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Ladies and gentlemen: if you go on talking, you are neither ladies nor gentlemen.

The question before the house is: how did the churches of the 18th century insist that there are people? I may tell you a little anecdote to illustrate how doubtful the very word "people" has become. I don't think I told it here already, that when I--or did I?--when I started a work service in the '30s, just before the World War II, which of course was a moment of -- of complete illusion in this country, with all the intellectuals being fellow travelers then of the -- of the red star, a boy came up, a graduate from Harvard who -- just graduating there with honors, came to see me on this scheme. And I tried to persuade him that he should enter incognito, anonymously, the -- the CCC, the Civil Conservation Corps of that time, which entailed great hardship, because he had to sleep in one bunk with a boy who had murdered his mother. So that's not so very agreeable. And -- brought himself into a dangerous position, indeed, and coming from a highly sophisticated home, and being a Harvard man, it was an extraordinary feat of courage and gallantry that he did this.

But he came with the notion, and he was very proud of this notion, that he had acquired in Harvard one fact: that the term "people" was a fiction, that there were only masses. And there were -- was a public to which you could, of course, cater; and there were individuals. But the very term "people," in the year 1938 and '39 this was, to -- appeared to this very sophisticated man, just in your -- own sim- -- situation, graduating from Harvard, as bunk. And if I read the modern literature, pep talks, politics, I have the impression that most people who use the word -- term "people" are of the dispensation of my friend, of that time. They use it for transparent, ulterior motives, because it sounds good. And in pep talks you have to mention it, but what it is has disappeared. And it is not met with in psychology and sociology. If you look up any index of a book on psychology, or on sociology, or on theology--for that matter, by the way, interestingly enough--you will not find in the index of any of these books the word -- term "people," and you will not find it in philosophy, either. Philosophers of course are the people without the people, I mean. The very word of a -- term "philosopher" means, you see: what do I think outside my people?

Now sentimentally, of course, you all know the spirituals, "Let My People Go," you all know there is something for the -- for shedding tears when you speak of people. So sentimentally, you live in one realm. And you sing hymns about people. But when it comes to straight reasoning processes, I feel that at this moment in this country, there is absolutely no belief in the existence of such a

thing as people. It is -- you live in a -- that's why you are all schizoid, because this is one of the deepest cleavages, that you only can li- -- believe half, in the existence of people, and in the other in the academic half, you cannot, because there it does not exist. I mean, has a psychologist ever analyzed people? He only analyzes individuals. And that's quite serious.

And I think therefore you are all sick, mentally sick, because you are living under this taboo that in the classroom, or in the laboratory, the word "people" doesn't exist, and in the political arena, and the Congress of the United States, it does; and in the churches, too.

And so I think a social history of the United States must bring this -- you up short against your own decision, what it is all about. And I -- therefore we are in the midst of saying that the people's movement was -- is a--in the 19th century--a desperate attempt of those classes of the population of the United States who did not come under the influence of individualistic philosophy to claim some right for further existence as people.

Now "people" is in -- always a religious term. You can't have a secular people; then they would be pagans and I think no American would agree that he is a pagan. There was a -- interestingly enough, there was a questionnaire sent out 15 years ago, right after the Second World War, about the faith of the United States' inhabitants {to be careful}. And the answer of 90 percent of them was that they thought they were good Christians. Now you can't be a Christian outside the Christian people. That's an illusion. You may then be a Christian philosopher, but certainly you do not belong to the community of Christianity if you do not know that God created people. And the people of God is a very serious business. The Church has always claimed that it is the new Zion, the new Israel, it is the next people. And it is just as much a people as the Jews are. Now the Jews are the people par excellence -- nobody can deny this. But they are a people, indeed.

So the word "people" has in the 19th century a kind of retrograde aspect. The churches defend this term. The Constitution still carries -- it on. The political speeches -- speakers have to cope with it. But the educated classes less and less put any store by it, and say, "Well, that's just a hangover from the Middle Ages."

