Title: The Story of "Mormonism" and The Philosophy of "Mormonism"
Author: Talmage, James E. (James Edward)
Language: English
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THE STORY OF "MORMONISM"

And

THE PHILOSOPHY OF "MORMONISM"

By James E. Talmage, D. Sc., F. R. S. E.



PREFACE

_The Story of "Mormonism"_ as presented in the following pages
is a revised and reconstructed version of lectures delivered by Dr.
James E. Talmage at the University of Michigan, Cornell
University, and elsewhere.  The "Story" first appeared in print
as a lecture report in the _Improvement Era_, and was afterward
issued as a booklet from the office of the _Millennial Star_,
Liverpool.  In 1910 it was issued in a revised form by the Bureau
of Information at Salt Lake City, in which edition the lecture
style of direct address was changed to the ordinary form of
essay.  The present or third American edition has been revised
and amplified by the author.

The "Story" has been translated and published abroad.  Already
versions have appeared in Swedish, modern Greek, and Russian.

The subject matter of _The Philosophy of "Mormonism"_ was first
presented as a lecture delivered by Dr. Talmage before the
Philosophical Society of Denver.  It appeared later in the
columns of the _Improvement Era_, and translations have been
published in pamphlet form in the Danish and German languages.

The present publication of these two productions is made in
response to a steady demand.

                                                 THE PUBLISHERS.

Salt Lake City, Utah,
March, 1914.



THE STORY OF "MORMONISM"



CHAPTER I

In the minds of many, perhaps of the majority of people, the
scene of the "Mormon" drama is laid almost entirely in Utah;
indeed, the terms "Mormon question" and "Utah question" have been
often used interchangeably.  True it is, that the development of
"Mormonism" is closely associated with the history of the
long-time Territory and present State of Utah; but the origin of
the system must be sought in regions far distant from the present
gathering-place of the Latter-day Saints, and at a period
antedating the acquisition of Utah as a part of our national
domain.

The term "origin" is here used in its commonest application--that
of the first stages apparent to ordinary observation--the visible
birth of the system.  But a long, long period of preparation had
led to this physical coming forth of the "Mormon" religion, a
period marked by a multitude of historical events, some of them
preceding by centuries the earthly beginning of this modern
system of prophetic trust.  The "Mormon" people regard the
establishment of their Church as the culmination of a great
series of notable events.  To them it is the result of causes
unnumbered that have operated through ages of human history, and
they see in it the cause of many developments yet to appear.
This to them establishes an intimate relationship between the
events of their own history and the prophecies of ancient times.

In reading the earliest pages of "Mormon" history, we are
introduced to a man whose name will ever be prominent in the
story of the Church--the founder of the organization by common
usage of the term, the head of the system as an earthly
establishment--one who is accepted by the Church as an ambassador
specially commissioned of God to be the first revelator of the
latter-day dispensation.  This man is Joseph Smith, commonly
known as the "Mormon" prophet.  Rarely indeed does history
present an organization, religious, social, or political, in
which an individual holds as conspicuous and in all ways as
important a place as does this man in the development of
"Mormonism." The earnest investigator, the sincere truth-seeker,
can ignore neither the man nor his work; for the Church under
consideration has risen from the testimony solemnly set forth and
the startling declarations made by this person, who, at the time
of his earliest announcements, was a farmer's boy in the first
half of his teens.  If his claims to ordination under the hands
of divinely commissioned messengers be fallacious, forming as
they form the foundation of the Church organization, the
superstructure cannot stand; if, on the other hand, such
declarations be true, there is little cause to wonder at the
phenomenally rapid rise and the surprising stability of the
edifice so begun.

Joseph Smith was born at Sharon, Vermont, in December, 1805.  He
was the son of industrious parents, who possessed strong
religious tendencies and tolerant natures.  For generations his
ancestors had been laborers, by occupation tillers of the soil;
and though comfortable circumstances had generally been their
lot, reverses and losses in the father's house had brought the
family to poverty; so that from his earliest days the lad Joseph
was made acquainted with the pleasures and pains of hard work.
He is described as having been more than ordinarily studious for
his years; and when that powerful wave of religious agitation and
sectarian revival which characterized the first quarter of the
last century, reached the home of the Smiths, Joseph with others
of the family was profoundly affected.  The household became
somewhat divided on the subject of religion, and some of the
members identified themselves with the more popular sects; but
Joseph, while favorably impressed by the Methodists in comparison
with others, confesses that his mind was sorely troubled over the
contemplation of the strife and tumult existing among the
religious bodies; and he hesitated.  He tried in vain to solve
the mystery presented to him in the warring factions of what
professed to be the Church of Christ.  Surely, thought he, these
several churches, opposed as they are to one another on what
appear to be the vital points of religion, cannot all be right.
While puzzling over this anomaly he chanced upon this verse in
the epistle of St. James:

    "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that
    giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and
    it shall be given him."

In common with so many others, the earnest youth found here
within the scriptures, admonition and counsel as directly
applicable to his case and circumstances as if the lines had been
addressed to him by name.  A brief period of hesitation, in which
he shrank from the thought that a mortal like himself, weak,
youthful, and unlearned, should approach the Creator with a
personal request, was followed by a humble and contrite
resolution to act upon the counsel of the ancient apostle.  The
result, to which he bore solemn record (testifying at first with
the simplicity and enthusiasm of youth, afterward confirming the
declaration with manhood's increasing powers, and at last
voluntarily sealing the testimony with his life's blood,) proved
most startling to the sectarian world--a world in which according
to popular belief no new revelation of truth was possible.  It is
a surprising fact that while growth, progress, advancement,
development of known truths and the acquisition of new ones,
characterize every living science, the sectarian world has
declared that nothing new must be expected as direct revelation
from God.

The testimony of this lad is, that in response to his
supplication, drawn forth by the admonition of an inspired
apostle, he received a divine ministration; heavenly beings
manifested themselves to him--two, clothed in purity, and alike
in form and feature.  Pointing to the other, one said, "This is
my beloved Son, hear Him."  In answer to the lad's prayer, the
heavenly personage so designated informed Joseph that the Spirit
of God dwelt not with warring sects, which, while professing a
form of godliness, denied the power thereof, and that he should
join none of them.  Overjoyed at the glorious manifestation thus
granted unto him, the boy prophet could not withhold from
relatives and acquaintances tidings of the heavenly vision.  From
the ministers, who had been so energetic in their efforts to
convert the boy, he received, to his surprise, abuse and
ridicule.  "Visions and manifestations from God," said they, "are
of the past, and all such things ceased with the apostles of old;
the canon of scripture is full; religion has reached its
perfection in plan, and, unlike all other systems contrived or
accepted by human kind, is incapable of development or growth.
It is true God lives, but He cares not for His children of modern
times as He did for those of ancient days; He has shut Himself
away from the people, closed the windows of heaven, and has
suspended all direct communication with the people of earth."

The persecution thus originating with those who called themselves
ministers of the gospel of Christ spread throughout the
community; and the sects that before could not agree together nor
abide in peace, became as one in their efforts to oppose the
youth who thus testified of facts, which though vehemently
denounced, produced an effect that alarmed them the more.  And
such a spectacle has ofttimes presented itself before the
world--men who cannot tolerate one another in peace swear
fidelity and mutual support in strife with a common opponent.
The importance of this alleged revelation from the heavens to the
earth is such as to demand attentive consideration.  If a fact,
it is a full contradiction of the vague theories that had been
increasing and accumulating for centuries, denying personality
and parts to Deity.

In 1820, there lived one person who knew that the word of the
Creator, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness,"
had a meaning more than in metaphor.  Joseph Smith, the youthful
prophet and revelator of the nineteenth century, knew that the
Eternal Father and the well-beloved Son, Jesus Christ, were in
form and stature like unto perfect men; and that the human family
was in very truth of divine origin.  But this wonderful vision
was not the only manifestation of heavenly power and personality
made to the young man, nor the only incident of the kind destined
to bring upon him the fury of persecution.  Sometime after this
visitation, which constituted him a living witness of God unto
men, and which demonstrated the great fact that humanity is the
child of Deity, he was visited by an immortal personage who
announced himself as Moroni, a messenger sent from the presence
of God.  The celestial visitor stated that through Joseph as the
earthly agent the Lord would accomplish a great work, and that
the boy would come to be known by good and evil repute amongst
all nations.  The angel then announced that an ancient record,
engraven on plates of gold, lay hidden in a hill near by, which
record gave a history of the nations that had of old inhabited
the American continent, and an account of the Savior's
ministrations among them.  He further explained that with the
plates were two sacred stones, known as Urim and Thummim, by the
use of which the Lord would bring forth a translation of the
ancient record.  Joseph further testifies that he was told that
if he remained faithful to his trust and the confidence reposed
in him, he would some day receive the record into his keeping,
and be commissioned and empowered to translate it.  In due time
these promises were literally fulfilled, and the modern version
of these ancient writings was given to the world.

The record proved to be an account of certain colonies of
immigrants to this hemisphere from the east, who came several
centuries before the Christian era.  The principal company was
led by one Lehi, described as a personage of some importance and
wealth, who had formerly lived at Jerusalem in the reign of
Zedekiah, and who left his eastern home about 600 B.C.  The book
tells of the journeyings across the water in vessels constructed
according to revealed plan, of the peoples' landing on the
western shores of South America probably somewhere in Chile, of
their prosperity and rapid growth amid the bounteous elements of
the new world, of the increase of pride and consequent dissension
accompanying the accumulation of material wealth, and of the
division of the people into factions which became later two great
nations at enmity with one another.  One part following Nephi,
the youngest and most gifted son of Lehi, designated themselves
_Nephites_; the other faction, led by Laman, the elder and wicked
brother of Nephi, were known as _Lamanites_.

The Nephites lived in cities, some of which attained great size
and were distinguished by great architectural beauty.
Continually advancing northward, these people in time occupied
the greater part of the valleys of the Orinoco, the Amazon, and
the Magdalena.  During the thousand years covered by the Nephite
record, the people crossed the Isthmus of Panama, which is
graphically described as a neck of land but a day's journey from
sea to sea, and successively occupied extensive tracts in what is
now Mexico, the valley of the Mississippi, and the Eastern
States.  It is not to be supposed that these vast regions were
all populated at any one time by the Nephites; the people were
continually moving to escape the depredations of their hereditary
foes, the Lamanites; and they abandoned in turn all their cities
established along the course of migration.  The unprejudiced
student sees in the discoveries of the ancient and now
forest-covered cities of Mexico, Central America, Yucatan, and
the northern regions of South America, collateral testimony
having a bearing upon this history.

Before their more powerful foes, the Nephites dwindled and fled;
until about the year 400 A.D. they were entirely annihilated
after a series of decisive battles, the last of which was fought
near the very hill, called Cumorah, in the State of New York,
where the hidden record was subsequently revealed to Joseph
Smith.

The Lamanites led a roving, aggressive life; kept few or no
records, and soon lost the art of history writing.  They lived on
the results of the chase and by plunder, degenerating in habit
until they became typical progenitors of the dark-skinned race,
afterward discovered by Columbus and named American Indians.

The last writer in the ancient record, and the one who hid away
the plates in the hill Cumorah, was Moroni--the same personage
who appeared as a resurrected being in the nineteenth century, a
divinely appointed messenger sent to reveal the depository of the
sacred documents; but the greater part of the plates since
translated had been engraved by the father of Moroni, the Nephite
prophet Mormon.  This man, at once warrior, prophet and
historian, had made a transcript and compilation of the
heterogeneous records that had accumulated during the troubled
history of the Nephite nation; this compilation was named on the
plates "The Book of Mormon," which name has been given to the
modern translation--a work that has already made its way over
most of the civilized world.  The translation and publication of
the Book of Mormon were marked by many scenes of trouble and
contention, but success attended the undertaking, and the first
edition of the work appeared in print in 1830.

The question, "What is the Book of Mormon?"--a very pertinent one
on the part of every earnest student and investigator of this
phase of American history--has been partly answered already.  The
work has been derisively called the "Mormon Bible," a name that
carries with it the misrepresentation that in the faith of this
people the book takes the place of the scriptural volume which is
universally accepted by Christian sects.  No designation could be
more misleading, and in every way more untruthful.  The
Latter-day Saints have but one "Bible" and that the Holy Bible of
Christendom.  They place it foremost amongst the standard works
of the Church; they accept its admonitions and its doctrines, and
accord thereto a literal significance; it is to them, and ever
has been, the word of God, a compilation made by human agency of
works by various inspired writers; they accept its teachings in
fulness, modifying the meaning in no wise, except in the rare
cases of undoubted mistranslation, concerning which Biblical
scholars of all faiths differ and criticize; and even in such
cases their reverence for the sacred letter renders them even
more conservative than the majority of Bible commentators and
critics in placing free construction upon the text.  The
historical part of the Jewish scriptures tells of the divine
dealings with the people of the eastern hemisphere; the Book of
Mormon recounts the mercies and judgments of God, the inspired
teachings of His prophets, the rise and fall of His people as
organized communities on the western continent.

The Latter-day Saints believe the coming forth of the Book of
Mormon to have been foretold in the Bible, as its destiny is
prophesied of within its own lids; it is to the people the true
"stick of Ephraim" which Ezekiel declared should become one with
the "stick of Judah"--or the Bible.  The people challenge the most
critical comparison between this record of the west and the Holy
Scriptures of the east, feeling confident that no discrepancy
exists in letter or spirit.  As to the original characters in
which the record was engraved, copies were shown to learned
linguists of the day and pronounced by them as closely resembling
the Reformed Egyptian writing.

Let us revert, however, to the facts of history concerning this
new scripture, and the reception accorded the printed volume.

The Book of Mormon was before the world; the Church circulated
the work as freely as possible.  The true account of its origin
was rejected by the general public, who thus, assumed the
responsibility of explaining in some plausible way the source of
the record.  Among the many false theories propounded, perhaps
the most famous is the so-called Spaulding story.  Solomon
Spaulding, a clergyman of Amity, Pennsylvania, died in 1816.  He
wrote a romance to which no name other than "Manuscript Story"
was given, and which, but for the unauthorized use of the
writer's name and the misrepresentation of his motives, would
never have been published.  Twenty years after the author's
death, one Hurlburt, an apostate "Mormon," announced that he had
recognized a resemblance between the "Manuscript Story" and the
Book of Mormon, and expressed a belief that the work brought
forward by Joseph Smith was nothing but the Spaulding romance
revised and amplified.  The apparent credibility of the statement
was increased by various signed declarations to the effect that
the two were alike, though no extracts for comparison were
presented.  But the "Manuscript Story" was lost for a time, and
in the absence of proof to the contrary, reports of the
parallelism between the two works multiplied.  By a fortunate
circumstance, in 1884, President James H. Fairchild, of Oberlin
College, and a literary friend of his--a Mr. Rice--while
examining a heterogeneous collection of old papers which had been
purchased by the gentleman last named, found the original
manuscript of the "Story."

