The Rocky Mountain Saints/Chapter 1
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INCEPTION OF MORMONISM—JOSEPH SMITH'S FIRST VISION.
CHAPTER I.
The faith of the Latter-Day Saints was in the beginning strictly confined to Biblical doctrines, and the preaching of the first elders was something like a resuscitation of the dispensation committed to the apostolic fishermen of Galilee. With the acceptance of what they deemed the new revelation of Christ, there was no sacrifice too great to make, and no self-abnegation with which they would not strive to adorn their lives. Primitive Mormonism was to the youthful disciples the fulness of the everlasting gospel, with all the blessings, gifts and powers enjoyed by the early Christian Church, and all the promises of glory and honour in the world to come that inspired the first disciples of Christ.
The first elders were peculiarly adapted for the singular work which they had to perform. They were earnest, fiercely enthusiastic, and believers in everything that had ever been written about "visions," "dreams," "the ministering of angels," "gifts of the spirit, tongues, and interpretation of tongues," "healings," and "miracles." They wandered "without purse or scrip" from village to village and from city to city, preaching in the public highways, at the firesides or in the pulpits—wherever they had opportunity—testifying and singing:
"The Spirit of God like a fire is burning!
The Latter-day glory begins to come forth;
The visions and blessings of old are returning,
The Angels are coming to visit the earth.
We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven
Hosannah, hosannah to God and the Lamb!
Let glory to them in the highest be given,
Henceforth and for ever: Amen and Amen!"[1]
Half a dozen such verses as these inspired with sentiments that ranged from Adam to the time when "Jesus descends with his chariots of fire," sung with Stentorian lungs, threw over their audiences an influence such as they had never before experienced. "The work was of God." The barren, speculative, carefully prepared sermons of fifty weeks in the year chilled in the presence of the energy and demonstration of the Mormon elders; the latter had no dead issues to deal with; their Prophet was a live subject. In this manner Mormonism was first announced. It was the feeling of the soul, and not the reasoning of the mind. It was robust believing, not calm, intellectual understanding; and thus by natural sequence "the number of the disciples grew and multiplied." It was an emotional faith in both speaker and hearer. They felt that God was with them, and feeling" at such moments sets all argument at rest.
The founder of Mormonism was naturally very impressible, and at an early age conceived the idea that he was preeminently the subject of ancient prediction.[2] He soon passed from faith to positive assertion, and the first men of talent who became converts—such as Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, Orson Pratt, and other prominent elders—readily furnished him with the confirmation of his calling. These elders had nearly all been preachers, teachers, or exhorters, and they were not slow to discover that the Old Testament abounded with, to them, evidences of prediction about America, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the reign of the Saints on earth. The Bible, that before was a sealed book, suddenly opened with living truths of the closest personal application to the new disciples and their destiny. Every verse from Genesis to Revelation was scanned with microscopic scrutiny for evidence relative to the new faith, and, with the general reverence of Christendom for the Bible and the ready credence accorded to chapter and verse, the Mormon elders were astonishingly successful with the young and piously inclined of the labouring and mechanical classes, although their teachings were not so readily accepted by the more intellectual and better taught.
From the preaching of faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, and the gifts of the Spirit as enjoyed by the primitive Christian Church, it was an easy step for the young believer to accept Joseph Smith's statement that it had been revealed to him that "the set time to restore the kingdom to Israel" had come, and that the temporal dominion of the world by an inspired prophet was not only a proper thing, but was the consistent sequence of that prophet being chosen as the recognized medium between the heavens and the earth. It had been predicted that Christ should some day return to earth in power and great glory to reign a thousand years; hence the necessity of the Saints gathering together to prepare for the day of his coming; and in this "gathering "was laid, by the Prophet, the first stepping stone to worldly power.[3] As the number of believers increased, the establishment of the kingdom of God as a temporal and political power became a subject of earnest discourse, and from the announcement of this literal kingdom up to the present moment there has been an unceasing warfare between the Saints and the Gentiles, wherever they have existed together, for local supremacy. All that follows in the history of Mormonism after the enunciation of temporal sovereignty is but the working out of the Prophet's conceptions of his mission which grew with his years and increased with the success of the preaching of the faith. How far his later teachings and actions, or those of his successor, have been in harmony with the original platform, may well be questioned. Let the student of history determine for himself whether there can be found in connection with the Mormon movement any defined purpose of the Ruler of the Universe, or whether it is aught else than one of those ten thousand mysterious providences which have had a work to perform in human development, and which, after performing that work, have passed away, leaving their impress upon the history of the world.