I don't think it is. It is very strange today to -- to see what steps are taken to reestablish the people of these United States and all over the world. It is very serious if you live in Tokyo, or Buenos Aires, or Los Angeles, or New York, or Moscow, and you see that regardless of political system; regardless of color, race, and creed; all people live in the same cultural slums, called "suburbs," where there can be no people. Because one thing is certain of the people: that you have

to share with the same members of your group the serious and the playful part of life. But people who live in suburbs are schizoid, because they live their serious life downtown in {offices}. And they live their playful life on weekends and at cocktail parties in the suburbs. That is, you do not live, when you live in suburbs, totally with the people to whom you owe your livelihood. The secretary who -- lives in one suburb, and the boss lives in another; and therefore, no people.

So the Mormons, and the Methodists I'm said -- tried to tell you, belong to these -- fighters who have tried to -- at least to delay the disintegration of our society into suburbanites and masses. And to -- then if I now go back to the Mormons more distinctly, and more -- more in detail, will you always keep in mind that I'm only lifting out of -- from oblivion two examples of this stout fight for the en- -- permanency of people in this continent. And I don't say that the Mormons or the Methodist mission in Oregon are the only ones by a long shot, but you can study from them the main ingredient which distinguishes a public movement--like the vegetarian movement, or the -- Abolition movement, Prohibition movement, all the movements we already have dealt with here, you see--from these attempts to retain the character of a people. That's very different.

And therefore, I bring it only now, because you only now can perhaps understand that it is an apologetic movement. Apologetics mean a defense movement, a -- movement to avoid the worst. And it is therefore a reactionary movement in the sense that I react against the danger, you see, by trying to forestall it. The Mormons at no time were a progressive movement. The Methodists certainly weren't. Religious movements in this sense are not progressive; except Unitarians, I mean, dissolving. If you dissolve religion of course into Unitarianism, then you call "progress" what the liberals call "progress," to bo- -- become more secular and more secular, and more scientific. To me, this is destruction; to me, this is ridiculous; people cannot live by science. Science is of yesterday. I can't live tomorrow by science, because science can only know what has been. Can only deal with facts. I'm not interested in that, if I have to live.

So the -- so-called progress of the 19th century even threatens the future of the people. And the churches therefore are restorat- -- -rative restorers, or attempts at restoring this notion. And therefore, of course--and rightly so--have always had to reconcile the notion of reaction, of reacting against the disintegrating process, and trying to flavor this reaction with some great modernism. Of course, you cannot attract modern masses who believe in progress if you not--even in the field of religion--promise them something new, something religiously progressive. And at the same time, since people of course are as old as Cain and Abel, and the children of Abra- -- of Noah, you have to be very conservative. And the problem then of these church groups in the 19th century to this day has been to connect and combine eternal elements, or primeval elements of

religious organization, and order, and revelation with some spice and condiment of newness.

This is the real tragedy, you see. You have here this -- this church of Madame McPherson, have you not? And of course, you find this attempt in Los Angeles over-developed. There is no city in the whole world which has so many crackpots in religion, and so many people who try to sell you the oldest verities under the garment of a new fashion. And this is -- then is the situation of the people of God under the new dispensation of this continent. You get a secular government and you get corporations and masses. Religion has to come outside some way in the way in -- people are accustomed to take up new things--it has to look new--and on the other hand, it has to represent the enduring, unchanging verities which make a people.

Now this queer mixture, of course, is apparent in Brigham -- in Joseph Smith's attempt to found this religion in America. And in the way, you find all the elements with which he is bothered -- with -- or anybody is bothered who tries to retain a people's tradition in this country. And so the Mormon creed and the Mormon movement is a model case.

I told you, we -- we reached the point where he went to Nauvoo, in Illinois, and was killed there--or in the na- -- neighboring town of Carthage, in jail, in 1844. By that time, the town of Nauvoo counted 20,000 inhabitants, all Mormons. He had started with 12 people in 1830. In Nauvoo, during the last year of his leadership -- as mayor of Nauvoo, there arrived ship after ship from England with colonists, with people whom his famous successor, Brigham Young, and other apostles had be- -- gotten out of England, and Scandinavia, and Germany to join this new group. This is -- in itself is a remarkable achievement. And on the Mississippi River, boats would arrive with hundreds of newcomers to join the new faith.

