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Book, page 521 / 707 that faith in Utah, we have a murder committed every year to every 2500 of population. The same ratio of crime extended to the population of the United States would give 16,000 murders every year." The Messenger, the organ of the Reorganized Church in Salt Lake City, said in November, 1875: "While laying the waste pipes in front of the residence of Brigham Young recently the skeleton of a man--a white man--was dug up. A similar discovery was made last winter in digging a cellar in this city. What can have been the necessity of these secret burials, without coffins, in such places?" CHAPTER IX. BLOOD ATONEMENT As early as 1853 intimations of the doctrine that an offending member might be put out of the way were given from the Tabernacle pulpit. Orson Hyde, on April 9 of that year, spoke, in the form of a parable, of the fate of a wolf that a shepherd discovered in his flock of sheep, saying that, if let alone, he would go off and tell the other wolves, and they would come in; "whereas, if the first should meet with his just deserts, he could not go back and tell the rest of his hungry tribe to come and feast themselves on the flock. If you say the priesthood, or authorities of the church here, are the shepherd, and the church is the flock, you can make your own application of this figure." In September, 1856, there was a notable service in the bowery in Salt Lake City at which several addresses were made. Heber C. Kimball urged repentance, and told the people that Brigham Young's word was "the word of God to this people." Then Jedediah M. Grant first gave open utterance to a doctrine that has given the Saints, in late years, much trouble to explain, and the carrying out of which in Brigham Young's days has required many a Mormon denial. This is, what has been called in Utah the doctrine of "blood atonement," and what in reality was the doctrine of human sacrifice.
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