The alternatives suggested were considered, and going directly to the General Assembly was and is still considered the wiser one. If it fails, the other is available.

The two methods of procedure were (1) to take the case by overture directly to the General Assembly for its competent administrative notice or (2) by judicial process begun in the lower court.

The question is: "Is this true?" Is what true? Is it true that our (Southern Presbyterian) Church is admitting, harboring, and tolerating polygamy? I answer YES, it is true. I ask you to please allow me to state some of the reasons which evidently satisfy my own mind and must satisfy any other mind of the fact.

I enclose two clippings, which I hope you will publish entire.

From the Washington Post, March 21, 1904:

"POLYGAMOUS PRESBYTERIANS.

"They Are to Be Found Among the Natives of the Congo Free State.

"Polygamy thrives in the Congo Free State, not alone without the medium of a Mormon church, but within the Presbyterian Church, according to the description which Rev. W. M. Morrison, a missionary to that country for the Presbyterian denomination, presented to the congregation of the Central Presbyterian church, last night.

""Some of the natives have as many as five wives,' said the missionary. 'Many members of the church have as many as two wives. When they are reprimanded for polygamous living in the church, they will respond that they had the wives when the gospel was brought to them; that it is the custom of the country, and previous to the coming of the white

man no one thought it wrong; and, therefore, it would be wrong to desert all but one of the plural wives and their families.'

"Rev. Mr. Morrison spoke of this point of the African's life in a talk on the work in the Congo Free State. Women, he said, possess rights there which are hardly dreamed of in the Orient, and more than the American woman. The clothing varied from the 'black,' which the children wore, to a single strip of cloth, or, in some cases, a sheet which wrapped the body. The religion of the natives was that of ancestry worship."

From the Evening Star, Washington, Monday, March 21, 1904:

"PRACTICE POLYGAMY.

"Statement Regarding a Custom in Congo Free State.

"Rev. W. M. Morrison, a missionary to the Congo Free State for the Presbyterian denomination, presented to the congregation of the Central Presbyterian church last evening a description of the polygamous customs of the people in his mission field.

"Some of the natives have as many as five wives,' said the missionary. 'Many members of the church have as many as two wives. When they are reprimanded for polygamous living in the church they will respond that they had the wives when the gospel was brought to them; that it is the custom of the country, and previous to the coining of the white man no one thought it wrong; and, therefore, it would be wrong to desert all but one of the plural wives and their families.'

"He said, however, that the women of the African state occupied a position never dreamed of in the Orient, and as high as that of the American women."

These two influential papers have a circulation of about seventy thousand daily. Their reports are careful. It is the habit of these papers to publish in the Monday issues notices of what is said on Sabbath in the pulpits of the city. You will notice that these clippings are from the Monday issuesnow two years since. At that time this community and the country at large were in a state of no ordinary excitement over the Mormon Smoot case before the Senate Committee and still pending, as to whether he should be ousted from his seat in the Senate.*

I was shocked and started out to correct the supposed unintentional misrepresentation. But just then Dr. D. W. C. Snyder, our returned missionary from Luebo, Africa, where he had served our church some seven years, came to my house as a guest. I laid the matter before him. He informed me that the representation was true. He stated that he found polygamy in the church and acquiesced in it reluctantly, and had it still in mind to overture the General Assembly on the subject, and I expressed the hope that he would do so.

As co-operating, I prepared an overture to be presented to the Maryland Presbytery, to which I had been transferred from the Charleston Presbytery, S. C. But by an unexpected adjournment, I failed to get it before my own Presbytery. A member of the Chesapeake Presbytery, which was to meet in Alexandria the next week, suggested to me to bring it before that body. Well, as a corresponding member, and after speaking to some of the brethren, I did so. It was zealously discussed, and the vote stood 15 for to 8 against it. There was entered a protest. In the course of the discussion, Dr. Pitzer, in whose church Dr. Morrison made the discourse referred to by the papers, and who was a guest of Dr. Pitzer, stated before Presbytery as a matter of knowledge from this discourse, and from private personal

*In the House Roberts was denied a seat, but in the Senate Smoot was seated with the distinct understanding that his right to hold it would be contested.

conversation, that the existence of polygamy in the African church was a fact. He defended it, voted against the overture, and led in filing the protest.