And this may show you that it is very cheap, when you read in the textbooks, that was a typical frontier religion. Mormonism has nothing to do with frontier religion, because it was not established at the frontier. It was invented by a native of Vermont. Joseph Smith was born 20 miles from where my home now stands. And he was born in a settled environment. And he moved to Palmyra, New York, which you also cannot call at that time a -- a frontier territory. And everything he decided and did was based on his experiences -- in the farming communities of Vermont and of Palmyra. And therefore to -- it is very cheap to pretend--this is the of course -- the myth of American histor- -- history writing of the last 50 years--that Mormonism has anything to do with the frontier. Or much to do with frontier. They were pushed out to the frontier in order to survive, but they began in the heart of Jerusalem.

And the story of Mormonism therefore is more than an American story. I received a visitor a few years ago from Africa, who was a professor of Islam, and he said, "The only second case of a religion that has sprung up in the same manner as Mohammedanism is Mormonism. And therefore, I am a professor of Islam"--he was a Frenchman--"I have to study Mormonism as the one comparison -- comparative movement which shows exactly all the chronology and all the features of Islam."

Now Islam is a Christian heresy, and so is Mormonism. Islam is not as you -- today are -- for your convenience, try to think, is a religion. It's a heresy of Christianity and Judaism, and has never been anything else, and never pretended to be anything else, because the prophet Mohammed has just said that he took from the Jews and the Christians their revelation and prepared it for the Arabs so that -- and omitted anything that his Arab people couldn't bear. In the same sense, Mormonism is a simplification of our tradition here, because the first tenet of Mr. Joseph Smith was very simply: all the churches have apostasized. That is, all the hitherto existing representatives of the Christian people have failed to give the people the right order. Now that's exactly what Islam says in Arab -- Arabia of the Christian and Jewish churches: "It's nothing for my people."

The second tenet of Mormonism--and these things have to be stressed, because I think the analysis carries much further than just an American problem. It's a worldwide problem today. And therefore we -- you cannot deal with the Arab world without seeing that they today pay the penalty for their Christian heresy. That is, that they are now, by industry, forced to -- to go Christian. And the Jews in Palestine, with their industrial achievements, force upon the Arabs the admission, you see, that they must do something for the -- for the earth; that they must suddenly, instead of destroying irrigation, as they have done in all the -- in all the countries they conquered, you see, that they have to do something, too. The -- the Arabs for the last 1500 years, have not done anything. They have tolerated the -- the -- the conquered -- populations to go on, but they haven't themselves administered. And they haven't themselves irrigated the land. They haven't. They -- they have -- have treated Asia Minor or what have you exactly in the same manner as the Indians here have treated Southern California before the white man restored irrigation.

So Mormonism therefore is more than just an accident in this country. It is something that obviously will -- always will happen, when the violence with which an order is transplanted into a vast, new territory is such that people look for som- -- simplification. And so Joseph Smith said, "We don't need the traditions of the last 1500 years. We can do it directly."

And so the second tenet of -- the man was -- the first is -- being -- will you

kindly { }, because you nowhere find these things said. I have to tell you these, you s- -- we live under such watertight compartments: here are religionists, and there are historians, and there are sociologists. I have -- don't have -- acknowledge these taboos. There's just one human history. And you have to use all the -- the knowledge from any source which is available. And therefore, this tenet of Joseph Smith, that all the churches have apostasized, I think, isn't stressed sufficiently in this religion of the latter-day saints. Neither is the second point, that the only originality which he claimed was that now we could have a Christianity on this soil from the aborigines. The only word not found in the Bible, in the Book of Mormons, is the word "aborigines." And it is even there doubtful. It is hidden.

You know the wor- -- Book of Mormons, in which -- in which Joseph Smith hid his great dream of a Christian people on this continent in direct, you see, in direct relationship to the older revelations -- jumping over the whole European phase? This simplification is really based on this one word "aborigines," but the Book of Mormons, if you--somebody in the English department should make a study of this--does not contain any non-biblical term. The Book of Mormons nobody can read without going to sleep--even the Mormons can't.

I talked to an elder of the Church in -- in -- in Salt Lake City, and -- a professor of chemistry--a very famous American, by the way--and he admitted that nobody could read the book. It isn't meant for reading, because the only word that is necessary is to understand that the revelation jumped from Israel directly to America, under the omission of the whole history of the Church, between Paul's -- the days of the Apostle Paul and Joseph Smith.