After a careful perusal and comparison with the Book of Mormon,
President Fairchild declared in an article published in the New
York _Observer_, February 5, 1885:

    The theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon in the
    traditional manuscript of Solomon Spaulding will
    probably have to be relinquished.  * * *  Mr. Rice,
    myself, and others compared it [the Spaulding
    manuscript] with the Book of Mormon and could detect
    no resemblance between the two, in general or in
    detail.  There seems to be no name nor incident common
    to the two.  The solemn style of the Book of Mormon in
    imitation of the English scriptures does not appear in
    the manuscript.  * * *  Some other explanation of the
    origin of the Book of Mormon must be found if any
    explanation is required.

The manuscript was deposited in the library of Oberlin College
where it now reposes.  Still, the theory of the "Manuscript
Found," as Spaulding's story has come to be known, is
occasionally pressed into service in the cause of anti-"Mormon"
zeal, by some whom we will charitably believe to be ignorant of
the facts set forth by President Fairchild.  A letter of more
recent date, written by that honorable gentleman in reply to an
inquiring correspondent, was published in the _Millennial Star_,
Liverpool, November 3, 1898, and is as follows:

                                 OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO,
                                      October 17, 1895.

    J. R. HINDLEY, ESQ.,

    Dear Sir: We have in our college library an original
    manuscript of Solomon Spaulding--unquestionably
    genuine.

    I found it in 1884 in the hands of Hon. L. L. Rice,
    of Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands.  He was formerly state
    printer at Columbus, Ohio, and before that, publisher
    of a paper in Painesville, whose preceding publisher
    had visited Mrs. Spaulding and obtained the manuscript
    from her.  It had lain among his old papers forty
    years or more, and was brought out by my asking him to
    look up anti-slavery documents among his papers.

    The manuscript has upon it the signatures of several
    men of Conneaught, Ohio, who had heard Spaulding read
    it and knew it to be his.  No one can see it and
    question its genuineness.  The manuscript has been
    printed twice, at least;--once by the Mormons of Salt
    Lake City, and once by the Josephite Mormons of Iowa.
    The Utah Mormons obtained the copy of Mr. Rice, at
    Honolulu, and the Josephites got it of me after it
    came into my possession.

    This manuscript is not the original of the Book of
    Mormon.

            Yours very truly,
                    JAMES H. FAIRCHILD.

The "Manuscript Story" has been published in full, and
comparisons between the same and the Book of Mormon may be made
by anyone who has a mind to investigate the subject.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a fuller account of the Book of Mormon, see the
author's "Articles of Faith," Lectures 14 and 15; published at
Salt Lake City, Utah, 1913.]



CHAPTER II

But we have anticipated the current of events.  With the
publication of the Book of Mormon, opposition grew more intense
toward the people who professed a belief in the testimony of
Joseph Smith.  On the 6th of April, 1830, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints was formally organized and thus took
on a legal existence.  The scene of this organization was
Fayette, New York, and but six persons were directly concerned as
participants.  At that time there may have been and probably were
many times that number who had professed adherence to the newly
restored faith; but as the requirements of the law governing the
formation of religious societies were satisfied by the
application of six, only the specified number formally took part.
Such was the beginning of the Church, soon to be so universally
maligned.  Its origin was small--a germ, an insignificant seed,
hardly to be thought of as likely to arouse opposition.  What was
there to fear in the voluntary association of six men, avowedly
devoted to peaceful pursuits and benevolent purposes?  Yet a
storm of persecution was threatened from the earliest day.  At
first but a family affair, opposition to the work has involved
successively the town, the county, the state, the country, and
today the "Mormon" question has been accorded extended
consideration at the hands of the national government, and indeed
most civilized nations have taken cognizance of the same.

Let us observe the contrast between the beginning and the present
proportions of the Church.  Instead of but six regularly
affiliated members, and at most two score of adherents, the
organization numbers today many hundred thousand souls.  In place
of a single hamlet, in the smallest corner of which the members
could have congregated, there now are about seventy stakes of
Zion and about seven hundred organized wards, each ward and stake
with its full complement of officers and priesthood
organizations.  The practise of gathering its proselytes into one
place prevents the building up and strengthening of foreign
branches; and inasmuch as extensive and strong organizations are
seldom met with abroad, very erroneous ideas exist concerning the
strength of the Church.  Nevertheless, the mustard seed, among
the smallest of all seeds, has attained the proportions of a
tree, and the birds of the air are nesting in its branches; the
acorn is now an oak offering protection and the sweets of
satisfaction to every earnest pilgrim journeying its way for
truth.

From the organization of the Church, the spirit of emigration
rested upon the people.  Their eyes were from the first turned in
anticipation toward the evening sun--not merely that the work of
proselyting should be carried on in the west, but that the
headquarters of the Church should be there established.  The Book
of Mormon had taught the people the true origin and destiny of
the American Indians; and toward this dark-skinned remnant of a
once mighty people, the missionaries of "Mormonism" early turned
their eyes, and with their eyes went their hearts and their
hopes.

Within three months from the beginning, the Church had
missionaries among the Lamanites.  It is notable that the Indian
tribes have generally regarded the religion of the Latter-day
Saints with favor, seeing in the Book of Mormon striking
agreement with their own traditions.

The first well-established seat of the Church was in the pretty
little town of Kirtland, Ohio, almost within sight of Lake Erie;
and here soon rose the first temple of modern times.  Among their
many other peculiarities, the Latter-day Saints are characterized
as a temple-building people, as history proves the Israel of
ancient times to have been.  In the days of their infancy as a
Church, while in the thrall of poverty, and amidst the
persecution and direful threats of lawless hordes, they laid the
cornerstone, and in less than three years thereafter they
celebrated the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, a structure at
once beautiful and imposing.  Even before this time, however,
populous settlements of Latter-day Saints had been made in
Jackson County, Missouri; and in the town of Independence a site
for a great temple had been selected and purchased; but though
the ground has been dedicated with solemn ceremony, the people
have not as yet built thereon.

Within two years of its dedication, the temple in Kirtland was
abandoned by the people, who were compelled to flee for their
lives before the onslaughts of mobocrats; but a second temple,
larger and more beautiful than the first, soon reared its spires
in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois.  This structure was destroyed by
fire, but the temple-building spirit was not to be quenched, and
in the vales of Utah today are four magnificent temple edifices.
The last completed, which was the first begun, is situated in
Salt Lake City, and is one of the wonders and beauties of that
city by the great salt sea.[2]

[Footnote 2: For a detailed account of modern temples, with
numerous pictorial views, see "The House of the Lord," by the
present author; Salt Lake City, Utah, 1912.]

To the fervent Latter-day Saint, a temple is not simply a church
building, a house for religious assembly.  Indeed the "Mormon"
temples are rarely used as places of general gatherings.  They
are in one sense educational institutions, regular courses of
lectures and instruction being maintained in some of them; but
they are specifically for baptisms and ordinations, for
sanctifying prayer, and for the most sacred ceremonies and rites
of the Church, particularly in the vicarious work for the dead
which is a characteristic of "Mormon" faith.  And who that has
gazed upon these splendid shrines will say that the people who
can do so much in poverty and tribulation are insincere?  Bigoted
they may seem to those who believe not as they do; fanatics they
may be to multitudes who like the proud Pharisee of old thank God
they are not as these; but insincere they cannot be, even in the
judgment of their bitterest opponent, if he be a creature of
reason.

The clouds of persecution thickened in Ohio as the intolerant
zeal of mobs found frequent expression; numerous charges, trivial
and serious, were made against the leaders of the Church, and
they were repeatedly brought before the courts, only to be
liberated on the usual finding of no cause for action.  Meanwhile
the march to the west was maintained.  Soon thousands of converts
had rented or purchased homes in Missouri--Independence, Jackson
County, being their center; but from the first, they were
unpopular among the Missourians.  Their system of equal rights
with their marked disapproval of every species of aristocratic
separation and self-aggrandizement was declared to be a species
of communism, dangerous to the state.  An inoffensive
journalistic organ, _The Star_, published for the purpose of
properly presenting the religious tenets of the people, was made
the particular object of the mob's rage; the house of its
publisher was razed to the ground, the press and type were
confiscated, and the editor and his family maltreated.  An absurd
story was circulated and took firm hold of the masses that the
Book of Mormon promised the western lands to the people of the
Church, and that they intended to take possession of these lands
by force.  Throughout the book of revelations regarded by the
people as law specially directed to them, they are told to save
their riches that they may purchase the inheritance promised them
of God.  Everywhere are they told to maintain peace; the sword is
never offered as their symbol of conquest.  Their gathering is to
be like that of the Jews at Jerusalem--a pacific one, and in
their taking possession of what they regard as a land of promise,
no one previously located there shall be denied his rights.

A spirit of fierce persecution raged in Jackson and surrounding
counties of Missouri.  An appeal was made to the executive of the
state, but little encouragement was returned.  The lieutenant-
governor, Lilburn W. Boggs, afterward governor, was a pronounced
"Mormon"-hater, and throughout the period of the troubles, he
manifested sympathy with the persecutors.

One of the circuit judges who was asked to issue a peace warrant
refused to do so, but advised the "Mormons" to arm themselves and
meet the force of the outlaws with organized resistance.  This
advice was not pleasing to the Latter-day Saints, whose religion
enjoined tolerance and peace; but they so far heeded it as to arm
a small force; and when the outlaws next came upon them, the
people were not entirely unprepared.  A "Mormon" rebellion was
now proclaimed.  The people had been goaded to desperation.  The
militia was ordered out, and the "Mormons" were disarmed.  The
mob was unrestrained in its eagerness for revenge.  The "Mormons"
engaged able lawyers to institute and maintain legal proceedings
against their foes, and this step, the right to which one would
think could be denied no American citizen, called forth such an
uproar of popular wrath as to affect almost the entire state.

It was winter; but the inclemency of the year only suited the
better the purpose of the oppressor.  Homes were destroyed, men
torn from their families were brutally beaten, tarred and
feathered; women with babes in their arms were forced to flee
half-clad into the solitude of the prairie to escape from
mobocratic violence.  Their sufferings have never yet been fitly
chronicled by human scribe.  Making their way across the river,
most of the refugees found shelter among the more hospitable
people of Clay County, and afterward established themselves in
Caldwell County, therein founding the city of Far West.  County
and state judges, the governor, and even the President of the
United States, were appealed to in turn for redress.  The
national executive, Andrew Jackson, while expressing sympathy for
the persecuted people, deplored his lack of power to interfere
with the administration or non-administration of state laws; the
national officials could do nothing; the state officials would do
naught.

But the expulsion from Jackson County was but a prelude to the
tragedy soon to follow.  A single scene of the bloody drama is
known as the Haun's Mill massacre.  A small settlement had been
founded by "Mormon" families on Shoal Creek, and here on the 30th
of October, 1838, a company of two hundred and forty fell upon
the hapless settlers and butchered a score.  No respect was paid
to age or sex; grey heads, and infant lips that scarcely had
learned to lisp a word, vigorous manhood and immature youth,
mother and maiden, fared alike in the scene of carnage, and their
bodies were thrown into an old well.

In October, 1838, the Governor of Missouri, the same Lilburn W.
Boggs, issued his infamous exterminating order, and called upon
the militia of the state to execute it.  The language of this
document, signed by the executive of a sovereign state of the
Union, declared that the "Mormons" must be driven from the state
or exterminated.  Be it said to the honor of some of the officers
entrusted with the terrible commission, that when they learned
its true significance they resigned their authority rather than
have anything to do with what they designated a cold-blooded
butchery.  But tools were not wanting, as indeed they never have
been, for murder and its kindred outrages.  What the heart of man
can conceive, the hand of man will find a way to execute.  The
awful work was carried out with dread dispatch.  Oh, what a
record to read; what a picture to gaze upon; how awful the fact!
An official edict offering expatriation or death to a peaceable
community with no crime proved against them, and guilty of no
offense other than that of choosing to differ in opinion from the
masses!  American school boys read with emotions of horror of the
Albigenses, driven, beaten and killed, with a papal legate
directing the butchery; and of the Vaudois, hunted and hounded
like beasts as the effect of a royal decree; and they yet shall
read in the history of their own country of scenes as terrible as
these in the exhibition of injustice and inhuman hate.

In the dread alternative offered them, the people determined
again to abandon their homes; but whither should they go?
Already they had fled before the lawless oppressor over well nigh
half a continent; already were they on the frontiers of the
country that they had regarded as the land of promised liberty.
Thus far every move had carried them westward, but farther west
they could not go unless they went entirely beyond the country of
their birth, and gave up their hope of protection under the
Constitution, which to them had ever been an inspired instrument,
the majesty of which, as they had never doubted, would be some
day vindicated, even to securing for them the rights of American
citizens.  This time their faces were turned toward the east; and
a host numbering from ten to twelve thousand, including many
women and children, abandoned their homes and fled before their
murderous pursuers, reddening the snow with bloody footprints as
they journeyed.  They crossed the Mississippi and sought
protection on the soil of Illinois.  There their sad condition
evoked for a time general commiseration.

The press of the state denounced the treatment of the people by
the Missourians and vindicated the character of the "Mormons" as
peaceable and law-abiding citizens.  College professors published
expressions of their horror over the cruel crusade; state
officials, including even the governor, gave substantial evidence
of their sympathy and good feeling.  This lull in the storm of
outrage that had so long raged about them offered a strange
contrast to their usual treatment.  Let it not be thought that
all the people of Illinois were their friends; from the first,
opposition was manifest, but their condition was so greatly
bettered that they might have thought the advent of their Zion to
be near at hand.