The reader will readily perceive from the following chapters that Mormonism has contained within itself the elements of a sincere faith, and has thereby captivated the simple, inquiring, religiously-traditioned minds of a certain class of persons; has held them for a time in the expectancy of greater and progressive truths; and that the abandonment of the system by many of its most devoted adherents has been but the inevitable result of growth of intellect and the acceptance of broader and more liberal views of the purposes of a beneficent Deity.
The issues which have arisen in Mormonism of late years, and which have given to it the materialistic character that it now bears, were not anticipated by the early disciples. The temporal, patriarchal government of Utah is a disappointment, not a triumph, for long ere this—according to their teachings—the wicked should have been destroyed from oft the face of the earth, the elements should have melted with fervent heat, the heavens should have been rolled up like a scroll, and the elect should have been far away up in the clouds.
The Apostle Parley P. Pratt, the most eloquent and forcible preacher of the Mormon Church, over thirty years ago, in his controversy with La Koy Sunderland, editor of Zion's Watchman, then published in New York, uttered the following prediction: "Within ten years from now (1838), the people of this country who are not Mormons, will be entirely subdued by the Latter-Day Saints or swept from the face of the earth; and if this prediction fails, then you may know that the Book of Mormon is not true." During that controversy, Parley was evidently annoyed at Mr. Sunderland, and, regarding his own indignation as the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he predicted that "within two years, La E-oy Sunderland will be struck dumb and incapacitated from speaking a loud word." At a later date, in taking farewell of New York, he penned a "Lamentation" for her citizens. In that effusion he tells the New-Yorkers: "When the Union is severed, when this mighty city shall crumble to ruin and sink as a millstone, the merchants undoing," &c., to "sing this lamentation and think upon me."
Parley was a sincere, good meaning man, who honoured extensively the institution of polygamy, and in adding to his family circle he aroused the wrath of an outraged husband, who pursued and killed him in Arkansas, in 1856; but the Union is not severed, New York stands where it did, with no particular signs of the "millstone," and Mr. La Boy Sunderland still lives in Massachusetts, a very forcible speaker as well as writer. Mormon history abounds with innumerable predictions equally veracious.[4]
The polygamic faith contended for to-day was not in the original programme, neither has it contributed to create the power that now reigns in Utah. It was the monogamic spiritual life and understanding of primitive Christianity that built up the organization which gave power and influence to Joseph Smith. It was the hearer's faith in Peter of Galilee, more than in Joseph of New York, that induced thousands of professing Christians to add the new prophet to their faith, and to accept his revelations. It was their confidence that the Holy Ghost had been poured out upon disciples in Judea, eighteen hundred years before, which made the promises in America possible of belief, and acceptable in the nineteenth century, and it is this reduplication of faith in the disciples to-day in Utah and throughout the world, and not the assumed genius or ability, with which he is generally credited, which clothes Brigham Young with that unchallenged authority which is a marvel to all outside the Church.
The Mormon organization is thorough and complete. It permeates every position and condition of life, and controls and governs everything from the cradle to the grave. It is a combination of iron military rule and Jesuitical penetration and perseverance, and as such in course of time it became intolerable to the very men who made it. The leading elders, the "witnesses" and the first apostles have almost all apostatized from the more recent doctrines of Joseph and Brigham, while they still cling to the original faith and believe in the ministering of angels, &c. It is this deeply rooted conviction of heavenly manifestations and their own phenomenal experience, that has held and now holds the people together, and not the personal influence of Joseph Smith, and still less that of his successor.
