Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: George Townshend, The Conversion of Mormonism, Hartford: Church Missions Publishing Company, 1911, bahai-library.com.
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Mormonism
of
conversion
The

Townshend
George
SUNSET ON SALT LAKE
SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES

The Conversion

of Mormonism
BY
GEORGE TOWNSHEND, M. A., (Oxon.)
Copyrighted March, 1911
T. B. Simonds, Printer
Hartford, Conn., U. S. A.
The Conversion of Mormonism

CHAPTERS

Preface

I. Joseph Smith and his Church . page 13

II. The Mormons move West . . "31

III. Modern Mormonism . . " 43

IV. History and Methods of our Church
in Utah . . . " 61
The author of this book lived in Utah for more than
five years, and was a close observer and careful student of
Mormonism. For all who wish an accurate statement of
the belief of the Latter Day Saints, and also of the Church's
Missionary Programme in Utah, I heartily commend his
book.
F. S- SPALDING,
Bishop of Utah.
Salt Lake, April, 191 1.
PREFACE
The aim of this book is twofold. I have tried, first,
to give in outline a constructive account of the history
of the Mormon organization, calling itself "The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints," and, secondly,
to show the principles which have guided our Church
in her work among the Mormons.
The ground covered in the following pages has always
been the field of bitter contentions between Mormons
and non-Mormons; and what I have written may be
taken by some for controversial matter. But it is not
inspired by the spirit of controversy. Not a line has
been penned in animosity or unkindness. I have
approached Mormonism not — like the Latterday Saint
—as a celestial gift, nor—with the anti-Mormon—as
a contemptible fraud, but as an object of dispassionate
study like any other religious system. And I have
written of the Mormon people with the respect due
to fellow-men and fellow-citizens. Had I done other
wise, I should not have been loyal to the genius of our
Church's efforts in Utah.
But while I have sought to avoid causing offense,
I have not hesitated to say frankly what I believe to
be true. Mormonism is sketched here as the facts —
so far as I know them — show it to be. It appears
to me a piece of mere justice to the Latterday Saint to
offer him a positive view of Mormonism as those on
the outside see it.
GEORGE TOWNSHEND.
Sewanee, Tennessee.
January, 1911.
CHAPTER I

JOSEPH SMITH AND HIS CHURCH
JOSEPH SMITH, JR.
Founder of Mormonism
Joseph Smith, the founder of "The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latterday Saints," commonly known as the
"Mormon Church," was born in Vermont, on December
the twenty-third, 1805. His family was needy and
obscure, and several of its members belonged to that
unhappy class which psychical research has taught
us to call mediumistic. Solomon Mack, the father
of the prophet's mother, wrote and peddled about the
country an autobiography, in which he told of falling
fits which beset him, of queer religious experiences,
of visions, and of bodiless voices calling him. His
children took after him. One of his daughters was
miraculously cured of an illness and wafted away to the
world of spirits, where she "saw the Saviour and received
from him a message for her earthly friends." The
mother of the young Joseph herself "heard spirit voices
and saw visions," and always considered these phenom
ena as special revelations from heaven. From the other
side, too, of the family, Joseph inherited a medium
istic temperament. His father had a series of seven
"celestial dreams" at intervals from 1811 to 1819. Of
these seven, two are especially nortewothy, for they
were grafted by his son into the religion he founded.
The vision of the Magic Box discovered in a wilderness of
"dead fallen timber" suggested the finding of the
Golden Bible; that of the Fruit Trees is incorporated
in the Book of Mormon. (I Nephi VIII.)

>3
The true child of such parents, Joseph began early
to deal in mystery. While a lad, he claimed to be
able to locate underground streams with a forked
hazel switch. At the age of fourteen he had his first
vision which his later career has made so famous.
He describes it thus: "Some time in the second year
after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place
where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject
of religion — I was at this time in my fifteenth year.
During this time of great excitement,
my mind was called up to serious reflection and great
uneasiness; but though my feelings were deep and often
pungent, still I kept myself aloof from all those parties,
though I attended their several meetings as often as
occasion would permit .... It was on the
morning of a beautiful clear day, early in the
spring of 1820. He narrates how he went out into the
fields to make the first attempt of his life at praying
aloud. After I had retired into the place where
I had previously designed to go, having looked
around me and finding myself alone, I kneeled
down and began to offer up the desires of my
heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immedi
ately I was seized upon by some power which
entirely overcame me, and had such astonishing influ
ence over me, as to bind my tongue so that I could not
speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it
seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden
destruction. But exerting all my powers to call upon
God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which
had seized upon me and at the very moment when I was
ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to des