This is exactly the problem -- was exactly the problem of Islam, you see, that Mohammed felt -- he had Jews in Arabia, he had Christian churches in Arabia, he came to know them, and he felt that his Arabian people, these -- the Arabs simply could not cope with the complicatedness of Greek and Roman literature and Hebrew s- -- law. And so he decided that there had to be a shortcut, and that the tribesmen of his big continent--and Arabia is as big, you know, as Alaska and Texas taken together--that this vast center of impenetrable land, just as America appeared to Joseph Smith, had to be conquered by a simpler gospel.

This word "aborigines" then is the -- is the secret of the Mormon faith and of the Mormon victory, and of the Mormon success. The -- some of you may know the details, that by -- by and large, 420 of our era, Mr. Mormon died, and left this; and that it was written down by his descendant Moroni--the "-i" is important--and -- at the end of the name--and --. Today I think -- I -- I know very

fine Mormons and they are really the salt of the earth. As you know, socially the Mormons are one of the best -- integrated groups in this country. They are a people. You come to Arizona and New Mexico, and you feel the best people are the Mormons.

And therefore, it is a great story of achievement -- of real achievement by a -- doubtful means. And that is the great and constant question I think before any man who -- loves history of his own people, that if you -- judge them by the fruits, then sometimes you wonder whether the roots, and the bark, and the seed may then be wrong. It's a terrible question, you see. We always reject for the Jesuit teaching the famous rule that the end justifies the means. Here we don't have anything to do with ends and means, because what is today Mormonism certainly was not the end of Joseph Smith by a long shot. He couldn't foresee any of these developments, you see. He didn't even see that there would be more than one city serving, you see, his creed. He still thought of the covenanted community in one place. And therefore, you cannot say that his ends justified his means.

The real history of humanity is much more complicated, because it deals with fruits and seeds. Now the seeds know nothing of the fruit, and the fruit know nothing of the seed, and there is not this intellectual relation between ends and means, you see, as the attacking, anti-Jesuit, secularist will say. They want something, so they use any means, you see.

In this sense, you cannot say that the first Mormons wanted anything. They certainly didn't want Salt Lake City. They certainly didn't want to spread -- become an all-American church in the simplest -- in this way in which it exists today. But it is obviously something about this -- this -- the vastness of this continent that demanded that the whole continent should be embraced as a new dispensation. And I do think that the contribution that the Mormons have made to the American scene, and that pervades everything today in oth- -- all other groups of the country, is that they gave America a spiritual task, that they said, "America is not geography, and America therefore does not contain separate groups of Episcopalians, and Baptists, you see, and Moravian brethren, but because it is a country, it must have its universalist, American revelation." That's the meaning of the word "aborigines." No -- no distinction then, not even for the Mormon group, you see, because the real claim is that the spirit of God did not leave this continent unprovided.

And that's something very touching. And in this sense, I think that there is not just only proud -- pride in Joseph Smith, but also the humility that as a member or -- an inhabitant of this good earth in this country, of this bleak promontory called at that time "New England," you see, that there was the spirit

of God directly. And so in this sense, he responds to -- he is a -- dialectically opposed to the Pilgrim fathers. The Pilgrim fathers take the old gospel from the -- its corruption in England and bring it, you see, untainted to these shores. That is the gospel of 1620.

And you may not know it, but after all, these Pilgrim fathers hoped to be called back to Europe in triumph, because they had preserved the purity of the faith outside the corrupt courts of Europe. This was their great hope. They didn't go to New England to stay there, but they went with the great hope that they would be the leaders of the future Europe. They were disappointed and deceived in this, but that's why they went. They wanted to be -- come home again.

Now the Mormons turned the tables. They say, "Nothing that has come from the Old World that is not corrupted, including the Gospel"--and that's the strange thing--and therefore they deny the Pilgrim fathers' errand in the wilderness and say, "The wilderness is putting us straight. Here in the wilderness the will of God can be found directly."

Now the story of course of the finding of the golden tables on which The Book of Mormon was written, and from which -- whose mysterious, hieroglyphic, Egyptian -- semi-Egyptian signs--it was translated gradually into -- into English--is in itself a story in psychology. As I said, Joseph Smith claimed that there were these golden tablets coming down from Heaven, then buried in the ground, found by him, and he even had here some expert of his time, {a brother Antony}, being approached by him and asked whether these signs of the golden plates were really -- real hieroglyphs. And he also has the -- answered this. I mean, you read it, it deserves -- it is very strange.