There is much in the first announcement of Mormonism, and its claim to divine origin through revelation, that may well be questioned; but there is little in the early faith which the Bible believer can easily assail from that standpoint. The difficulty which controversialists have experienced when in argument with Mormon casuists has been their readiness to admit all that prophets and apostles have ever said, while they tie themselves to none. In handling the revelations of modern science and discovery they are never surprised. They willingly allow all that geology may establish, and if that hurts Moses or any one else it is nothing to them;—when science is positive, the record has to yield. Their faith, borrowed or adopted from the ancients, is held with a loose hand, and can be parted with at any time; but their own faith proper, that which is given through "the living oracles," can never be surrendered. No authority can be accepted, or even doubtfully entertained, that disputes Joseph Smith. To the believing Mormons, he was "the end to all controversy," and this has not been forgotten in the inheritance claimed by his successor.
The Mormons as a people are not justly chargeable with the wrong-doing which has been ascribed to them. There are bad men among them—dangerously bad men—who have committed outrages and damning deeds which would disgrace any community. But those deeds were perpetrated by the few; the masses were sincere and devoted to their conceptions of right and truth, as the whole course of their lives and eventful history abundantly proves. This has been the united testimony of all the "Gentiles" who have lived among them. The errors of the past life of the people, whether in their treatment of apostates or in their hostility to the nation, are attributable to the system and to the men who direct the public mind. Men and women who, for a religious faith, voluntarily abandon the homes of childhood, and rend asunder the hallowed ties of family and friends—as Mormon converts do in all parts of the earth—traversing oceans and plains, and suffering privations incident to creating new homes in a barren waste, are not persons devoid of the qualities of good citizens.
It was the people's love of religious truth while associated with other churches, that induced them to listen to the Mormon elders when they proclaimed the restoration of the primitive Gospel in all its purity and power, with a Church organization of Patriarchs, Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers and Deacons. This harmony in organization—the counterpart of primitive Christianity—binds them still to Mormonism, in spite of the extravagances of their leaders against which their early teachings and innate sense of right revolt. To the mass of the Mormon people it is no simple matter to meet in argument their own teachers—men who have seldom, if ever, been vanquished in discussion when met by the most talented ministers of other religions. When to this difficulty is added the people's own personal experience of the power of healing in the Church, something more than an opponent's denunciation is required to deliver them from the thraldom of an unquestioning faith.
The educated mind takes within its range of thoughts causes and effects, and discriminates between what is general and what is special and personal, but, among the untaught masses, ninety-nine in a hundred rely upon their own experience alone. "Was I not healed by the anointing of oil, the laying on of hands and the prayer of faith?" "Did I not see my mother carried to the waters of baptism a poor decrepit invalid, and when she had been immersed for the remission of sins she walked home, and has been well ever since?" "Was not my father deaf, and did he not get his hearing by the prayers of the elders?" "My darling child was brought from death unto life by the prayer of faith." The unscripturalness of Brigham's "Adam Deity," the despotism of an "infallible Priesthood," and the evidence of a thousand outrages and murders are nothing to minds that cling to the personal reminiscence of miracles. The only hope, therefore, is in the education of the people to the realization that those phenomenal manifestations of healing, the influences of which they have personally experienced, are not the specialty of the Mormon Church, but are to be found to some extent everywhere, in all churches, and even among persons unassociated with any religious creed; that these manifestations which the Mormon leaders have claimed as exclusive proofs of the divinity of their mission are but the result of natural causes, conditions and circumstances, and of this fact the Mormon Church furnishes the most abundant evidence.
