164 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
time, though citizens of the commonwealth, they had not been in sympathy with other citizens; though rehgionists, they were in deadly opposition to all other religions; as a fraternity, bound by friendly compact, not alone spiritually but in temporal matters, in buying and selling, in town-building, farming, and stock-rais- ing, in all trades and manufactures, they stood on vant- age-ground. They were stronger than their immediate neighbors — stronger socially, politically, and indus- trially ; and the people about them felt this, and while hating, feared them.
It is true, that on their first arrival in Zion they were not wealthy ; neither were their neighbors. They were not highly educated or refined or cultured; neither were their neighbors. They were sometimes loud and vulgar of speech ; so were their neighbors. Immorality cropped out in certain quarters; so it did among the ancient Corinthians and the men of mod- ern Missouri; there was some thieving among them; but they w^ere no more immoral or dishonest than their persecutors who made war on them, and as they thought without a shadow of right.
There is no doubt that among the Mormons as among the gentiles, perhaps among the Mormon leaders as among the gentile leaders, fornication and adultery were practised. It has been so in other ages and nations, in every age and nation; it is so now, and is likely to be so till the end of the world. But when the testimony on both sides is carefully weighed, it must be admitted that the Mormons in Missouri and Illinois were, as a class, a more moral, honest, temperate, hard-working, self-denying, and thrifty people than the gentiles by whom they were sur- rounded. Says John D. Lee on entering the Mis- souri fraternity and, at the time of this remarking, by no means friendly to the saints, "The motives of the people who composed my neighborhood were pure; they were all sincere in their devotions, and tried to square their actions through life by the golden rule. . .