This is a very strange book. It is written by an -- the orthodox Mormon, that is, one who -- rejects the -- the settlement in Utah. And the so-called Reorganized Church of the Mormons exists to this day in Iowa, in the state of Iowa. They are, like the Samaritans in Judaism, and like this church in Jerusalem, in Christianity thinking of themselves as being wrongly superseded by a new de- -- development. They would be the people who, under the brother of the Lord, and the bishop of Judaism, you see, believed in a family Christianity, so to speak, an hereditary office, and wouldn't follow Peter to Rome or Paul to Corinth. And so they rejected the migration to -- to Salt Lake City, and rejected polygamy. And it seems to be unknown in this country that they still are some hundred thousand people strong in Iowa, and are -- have their -- their alliance or -- widely spread, even outside this country. This book is published in Lamoni, Iowa, and it -- says, with a voice of warning, instruction to all people: "Introduction to the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," by Parley P. Pratt, printed and published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints in Iowa, in 1886. The first edition was as early as 1850.

This is the first lesson, then, the organiz- -- the fact that Mr. Pratt -- his branch of -- after the death or murder of Joseph Smith, and not gone to the second phase of the Mormons, brings out the problem of any people. In any generation, there is this deviation. You hear in Bolshevism about deviations, you see, like Tito representing one, or even { }.

Now in our history -- real history of a spiritual character; that is, all movements who try to found peoples, and not just conquer land or gold in California by individuals, you will always find that in every generation, the -- the -- the -- the direction has to be redi- -- newly discovered. And if we put here 1830 for the beginning of Joseph Smith, it is very pertinent to understand that in 1844, you had to go to Iowa. And the son of Joseph Smith, Jo- -- Joseph Smith, Jr., became here president, so the whole -- the family of a -- and the -- his wife, too, even the widow, went here to Iowa. And -- Brigham Young goes out to Salt Lake City. That's in 1853.

Now in 1990, the Church of the Latter-day Saints had to be refounded after a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, by the then-president, 40 years later. And if you ever -- anybody has ever dealt with church history, he may -- begun to understand why in the history of the Christian Church, exactly the same happened. Moses was very wise, and Jesus, because they knew that they had to provide for 40 years after their death, so -- Moses at first didn't -- doesn't enter himself the promised land, you see, but procrastinates and procrastinates, so that this -- this second founding can still be done under his supervision, so to speak -- that he can appoint Joshua to take the second step.

So it would be the same if -- if, in our case, if the prophet -- if Joseph Smith had not simply been murdered, martyrized by foreign force, but if he had said that he would not go to Utah, you see, but he would leave it to the next generation. The same is true about Jesus. The great act of our -- the founder of Christianity is that He left it to the Apostles to live the second half of His life. He would have had to die, too. But if He had died at 70, nothing would have happened. The only way in which He could found the Church was to put Himself out of the way and to make room for His successors so that the -- the thing could be tested. The story of the Church is the story between His crucifixion and the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. And Christianity existed only after the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, because that meant that the meaning of Jesus's step--to take the truth out of the people of flesh and blood of Israel--was justified, because their story -- their prophetic story was now at an end.

You have a very similar situation then with Mormonism, and with other

such steps. And I -- warn to you take these stories as arbitrary. There is a great law of realization, of incarnation in all real sacrifi- -- -ficial movements. And the first thing you can learn about a people's movement, compared to a public movement--an Abolition movement or such--that it takes the investment of the lives of whole generation before there can be any fruit. If a -- if not a whole generation is willing to forgo the fruits of the future, you cannot found a people, found a new nation. Success stories, as you want from people, who do nothing which isn't immediately successful, has nothing to do with history in the sense of people's history, of permanent history.

That's why it is so ridiculous when I see what you are advised to do. You are always advised to do something that is in -- of immediate success. But all you can do for immediate success is absolutely futile. And it melts in your fingers. You all survive; that is, you will stand in -- your old age with empty hands, because you haven't planted a tree, or you haven't begotten children. These are the things that last. Your out making money is only a way of losing it again.