While healing the sick, through the laying on of hands by the elders, is a common experience in every part of the world where the missionaries have travelled, it is equally true that for one case of instantaneous healing of that character which is cited as miraculous by the Mormon writers, there have been hundreds of instances of the sick being administered to in the same way, without any beneficial results whatever, and they have been left to recover by the recuperative power of nature, or the maladies have yielded to ordinary medical treatment which the Church had actually forbidden. This "gift of healing" has also been experienced more in Europe than in America, for the young Saints in Europe have more faith than the older Saints in the very bosom of the Church. Their spiritual nature is worked up to the greatest intensity, and they are always prepared to see angels, behold visions, dream dreams, speak in tongues and prophesy. A large portion of their time in foreign countries is consumed in "rejoicing together," and "building each other up," by glowing testimonies of their experience; but when they arrive in Utah they soon discover that another condition of affairs exists there. The hard facts of a hard life confront them, and the contemplation of heavenly things has to give place to the arduous labours for the necessaries of existence. Many, not appreciating the true causes of this change in their spiritual experience, become discontented, murmur, and apostatize, and those who have been the most favoured, usually become the most dejected and Godforsaken. The ignorant teacher who visits the unfortunate, disappointed, but once gifted Saint, renders his experience still worse by stating in reference to the change which he cannot explain, that "the Lord first greatly blessed him in order to leave him without excuse for backsliding so that He could the better damn him when he apostatized."
The greatest dispensation of spiritual power experienced in the Mormon Church fell upon the British Saints during the Presidency of the apostle Orson Pratt, from 1848 to 1851. The other apostles are more secular than religious, and have a great deal more to do with this world's affairs than with the hopes of the next they have all large families to provide for. Orson also has many wives, but his better education and eminent ability as a writer and reasoner have preserved him more a missionary than a farmer; he is, emphatically, the apostle of the Twelve. During his mission to Europe, his pen furnished the first logical arguments in favour of Mormonism, and his influence spread like a consuming fire among the Saints throughout the Old World. He aroused the ambition and excited the zeal of young and old to spread abroad the new faith, and, armed as they were with his arguments, they scoured the country and invited discussion wherever they went. They penetrated the aisles of the cathedrals, ascended the pulpits of the meeting-houses, visited the houses of the bigoted, and stormed the haunts of vice and woe with their tracts and pamphlets. It was a grand revival of the mission into the highways and hedges, arousing the sinner to come to the great marriage feast.
Controversy met these zealous missionaries, and often stoning, buffeting, and even imprisonment followed. But the Saints rejoiced the more, glorying in tribulation, and, as a natural consequence, they grew immensely in spiritual power.
Mormonism in England, Scotland, and Wales, was a grand triumph, and was fast ripening for a vigorous campaign in continental Europe. There is no page of religious history which more proudly tells its story than that which relates this peculiar phase of Mormon experience. The excitement was contagious, even affecting persons in the higher ranks of social life, and the result was a grand outpouring of spiritual and miraculous healing power of the most astonishing description. Miracles were heard of everywhere ; and numerous competent and most reliable witnesses bore testimony to their genuineness.
In whatever light this "healing power" may be regarded, it was at the time a grand reality of the European mission, but it has, in a great measure, passed away under the withering teachings of the polygamous era among the Saints in Zion. With the preaching of the simple word, the elders were powerful, the Saints were zealous, the public listened, the spirit ran from heart to heart, and miracles were common. But the cold logic of argument labouring to engraft a relic of barbarism upon an age of the highest civilization, quenched the spirit and choked the zeal which accomplished those wonders of Mormon history.
Up to the introduction of polygamy, Mormonism was solely a "Bible-Gospel" in Europe, and differed so widely from the kingdom-building scheme of Utah, that the very sons of the apostles and prophets testify, on their return to Utah from European missions, that they never knew what Mormonism was, nor the power of God, till they went abroad to preach. This is a common admission, and a damaging testimony against Zion; but it tells a great truth, and confirms the assertion that it is especially the British mission, with latterly the Scandinavian, that has built up Utah. It is the remembrance of their first love's joy in the Church in the Old World that preserves many of the Saints now in their dreary fellowship in the Church of the New World.
