SALT LAKE AND THE MORMONS 75 



taries like Bear River, but with no outlet it 

 grows steadily more briny. Already they are 

 beginning to utilize its saline qualities with great 

 evaporating pans, and, some day, this will be a 

 great industry. 



More and more the Church is losing its peculiar 

 position, sloughing off that which distinguished 

 it, and, more and more, politics tend to divide on 

 other tha.n church lines. It is a good thing. The 

 isolation of the Church is, perhaps, the leading 

 cause of its past persecutions. Nothing else can 

 account for it. As it tends to modernize, to 

 become an integral part of the life about it, more 

 ecclesiastical and less political, it will accommodate 

 itself to modern thought and take its place among 

 the great sects of the world. 



Its days of persecution are past. Its need for 

 isolation is ended. With its organization, brains 

 and ideals, it will be a great force for progress. 

 When it forsook polygamy it justified itself. 



It showed that it was not a dead body, but a 

 living growth ready to meet living problems with 

 a live faith. For myself, I saw but little to crit- 

 icise and much to admire. 