Thus I found that it was our church and not the papers that needed correction. This overture was the result, with the idea that its passage would be a walkover without controversy even in the General Assembly.

Soon after the Chesapeake Presbytery, which adjourned April 21, 1904, I received a letter from Dr. W. M. Morrison, our returned missionary, dated Louisville, Ky., June 28, in which he severely called me to task for what I had done. He generously credited me with sincerity in this ignorantly meddlesome interference and "unseemly agitation" of a question which can only be judged wisely by the missionary in the field. This current claim of certain missionaries is not to be conceded for an instant, as the moral and religious character of the conjugal relation do not depend on varying circumstances, but are settled by Christ himself. However, he also concedes my friendliness to the mission, for he knew that I had given him one hundred dollars for the printing press and, probably, that I had sent a fifty-dollar draft to one of his colleagues. I mention this only to repel the ignorant imputations which have been indulged.

There is a still more important part of this letter which I must give, because it squarely answers the question, "Is this true?"

In reference to the newspaper statements above given, he writes, "Now what I did say was this: We have a few men in our African church who have two wives. There are perhaps not more than fifteen or twenty in over two thousand membership." In the Virginia Synod at Richmond (1905) he qualified this by saying that there were only four or five polygamists. But added, very properly, the principle is the same; and then I understood him to deny the right of the home church to dictate to the missionary in this matter.

I had intended to quote his argument for polygamy in the church and "against making monogamy a condition of

church membership," but it is too long for this communication. However, I shall use it in a pamphlet on this subject which will soon be published.* He and other returned mis

*I will here insert the main body of Dr. Morrison's letter as a statement of the polygamist plea and of the introduction of polygamy into our church at Luebo, Africa:

"Now what I did say was this: We have a few men in our African Church who have two wives. There are perhaps not more than fifteen or twenty in the over two thousand membership. Throughout the history of the Church, from the days of the Apostles down to the present time, Christianity upon its first introduction into a pagan country has had to contend with polygamy. Though the teaching of Christ and the spirit of Christianity are clearly against polygamy, yet there is nothing in the New Testament to warrant us, upon the introduction of Christianity into pagan countries, in making monogamy a condition of church membership. (?) There were polygamists in the early Apostolic Church, as is clearly shown in Paul's letter to Timothy where we are told that only a man who has one wife can hold office in the Church, clearly implying that there were men in the Church who did have more than one wife. (?) In giving the qualifications of a man today for such an office, it would certainly not be necessary to say that he should have to be the husband of only one wife. This comes like somewhat of a shock to us at first, but we who are brought face to face with these problems on the foreign field must meet them in the spirit of Christ and we dare not set up conditions for Church membership different from those indicated in the Bible. In the settling of such a question we must not forget that the woman and the children of a polygamous marriage have some rights, and Christianity respects these rights. To put away a woman with her children does her and the children a great injustice, and will more than likely force her into marriage with another man, which would be adultery. (?) Consequently, at Luebo, after long and careful prayer and deliberation over this matter, we have decided that it is right for us to admit men with more than one wife, but on the condition that no more wives shall be taken and also on the condition that such men shall not be permitted to hold any position of prominence in the Church, such as teacher or evangelist. This latter puts a ban on polygamy, and just as polygamy was thus in course of time weeded out of the early church (?) so we find that polygamy is fast decreasing in the regions about our missions. We believe that the time will not be far distant at Luebo when we can make monogamy a condition of church membership. Already in some of the older missions on the Congo they are now at a point where monogamy can be insisted on. "The above is in substance what I said." Below p. 92.