I stated that professional men, and even college professors
raised their voices in commiseration of the "Mormon" situation
and in denouncing the "Mormon" oppressors.  Prof. Turner of
Illinois College wrote:

    Who began the quarrel?  Was it the "Mormons?"  Is it
    not notorious on the contrary that they were hunted
    like wild beasts from county to county before they
    made any resistance?  Did they ever, as a body,
    refuse obedience to the laws, when called upon to do
    so, until driven to desperation by repeated threats
    and assaults by the mob?  Did the state ever make
    one decent effort to defend them as fellow-citizens
    in their rights or to redress their wrongs?  Let the
    conduct of its governors and attorneys and the fate
    of their final petitions answer!  Have any who
    plundered and openly insulted the "Mormons" ever
    been brought to the punishment due to their crimes?
    Let boasting murderers of begging and helpless
    infancy answer!  Has the state ever remunerated even
    those known to be innocent for the loss of either
    their property or their arms?  Did either the pulpit
    or the press through the state raise a note of
    remonstrance or alarm?  Let the clergymen who
    abetted and the editors who encouraged the mob
    answer!

As a sample of the press comments against the brutality of the
Missourians I quote a paragraph from the Quincy _Argus_, March
16, 1839:

    We have no language sufficiently strong for the
    expression of our indignation and shame at the recent
    transaction in a sister state, and that state,
    Missouri, a state of which we had long been proud,
    alike for her men and history, but now so fallen that
    we could wish her star stricken from the bright
    constellation of the Union.  We say we know of no
    language sufficiently strong for the expression of
    our shame and abhorrence of her recent conduct.  She
    has written her own character in letters of blood,
    and stained it by acts of merciless cruelty and
    brutality that the waters of ages cannot efface.  It
    will be observed that an organized mob, aided by
    many of the civil and military officers of Missouri,
    with Gov. Boggs at their head, have been the
    prominent actors in this business, incited too, it
    appears, against the "Mormons" by political hatred,
    and by the additional motives of plunder and revenge.
    They have but too well put in execution their threats
    of extermination and expulsion, and fully wreaked
    their vengeance on a body of industrious and
    enterprising men, who had never wronged nor wished to
    wrong them, but on the contrary had ever comported
    themselves as good and honest citizens, living under
    the same laws, and having the same right with
    themselves to the sacred immunities of life, liberty
    and property.



CHAPTER III

Settling in and about the obscure village of Commerce, the
"Mormon" refugees soon demonstrated anew the marvelous
recuperative power with which they were endowed, and a city
seemed to spring from the earth.  Nauvoo--the City Beautiful--was
the name given to this new abiding place.  It was situated but a
few miles from Quincy, in a bend of the majestic river, giving
the town three water fronts.  It seemed to nestle there as if the
Father of Waters was encircling it with his mighty arm.  Soon a
glorious temple crowned the hill up which the city had run in its
rapid growth.  Their settlements extended into Iowa, then a
territory.  The governors of both Iowa and Ohio testified to the
worthiness of the Latter-day Saints as citizens, and pledged them
the protection of the commonwealth.  The city of Nauvoo was
chartered by the state of Illinois, and the rights of local
self-government were assured to its citizens.

A military organization, the "Nauvoo Legion," was authorized, and
the establishment of a university was provided for; both these
organizations were successfully effected.  It was here that a
memorial was prepared and sent to the national government,
reciting the outrages of Missouri, and asking reparation.  Joseph
Smith himself, the head of the delegation, had a personal
interview with President Van Buren, in which the grievances of
the Latter-day Saints were presented.  Van Buren replied in words
that will not be forgotten, "Your cause is just, but I can do
nothing for you."

The peaceful conditions at first characteristic of their Illinois
settlement were not to continue.  The element of political
influence asserted itself and the "Mormons" bade fair to soon
hold the balance of power in local affairs.  The characteristic
unity, so marked in connection with every phase of the people's
existence, promised too much; immigration into Hancock county was
continuous, and the growing power of the Latter-day Saints was
viewed with apprehension.  With this as the true motive, many
pretexts for annoyance were found; and arrests, trials, and
acquittals were common experiences of the Church officers.

A charge, which promised to prove as devoid of foundation as had
the excuses for the fifty arrests preceding it, led Joseph Smith,
president of the Church, and Hyrum Smith, the patriarch, to again
surrender themselves to the officers of the law.  They were taken
to Carthage, Joseph having declared to friends his belief that he
was going to the slaughter.  Governor Ford gave to the prisoners
his personal guarantee for their safety; but mob violence was
supreme, more mighty than the power of the state militia placed
there to guard the prison; and these men were shot to death, even
while under the governor's plighted pledge of protection.  Hyrum
fell first; and Joseph, appearing at one of the windows in the
second story, received the leaden missiles of the besieging mob,
which was led by a recreant though professed minister of the
gospel.  But the brutish passion of the mob was not yet sated;
propping the body against a well-curb in the jail-yard, the
murderers poured a volley of bullets into the corpse, and fled.
Thus was the unholy vow of the mob fulfilled, that as law could
not touch the "Mormon" leaders, powder and ball should.  John
Taylor, who became years afterward president of the Church, was
in the jail at the same time; he received four bullets, and was
left supposedly dead.

Joseph Smith had been more than the ecclesiastical leader; his
presence and personality had been ever powerful as a stimulus to
the hearts of the people; none knew his personal power better
than the members of his own flock, unless indeed it were the
wolves who were ever seeking to harry the fold.  It had been the
boast of anti-"Mormons" that with Joseph Smith removed, the
Church would crumble to pieces of itself.  In the personality of
their leader, it was thought, lay the secret of the people's
strength; and like the Philistines, the enemy struck at the
supposed bond of power.  Terrible as was the blow of the fearful
fatality, the Church soon emerged from its despairing state of
poignant grief, and rose mightier than before.  It is the faith
of this people that while the work of God on earth is carried on
by men, yet mortals are but instruments in the Creator's hands
for the accomplishment of divine purposes.  The death of the
president disorganized the First Presidency of the Church; but
the official body next in authority, the Council of the Twelve,
stepped to the front, and the progress of the Church was
unhindered.  The work of the ministry was not arrested; the
people paused but long enough to bury their dead and clear their
eyes from the blinding tears that fell.

Let us take a retrospective glance at this unusual man.  Though
his opponents deny him the divine commission with which his
friends believe he was charged, they all, friends and foes alike,
admit that he was a great man.  Through the testimony of his
life's work and the sanctifying seal of his martyrdom, thousands
have come to acknowledge him all that he professed to be--a
messenger from God to the people.  He is not without admirers
among men who deny the truth of his principles and the faith of
his people.

A historical writer of the time, Josiah Quincy, a few weeks after
the martyrdom, wrote:

    It is by no means improbable that some future text book
    for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a
    question something like this: "What historical American
    of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful
    influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?"  And it
    is by no means impossible that the answer to that
    interrogatory may be thus written--"Joseph Smith, the
    Mormon Prophet."  And the reply, absurd as it doubtless
    seems to most men now living, may be an obvious
    commonplace to their descendants.  History deals in
    surprises and paradoxes quite as startling as this.  A
    man who established a religion in this age of free
    debate, who was and is today accepted by hundreds of
    thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High--such
    a rare human being is not to be disposed of by pelting
    his memory with unsavory epithets.  * * *  The most
    vital questions Americans are asking each other today,
    have to deal with this man and what he has left us.
    * * *  Joseph Smith, claiming to be an inspired teacher,
    faced adversity such as few men have been called to
    meet, enjoyed a brief season of prosperity such as few
    men have ever attained, and finally * * * went
    cheerfully to a martyr's death.  When he surrendered
    his person to Governor Ford, in order to prevent the
    shedding of blood, the Prophet had a presentiment of
    what was before him.  "I am going like a lamb to the
    slaughter," he is reported to have said, "but I am as
    calm as a summer's morning.  I have a conscience void of
    offense, and shall die innocent."

The "Mormon" people regarded it as a duty to make every proper
effort to bring the perpetrators of the foul assassination of
their leaders to justice; sixty names were presented to the local
grand jury, and of the persons so designated, nine were indicted.
After a farcical semblance of a trial, these were acquitted, and
thus was notice, sanctioned by the constituted authority of the
law, served upon all anti-"Mormons" of Illinois, that they were
safe in any assault they might choose to make on the subjects of
their hate.  The mob was composed of apt pupils in the learning
of this lesson.  Personal outrages were of every-day occurrence;
husbandmen were captured in their fields, beaten, tortured, until
they barely had strength left to promise compliance with the
demands of their assailants,--that they would leave the state.
Houses were fired while the tenants were wrapped in uneasy
slumber within; indeed, one entire town, that of Morley, was by
such incendiarism reduced to ashes.  Women and children were
aroused in the night, and compelled to flee unclad or perish in
their burning dwellings.

But what of the internal work of the Church during these trying
periods?  As the winds of winter, the storms of the year's
deepest night, do but harden and strengthen the mountain pine,
whose roots strike the deeper, whose branches thicken, whose
twigs multiply by the inclemency that would be fatal to the
exotic palm, raised by man with hot-house nursing, so the new
sect continued its growth, partly in spite of, partly because of,
the storms to which it was subjected.  It was no green-house
growth, struggling for existence in a foreign clime, but a fit
plant for the soil of a free land; and there existed in the minds
of unprejudiced observers not a doubt as to its vitality.  The
Church soon found its equilibrium again after the shock of its
cruel experience.  Brigham Young, who for a decade had been
identified with the cause, who had received his full share of
persecution at mobocratic hands, now stood at the head of the
presiding body in the priesthood of the Church.  The effect of
this man's wonderful personality, his surprising natural ability,
and to the people, the proofs of his divine acceptance, were
apparent from the first.

Migration from other states and from foreign shores continued to
swell the "Mormon" band, and this but angered the oppressors the
more.  The members of the Church, recognizing the inevitable long
before predicted by their murdered prophet, that the march of the
Church would be westward, redoubled their efforts to complete the
grand temple upon which they had not ceased to work through all
the storms of persecution.  This structure, solemnly dedicated to
their God, they entered, and there received their anointings and
their blessings; then they abandoned it to the desecration and
self-condemning outrages of their foes.  For the mob's decree had
gone forth, that the "Mormons" must leave Illinois.  After a few
sanguinary encounters, the leaders of the people acceded to the
demands of their assailants, and agreed to leave early in the
following spring; but the departure was not speedy enough to
suit, and the lawless persecution was waged the more ruthlessly.

Soon the soil of Illinois was free from "Mormon" tread; Nauvoo
was deserted, her 20,000 inhabitants expatriated.  Colonel Thomas
L. Kane, a conspicuous figure at this stage of our country's
history, was traveling eastward at the time, and reached Nauvoo
shortly after its evacuation.  In a lecture before the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, he related his experience in this
sometime abode of the Saints.  I paraphrase a portion of his
eloquent address.

Sighting the city from the western shore of the mighty
Mississippi, as it nestled in the river's encircling embrace, he
crossed to its principal wharf, and, there to his surprise, found
no soul to meet him.  The stillness that everywhere prevailed was
painful, broken only by an occasional faint echo of boisterous
shout or ribald song from a distance.  The town was in a dream,
and the warrior trod lightly lest he wake it in affright, for he
plainly saw that it had not slumbered long.  No grass grew in the
pavement joints; recent footprints were still distinct in the
dusty thoroughfares.  The visitor made his way unmolested into
work-shops and smithies; tools lay as last used; on the
carpenter's bench was the unfinished frame, on the floor were the
shavings fresh and odorous; the wood was piled in readiness
before the baker's oven; the blacksmith's forge was cold, but the
shop looked as though the occupant had just gone off for a
holiday.  The gallant soldier entered gardens unchallenged by
owner, human guard, or watchful dog; he might have supposed the
people hidden or dead in their houses; but the doors were not
fastened, and he entered to explore, there were fresh ashes on
the hearth; no great accumulation of the dust of time was on
floors or furniture; the awful quiet compelled him to tread
a-tip-toe as if threading the aisles of an unoccupied cathedral.
He hastened to the graveyard, though surely the city had not been
depopulated by pestilence.  No; there were a few stones newly
set, some sods freshly turned in this sacred acre of God, but
where can you find a cemetery of a living town with no such
evidence of recent interment?  There were fields of heavy grain,
the bounteous harvest rotting on the ground; there were orchards
dropping their rich and rosy fruit to spoil beneath; not a hand
to gather or save.

But in a suburban corner, he came across the smoldering embers of
a barbecue fire, with fragments of flesh and other remnants of a
feast.  Hereabout houses had been demolished; and there beyond,
around the great temple that had first attracted his attention
from the Iowa shore, armed men were bivouacked.  This worthy
representative of our country's service was challenged by the
drunken crowd, and made to give an account of himself, and to
answer for having crossed the river without a permit from the
head of the band.  Finding that he was a stranger, they related
to him in fiendish glee their recent exploits of pillage, rapine,
and murder.  They conducted him through the temple; everywhere
were marks of their brutish acts; its altars of prayer were
broken; the baptismal font had been so "diligently desecrated as
to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to
abide in."  There in the steeple close by the "scar of divine
wrath" left by a recent thunderbolt, were broken covers of liquor
and drinking vessels.

Sickened with the sight, disgusted with this spectacle of
outrage, the colonel recrossed the river at nightfall, beating
upward, for the wind had freshened.  Attracted by a faint light
near the bank, he approached the spot, there to find a few
haggard faces surrounding one who seemed to be in the last stages
of fever.  The sufferer was partially protected by something like
a tent made from a couple of bed sheets; and amid such
environment, the spirit was pluming itself for flight.  Making
his way through this camp of misery, he heard the sobbings of
children hungry and sick; there were men and women dying from
wounds or disease, without a semblance of shelter or other
physical comfort; wives in the pangs of maternity, ushering into
the world innocent babes doomed to be motherless from their
birth.  And at intervals, to the ears of those outcasts, the sick
and the dying, the wind brought the soul-piercing sounds of the
reveling mob in the distant city, the scrap of vulgar song, the
shocking oath, shrieked from the temple tower in the madness of
drunken orgies.

This, however, was but the rear remnant of the' expatriated
Christian band.  The van was already far on its way toward the
inviting wilderness of the all but unknown west.  But the
wanderers were not wholly without friends; certain Indian tribes,
the Omahas and the Potawatomis, welcomed them to their lands,
inviting them to camp within their territory during the coming
winter.  "Welcome," said these children of the forest, "we too
have been driven from our pleasant homes east of the great river,
to these damp and unhealthful bottoms; you now, white men, have
been driven forth to the prairies; we are fellow-sufferers.
Welcome, brothers."

