it seems, from what Young told
Hepworth Dixon, “are the souls of bachelors and monogamists, being
incapable of issue, unblessed with female companions, unfitted to reign
and rule in the celestial spheres. They have failed,” said Young, “in
not living the patriarchal life—in not marrying many wives. An unmarried
Mormon fills but a low scale in the order of things.” Man being of the
race of God becomes eligible for a celestial throne: his household of
wives and children being his kingdom, not on earth only, but in heaven,
polygamy is thus his highest duty, and most glorious privilege. In the
East, polygamy does not answer. The races with one wife there breed
faster than the Turks. In the city of the Mormons, under polygamy,
births are very numerous. The actual wives of Young are twelve! the
twelve apostles own from three to four each. Young has forty-eight
children, and all have their quivers full. The women, according to Mr.
Dixon, dislike polygamy nevertheless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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