It's very strange. The whole country is today really in this sense hell-bent, because people say, "Don't do anything if success is not guaranteed."

I give you another story. It happened in my own life. A school man, one of the leading educators of this country, and pretending to be a pious Christian, came to me one day and said, "I've just held a meeting of all the principals of the pub- -- private schools of New England in which I said that your scheme"--I had this scheme then on foot--"was very promising, and that 15 years from now it would be successful."

And I said, "Oh, that's wonderful, Mr. {Vries}. I ne- -- we need help. We are beleaguered with animosity, and opposition, and this is controversial, and would you kindly judge -- come and join our board, because a name like yours, and with influence in your groups, that would be of tremendous assistance?"

He laughed at me, this scoundrel. And said -- and said, "Oh no. I'll wait 15 years. And then it will, you see, come to me without any effort. Why should I now be tainted with this controversial matter, and with this battle royal, raging over you and your issue? I'll sit back, and then I'll be the -- the man in due time."

Well, fortunately he died. And I hope he's in hell. I sincerely hope this, because this -- are the scoundrels, you see--this man was in education--who are today destroying the fiber of the -- this people, the people of the earth. The -- this effrontery to say, "Here is a good thing, but I'm not going to support it; but 15 years later, I'll be the chairman of the board."

This is today what you -- what is called "reasonable action." And this is blasphemy, because this man was touched by the spirit. He saw that this had to be done. And he has the -- the impudence, and impertinence to say, "Well, what does it matter? I mean, I will have nothing to do with it unless it is re- -- generally recognized." And all our politics, as you know, are ruined by this today. And therefore, we have just a Madison Avenue governing you by -- by these things of immediate success. People must use whole generations as seed if there shall be fruit two or three generations from now.

Now the stra- -- third point about Joseph Smith I wish to make is that this man, by a mysterious insight--for which I have no explanation--knew this from the -- his 14th year. In his 14th year, he began to enter the strange tactics which have made him so successful: that he provoked enmity before he had success. That is going very far. The -- but Mohammed did the same.

He knew that to promote, to set in motion a popular movement, enmity had to be encouraged. So he said, "Let's anticipate the enmity. Then the -- success can be speeded up." And at 14, he incurred the animosity of all his own clan by saying, when they all joined the Presbyterian Church in a revival movement in his little town of Sharon, Vermont, he sai- --no, it was already Palmyra, pardon me--he aid, "I" -- he wouldn't join. He would wait for a special revelation. Now, he hadn't received the special revelation, but by saying this, all the people in the town will -- turned against him. He stood the animosity for the next five years, and then it not only quieted down, but people said, "Well, after all, he's not such a wrong fellow." And once for all, his family and his neighbors never again wavered in their loyalty to him.

This is a very strange story. It deserves much greater study than it has ever been given. That in a -- with an instinct of a -- I don't know { } I call this leader, you see, because it isn't quite leadership, you see, it's something else; an instinct of -- of being effective, of leaving -- making a mark. He anticipated this, and he did it again. At the age of 23, he proclaimed that he had to -- had this revelation. The people were aroused. They were all upset by this claim of a new prophecy, aboriginal prophecy in America. For six years, he accepted this enmity upon himself, and only when he was in the year 29 did he publish the book. By that time, the enmity had run its course.

You know, the McCarthy -- tempest, I mean. They all blow over. Nobody can be wrathful for more than a short time. So his neighbors had given up by that time, at least some of them, to be so terribly aroused. And when he printed this book, the next of kin, so to speak, and the neighbors, did not revolt. He would have gone on with this in the case of polygamy, because it seems that just before his -- his death, he proclaimed that he had received a revelation, in 1843,

that he would -- the -- the new continent, and the people of this continent should be increased by hook and by crook. But you also may say that it should -- that he had discovered that if he cut out the history of the Church between 33 or 66 of our era and 1830, that he would inevitably be driven back to the tenets of the Old Testament. And polygamy in this sense is of course an Old Testament s- -- tenet. There is polygamy in the Old Testament. Abraham has two wives. And the Jews have only abolished--I -- mentioned this, I think before--Judaism, in -- as late as the 11th century. There is an -- {Gerson of Worms}, then published a treaty in which he rejected polygamy. And just as the Jewish era is much later than the Christian era--this counting of the years from creation of the world--as an answer to Christianity, so monogamy in Judaism is an answer to the environment -- the Christian environment. There is no -- there is no firm tradition about monogamy in the Old Testament.

