142 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
There were now saints everywhere, all over the United States, particularly throughout the western portion; there were isolated believers, and small clus- ters, and small and great congregations. There were also many travelling preachers, men full of the holy ghost, or believing themselves so, who travelled without purse or scrip, whom no bufFetings, insults, hunger, or blows could daunt, who feared nothing that man could do, heaven's door being always open to them. See now the effects of these persecutions in Missouri. Twelve thousand were driven from their homes and set moving by Boggs and his gen- erals; three fourths of them found new homes at Quincy, Nauvoo, and elsewhere; but three thousand, who, but for the persecutions, would have remained at home and tilled their lands, were preaching and proselyting, making new converts and establishing new churches wherever they went. One of their number, William Smith, was a member of the Illi- nois legislature. In the very midst of the war they were preaching in Jackson county, among their old enemies and spoilers, striving with all their souls to win back their Zion, their New Jerusalem. From New York, February 19, 1840, Brigham Young, H. C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, and Parley P. Pratt indited a letter to the saints at Commerce, speaking of the wonderful progress of the faith, and of their own in- tended departure for England.^*'
Thus, despite persecution, the saints increased in number year by year. Before the end of 1840 there were fifteen thousand souls at Nauvoo, men, women, and children, not all of them exiles from Missouri, but from every quarter, old believers and new con- verts from different parts of the United States, from Canada, and from Europe; hither came they to the city of their God, to the mountain of his holiness.
ering place for all the saints, and in that delightful country they expect to find their Eden, and build the New Jerusalem. ' Bennett's Mormonlsm Exp. , 192-3. ^"See J. D. Hunter's letter of Dec. 26, 1839, from Jackson county, 111., in Times and Seasons, i. 59.