In return much assistance was rendered by the white refugees to
their, shall I say savage friends?  If it was civilization the
wanderers had left, then indeed might the red men of the forest
have felt proud of their distinction.  But the Indian agent, a
Christian gentleman, ordered the "Mormons" to move on and leave
the reservation which a kind government had provided for its red
children.  An order from President Polk, who had been appealed to
by Colonel Kane, gave the people permission to remain for a short
season.  The government of Iowa had courteously assured them
protection while passing through that territory.  As soon as the
people were well under way, a thorough organization was effected.
Remembering the toilsome desert march from Egypt to Canaan, the
people assumed the name, "Camp of Israel."  The camp consisted of
two main divisions, and each was sub-divided into companies of
hundreds, fifties, and tens, with captains to direct.  An officer
with one hundred volunteers went ahead of the main body to select
a route and prepare a road.  At this time, there were over one
thousand wagons of the "Mormons" rolling westward, and the line
of march soon reached from the Mississippi to Council Bluffs.
There were in the company not half enough draft animals for the
arduous march, and but an insufficient number of able-bodied men
to tend the camps.  The women had to assist in driving teams and
stock, and in other labors of the journey.  Yet with their
characteristic cheerfulness the people made the best, and that
proved to be a great deal, out of their lot.  When the camp
halted, a city seemed to spring as if by magic from the prairie
soil.  Concerts and social gatherings were usual features of the
evening rests.

But another great event disturbed the equanimity of the camp.
War had broken out between Mexico and the United States.  General
Taylor's victories in the early stages of the strife had been all
but decisive, but the Republic was on march to the western ocean
and the provinces of New Mexico and California were in her path.
These two provinces comprised in addition to the territory now
designated by those names, Utah, Nevada, portions of Wyoming and
Colorado, as also Arizona; while Oregon, then claimed by Great
Britain, included Washington, Idaho, and portions of Montana and
Wyoming.  It was the plan of the national administration to
occupy these provinces at the earliest moment possible; and a
call was made upon the "Mormon" refugees to contribute to the
general force by furnishing a battalion of five hundred men to
take part in the war with Mexico.  The surprise which the message
of the government officer produced in the camp amounted almost to
dismay.  Five hundred men fit to bear arms to be drafted from
that camp!  What would become of the rest?  Already women and
boys had been pressed into service to do the work of men; already
the sick and the halt had been neglected; and many graves marked
the path they had traversed, whose tenants had passed to their
last sleep through lack of care.

But how long did they hesitate?  Scarcely an hour; it was the
call of their country.  True, they were even then leaving the
national soil, but not of their own will.  To them their country
was and is the promised land, the Lord's chosen place, the land
of Zion.  "You shall have your battalion," said Brigham Young to
Captain Allen, the muster officer, "and if there are not young
men enough, we will take the old men, and if they are not enough,
we will take the women."  Within a week from the time President
Polk's message was received, the entire force, in all five
hundred and forty-nine souls, was on the march to Fort
Leavenworth.  Their path from the Missouri to the Pacific led
them over two thousand miles, much of this distance being
measured through deserts, which prior to that time had not been
trodden by civilized foot.

Colonel Cooke, the commander of the "Mormon" Battalion, declared,
"History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry."
Many were disabled through the severity of the march, and
numerous cases of sickness and death were chronicled.  General
Kearney and his successor, Governor R. B. Mason, as military
commandants of California, spoke in high praise of this
organization, and in their official reports declared that they
had made efforts to prolong the battalion's term of service; but
most of the men chose to rejoin their families as soon as they
could secure their honorable discharge.

But to return to the Camp of Israel: A pioneer party, consisting
of a hundred and forty and four, preceded the main body; and the
line of the migrating hosts soon stretched from the Missouri to
the valley of the Great Salt Lake.  Wagons there were, as also
some horses and men, but all too few for the journey; and a great
part of the company walked the full thousand miles across the
great plains and the forbidding deserts of the west.  In the
Black Hills region, the pioneers were delayed a week at the
Platte, a stream, which, though usually fordable at this point
was now so swollen as to make fording impossible.  Here, too,
their provisions were well nigh exhausted.  Game had not been
plentiful, and the "Mormon" pioneers were threatened with the
direst privations.  In their slow march they had been passed by a
number of well-equipped parties, some of them from Missouri bound
for the Pacific; but most of these were overtaken on the easterly
side of the river.  Amongst the effects of the "Mormon" party was
a leathern boat, which on water served the legitimate purpose of
its maker and on land was made to do service as a wagon box.
This, together with rafts specially constructed, was now put to
good use in ferrying across the river not alone themselves and
their little property, but the other companies and their loads.
For this service they were well paid in camp provisions.

Thus, the expatriated pioneers found themselves relieved from
want with their meal sacks replenished in the heart of the
wilderness.  Many may call it superstition, but some will regard
it as did the thankful travelers--an interposition of Providence,
and an answer to their prayers--an event to be compared, they
said, to the feeding of Israel with manna in the wilderness of
old.

After over three months' journeying, the pioneer company reached
the valley of the Great Salt Lake; and at the first sight of it,
Brigham Young declared it to be the halting place--the gathering
center for the Saints.  But what was there inviting in this
wilderness spread out like a scroll barren of inviting message,
and empty but for the picture it presented of wondrous scenic
grandeur?  Looking from the Wasatch barrier, the colonists gazed
upon a scene of entrancing though forbidding beauty.  A barren,
arid plain, rimmed by mountains like a literal basin, still
occupied in its lowest parts by the dregs of what had once filled
it to the brim; no green meadows, not a tree worthy the name,
scarce a patch of greensward to entice the adventurous wanderers
into the valley.  The slopes were covered with sagebrush,
relieved by patches of chaparral oak and squaw-bush; the wild
sunflower lent its golden hue to intensify the sharp contrasts.
Off to the westward lay the lake, making an impressive,
uninviting picture in its severe, unliving beauty; from its blue
wastes somber peaks rose as precipitous islands, and about the
shores of this dead sea were saline flats that told of the
scorching heat and thirsty atmosphere of this parched region.  A
turbid river ran from south to north athwart the valley,
"dividing it in twain," as a historian of the day has written,
"as if the vast bowl in the intense heat of the Master Potter's
fires, in process of formation had cracked asunder."  Small
streams of water started in rippling haste from the snow-caps of
the mountains toward the lake, but most of them were devoured by
the thirsty sands of the valley before their journey was half
completed.

Such was the scene of desolation that greeted the pioneer band.
A more forsaken spot they had not passed in all their wanderings.
And is this the promised land?  This is the very place of which
Bridger spake when he proffered a thousand dollars in gold for
the first bushel of grain that could be raised here.  With such a
Canaan spread out before them, was it not wholly pardonable if
some did sigh with longing for the leeks and flesh-pots of the
Egypt they had left, or wished to pass by this land and seek a
fairer home?  Two of the three women who belonged to the party
were utterly disappointed.  "Weak, worn, and weary as I am," said
one of these heroines, "I would rather push on another thousand
miles than stay here."

But the voice of their leader was heard.  "The very place," said
Brigham Young, and in his prophetic mind there rose a vision of
what was to come.  Not for a moment did he doubt the future.  He
saw a multitude of towns and cities, hamlets and villas filling
this and neighboring valleys, with the fairest of all, a city
whose beauty of situation, whose wealth of resource should become
known throughout the world, rising from the most arid site of the
burning desert before him, hard by the barren salt shores of the
watery waste.  There in the very heart of the parched wilderness
should stand the House of the Lord, with other temples in valleys
beyond the horizon of his gaze.

Within a few hours after the arrival of the vanguard upon the
banks of what is now known as City Creek--the mountain stream
which today furnishes Salt Lake City part of her water
supply--plows were put to work; but the hard-baked soil, never
before disturbed by the efforts of man to till, refused to yield
to the share.  A dam was thrown across the stream and the
softening liquid was spread upon the flat that had been chosen
for the first fields.  The planting season had already well nigh
passed, and not a day could be lost.  Potatoes and other seed
were put in, and the land was again flooded.  Such was the
beginning of the irrigation system, which soon became
co-extensive with the area occupied by the "Mormon" settlers, a
system which under the blessing of Providence, has proved to be
the veritable magic touch by which the desert has been made a
field of richness and a garden of beauty; a system which now
after many decades of successful trial is held up by the nation's
wise and great ones to be the one practicable method of
reclaiming our country's vast domains of arid lands.  It was on
the 24th of July, 1847, that the main part of the pioneer band
entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and that day of the
year is observed as a legal holiday in Utah.  From that time to
the present, the stream of immigration to these valleys has never
ceased.



CHAPTER IV

The dangers of the first company's migration were surpassed by
those of parties who subsequently braved the terrors of the
plains.  In their enthusiasm to reach the gathering place of
their people, many of the Latter-day Saints set out from Iowa,
where railway facilities had their termination, with hand-carts
only as a means of conveyance.  Today there are living in the
smiling vales of Utah, men and women who then as boys and girls
trudged wearily across the prairies, dragging the lumbering carts
that contained their entire provision against starvation and
freezing.  Such handcart companies were organized with care; a
limited amount of freight was allowed to each division; milch
cattle and a very few draft-animals, with wagons for conveying
the heavier baggage and to carry the sick, were assigned.  The
tale of those dreary marches has never yet been told; the song of
the heroism and sacrifice displayed by these pilgrims for
conscience sake is awaiting a singer worthy the theme.  Wading
the streams with carts in tow, or in cases of unfordable streams,
stopping to construct rafts; at times living on reduced rations
of but a few ounces of meal per day; lying down at night with a
prayer in the heart that they wake no more on earth, a prayer
which had its fulfilment in hundreds of cases; the dying heaving
their parting sighs in the arms of loved ones who were soon to
follow, they journeyed on.

The inevitable catastrophes and accidents of travel robbed them
of their substance.  Hostile savages stampeded their cattle, or
openly attacked and plundered the trains.  But on they went,
never swerving from the course.  These later companies needed no
chart nor compass to guide them over the desert; the road was
plain from the marks of former camps, and yet more so from the
graves of friends and loved ones who had started before on the
road to the earthly Zion and found that it led them to the
martyr's entrance to heaven, graves that were marked perhaps but
by a rude inscription cut on a pole or a board.  And even these
narrow lodgings had not been left inviolate; the wolves of the
plains had too often succeeded in unearthing and rending the
bodies.  Every company thus made the course the plainer; each of
them added to the silent population of the desert; sometimes half
a score were interred at one camp, and of one company over a
fourth were thus left beside the prairie road.  Now we traverse
the self-same track in a day and a night, reclining on luxurious
cushions of ease, covering fifty miles while dining in luxury;
and we avert the ennui of the journey by berating the railway
company for lack of speed.

Relief trains were continually on the way between the valley of
the Salt Lake and the Missouri; and the remnants of many a
company were saved from what appeared to be certain destruction
by the opportune arrival of these rescuing parties.  Such relief
came from those who were themselves destitute and almost
starving.  Brigham Young with a few of the chief officials of the
Church, and aids, returned eastward on such an errand of rescue
within a few weeks after first reaching the valley.  The region
to which the early settlers came was in no wise a typical land of
promise; it did not flow spontaneously with milk and honey.

Drought and unseasonable frosts made the first year's farming
experiments but doubtful successes, and in the succeeding spring
the land was visited by the devastating plague of the Rocky
Mountain crickets.  They swarmed down in innumerable hordes upon
the fields, destroying the growing crops as they advanced,
devouring all before them, leaving the land a desert in their
track.  The people scarcely knew how to withstand the assault of
this new foe; they drove the marauders into trenches there to be
drowned or burned; men, women and every child that could swing a
stick, were called to the ranks in this insect war; and with all
their fighting, the people forgot not to pray for deliverance,
and they fasted, too, for the best of reasons.

And as they watched, and prayed, and worked, they saw approaching
from the north and west a veritable host of winged creatures of
more formidable proportions still; and these bore down upon the
fields as though coming to complete the devastation.  But see!
these are of the color that betokens peace; they are the gulls,
white and beautiful, advancing upon the hosts of the black
destroyers.  Falling upon the people's foes, they devoured them
by the thousand, and when filled to repletion, disgorged and
feasted again.  And they did not stop till the crickets were
destroyed.  Again the skeptic will say this was but chance; but
the people accepted that chance as a providential ruling in their
behalf, and reverently did they give thanks.

Today the wanton killing of a gull in Utah is an offense in law;
but stronger than legal proscription, more powerful than fear of
judicial penalties, is the popular sentiment in favor of these
white-winged deliverers.  Every year come these graceful
creatures to spend the springtime in the fields and upon the
lakes of Utah; and right well do they feel their welcome, for
they are habitually so tame and fearless that they may almost be
touched by the hand before they take flight.

By the autumn of 1848, five thousand people had already reached
the valley, and the food problem was a most difficult one.  The
winter was severe; and famine, stark and inexorable, threw its
dread shadow over the people.  There seemed to be an entry in the
book of fate that every possible test of human endurance and
integrity should be applied to this pilgrim band.  Without
distinction as to former station, they went out and dug the roots
of weeds, gathered the tenderest of the coarse grass, thistles,
and wild berries, and thus did they subsist; upon such did they
feast with thanksgiving, until a less scanty harvest relieved
their wants.

It was at this time that the gold fever was at its height, a
consequence of the discovery of the precious metal in California,
in which discovery, indeed, certain members of the disbanded
"Mormon" Battalion, working their way eastward, were most
prominent.  Some of the "Mormon" settlers, becoming infected with
the malady, hastened westward, but the counsel of the Church
authorities prevailed to keep all but a few at home.  These
people had not left the country of their birth or adoption to
seek gold; nor bright jewels of the mine; nor the wealth of seas;
nor the spoils of war; they sought and believed they had found, a
faith's pure shrine.  But the gold-seekers hastening westward,
and the successful miners returning eastward, halted at the
"Mormon" settlements and there replenished their supplies,
leaving their gold to enrich the people of the desert.

But of what use is gold in the wilderness!  In the old legend a
famishing Arab, finding a well filled bag upon the sand was
thrilled with joy at the thought of dates--his bread; and then
was cast into the depths of despair when he realized that he had
found nothing but a bag of costly pearls.  The settlers by the
lake needed horses and wagons, tools, implements of husbandry and
building; and gold was valuable only as it represented a means of
obtaining these.  Gold became so plentiful and was withal so
worthless in the desert colony that men refused to take it for
their labor.  The yellow metal was collected in buckets and
exported to the States in exchange for the goods so much desired.
Merchandise brought in by caravans of "prairie schooners," was
sold as fast as it could be put out; and strict rules were
enforced allowing but a proportionate amount to each purchaser.