traction, not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power
of some actual being from the unseen world, who had
such marvellous power as I had never before felt in
any being. Just at this moment of great alarm, I saw
a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the bright
ness of the Sun, which descended gradually until it fell
upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself
delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When
the light rested upon me, I saw two personages whose
brightness and glory defy all description, standing
above me in the air. One of them spake unto me
. When I came to myself again I found
myself on my back looking up into heaven."
Three years later he had two similar experiences,
in which, as he relates, he saw an angel who told him
of engraved plates of gold hidden in the hill of Cumorah.
About this time, the boy began crystal-gazing, being
moved to do so at first by a wish to rival the feats of
a young friend by the name of Belcher. He soon gained
a local reputation as a finder of treasure and stolen
goods. In these exploits, he used as his "peep stone"
a translucent quartz pebble; he would set it in the
crown of his hat and, putting his face after it, would
gaze steadfastly at its faint glinting till he induced the
somnabulistic state. But in September, 1827, the
month in which he claimed to have found the gold
plates at Manchester, N. Y., he happened on two
strange objects which he found would serve his purpose
better. These he called his "interpreters," and ex
plained that they were in truth no other than the Urim
and Thummim; but, from the naive description given
by his mother and himself, it would seem that they

IS
were two prisms from an old fashioned chandelier.
He now addressed himself to the more considerable
business of literary composition, and in a year and a
half produced an occidental testament, one third as
large as the Bible and called by him, "The Book of
Mormon." His method of work has been told with
much particularity. As he sat with his face buried
in the hat staring at his "interpreters" something
resembling parchment would appear before his eyes,
and on it would be a character in some foreign tongue
with the interpretation thereof in English described
below. Sometimes he would have difficulty in inducing
the trance and the image would not appear; on such
occasions he would rise, withdraw, say his prayers, and
then return to his task.
It was evident that he was not now completely con
trolled, as he had been in his various visions, for his
utterances were colored by his own individuality and
he always retained consciousness of his surroundings.
He did no writing himself, but recited aloud the words
he saw and had them taken down by an assistant. His
wife at first acted as his amanuensis, and afterwards
David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery took her place.
The work was done at the rate of from two to three
pages a day at intervals from the end of 1827 to the
middle of 1829. Joseph Smith represented that the
book was a translation of certain records engraved on
the gold plates which had been revealed to him in his
visions and which he had unearthed from their ancient
hiding place in a neighboring wood. He never used
the alleged plates in his work, and he dictated with
equal facility whether they were in the same house as

he or not; and when he had written "finis" to his book,
the plates were removed from human ken by a process
of levitation.
The contents of the volume are described thus by
the translator: "We are informed by these records,
that America, in ancient times, has been inhabited by
two distinct races of people. The first were called
Jaredites, and came directly from the tower of Babel.
The second race came directly from the city of Jerusa
lem about six hundred years before Christ. They
were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph.
The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the
Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them
in the inheritance of the country. The principal
nation of the second race fell in battle towards the
close of the fourth century. The remnant are the
Indians, who now inhabit this country. This book
also tells us that our Saviour made His appearance upon
this continent after His resurrection; that He planted
the gospel here in all its fulness and richness and power
and blessing; that they had apostles, prophets, pastors,
teachers, and evangelists; the same order, the same
priesthood, the same ordinances, gifts, powers, and
blessings, as were enjoyed on the Eastern continent;
that the people were cut off in consequence of their
transgressions; that the last of their prophets who
existed among them was commanded to write an abridg
ment of their prophecies, history, etc., and to hide it
up in the earth, and that it should come forth and be
united with the Bible, for the accomplishment of the
purposes of God in the last days."
The character of the work shows traces of the temper

