Deseret Evening News

CORNERED AGAIN.

We did not expect that the prevaricator who makes up ribald and false reports of Tabernacle discourses for the Salt Lake Tribune would either apologize for a grave mistake or repent of a wilful lie. One of these was his statement that President George Q. Cannon, in his discourse on Sunday, speaking of revelation to Joseph Smith said:

"According to that revelation the most wicked murderer who ever stood upon the gallows would be immediately ushered into the realms of God if he only confessed, before the fatal drop, his repentance, and expressed a belief in the divine mercy of the Lord."

Of course the speaker did not teach any such doctrine, but, on the contrary, showed that it was a false notion entertained by sectarian preachers.

We showed that he had been misrepresented, after the common style of Tribune reports.

Now comes the reporter with a quotation from the synopsis, of the discourse given by the Deseret News, and endeavors to draw from it the inference that his report was correct.

President Cannon stated that "all men except the sons of perdition" will be "brought forth after having received their punishment, and partake of the work of redemption." He showed that the punishment prepared of God for the wicked is eternal because God is eternal, but that "those who suffer the wrath of God will be finally redeemed" after they have had "to pay the penalty of breaking the commandments of God."

The Tribune attempts to draw the inference that its report was correct because of these admitted remarks of the speaker. But, with its accustomed recklessness, that paper thus furnishes a refutation of its own statement. If even murderers are at some time to "partake of the work of redemption," it is to be after they have "received their punishment," after they have "suffered the wrath of God;" after they have had to "pay the penalty of breaking the commandments of God." How this justifies the statement that the speaker said "the most wicked murderer who ever stood upon the gallows would be immediately ushered into the realms of God, if he only confessed, etc.," will require Tribune logic to explain.

But the reporter's statement was a deliberate falsification of the speaker's remarks, in common Tribune style: that is, a complete reversal of the speaker's position. President Cannon showed the fallacy of the common sectarian notion that there are but two places for departed souls—heaven and hell, and the inconsistency of the idea that a murderer could go straight to heaven from the scaffold, while a moral and upright man who failed to believe in the Christian religion was consigned to an eternal hell. And he explained the doctrine, revealed through Joseph Smith, of the intermediate state, the redemption of sinners after just punishment, and the various degrees of glory to be enjoyed in the hereafter according to the works of the sons and daughters of God.

If the reporter unintentionally muddled what he heard because of his inattention and audible conversation at the reporters' table, where he made a public nuisance of himself, he should have had the manhood to confess and apologize. But whoever knew a Tribune scribe to frankly acknowledge an error, or fail to add falsehood to falsehood in order to dodge a square issue?