Within a few months after the first settlement of Utah, public
schools were established; and one of the early acts of the
provisional government was to grant a charter to the Deseret
University, now known as the University of Utah.

Up to 1849, Utah had no political history.  Settling in a Mexican
province, the contest to determine its future ownership by the
United States then in progress, the people in common with most
pioneer communities established their own form of government.
But in February, 1848, the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo gave
California to the United States; months passed, however, before
the news of the change reached the west.  Early in 1849, a call
had been issued to "all the citizens of that portion of Upper
California lying to the east of the Sierra Nevada mountains" to
meet in convention at Great Salt Lake City; and there a petition
was prepared asking of Congress the rights of self-government;
and pending action, a temporary regime was established, under the
name of the Provisional Government of the State of Deseret.

"Utah" was not the choice of the people as the name of their
state; that word served but to recall the degraded tribes who had
contested the settlement of the valleys.  Deseret, a Book of
Mormon name for the honey bee, was more appropriate.  The
petition of the people was denied in part, and, in 1850 was
established the territorial form of government in Utah.
Concerning the period of the provisional government, such men as
Gunnison, Stansbury, and other federal officials on duty in the
west, have recorded their praises of the "Mormon" colonists in
official reports.  But with the un-American system of territorial
government came troubles.

At first, many of the territorial officials were appointed from
among the settlers themselves; thus, Brigham Young was the first
governor; but strangers, who knew not the people nor their ways,
filled with prejudice from the false reports they had heard, came
from the east to govern the colonists in the desert.  Of the
federal appointees thus forced upon the people of Utah, many made
for themselves most unenviable records.

Some of them were broken politicians, professional
office-seekers, with no desire but to secure the greatest
possible gain out of their appointment.  With effrontery that
would shock the modesty of a savage, the non-"Mormon" party
adopted and flagrantly displayed the carpet-bag as the badge of
their profession.  But not all the officials sent to Utah from
afar were of this type; some of them were honorable and upright
men, and amongst this class the "Mormon" people reckon a number
who, while opposed to their religious tenets, were nevertheless
sincere and honest in the opposition they evinced.

In the early part of 1857, the published libels upon the people
received many serious additions, the principal of which was
promulgated in connection with the resignation of Judge Drummond
of the Utah federal court.  In his last letter to the United
States attorney-general, he declared that his life was no longer
safe in Utah, and that he had been compelled to flee from his
bench; but the most serious charge of all was that the people had
destroyed the records of the court, and that they had resented,
with hostile demonstration, his protests; in short, that justice
was dethroned in Utah, and that the people were in a state of
open rebellion.

With mails three months apart, news traveled slowly; but as soon
as word of this infamous charge reached Salt Lake City, the clerk
of the court, Judge Drummond's clerk, sent a letter by express to
the attorney-general, denying under oath the judge's statements,
and attesting the declaration with official seal.  The records,
he declared, had been untouched except by official hands, and
from the time of the court's establishment the files had been
safe and were then in his personal keeping.  But, before the
clerk's communication had reached its destination, so difficult
is it for stately truth to overtake flitting falsehood, the
mischief had been done.  Upon the most prejudiced reports utterly
unfounded in fact, with a carelessness which even his personal
and political friends found no ample means of explaining away,
President Buchanan allowed himself to be persuaded that a
"Mormon" rebellion existed, and ordered an army of over two
thousand men to proceed straightway to Utah to subdue the rebels.
Successors to the governor and other territorial officials were
appointed, among whom there was not a single resident of Utah;
and the military force was charged with the duty of installing
the foreign appointees.

With great dispatch and under cover of secrecy, so that the Utah
rebels might be taken by surprise, the army set out on the march.
Before the troops reached the Rocky Mountains, the sworn
statement from the clerk of the supreme court of Utah denying the
charges made by Judge Drummond became public property; and about
the same time men who had come from Utah to New York direct,
published over their own signatures a declaration that all was
peaceful in and about the settlements of Utah.  The public eye
began to twitch, and soon to open wide; the conviction was
growing that someone had blundered.  But to retract would be a
plain confession of error; blunders must be covered up.

Let us leave the soldiers on their westward march, and ascertain
how the news of the projected invasion reached the people of
Utah, and what effect the tidings produced.  Certain "Mormon"
business agents, operating in Missouri, heard of the hostile
movement.  At first they were incredulous, but when the overland
mail carrier from the west delivered his pouch and obtained his
receipt, but was refused the bag of Utah mail with the
postmaster's statement that he had been ordered to hold all mail
for Utah, there seemed no room for doubt.  Two of the Utahns
immediately hastened westward.

On the 24th of July, 1857, the people had assembled in
celebration of Pioneer Day.  Silver Lake, a mountain gem set
amidst the snows and forests and towering peaks of the
Cottonwoods, had been selected as a fitting site for the
festivities.  The Stars and Stripes streamed above the camp;
bands played; choirs sang; there were speeches, and picnics, and
prayers.  Experiences were compared as to the journeyings on the
plains; stories were told of the shifts to which the people had
been put by the vicissitudes of famine; but these dread
experiences seemed to them now like a dream of the night; on this
day all were happy.  Were they not safe from savage foes both red
and white?  There had been peace for a season; and their desert
homes were already smiling in wealth of flower and tree; the
wilderness was blossoming under their feet; their consciences
were void of offense toward their fellows.  Yet at that very
hour, all unbeknown to themselves, and without the opportunity of
speaking a word in defense, these people had been convicted of
insurrection and treason.

It was midday and the festivities were at their height, when a
party of men rode into camp and sought an interview with Governor
Young.  Three of them had plainly ridden hard and far; they gave
their report;--an armed force of thousands was at that hour
approaching the territory; the boasts of officers and men as to
what they would do when they found themselves in "Mormon" towns
were reported; and these stories called up, in the minds of those
who heard, the dread scenes of Far West and Nauvoo.  Had these
colonists of the wilderness not gone far enough to satisfy the
hatred of their fellow-citizens in this republic of liberty?
They had halted between the civilization of the east and that of
the west, they had fled from the country that refused them a
home, and now the nation would eject them from their desert
lodgings.

A council was called and the situation was freely discussed.  Had
they not seen, lo, these many times, organized battalions and
companies surpassing fiendish mobs in villainy?  The evidence
warranted their conclusion that invasion meant massacre.  With
tense calmness the plan of action was decided upon.  It was the
general conviction that war was inevitable, and it was decided to
resist to the last.  Then, if the army forced its way into the
valleys of Utah on hostile purpose bent, it should find the land
as truly a desert as it was when the pioneers first took
possession.  To this effect was the decision:--We have built
cities in the east for our foes to occupy; our very temples have
been desecrated and destroyed by them; but, with the help of
Israel's God, we will prevent them enriching themselves with the
spoils of our labors in these mountain retreats.

There seemed to be no room for doubt that war was about to break
upon them; and with such a prospect, men may be expected to take
every advantage of their situation.  Brigham Young was still
governor of Utah, and the militia was subject to his order.
Promptly he proclaimed the territory under martial law, and
forbade any armed body to cross its boundaries.  Echo Canyon, the
one promising route of ingress, was fortified.  In those defiles
an army might easily be stopped by a few; ammunition stations
were established; provisions were cached; boulders were collected
upon the cliffs beneath which the invaders must pass if they held
to their purpose of forcing an entrance.  The people had been
roused to desperation, and force was to be met with force.  In
the settlements, combustibles were placed in readiness, and if
the worst came, every "Mormon" house would be reduced to ashes,
every tree would be hewn down.

With an experience of suffering that would have well served a
better cause, this picked detachment of the United States army
made its way to the Green River country; and there, counting well
the cost of proceeding farther, went into camp at Fort Bridger.
Many of the troops had almost perished in the storms, for it was
late in November, and the winter had closed in early.  Colonel
Cooke reported to the commandant that half his horses had
perished through cold and lack of food; hundreds of beef cattle
had died; yet the region was so wild and forbidding that scarcely
a wolf ventured there to glut itself upon the carcasses.  In
Cooke's own words we read that for thirty miles the road was
blocked with carcasses--and "with abandoned and shattered
property, they mark, perhaps beyond example in history, the steps
of an advancing army with the horrors of a disastrous retreat."

With the army traveled the new federal appointees to offices in
the territory.  Cumming, the governor-to-be, issued a
proclamation from his dug-out lodgings, and sent it to Salt Lake
City by courier; he signed it as "Governor of Utah Territory."
This but belittled him, for by the very terms of the Organic Act,
to uphold which was the professed purpose of his coming, he was
not governor until the oath of office had been duly administered
and subscribed.  A few days later he went before his
fellow-sufferer Eckles, the appointee for chief justice of Utah,
and took an oath; but why did he swear so recklessly when the one
before whom he swore was no more an official than himself?

The army wintered at a satisfactory distance from Salt Lake City,
and such a winter, according to official reports, the soldiers of
our nation have rarely had to brave.  It was soon apparent that
they need fear no "Mormon" attack; orders had been issued to the
territorial militia to take no life except in cases of absolute
necessity; but General Johnston and his staff had more than their
match in battling with the elements.  Communications between
Governor Young and the commandant were frequent; safe conduct was
assured any and all officers who chose to enter the city; and if
necessary hostages were to be given; but the governor was
inexorable in his ultimatum that, as an organized body with
hostile purpose, the soldiers should not pass the mountain
gateway.  In the meantime, a full account of the situation was
reported by Governor Young to the President of the United States,
and the truth slowly made its way into the eastern press.
President Buchanan tacitly admitted his mistake; but to recall
the troops at that juncture would be to confess humiliating
failure.

A peace commissioner, in the person of Colonel Kane, was
dispatched to Salt Lake City; his coming being made known to
Governor Young, an escort was sent to meet him and conduct him
through the "Mormon" lines.  The result of the conference was
that the "Mormon" leaders but reiterated their statement that the
President's appointees would be given safe entry to the city, and
be duly installed in their offices, provided they would enter
without the army.  This ultimatum was carried to the federal
camp; and to the open chagrin of the commandant, Governor Cumming
and his fellow appointees moved to Salt Lake City under "Mormon"
escort, after a five months' halt in the wilderness.

I believe that strategy is usually allowed in war, and I am free
to say the "Mormons" availed themselves of this license.  At
short intervals in the course of the night-passage through the
canyon, the party was challenged, and the password demanded;
bon-fires were blazing down in the gorges, and the impression was
made that the mountains were full of armed men; whereas the
sentries were members of the escort, who, preceding by short cuts
the main party, continued to challenge and to pass.  On their
arrival, the gentlemen were met by the retiring officials, and
were peaceably installed.  The new governor called upon the clerk
of the court, and ascertained the truth of the statement that the
records were entirely safe.  He promptly reported his conclusions
to General Johnston that there was no further need for the army.
It was decided, however, that the soldiers should be permitted to
march through the city, and straightway the "Mormons" began their
exodus to the south.

Governor Cumming tried in vain to induce the people to remain,
assuring them that the troops would commit no depredations.  "Not
so," said Brigham Young, "we have had experience with troops in
the past, Governor Cumming; we have seen our leaders shot down by
the demoralized soldiery; we have seen mothers with babes at
their breasts sent to their last home by the same bullet; we have
witnessed outrages beyond description.  You are now Governor of
Utah; we can no longer command the militia for our own defense.
We do not wish to fight, therefore we depart."  Leaving a few men
to apply the brand to the combustibles stored in every house, at
the first sign of plunder by the soldiers, the people again
deserted their homes and moved into the desert anew.

But the officers of the army kept their word; the troops were put
into camp forty miles from the settlements, and the settlers
returned.  The President's commissioners brought the official
pardon, unsolicited, for all acts committed by the "Mormons" in
opposing the entrance of the army.  The people asked what they
had done that needed pardon; they had not robbed, they had not
killed.  But a critical analysis of these troublous events
revealed at least one overt act--some "Mormon" scouts had
challenged a supply train; and, being opposed, they had destroyed
some of the wagons and provisions; and for this they accepted the
President's most gracious pardon.



CHAPTER V

After all, the "Mormon" people regard the advent of the Buchanan
army as one of the greatest material blessings ever brought to
them.

The troops, once in Utah, had to be provisioned; and everything
the settlers could spare was eagerly bought at an unusual price.
The gold changed hands.  Then, in their hasty departure, the
soldiers disposed of everything outside of actual necessities in
the way of accouterment and camp equipage.  The army found the
people in poverty, and left them in comparative wealth.

And what was the cause of this hurried departure of the military?
For many months, ominous rumblings had been heard,--indications
of the gathering storm which was soon to break in the awful fury
of civil strife.  It could not be doubted that war was imminent;
already the conflict had begun, and a picked part of the army was
away in the western wilds, doing nothing for any phase of the
public good.  But a word further concerning the expedition in
general.  The sending of troops to Utah was part of a foul scheme
to weaken the government in its impending struggle with the
secessionists.  The movement has been called not inaptly
"Buchanan's blunder," but the best and wisest men may make
blunders, and whatever may be said of President Buchanan's
short-sightedness in taking this step, even his enemies do not
question his integrity in the matter.  He was unjustly charged
with favoring secession; but the charge was soon disproved.

However, it was known that certain of his cabinet were in league
with the seceding states; and prominent among them was John
Floyd, secretary of war.  The successful efforts of this officer
to disarm the North, while accumulating the munitions of war in
the South; to scatter the forces by locating them in widely
separated and remote stations; and in other ways to dispose of
the regular army in the manner best calculated to favor the
anticipated rebellion, are matters of history.  It is also told
how, at the commencement of the rebellion, he allied himself with
the confederate forces, accepting the rank of brigadier-general.
It was through Floyd's advice that Buchanan ordered the military
expedition to Utah, ostensibly to install certain federal
officials and to repress an alleged infantile rebellion which in
fact had never come into existence, but in reality to further the
interests of the secessionists.  When the history of that great
struggle with its antecedent and its consequent circumstances is
written with a pen that shall indite naught but truth, when
prejudice and partisanship are lived down, it may appear that
Jefferson Davis rather than James Buchanan was the prime cause of
the great mistake.