ament and environment of the author. It is written
in the prolix style which marked his conversation.
Its poverty of vocabulary, its solecisms, and its lack of
ideas are a natual result of his want of schooling. His
retentive memory and his weak judgment are shown
in the large congeries of sectarian teachings, unassorted
and confused, which make up the theology of the book.
These doctrines are those which were popular in the
boy's neighborhood at the time. For example, the
crude Calvinism of the local Presbyterians appears in
several particulars, notably in the Tritheistic doctrine
of the Trinity. Along with Presbyterian beliefs, are set
others from the Campbellites and Baptists, as the
return of the Jews to Jerusalem (a Campbellite tenet)
and the insistence on baptism by immersion, and on
the immersion of adults only. -Marks of the time and
place of authorship, too, as well as of the mentality of
the author, abound.
The Anti-Masonic Crusade, begun in New York in
1826, and the almost contemporaneous panic of the
Protestants at the apparent power and designs of the
Roman Catholic Church, are both referred to in the
Book of Mormon. (I Nephi XIII :4 et seq. and Helaman
VI:22-26, and Ether VIII:18-26). And the theory
that the Red Men are the descendants of the lost Ten
Tribes, which was especially popular in Joseph Smith's
youth and was often elaborated in books and local
pulpits, forms the central motive of the narrative.
This composition, under the now notorious title of
"The Book of Mormon," was printed at Palmyra, New
York, in July, 1830. No sooner was it on the market
than the author set to work on "The Visions of Moses"

and then on "The Writings of Moses." By 1834 he
had finished a revision of the Bible; in 1842 he pub
lished a "Translation of some Ancient Records that
have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt,"
the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called
"The Book of Abraham," written by his own hand
upon papyrus. "The Visions of Moses" and "The
Book of Abraham" comprise "The Pearl of Great
Price," one of the sacred books of "The Latterday
Saints."
Before the publication of the Book of Mormon,
Smith had started his "church." The temper of the
age was in favor of the adventure, for religious excite
ment was in the air. The camp meeting originated in
Kentucky in 1799 and the revivalistic system spread
fast and far. Ignorant and educated were alike affected.
The emotional wave, rising in the west, spread eastward.
It swept over Yale in 1802 when thirty-three of the
students were converted, and during the next forty years,
there were fifteen revivals there. At Princeton, Am
herst and Williams Colleges, similar effects are on record.
In New York State, the first town reached by the
movement was Palmyra, Joseph's home. Contem
poraries give startling accounts of the morbidness and
fury of the general emotionalism. In the country
parts, whole neighborhoods would be forsaken and
the roads crowded with multitudes eager to join in
devotion under some popular preacher. So violent was
the fever that the physical phenomena of religious
frenzy were commonly seen; the devotees would sob
and shriek as lost souls, or sing and shout for joy as
already saved; they would drop to the ground and

twitch in convulsions or lie there stark like corpses;
they would leap or bound about, kicking and shouting
and crying; they would roll over and over on the
ground for hours and sometimes would fancy they were
dogs and would gather about a tree, barking and yelp
ing, "Treeing the devil." A natural result of this
excitement was the multiplying of religious bodies.
Schisms occurred in the old societies — four, for example,
among the Methodists in the sixteen years from 1814
to 1830; and many new "churches" were started.
Seers and saviours sprang up all over the country.
Jemima Wilkinson, who asserted that she had been
miraculously raised from the dead, that her carnal life
was ended and her new body animated by the spirit
and power of Christ, founded the sect of the Wilkin-
sonians and drew to her many intelligent people; she
was almost a contemporary of Smith, dying in 1819.
In 1810, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, with whom
Sidney Rigdon worked before he joined Smith, founded
that congregation in Washington County, Pennsylvania,
out of which grew the disciples of Christ or Campbellites.
In 1812, John Herr started the "Reformed Mennonite
Church." In 1817, the Pilgrims made their march
from Canada through Vermont and New York, gather
ing recruits on their way, towards the far Southwest.
They were ruled by a "revelator" who said that he was
in direct communication with the Almighty and issued
inspired commands on all subjects, great and small.
The "Church of God" was founded by John Winebrenner
in the same year in which Smith founded the "church of
Jesus Christ." The latter was only one year old when
William Miller founded "the Adventists," and Ballou

