THE K I N G ’S BUS I NES S
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told me th a t th e m inisters were afraid to m eet them in argum ent, and I was more th a n surprised when he said he would be pleased to m eet th e elders at any tim e. I then trie d in every way to get them to go and see hiin, b u t u tte rly failed to do so. This was early in F ebruary, 1902. Then I trie d to banish Dr. McMillan and his lecture from my mind. One Sunday n igh t I sa t talk ing w ith an elder in my home, and some one knocked on th e door. I opened it to adm it th e Rev. John D. N utting, whom I had never seen before, b u t who had lived some years in U tah, and was doing m issionary work among th e Mormons, and h ad h eard of me th rough my own pastor, Mr. B itting, whom I had slighted and trie d to forget. This was early in th e evening. I had intended going w ith th e elder to a meeting, bu t I le t th e elder go alone, and remained to ta lk to Mr. N utting because courtesy compelled me to do so. He talked for more th a n four hours to me, b u t I was unreasonable. He re-affirmed all th a t Dr. McMillan had said, and added more, and spoke about th e 2,000 changes th a t have been made in th e Book of Mor mon. When he left me he gave me some tracts. One of them contained the exact quotation from a Mormon book called th e “ Jo u rn al of Discourses” where B righam Young said in 1852, in th e Tabernacle in S alt Lake City, “Adam is our God, and th e only God w ith whom we have to do. When he came into th e garden of Eden, he came into it w ith a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, w ith him .” Now, by th is time, I was getting uneasy about th is blasphemous doctrine. I t had come up so many times, and been denied by th e elders. So I took th e tract, and w ent to a Mormon meeting a t No. 202 W est 23rd S treet, th e house of Mrs. Lane; and th e re m et E lder John G. McQuarrie, th e P residen t of th e E ast ern S tates Mission. I showed him in th e tra c t abou t Adam-God, rem arking
Smith. They hope a t some fu tu re tim e to be able to practice it as of old, and as they do now in th e Mormon colony in th e n o rth ern p a rt of th e Republic of Mexico. This was told me by E lder Clark, of Provo, U tah. I B u t to resum e my story, about two months afte r being ordained to the priesthood, I w ent to h ear an anti-Mor mon lecture a t the H arlem Y. M. C. A. by Dr. D. J. McMillan, of th e New York P resby terian Church, who had lived in U tah for ten years or more. Among o th er things he said, th e re was a sta te m ent about th e aw ful blood-atonement doctrine, ta u g h t first by Brigham Young. Now, I had before had more th a n a h in t about this, as an elder named W illiam Snow h ad given me a small book en titled “ Blood A tonem ent.” Before I had gotten done w ith it, I made comments of astonishm ent about some things it contained. E lder Neff asked me to le t him see it, I did so and have no t seen th e book from th a t day to this. This frig h tfu l doctrine is founded on such passages of Scripture as Heb. 9:22, which read s: “And almost all things are by th e law purged w ith blood, and w ithou t shedding of blood is no rem ission.” However, I did not believe w hat Dr. McMillan said about th is a t th e time. He also spoke of the Adam-God doctrine. I not only did no t believe him , b u t was ind ign an t th a t he made such statem ents. I shook hands and spoke to him a t th e end of th e lecture, and some tim e la ter went to him for a private ta lk a t his own home. My main object was to p ro test again st w hat he had said about th e Adam-God doctrine. He reiterated his statem ent, and said he could show me Sithese things in au then tic Mormon books which he had in his study a t his church only two blocks away from where we sat. He alm ost begged me to go to his study and look a t them , which I firmly refused to do, telling him I would try to get some of th e elders to come over and ta lk to him . Now, they had always
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