And General Johnston who commanded the army in the west; he who
was so vehement in his denunciation of the rebel "Mormons," and
who rejoiced in being selected to chastise them into submission;
who, because of his vindictiveness incurred the ill-favor of the
governor, whose _posse comitatus_ the army was; what became of
him, at one time so popular that he was spoken of as a likely
successor to Winfield Scott in the office of general-in-chief of
the United States army?  He left Utah in the early stages of the
rebellion, turned his arms against the flag he had sworn to
defend, doffed the blue, donned the grey, and fell a rebel on the
field of Shiloh.

Changes many and great followed in bewildering succession in
Utah.  The people were besought to take sides with the South in
the awful scenes of cruel strife; it was openly stated in the
east that Utah had allied herself with the cause of secession;
and by others that the design was to make Salt Lake City the
capital of an independent government.  And surely such
conjectures were pardonable on the part of all whose ignorance
and prejudice still nursed the delusion of "Mormon" disloyalty.
Moreover, had the people been inclined to rebellion what greater
opportunity could they have wished?  Already a North and a South
were talked of--why not set up also a West?  A supreme
opportunity had come and how was it used?  It was at this very
time that the Overland Telegraph line, which had been approaching
from the Atlantic and the Pacific, was completed, and the first
tremor felt in that nerve of steel carried these words from
Brigham Young:

    Utah has not seceded, but is firm for the constitution
    and laws of our country.

The "Mormon" people saw in their terrible experiences and in the
outrages to which they had been subjected, only the
mal-administration of laws and the subversion of justice through
human incapacity and hatred.  Never even for a moment did they
question the supreme authority and the inspired origin of the
constitution of their land.  They knew no North, no South, no
East, no West; they stood positively by the constitution, and
would have nothing to do in the bloody strife between brothers,
unless indeed they were summoned by the authority to which they
had already once loyally responded, to furnish men and arms for
their country's need.

Following the advent of the telegraph came the railway; and the
land of "Mormondom" was no longer isolated.  Her resources were
developed, her wealth became a topic of the world's wonder; the
tide of immigration swelled her population, contributing much of
the best from all the civilized nations of the earth.  Every
reader of recent and current history has learned of her rapid
growth; of her repeated appeals for the recognition to which she
had so long been entitled in the sisterhood of states; of the
prompt refusals with which her pleas were persistently met,
though other territories with smaller and more illiterate
populations, more restricted resources, and in every way weaker
claims, were allowed to assume the habiliments of maturity, while
Utah, lusty, large and strong, was kept in swaddling clothes.
But the cries of the vigorous infant were at length heeded, and
in answer to the seventh appeal of the kind, Utah's star was
added to the nation's galaxy.

But let us turn more particularly to the history of the Church
itself.  For a second time and thrice thereafter, the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been deprived of its
president, and on each occasion were reiterated the prophecies of
disruption uttered at the time of Joseph Smith's assassination.
Calm observers declared that as the shepherd had gone, the flock
would soon be dispersed; while others, comparable only to wolves,
thinking the fold unguarded, sought to harry and scatter the
sheep.  But "Mormonism" died not; every added pang of grief
served but to unite the people.

When Brigham Young passed from earth, he was mourned of the
people as deeply as was Moses of Israel.  And had he not proved
himself a Moses, aye and a Joshua, too?  He had led the people
into the land of holy promise, and had divided unto them their
inheritances.  He was a man with clear title as one of the small
brotherhood we call great.  As carpenter, farmer, pioneer,
capitalist, financier, preacher, apostle, prophet--in everything
he was a leader among men.  Even those who opposed him in
politics and in religion respected him for his talents, his
magnanimity, his liberality, and his manliness; and years after
his demise, men who had refused him honor while alive brought
their mites and their gold to erect a monument of stone and
bronze to the memory of this man who needs it not.  With his
death closed another epoch in the history of his people, and a
successor arose, one who was capable of leading and judging under
the changed conditions.

                          -----------

But perhaps I am suspected of having forgotten or of having
intentionally omitted reference to what popular belief once
considered the chief feature of "Mormonism," the cornerstone of
the structure, the secret of its influence over its members, and
of its attractiveness to its proselytes, viz., the peculiarity of
the "Mormon" institution of marriage.  The Latter-day Saints were
long regarded as a polygamous people.  That plural marriage has
been practised by a limited proportion of the people, under
sanction of Church ordinance, has never since the introduction of
the system been denied.  But that plural marriage is a vital
tenet of the Church is not true.  What the Latter-day Saints call
celestial marriage is characteristic of the Church, and is in
very general practise; but of celestial marriage, plurality of
wives was an incident, never an essential.  Yet the two have
often been confused in the popular mind.

We believe in a literal resurrection and an actual hereafter, in
which future state shall be recognized every sanctified and
authorized relationship existing here on earth--of parent and
child, brother and sister, husband and wife.  We believe, further
that contracts as of marriage, to be valid beyond the veil of
mortality must be sanctioned by a power greater than that of
earth.  With the seal of the holy Priesthood upon their wedded
state, these people believe implicitly in the perpetuity of that
relationship on the far side of the grave.  They marry not with
the saddening limitation "Until death do you part," but "For time
and for all eternity."[3]  This constitutes celestial marriage.
The thought that plural marriage has ever been the head and front
of "Mormon" offending, that to it is traceable as the true cause
the hatred of other sects and the unpopularity of the Church, is
not tenable to the earnest thinker.  Sad as have been the
experiences of the people in consequence of this practise, deep
and anguish-laden as have been the sighs and groans, hot and
bitter as have been the tears so caused, the heaviest
persecution, the cruelest treatment of their history began before
plural marriage was known in the Church.

[Footnote 3: For treatment of Celestial Marraige and other Temple
ordinances, see "The House of the Lord," by the present author,
Salt Lake City, Utah, 1912.]

There is no sect nor people that sets a higher value on virtue
and chastity than do the Latter-day Saints, nor a people that
visits surer retribution upon the heads of offenders against the
laws of sexual purity.  To them marriage is not, can never be, a
civil compact alone; its significance reaches beyond the grave;
its obligations are eternal; and the Latter-day Saints are
notable for the sanctity with which they invest the marital
state.  It has been my privilege to tread the soil of many lands,
to observe the customs and study the habits of more nations than
one; and I have yet to find the place and meet the people, where
and with whom the purity of man and woman is held more precious
than among the maligned "Mormons" in the mountain valleys of the
west.  There I find this measure of just equality of the sexes--
_that the sins of man shall not be visited upon the head of
woman_.

At the inception of plural marriage among the Latter-day Saints,
there was no law, national or state, against its practise.  This
statement assumes, as granted, a distinction between bigamy and
the "Mormon" institution of plural marriage.  In 1862, a law was
enacted with the purpose of suppressing plural marriage, and, as
had been predicted in the national Senate prior to its passage,
it lay for many years a dead letter.  Federal judges and United
States attorneys in Utah, who were not "Mormons" nor lovers of
"Mormonism," refused to entertain complaints or prosecute cases
under the law, because of its manifest injustice and inadequacy.
But other laws followed, most of which, as the Latter-day Saints
believe, were aimed directly at their religious conception of the
marriage contract, and not at social impropriety nor sexual
offense.

At last the Edmunds-Tucker act took effect, making not the
marriage alone but the subsequent acknowledging of the contract
an offense punishable by fine or imprisonment or both.  Under the
spell of unrighteous zeal, the federal judiciary of Utah
announced and practised that most infamous doctrine of
segregation of offenses with accumulating penalties.

I who write have listened to judges instructing grand juries in
such terms as these: that although the law of Congress designated
as an offense the acknowledging of more living wives than one by
any man, and prescribed a penalty therefor, as Congress had not
specified the length of time during which this unlawful
acknowledging must continue to constitute the offense, grand
juries might indict separately for every day of the period during
which the forbidden relationship existed.  This meant that for an
alleged misdemeanor--for which Congress prescribed a maximum
penalty of six months' imprisonment and a fine of three hundred
dollars--a man might be imprisoned for life, aye, for many terms
of a man's natural life did the court's power to enforce its
sentences extend so far, and might be fined millions of dollars.
Before this travesty on the administration of law could be
brought before the court of last resort, and there meet with the
reversal and rebuke it deserved, men were imprisoned under
sentences of many years' duration.

The people contested these measures one by one in the courts;
presenting in case after case the different phases of the
subject, and urging the unconstitutionality of the measure.  Then
the Church was disincorporated, and its property both real and
personal confiscated and escheated to the government of the
United States; and although the personal property was soon
restored, real estate of great value long lay in the hands of the
court's receiver, and the "Mormon" Church had to pay the national
government high rental on its own property.  But the people have
suspended the practise of plural marriage; and the testimony of
the governors, judges, and district attorneys of the territory,
and later that of the officers of the state, have declared the
sincerity of the renunciation.

As the people had adopted the practise under what was believed to
be divine approval, they suspended it when they were justified in
so doing.  In whatever light this practise has been regarded in
the past, it is today a dead issue, forbidden by ecclesiastical
rule as it is prohibited by legal statute.  And the world is
learning, to its manifest surprise, that plural marriage and
"Mormonism" are not synonymous terms.

                          -----------

And so the story of "Mormonism" runs on; its finale has not yet
been written; the current press presents continuously new stages
of its progress, new developments of its plan.  Today the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is stronger than ever
before; and the people are confident that it is at its weakest
stage for all time to come.  It lives and thrives because within
it are the elements of thrift and the forces of life.  It
embraces a boundless liberality of belief and practise; true
toleration is one of its essential features; it makes love for
mankind second only to love for Deity.  Its creed provides for
the protection of all men in their rights of worship according to
the dictates of conscience.  It contemplates a millennium of
peace, when every man shall love his neighbor and respect his
neighbor's opinion as he regards himself and his own--a day when
the voice of the people shall be in unison with the voice of God.



THE PHILOSOPHY OF "MORMONISM"



CHAPTER I

In this attempt to treat the philosophy of "Mormonism" it is
assumed that no discussion of Christianity in general nor of the
philosophy of Christianity is required.  The "Mormon" creed, so
far as there is a creed professed by the Latter-day Saints, is
pre-eminently Christian in theory, precept, and practise.  In
what respect, then, may be properly asked, does "Mormonism"
differ from the faith and practise of other professedly Christian
systems--in short, what is "Mormonism?"

First, let it be remembered that the term "Mormon," with its
derivatives, is not the official designation of the Church with
which it is usually associated.  The name was originally applied
in a spirit of derision, as a nick-name in fact, by the opponents
of the Church; and was doubtless suggested by the title of a
prominent publication given to the world through Joseph Smith in
an early period of the Church's history.  This, of course, is the
Book of Mormon.  Nevertheless, the people have accepted the name
thus thrust upon them, and answer readily to its call.  The
proper title of the organization is "The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints."  The philosophy of "Mormonism" is declared
in the name.  The people claim this name as having been bestowed
by revelation and therefore that, like other names given of God
as attested by scriptural instances, it is at once name and title
combined.

The Church declines to sail under any flag of man-made design; it
repudiates the name of mortals as a part of its title, and thus
differs from Lutherans and Wesleyans, Calvinists, Mennonites, and
many others, all of whom, worthy though their organizations may
be, elevating as may be their precepts, good as may be their
practises, declare themselves the followers of men.  This is not
the church of Moses nor the prophets, of Paul nor of Cephas, of
Apollos nor of John; neither of Joseph Smith nor of Brigham
Young.  It asserts its proud claim as the Church of Jesus Christ.

It refuses to wear a name indicative of distinctive or peculiar
doctrines; and in this particular, it differs from churches
Catholic and Protestant, Presbyterian, Congregationalist,
Unitarian, Methodist and Baptist; its sole distinguishing
features are those of the Church of Christ.

In an effort to present in concise form the cardinal doctrines of
this organization, I cannot do better than quote the so-called
_Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints_, which have been in published form before the world for
over half a century.[4]

[Footnote 4: For extended treatment of "Mormon" doctrine see "The
Articles of Faith: a Series of Lectures on the Principal
Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," by
James E. Talmage.  Published by the Church: Salt Lake City, Utah;
485 pp.]

    1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son,
    Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

    2. We believe that men will be punished for their own
    sins, and not for Adam's transgression.

    3. We believe that, through the atonement of Christ, all
    mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and
    ordinances of the gospel.

    4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances
    of the gospel are: First, Faith in the Lord Jesus
    Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion
    for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands
    for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

    5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by
    prophecy, and by the laying on of hands, by those who
    are in authority, to preach the gospel and administer in
    the ordinances thereof.

    6. We believe in the same organization that existed in
    the primitive church, namely, apostles, prophets,
    pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.

    7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy,
    revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues,
    etc.

    8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as
    it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of
    Mormon to be the word of God.

    9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that he
    does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal
    many great and important things pertaining to the
    Kingdom of God.

    10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in
    the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion will be
    built upon this [the American] continent; that Christ
    will reign personally upon the earth, and that the earth
    will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.

    11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God
    according to the dictates of our own conscience, and
    allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how,
    where, or what they may.

    12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents,
    rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and
    sustaining the law.

    13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste,
    benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men;
    indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul,
    We believe all things, we hope all things, we have
    endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all
    things.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of
    good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these
    things.--JOSEPH SMITH.

This brief summary of "Mormon" doctrine appears over the
signature of Joseph Smith--the man whom the Latter-day Saints
accept as the instrument in divine hands of re-establishing the
Church of Christ on earth, in this the Dispensation of the
Fulness of Times.  Let it not be supposed, however, that these
Articles of Faith are, or profess to be, a complete code of the
doctrines of the Church, for, as declared in one of the
"Articles," belief in continuous revelation from Heaven is a
characteristic feature of "Mormonism."  Yet it is to be noted
that no doctrine has been promulgated, which by even strained
interpretation could be construed as antagonistic to this early
declaration of faith.  Nor has any revelation to the Church yet
appeared in opposition to earlier revelation of this or of
by-gone dispensations.

To most of the declarations in the Articles of Faith, many sects
professing Christianity could confidently pledge allegiance; to
many of them, all Christian organizations could and professedly
do subscribe.  Belief in the existence and powers of the Supreme
Trinity; in Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of mankind;
in man's individual accountability for his doings; in the
acceptance of sacred writ as the Word of God; in the rights of
Worship according to the dictates of conscience; in all the moral
virtues;--these professions and beliefs are as a common creed in
the realm of Christendom.  There is no peculiarly "Mormon"
interpretation, in the light of which these principles of faith
and practise are viewed by the Latter-day Saints, except in a
certain simplicity and literalness of acceptance--gross
literalness, unrefined materialism, it has been called by some
critical opponents.