and his friends "The Restorationists." It was in its
third year when J. J. Shiphen and P. P. Steward founded
"The Oberlin colony" in a forest of Northern Ohio.
The young prophet was in some ways well suited for
his task. He did not, it is true, bear a good character.
He was as self-indulgent as he was ignorant, and he
was one of the vainest of men; but he had ambition, a
lively imagination, a strong memory, a genial disposi
tion, and a remarkable faculty for dealing with people.
Affairs he could never manage, and when he tried,
relying on his own judgment, he failed calamitously;
but he never failed to manage men and women. Those
who knew him speak with emphasis of some hypnotic
spell which his eye possessed, whereby, they assert, he
could impress all and sway sensitive and weak minds.
His undoubted spiritualistic experiences, commonplace
as they are now known to be by students of such phe
nomena, made him feel (as hundreds of others under
similar circumstances have felt) that he was indeed the
favored of heaven, and as a psychic he was fitted to
head a sect which was inspired less by an ethical pur
pose than by the religious ecstasy popular in his time.
The "Mormon Church" was formally organized in
Fayette, New York, on April 6th, 1830. Joseph's
chief means of directing this church was by means of
what he called revelations. These purported to be
commands, given to him directly by God or by His
Son, which he passed on to his followers. During his
public life he received very many of these communica
tions, and a selection of them numbering about one
hundred and thirty, now compose the principal of the
three sacred Mormon books. In the first of them,

vouchsafed after the inauguration of the church, Joseph
is designated as a "seer, a translator, a prophet, and
apostle of Jesus Christ" and the faithful are bidden to
receive his word, "as if from mine own mouth in all
patience and faith." The high privilege and authority
accorded the prophet were reserved as his monopoly
by a farther revelation in the fall of the same year,
that "no one shall be appointed to receive command
ments and revelations in this church except my servant
Joseph Smith, Jr." He was thus impregnably in
trenched as absolute leader of his church. To disbe
lieve him was to discredit the whole religion. "I am
the Mormon Church" was the keystone of his religious
system. He had troublous times in controlling his
unruly and sometimes suspicious followers, and he
showed great capacity in the way he dealt with them;
but the rock on which his authority was builded was
the primary fact, which his followers could never gain
say, that on his veracity and on that alone, depended
the Mormon religion, and if he were an impostor the
faith in which they trusted was an imposition.
What attracted people to this new sect was less its
doctrines and theology than the marvels which were
reported to have attended its birth. The appearance
of God the Father and God the Son to the prophet,
the repeated visits from an angel, and the discovery of
the golden plates telling of America in bygone ages,
were miracles which, being similar to and yet surpassing
the experiences and the conjectures of the fanatics of
the day, fitted their fancies and secured their belief.
At first Mormon theology was a composite of the
teachings of the various sects with which Joseph Smith

was familiar, or in which he was instructed by two men
who soon . joined him — the Rev. Sidney Rigdon, at
one time a follower of Alexander Campbell, and Parley
P. Pratt, a travelling lay preacher. But as the months
went by, an elaborate and ambitious system was re
vealed by the prophet wherein an exposition was offered
of life hereafter, life here, and life heretofore.
"In the beginning," so the prophet translates the
first verse of Genesis, "The head of the Gods brought
forth Gods" or "Called the Gods together." It was
this grand council of deities, with their President at
their head, which designed and organized — but did
not make — our earth. They could not make it, for
matter is co-eternal with God and cannot be created;
all that can be done, even by the Gods, is to change its
form. God himself is material, and possessed of a
physical body which is an essentail part of his Godhead ;
man's body likewise, is an integral part of his person
ality, so that when he dies and temporarily loses his
body, he has to wait till it is restored to him before he
becomes a living soul. Among the Gods are the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are separate beings,
whose oneness is wholly moral and intellectual. The
Father has a body of flesh and bones, which he gained
by a prehistoric embodiment — Brigham Young once
explained that Adam was God; the Holy Ghost is a
substance which pervades all space and is described as
a "personage of spirit" having no body; the Son became
incarnate as a necessary step to the procuring of a
physical body, and the mystery of His birth is explained
by Young in this way, that "when the time came . . .
that the Saviour should come into the world and take

*3
a tabernacle, the Father came himself and favored that
spirit with a tabernacle instead of letting any other man
do it." (Quoted in Mormon Doctrine of Deity, p. 264.)
The object of the organization of this world was to
provide a place where man could obtain a physical
body. For man in the form of a spirit — with a body
of immensely rarified matter — exists before he appears
on earth. He is begotten, conceived and born in the
spiritual realms, under the same laws as prevail here.
His earth life is the second step of his career. The fall
of Adam was a necessary event, in order to provide man
with the temptations and difficulties on earth which
would prove and develop him. The fall subjected the
human race to the power of death and the bondage of
sin. Christ, rising from the grave with a body of flesh
and bones, foreshadowed that physical resurrection in
which all men will one day participate, and released
man from the power of death, and also liberated them
from the domain of their sins on condition that they
accepted his Gospel and obeyed its precepts. Man at
death, for a season, loses his earth body, but still lives
as a conscious entity, a spirit, in a world beyond, wait
ing till at the resurrection his body shall be restored
to him, and, like the risen Jesus, he shall be clad with
immortal flesh and bones. He then becomes an angel,
or "a living soul" as the Mormon elder in the burial
service phrases it. Some far off day, if he but labor
earnestly and patiently, an indefinitely long journey
towards knowledge will bring him at last to Godhead:
for God is a "perfected man" — "he once was what man
now is, and what God now is man may become,"

