INTRODUCTION. xxiii
pled worm still in agony, the remembrance of "persecutions" that chills every forward, generous impulse and withers the soul with the baneful teaching that "he that is not for us is against us."
Through the first twenty years of their occupancy of the Territory of Utah, the advanced and liberal minds among them hoped for a change from the ostracizing teachings of the Tabernacle, but it was almost hoping against hope. A brighter day, however, is dawning, when the barriers that have forbidden intercourse with the rest of the world, because of differences of faith, will be gently lowered and a better understanding prevail between the favoured Saints and the unbelieving Gentiles, and in some respects the former will be the greater gainers by the change. "No feud," says the shrewd and witty Sydney Smith, "can withstand social intercourse."
Throughout this work there will be found no disposition to pander to the charge of "wilful imposture" against Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. The facts of their history, to the Author's mind, do not warrant that conclusion. Men who publicly utter predictions which time must verify or prove false within the scope of their own natural lives, are entitled to the credit of honestly believing in their own mission. It is safe and sound philosophy to admit that men can be, and are frequently as zealous in the propagation of an error as of a truth; or what shall be said of the great "army of martyrs," of whom not one in a thousand ever reached the stake, the rack, or the guillotine for an absolute verity?
Whatever judgment may be passed upon the faith and personal lives of the Mormon Prophet and his successor, there will be a general recognition of a divine purpose in their history. Under their leadership the Mormon people have aided to conquer the western desert and to transform a barren and desolate region of a hitherto "unknown country" into a land that seems destined at no distant day to teem with millions of