The gospel plan as accepted and taught by the Latter-day Saints
is strikingly simple; disappointing in its simplicity, indeed, to
the mind that can find satisfaction in mysteries alone, and to
him whose love for metaphor, symbolism, and imagery are stronger
than his devotion to truth itself, which may or may not be thus
embellished.  The Church asserts that the wisdom of human
learning, while ranking among the choicest of earthly
possessions, is not essential to an understanding of the gospel;
and that the preacher of the Word must be otherwise endowed than
by the learning of the schoolmen.  "Mormonism" is for the
wayfaring man, not less than for the scholar, and it possesses a
simplicity adapting it to the one as to the other.  A few of the
characteristically "Mormon" tenets may perhaps be profitably
considered.

"Mormonism" affirms its unqualified belief in the Godhead as the
Holy Trinity, comprising Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; each of the
three a separate and individual personage; the Father and the Son
each a personage of spirit and of immortalized body; the Holy
Ghost a personage of spirit.

The unity of the Godhead is accepted in the literal fulness of
scriptural declaration--that the three are one in purpose, plan
and method, alike in all their Godly attributes; one in their
divine omniscience and omnipotence; yet as separate and distinct
in their personality as are any three inhabitants of earth.
"Mormonism" claims that scriptures declaring the oneness of the
Trinity admit of this interpretation; that such indeed is the
natural interpretation; and that the conception is in accord with
reason.

We hold that mankind are literally the spiritual children of God;
that even as the Christ had an existence with the Father before
coming to earth to take upon himself a tabernacle of flesh, to
live and to die as a man in accordance with the fore-ordained
plan of redemption, so, too, every child of earth had an
existence in the spirit-state before entering upon this mortal
probation.  We hold the doctrine to be reasonable, scriptural and
true, that mortal birth is no more the beginning of the soul's
existence than is death its end.

The time-span of mortal life is but one stage in the soul's
career, separating the eternity that has preceded from the
eternity that is to follow.  And this mortal existence is one of
the Father's great gifts to his spiritual children, affording
them the opportunity of an untrammeled exercise of their free
agency, the privilege of meeting temptation and of resisting it
if they will, the chance to win exaltation and eternal life.

We claim that all men are equal as to earthly rights and human
privileges; but that each has individual capacity and
capabilities; that in the primeval world there were spirits noble
and great, as there were others of lesser power and inferior
purpose.  There is no chance in the number or nature of spirits
that are born to earth; all who are entitled to the privileges of
mortality and have been assigned to this sphere shall come at the
time appointed, and shall return to inherit each the glory or the
degradation to which he has shown himself adapted.  The gospel as
understood by the Latter-day Saints affirms the unconditional
free-agency of man--his right to accept good or evil, to choose
the means of eternal progression or the opposite, to worship as
he elects, or to refuse to worship at all--and then to take the
consequences of his choice.

"Mormonism" rejects what it regards as a heresy, the false
doctrine of pre-destination as an absolute compulsion or even as
an irresistible tendency forced upon the individual toward right
or wrong--as a pre-appointment to eventual exaltation or
condemnation; yet it affirms that the infinite wisdom and
fore-knowledge of God makes plain to him the end from the
beginning; and that he can read in the natures and dispositions
of his children, their destiny.

"Mormonism" claims an actual and literal relationship of parent
and child between the Creator and man--not in the figurative
sense in which the engine may be called the child of its builder;
not the relationship of a thing mechanically made to the maker
thereof; but the kinship of father and offspring.  In short it is
bold enough to declare that man's spirit being the offspring of
Deity, and man's body though of earthy components yet being in
the very image and likeness of God, man even in his present
degraded--aye, fallen condition--still possesses, if only in a
latent state, inherited traits, tendencies and powers that tell
of his more than royal descent; and that these may be developed
so as to make him, even while mortal, in a measure Godlike.

But "Mormonism" is bolder yet.  It asserts that in accordance
with the inviolable law of organic nature--that like shall beget
like, and that multiplication of numbers and perpetuation of
species shall be in compliance with the condition "each after his
kind," the child may achieve the former status of the parent, and
that in his mortal condition man is a God in embryo.  However far
in the future it may be, what ages may elapse, what eternities
may pass before any individual now a mortal being may attain the
rank and sanctity of godship, man nevertheless carries in his
soul the possibilities of such achievement; even as the crawling
caterpillar or the corpse-like chrysalis holds the latent
possibility, nay, barring destruction, the certainty indeed, of
the winged imago in all the glory of maturity.

"Mormonism" claims that all nature, both on earth and in heaven,
operates on a plan of advancement; that the very Eternal Father
is a progressive Being; that his perfection, while so complete as
to be incomprehensible by man, possesses this essential quality
of true perfection--the capacity of eternal increase.  That
therefore, in the far future, beyond the horizon of eternities
perchance, man may attain the status of a God.  Yet this does not
mean that he shall be then the equal of the Deity he now worships
nor that he shall ever overtake those intelligences that are
already beyond him in advancement; for to assert such would be to
argue that there is no progression beyond a certain stage of
attainment, and that advancement is a characteristic of low
organization and inferior purpose alone.  We believe that there
was more than the sounding of brass or the tinkling of wordy
cymbals in the fervent admonition of the Christ to his
followers--"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect."  (Matt. 5:48.)

But it is beyond dispute that in his present state, man is far
from the condition of even a relatively perfect being.  He is
born heir to the weaknesses as well as to the excellencies of
generations of ancestors; he inherits potent tendencies for both
good and evil; and verily, it seems that in the flesh he has to
suffer for the sins of his progenitors.  But divine blessings are
not to be reckoned in terms of earthly possessions or bodily
excellencies alone; the child born under conditions of adversity
may after all be richly endowed with opportunity, opportunity
which, perhaps, had been less of service amid the surroundings of
luxury.  We hold that the Father has an individual interest in
his children; and that surely in the rendering of divine
judgment, the conditions under which each soul has lived in
mortality shall be considered.

"Mormonism" accepts the doctrine of the Fall, and the account of
the transgression in Eden, as set forth in Genesis; but it
affirms that none but Adam is or shall be answerable for Adam's
disobedience; that mankind in general are absolutely absolved
from responsibility for that "original sin," and that each shall
account for his own transgressions alone; that the Fall was
foreknown of God--that it was turned to good effect by which the
necessary condition of mortality should be inaugurated; and that
a Redeemer was provided, before the world was; that general
salvation, in the sense of redemption from the effects of the
Fall, comes to all without their seeking it; but that individual
salvation or rescue from the effects of personal sins is to be
acquired by each for himself by faith and good works through the
redemption wrought by Jesus Christ.  The Church holds that
children are born to earth in a sinless state, that they need no
individual redemption; that should they die before reaching years
of accountability, they return without taint of earthly sin; but
as they attain youth or maturity in the flesh, their
responsibility increases with their development.

According to the teachings of "Mormonism," Christ's instructions
to the people to pray "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven" was not a petition for the impossible,
but a fore-shadowing of what shall eventually be.  We believe
that the day shall yet come when the Kingdom of God on earth
shall be one with the Kingdom in heaven; and one King shall rule
in both.  The Church is regarded as the beginning of this Kingdom
on earth; though until the coming of the King, there is no
authority in the Church exercising or claiming temporal rule or
dominion among the governments of earth.  Yet the Church is none
the less the beginning of the Kingdom, the germ from which the
Kingdom shall develop.

And the Church must be in direct communication with the heavenly
Kingdom of which the earthly Kingdom when established shall be a
part.  Of such a nature was the Church in so far as it existed
before the time of Christ's earthly ministry; for the biblical
record is replete with instances of direct communication between
the prophets and their God.  The scriptures are silent as to a
single dispensation in which the spiritual leaders of the people
depended upon the records of earlier times and by-gone ages for
their guidance; but on the contrary, the evidence is complete
that in every stage of the Church's history the God of heaven
communicated his mind and will unto his earthly representatives.
Israel of old were led and governed in all matters spiritual and
to a great extent in their temporal affairs by the direct word of
revelation.  Noah did not depend upon the record of God's
dealings with Adam or Enoch, but was directed by the very word
and voice of the God whom he represented.  Moses was no mere
theologian trained for his authority or acts on what God had said
to Abraham, to Isaac, or to Jacob; he acted in accordance with
instructions given unto him from time to time, as the
circumstances of his ministry required.  And so on through all
the line of prophets, major and minor, down to the priest of the
course of Abia unto whom the angel announced the birth of John
who was to be the direct fore-runner of the Messiah.

When the Christ came in the flesh he declared that he acted not
of himself but according to instructions given him of the Father.
Thus the Messiah was a revelator, receiving while in the flesh
communication direct and frequent from the heavens.  By such
revelation he was guided in his earthly ministry; by such he
instructed his disciples; unto such he taught his apostles to
look for safe guidance when he would have left them.

During his earthly ministry Christ called and ordained men to
offices in the Church.  We have a record of apostles
particularly, numbering twelve, and beside these, seventy others
who were commissioned to preach, teach, baptize and perform other
ordinances of the Church.  After our Lord's departure, we read of
the apostles continuing their labors in the light of continued
revelation.  By this sure guide they selected and set apart those
who were to officiate in the Church.  By revelation, Peter was
directed to carry the gospel to the Gentiles; which expansion of
the work was inaugurated by the conversion of the devout
Cornelius and his household.  By revelation, Saul of Tarsus
became Paul the Apostle, a valiant defender of the faith.  Holy
men of old spake and wrote as they were moved upon by the Holy
Ghost and depended not upon the precedents of ancient history nor
entirely upon the law then already written.  They operated under
the conviction that the living Church must be in communication
with its living Head; and that the work of God, while it was to
be wrought out through the instrumentality of man, was to be
directed by him whose work it was, and is.

"Mormonism" claims the same necessity to exist today.  It holds
that it is no more nearly possible now than it was in the days of
the ancient prophets or in the apostolic age for the Church of
Christ to exist without direct and continuous revelation from
God.  This necessitates the existence and authorized
ministrations of prophets, apostles, high priests, seventies,
elders, bishops, priests, teachers and deacons, now as
anciently--not men selected by men without authority, clothed by
human ceremonial alone, nor men with the empty names of office,
but men who bear the title because they possess the authority,
having been called of God.

Is it unreasonable, is it unphilosophical, thus to look for
additional light and knowledge?  Shall religion be the one
department of human thought and effort in which progression is
impossible?  What would we say of the chemist, the astronomer,
the physicist, or the geologist, who would proclaim that no
further discovery or revelation of scientific truth is possible,
or who would declare that the only occupation open to students of
science is to con the books of by-gone times and to apply the
principles long ago made known, since none others shall ever be
discovered?

The chief motive impelling to research and investigation is the
conviction that to knowledge and wisdom there is no end.
"Mormonism" affirms that all wisdom is of God, that the halo of
his glory is intelligence, and that man has not yet learned all
there is to learn of him and his ways.  We hold that the doctrine
of continuous revelation from God is not less philosophical and
scientific than scriptural.



CHAPTER II

The Latter-day Saints affirm that the authority to act in the
name of God--the Holy Priesthood--has been restored to earth in
this dispensation and age, in accordance with the inspired
predictions of earlier times.  But, it may be asked, what
necessity was there for a restoration if the Priesthood had been
once established upon earth?  None indeed, had it never been
taken away.  A general apostasy from the primitive Church is
conceded in effect by some authorities in ecclesiastical history;
though few admit the entire discontinuance of priestly power, or
the full suspension of authority to operate in the ordinances of
the Church.  This great apostasy was foretold.  Paul warned the
Saints of Thessalonica against those who claimed that the second
coming of Christ was then near at hand: "For," said he, "that day
shall not come except there come a falling away first."  (II
Thess. 2:3.)  "Mormonism" contends that there has been a general
falling away from the Church of Christ, dating from the time
immediately following the apostolic period.  We believe that the
proper interpretation of history will confirm this view; and,
moreover, that the inspired scriptures foretold just such a
condition.[5]

[Footnote 5: See "The Great Apostasy: Considered in the Light of
Scriptural and Secular History," by James E. Talmage.  Published
by the _Deseret News_, Salt Lake City, Utah; 176 pp.]

If the Priesthood had been once taken from the earth no human
power could re-establish it; the restoration of this authority
from heaven would be necessary.  The Church claims that in the
present age this restoration has been effected by the personal
ministrations of those who exercised the authority in earlier
dispensations.  Thus, in 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery
received the Lesser or Aaronic Priesthood under the hands of John
the Baptist, who visited them as a resurrected being--the same
Baptist who by special and divine commission held the authority
of that Priesthood in the dispensation of the "Meridian of Time."
Later, the Higher or Melchizedek Priesthood was conferred upon
them through the personal ministrations of Peter, James, and
John--the same three who constituted the presidency of the
apostolic body in the primitive Church, after the departure of
the Lord Jesus Christ by whom it was founded.

That the claim is a bold one is conceded without argument.  The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints professes to have the
Priesthood of old restored in its fulness; and, moreover, while
acknowledging the right of every individual as of every sect or
other organization of individuals to believe and practise
according to choice in matters religious, it affirms that it is
the only Church on the face of the earth possessing this
authority and Priesthood; and that therefore it is _The Church_
and the only Church of Christ upon the earth today.  It holds as
absolutely indispensable to proper Church organization, the
presence of the living oracles of God who shall be directed from
the heavens in their earthly ministry; and these, "Mormonism"
asserts, are to be found with the Church of Jesus Christ.

"Mormonism" emphasizes the doctrine that that which is Caesar's
be given unto Caesar, while that which is God's be rendered unto
him.  Therefore, it teaches that all things pertaining unto
earth, and unto man's earthly affairs, may with propriety be
regulated by earthly authority, but that in the performance of
any ordinance, rite, or ceremony, claimed to be of effect beyond,
the grave, a power greater than that of man is requisite or the
performance is void.  Therefore, membership in the Church, which,
if of any value and significance at all, is of more than temporal
meaning, must be governed by laws which are prescribed by the
powers of heaven.  "Mormonism" recognizes Jesus Christ as the
head of the Church, as the literal Savior and Redeemer of
mankind, as the King of kings and Lord of lords, as the One whose
right it is to reign on earth, who shall yet subdue all worldly
kingdoms under his feet, who shall present the earth in its final
state of redemption to the Father.  It is his right to prescribe
the conditions under which mankind may be made partakers of his
bounty and of the privileges of the victory won by him over death
and the grave.

