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.