It is not an easy thing to break away from a life-long hope and such early joyous experiences as most of them had in the beginning. It is not courage that is lacking. It is, in fact, easier to meet death than to live this life of anxiety and trouble; but believers dread to assume the responsibility of breaking off from shepherds whom once they almost idolized, and making the things of eternity a matter between themselves and their Maker. Even among the greatest intellects, few have been able to leave the Church, though groaning under it for years, until some experience brought with it an issue that demanded the assertion of a personal right or a disputed truth at the expence of fellowship. The greatest of their apostles, Orson Pratt, has been a living martyr for years, and has suffered indignities which manhood would never endure outside of the Mormon communion, and all this from fear of doing a greater wrong by leaving the Church in which he had spent a long life of usefulness. This consciousness of another's scrupulous fidelity apparently emboldens Brigham Young to test every man to his utmost endurance who breathes an independent thought.
Summed up, Mormonism demands perfect submission total dethronement of individuality blind obedience. There is no middle path. The crowning error of Brigham Young is the claim to " a Priesthood that is infallible." No man at the head of a people ever required it less. His errors before that were all overlooked " to err is human." It mattered not what he said or did, the people hastened to excuse him, as another in his place might be no better and might do worse; but the assertion of Infallibility was the " vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself." Its assertion strips the people of human charity towards him. In his counsellings and teachings they are now required to see the authority of God, failing which they are "in darkness." He recognizes no right of thought diverging from his own, and this principle, carried to its legitimate extent, makes, in fact, one great something over a community of non entities. With liberty of thought and expression protected, Mormonism could have lived on, correcting its errors as it outgrew them, but with the assumption of an Infallible Priesthood its work has seen the beginning of the end.
- ↑ Hymn Book, p. 268. It is claimed that this effusion was given by "the gift of tongues," then translated by one of the elders, by the "gift of interpretation," into English.
- ↑ The student of Mormonism will be struck with the similarity of experience and claims of Joseph Smith and Mohammed. Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador, a Mohammedan writer, in a series of Essays recently published in London, treats of the prophecies concerning the Arabian Prophet, to be found in the Old and New Testaments, precisely as Orson Pratt applies them to the American Prophet.
- ↑ As early as the second year of the Church, some of the leading elders of Zion (in Missouri) were "accusing Brother" Joseph in rather an indirect way of seeking "after monarchical power and authority." Vide Orson Hyde and Hyrum Smith's Epistle to "the bishop, his councillors, and the inhabitants of Zion."
- ↑ The following is a specimen:—
"A Prophecy; or an extract from the Word of the Lord concerning New York, Albany, and Boston, given on the 23rd day of September, 1832.
"Let the Bishop" (Newel K. Whitney) "go into the City of New York, and also to the City of Albany, and also to the City of Boston, and warn the people of those cities with the sound of the Gospel, with a loud voice, of the desolation and utter abolishment which awaits them if they do reject these things; for, if they do reject these things, the hour of their judgment is nigh, and their house shall be left unto them desolate."
Sixteen years later, the Millennial Star, September 15, 1848, published the foregoing prophecy, supplementing it with a lengthy extract from the Albany Express of August 17th, giving an account of a "destructive fire" in that city. The Apostle-Editor of the Star—Orson Pratt—doubtless felt gratified at being able to help "the Lord" a little to the verification of the prediction. Fires in great cities and in small ones are accidents of daily occurrence all over the world, and just as much the vengeance of "the Lord" as that in Albany for rejecting Newel K. Whitney's mission; but on such predictions and their fulfilment have the Mormons been fed by the modern apostles. Nothing was said by the Prophet about the Chicago fire. With such a terrible conflagration in fulfilment of "the Word of the Lord," Mormonism might have had a fresh lease of life.