The Church claims that faith in God is essential to intelligent
service of him; and that faith, trust, confidence in God as the
Father of mankind, as the Supreme Being to whom all shall render
account of their deeds and misdeeds, must lead to a desire to
serve him and thus produce repentance.  Faith in God and genuine
repentance of sin, of necessity, therefore constitute the
fundamental principles of the gospel.  It is reasonable to expect
that after man has developed faith in God, and has repented of
his sins, he will be eager to find a means of demonstrating his
sincerity; and this means is found in the requirement concerning
baptism as essential to entrance into the Church, and as a means
whereby remission of sins may be obtained.  As to the mode of
baptism, the Church affirms that immersion alone is the one
method sanctioned by scripture, and that this mode has been
expressly prescribed by revelation in the present dispensation.

Water baptism, then, becomes a basic principle and the first
essential ordinance of the gospel.  It is to be administered by
one having authority; and that authority rests in the Priesthood
given of God.  Following baptism by water, comes the ordinance of
the bestowal of the Holy Ghost by the authorized imposition of
hands, which constitutes the true baptism of the Spirit.  These
requirements, designated specifically the "first principles and
ordinances of the gospel," "Mormonism" claims to be absolutely
essential to membership in the Church of Christ, and this without
modification or qualification as to the time at which the
individual lived in mortality.

Then with propriety it may be asked:--What shall become of those
who lived and died while the Priesthood was not operative upon
the earth?--those who have worked out their mortal probation
during the ages of the great apostasy?  Furthermore, what shall
be the destiny of those who, though living in a time of spiritual
light, perhaps had not the opportunity of learning and obeying
the gospel requirements? Here again the inherent justice of
"Mormon" philosophy shows itself in the doctrine of salvation for
the dead. No distinction is made between the living and the dead
in the solemn declaration of the Savior to Nicodemus, which
appears to have been given the widest possible application,--that
except a man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter
into the Kingdom of God.  (John 3:1-5.)

"Mormonism" proclaims something more than a heaven and a hell, to
one or the other of which all spirits of men shall be assigned,
perhaps on the basis of a very narrow margin of merit or demerit.
As it affirms the existence of an infinite range of graded
intelligences, so it claims the widest and fullest gradation of
conditions of future existence.  It holds that the honest,
though, perchance, mistaken soul who lived or tried to live
according to the light he had received, shall be counted among
the honorable of the earth, and shall find opportunity, if not
here then in the hereafter, for compliance with the requirements
essential for salvation.  It teaches that repentance with all its
attendant blessings shall be possible beyond the grave; but that
inasmuch as the change we call death does not transform the
character of the soul, repentance there will be difficult for him
who has ruthlessly and willfully rejected the manifold
opportunities afforded him for repentance here.  It asserts that
even the heathen devotee who may have bowed down to stocks and
stones, if in so doing he was obeying the highest law of worship
which to his benighted soul had come, shall have part in the
first resurrection, and shall be afforded the opportunity, which
on earth he had not found, of doing that which is required of
God's children for salvation.  And for all the dead who have been
without the privileges, perhaps indeed without the knowledge, of
compliance with Christ's law, there shall be given opportunity in
the hereafter.

Nevertheless, this life of ours is no trifle, no insignificant
incident in the soul's eternal course, having but small and
temporal importance, the omissions of which can be rectified with
ease by the individual beyond the veil.  If compliance with the
divine law as exemplified by the requirements of faith,
repentance, baptism, and the bestowal of the right to the
ministrations of the Holy Ghost, are essential to the salvation
of those few who just now are counted among the living, such is
not less necessary for those who once were living but now are
dead.  Who are the living of today but those who shortly shall be
added to the uncounted dead?  Who are the dead but those who at
some time have lived in mortality?

Christ has been ordained to be judge of both quick and dead; he
is Lord of living and dead as man uses these terms, for all live
unto him.  How then shall the dead receive the blessings and
ordinances denied to them or by them neglected while in the
flesh?  "Mormonism" answers: By the vicarious work of the living
in their behalf!  It was this great and privileged labor to which
the prophet Malachi referred in his solemn declaration, that
before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, Elijah should be
sent with the commission to turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children and the hearts of the children to the fathers.  Elijah's
visitation to earth has been realized.  On the 3rd of April, in
the year 1836, there appeared unto Joseph Smith and Oliver
Cowdery, in the temple erected by the.  Latter-day Saints at
Kirtland, Ohio, Elijah the prophet, who announced that the time
spoken of by Malachi had fully come; then and there he bestowed
the authority, for this dispensation, to inaugurate and carry on
this labor in behalf of the departed.

As to the fidelity with which the Latter-day Saints have sought
to discharge the duties thus divinely required at their hands,
let the temples erected in poverty as in relative prosperity--by
the blood and tears of the people--testify.  Two of these great
edifices were constructed by the Latter-day Saints in the days of
their tribulation, in times of their direst persecution,--one at
Kirtland, Ohio, the other at Nauvoo, Illinois.  The first is
still standing, though no longer possessed by the people who
built it; and no longer employed for the furtherance of the
purposes of its erection; the second fell a prey to flames
enkindled by mobocratic hate.  Four others have been constructed
in the vales of Utah, and are today in service, dedicated to the
blessing of the living, and particularly to the vicarious labor
of the living in behalf of the dead.  In them the ordinances of
baptism, and the laying on of hands for the bestowal of the Holy
Ghost, are performed upon the living representatives of the
dead.[6]

[Footnote 6: For a detailed treatment of Temples and Temple labor
among the Latter-day Saints, including a study of the doctrine of
vicarious labor for the dead, see "The House of the Lord, a Study
of Holy Sanctuaries Ancient and Modern," including forty-six
plates illustrative of modern Temples; by James E. Talmage.
Published by the Church: Salt Lake City, Utah; 336 pp.]

But this labor for the dead is two-fold; it comprises the proper
performance of the required ordinances on earth, and the
preaching of the gospel to the departed.  Shall we suppose that
all of God's good gifts to his children are restricted to the
narrow limits of mortal existence?  We are told of the
inauguration of this great missionary labor in the spirit world,
as effected by the Christ himself.  After his resurrection, and
immediately following the period during which his body had lain
in the tomb guarded by the soldiery, he declared to the sorrowing
Magdalene that he had not at that time ascended to his Father;
and, in the light of his dying promise to the penitent malefactor
who suffered on a cross by his side, we learn that he had been in
paradise.  Peter also tells us of his labors--that he was
preaching to the spirits in prison, to those who had been
disobedient in the days of Noah when the long-suffering of God
waited while the ark was preparing.  If it was deemed necessary
or just that the gospel be carried to spirits that were
disobedient or neglectful in the days of Noah, are we justified
in concluding that others who have rejected or neglected the word
of God shall be left in a state of perpetual condemnation?

"Mormonism" claims that not only shall the gospel be carried to
the living, and be preached to every creature, but that the great
missionary labor, the burden of which has been placed on the
Church, must of necessity be extended to the realm of the dead.
It declares unequivocally that without compliance with the
requirements established by Jesus Christ, no soul can be saved
from the fate of the condemned; but that opportunity shall be
given to every one in the season of his fitness to receive it, be
he heathen or civilized, living or dead.

The whole duty of man is to live and work according to the
highest laws of right made known to him, to walk according to the
best light that has been shed about his path; and while Justice
shall deny to every soul that has not rendered obedience to the
law, entrance into the kingdom of the blessed, Mercy shall claim
opportunity for all who, have shown themselves willing to receive
the truth and obey its behests.

It will be seen, then, that "Mormonism" offers no modified or
conditional claims as to the necessity of compliance with the
laws and ordinances of the gospel by every responsible inhabitant
of earth unto whom salvation shall come.  It distinguishes not
between enlightened and heathen nations, nor between men of high
and low intelligence; nor even between the living and the dead.
No human being who has attained years of accountability in the
flesh, may hope for salvation in the kingdom of God until he has
rendered obedience to the requirements of Christ, the Redeemer of
the world.

But while thus decisive, "Mormonism" is not exclusive.  It does
not claim that all who have failed to accept and obey the gospel
of eternal life shall be eternally and forever damned.  While
boldly asserting that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints is the sole repository of the Holy Priesthood as now
restored to earth, it teaches and demands the fullest toleration
for all individuals, and organizations of individuals, professing
righteousness; and holds that each shall be rewarded for the
measure of good he has wrought, to be adjudged in accordance with
the spiritual knowledge he has gained.  For such high claims
combined with such professions of tolerance, the Church has been
accused of inconsistency.  Let it not be forgotten, however, that
toleration is not acceptance.  I may believe with the utmost
fulness of my soul's powers that I am right and my neighbor is
wrong concerning any proposition or principle; but such
conviction gives me no semblance of right for interfering with
his exercise of freedom.  The only bounds to the liberty of an
individual are such as mark the liberty of another, or the rights
of the community.  God himself treats as sacred, and therefore as
inviolable, the freedom of the human soul.

   "Know this, that every soul is free
    To choose his life and what he'll be;
    For this eternal truth is given,
    That God will force no man to heaven.

   "He'll call, persuade, direct aright,
    Bless him with wisdom, love, and light;
    In nameless ways be good and kind,
    But never force the human mind."

"Mormonism" contends that no man or nation possesses the right to
forcibly deprive even the heathen of his right to worship his
deity.  Though idolatry has been marked from the earliest ages
with the seal of divine disfavor, it may represent in the
unenlightened soul the sincerest reverence of which the person is
capable.  He should be taught better, but not compelled to render
worship which to him is false because in violation of his
conscience.

In further defense of the Latter-day Saints against the charge of
inconsistency for this their tolerance toward others whom they
verily believe to be wrong, let me again urge the cardinal
principle that every man is accountable for his acts, and shall
be judged in the light of the law as made known to him.

There is no claim of universal forgiveness; no unwarranted
glorification of Mercy to the degrading or neglect of Justice; no
thought that a single sin of omission or of commission shall fail
to leave its wound or scar.  In the great future there shall be
found a place for every soul, whatever his grade of spiritual
intelligence may be.  "In my Father's house are many mansions,"
(John 14:2), declared the Savior to his apostles; and Paul adds,
"There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial
is another.  There is one glory of the sun and another glory of
the moon and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth
from another star in glory.  So also is the resurrection of the
dead," (I Cor. 15:40-42).  The Latter-day Saints claim a
revelation of the present dispensation as supplementing the
scripture just quoted.  From this later scripture (see D&C, Sec.
76), we learn that there are three well-defined degrees in the
future state, with numerous, perhaps numberless, gradations.

There is the _celestial state_ provided for those who have lived
the whole law, who have accepted the testimony of the Christ, who
have complied with the required ordinances of the gospel, who
have been valiant in the cause of virtue and truth.  Then there
is the _terrestrial state_, comparable to the first as is the
moon to the sun.  This shall be given to the less valiant, to
many who are nevertheless among the worthy men of the earth, but
who perchance have been deceived as to the gospel and its
requirements.  The _telestial state_ is for those who have failed
to live according to the light given them; those who have had to
suffer the results of their sins; those who have been of Moses,
of Paul, of Apollos, and of any one of a multitude of others, but
not of the Christ.

We hold that there is a wide difference between salvation and
exaltation; that there are infinite gradations beyond the grave
as there are here, and as there were in the state preceding this.

"Mormonism" is frequently spoken of as a new religion, and the
Church as a new church, a mere addition of one to the many sects
that have so long striven for recognition and ascendency among
men.  It is new only as the springtime following the darkness and
the cold of the year's night is new.  The Church is a new one
only as the ripening fruit is a new development in the course of
the tree's growth.  In a general and true sense, "Mormonism" is
not new to the world.  It is founded on the gospel of Christ
which antedates this earth.  The establishment of the Church in
the present age was but a restoration.  True, the Church is
progressive as it ever has been; it is therefore productive of
more and greater things as the years link themselves into the
centuries; but the living seed contains within its husk all the
possibilities of the mature plant.

This so-called new, modern gospel is in fact the old one, the
first one, come again.  It demands the organization and the
authority characteristic of the Church in former days, when there
was a Church of God upon the earth; it expects no more
consideration, and scarcely hopes for greater popularity, than
were accorded the primitive Church.  Opposition, persecution, and
martyrdom have been its portion, but these tribulations it
accepts, knowing well that to bear such has been the lot of the
true Church in every age.

"Mormonism" is more than a code of morals; it claims a higher
rank than that of an organization of men planned and instituted
by the wisdom and philosophy of men, however worthy.  It draws a
distinction between morality and religion; and affirms that human
duty is not comprised in a mere avoidance of sin.  It regards the
strictest morality as an indispensable feature of every religious
system claiming in any degree divine recognition; and yet it
looks upon morality as but the alphabet from which the words and
sentences of a truly religious life may be framed.  However
euphonious the words, however eloquent the periods, to make the
writing of highest worth there must be present the divine
thought; and this, man of himself cannot conceive.

It affirms that there was a yesterday as there is a today, and
shall be a tomorrow, in the dealings of God with men; that

    Through the ages one increasing purpose runs;

and that purpose,--the working out of a divine plan, the ultimate
object of which is the salvation and exaltation of the human
family.

The central feature of that plan was the earthly ministry and
redeeming sacrifice of the Christ in the meridian of time; the
consummation shall be ushered in by the return of that same
Christ to earth as the Rewarder of righteousness, the Avenger of
iniquity, and as the world's Judge.

The Church holds that in the light of revelation, ancient and
modern, and by a fair interpretation of the signs of the times,
the second coming of the Redeemer is near at hand.  The present
is the final dispensation of the earth in its present state;
these are the last days of which the prophets in all ages have
sung.

But of what use are theories and philosophies of religion without
practical application?  Of what avail is belief as a mere mental
assent or denial?  Let it develop into virile faith; vitalize it;
animate it; then it becomes a moving power.  The Latter-day
Saints point with some confidence to what they have attempted and
begun, and to the little they have already done in the line of
their convictions, as proof of their sincerity.

For the second coming of the Redeemer, preparation is demanded of
men; and today, instead of the single priest crying in the
wilderness of Judaea, there are thousands going forth among the
nations with a message as definite and as important as that of
the Baptist; and their proclamation is a reiteration of the voice
in the desert--"Repent Repent! for the Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand."


The philosophy of "Mormonism" rests on the literal acceptance of
a living, personal God, and on the unreserved compliance with his
law as from time to time revealed.





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