The same thing then is -- happened to Joseph Smith's cutting out the direct story, saying that the -- all the churches had apostasized, he was of course tossed around with his dream of immediate peopling the continent. And polygamy is, in such circumstances, a very great help. His successor, Owen Young, had 28 wives. And I know one of the offspring, and it is very pleasant to consider that he has some 1500 cousins.

And that makes, of course, for a kind of tapestry of -- of -- and population that is knit tight together. And with the immense children's mortality in such a new country, all these things are quite serious, and cannot be despised. There can -- you cannot brush this aside as mere barbarism. There was necessity. If you wanted to have the people of God coming to the fore in a great hurry as against all the apostasized churches, something extraordinary had to be done.

Now he had one thing, immigration, from the old country, you see. But in order -- since this immigration largely consisted of women, he had to immediately tie them into the stream of this country. And -- this -- I think that polygamy cannot be just laughed off and ridiculed. I -- I don't think the discussion of polygamy can be done by snickering and thinking this is obscene. I think the obscenities are all in Hollywood and not in polygamy. I mean, I think Lolita is much greater blot on the American scene than polygamy in -- in the -- for the Mormons.

But the issue of polygamy is interesting in this respect, that it means to go practically back before Christianity, so that the -- attempt of a pure aboriginal revelation leads him then to this arbitrary step into, so to speak, nowhere, into pre-Christian or- -- pre-Christian order. And there you see that to be reactionary, as the Mormons, is as fatal to the move- -- motions of the Holy Spirit as to be just progressive. And I think this polygamous -- in the -- issue, this polygamous -- the

question of polygamy should be taken seriously by you. All the modern sects are driven into some pre-Christian tenets--like Christian Science, to condemn wine for -- by vegetarians or Aboli- -- Prohibitionists, or to condemn medicine--that's pre-Christian. Christianity has made us completely free from all these things. Now all the movements, religious sects of the 19th century, have an issue like polygamy. Some back-sliding into the pre-Christian sla- -- enslavement. When the Methodists don't allow you to smoke and to drink, it's exactly the same slavery. That's pre-Christian, because Christianity has said that the things of the -- the goods of the earth, the things of the earth are indifferent. They can -- they have in themselves no morality one way or the other. You never know. At times, it's right; and at times, it's not right. And it is the human heart that has -- decided each time in complete freedom.

So the polygamy I mentioned as -- at some length for two reasons. First, that it is a typical resorting to an -- symbol or to an action which is not anymore within the Christian story. It is outside Christianity, polygamy. And the second, that it again proves the uncanny wisdom, or instinct, or however you call it, of Joseph Smith to invite persecution first, and to win by wearing down the enmity. His own wife belonged to this Reorganized Church, who went to Iowa, Lamoni, Iowa, and did not follow the new gospel of Owen -- Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, with open, declared polygamy. And on her death bed, her son--in 1858 this was--her son implored her to come out and say whether Joseph Smith, her husband, had ever said anything about polygamy, or not.

Now it is pretty sure I think from all the evidence that he had come out in -- for -- favor of polygamy, and -- practically as much as theoretically. And -- simply that he had practiced it. And his -- his lynching, his death was connected with the slander that had come up from -- through this -- his new doctrine, in the last year of his life. But his wife was so completely dedicated to him, that at the bequest of her son, on her deathbed, she denied all the accusations and said that he never had -- had said anything in favor of polygamy. He had worn her out -- her enmity, too.

I think the -- the thing is -- is not true, because she waited till on her deathbed, in order to help her son to achieve the presidency of this reorganized church, which rejected polygamy, you see. But for 11 years -- or for 14 years, she had been absolutely silent on the issue and nobody had been able to move her to any statement one way or the other. Now it seems to me that if she had been very sure of her ground, there was no reason for her to wait to her dying hour, when the love of her hus- -- son, you see, prevailed on her. The son has fought all his life against polygamy, and always based it on this fact that his father, to his knowledge, had never openly stated this new revelation.

Well, I am in the midst of nowhere. Next time then.