|WE are indebted to Elder Wilkins, of Logan, Utah,
first-assistant-general-tooly-muck-a-hi Z. C. M. I. and Z. W. of T.
U. O. M. and B. company, and president of the cache stake of Zion,
constituting last in the quorum of seventies, for the late edition of
the Mormon Guide and Hand Book of the Endowment House. It is a very
pleasant work to read, and makes the whole endowment scheme as clear to
the average mind as though he had been through it personally.
Pictures of the endowment chemiloon and Z. C. M. I. bib are given
to show the novice exactly how they appear to the unclothed and
unregenerate vision. The convert, it seems, first goes to the desk, on
entering, and registers. Then she leaves her every-day clothes in the
baggage room and gets a check for them. The next thing on the programme
is a bath, called the farewell bath, because it is the last one taken by
the endowment victim.
The convert is then anointed with machine oil from a cow's horn, after
which she is named something, supposed to be the celestial cognomen.
Then comes the endowment robe, which is a combination arrangement that
don't look pretty. After that, the apprentice to polygamy goes into an
impromptu garden of Eden, where the apple business is gone through with.
A thick-necked path-master from Logan takes the character of Adam, and a
pale-haired livery stable keeper from Salt Lake acts as the ruler of the
universe. This is not making light of a sacred subject. It is just the
simple, plain, horrible truth.
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The creation of the world is thus gone through with by these blatant
priests of Latter Day bogus sanctity, and the exercises are continued
after this fashion through all their disgusting details. We have no
time or inclination to enlarge upon them. Truth is sometimes nauseating,
especially while discussing the Mormon problem.
If Brigham Young had lived, he would have helped out his church by a
revelation that would have knocked the daylights out of polygamy; but
as it is now, John Taylor, with his characteristic stubborness, will
not attend to it, his revelation machine being somewhat out of whack,
as Oscar Wilde would say, so that the anointing with the so-called
sanctified lubricant will continue till the United States sits down on
the whole grand farce.