*4
Three different resurrections in the course of human
history are revealed. One was on the first Easter,
when many good people from Adam to John the Bap
tist were raised. The second was to take place very
soon and was to bring in the millenium. All those who
had received the Gospel since the first resurrection
would rise and would live on a glorified earth, wherein
should be no priestcraft, nor tyranny, no war, nor sin,
no sorrow, nor death, but only beauty and joy and
truth and righteousness, the heathens and Gentiles
being privileged to serve the Saints as hewers of wood
and drawers of water, and all looking to one Holy City
as their capital, to one Temple as their centre of worship,
to one King as their dear Saviour and Lord, until the
third and final Resurrection when all mankind should
pass on to the spiritual spheres, each gaining the exact
reward for his conduct and belief on earth.
The world beyond is divided into four parts. One is
Hell. Here dwell the devil and his angels together with
murderers and apostates (for murder and apostasy
are the two sins against the Holy Ghost which have
never forgiveness.) The other three are spheres of
different degrees of bliss, the first called telestial, the
second terrestial and the last and highest celestial.
These spheres are similar to the earth and the life
lived there is similar to earth life in all its relations save
that all things are intensified and sublimated. The
Saints may remain single in heaven, or marry one wife,
or, if they elect, enjoy there the pleasures of polygamy
and rear in godlike joy and power an ever increasing
family of spirits, who in their turn will need new worlds
wherein they may take on bodies of flesh and bone.

*5
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints
is," said Smith, "the only true and living church in
existence. All other religions are wrong, all other
religious bodies are corrupt." The Gospel was taken
from the earth in the third or fourth century and only
restored through himself. None but the duly accred
ited officers of the Mormon church has any authority
to perform any divine ordinance; and the reception
of these rites and acceptance of the teachings of Smith
is necessary, if not to escape damnation, as was usually
taught, at least to attain any high reward in the worlds
beyond.
The first three principles of the Gospel are faith in
Jesus Christ, repentance, and baptism. Baptism is
for the remission of sins. If a member has fallen into
disobedience or apostasy, it is usual, should he repent
and reform, to re-baptize him. The ceremony is per
formed by immersion. No child is competent to
receive the rite before the age of eight years, but infants
are taken in the arms of elders, blessed, named and
"dedicated to the Lord." There are two other kinds
of baptism, one performed by the laying on of hands
for the reception of the Holy Ghost, the other a vicarious
baptism for the dead. As the ceremony of immersion
cleanses the recipient from sin, so the laying on of
hands imparts to the forgiven soul something of the
strength of God and enables him to walk with the
Spirit on the road towards divinity. Baptism for the
dead is an ordinance whereby those who have died
without a knowledge of the true faith may be lifted to
Paradise by the love of their friends and relatives
among the Saints.

The attitude taken up by Joseph Smith in this doc
trine of the church seems to have been one of direct
and bitter condemnation of Christendom; that adopted
by his followers certainly has been such. The very
first revelation published by the prophet as coming
from the lips of Jesus Christ was not constructive, bur
destructive; was not aimed at the pagan religions to
the pagan world, not against agnosticism or "infidelity,"
but against the Christian bodies and at Christian people.
And it became early a peculiar mark of Mormonism,
that its proselytizing energies — like its denuncia
tions — were directed and centred upon the apostate
Christians — the Roman Catholics first and the Protes
tant societies in the second place — rather than upon
the ignorant heathen. Herein lies the basic reason
for the inveterate hostility between Mormonism and
historic Christianity. Even today little or nothing is
done towards the conversion of the non-Christian
peoples save for missions in the islands of the Southern
Pacific and in Japan.
The first conference of Mormons was held at Fayette,
N. Y., in June, 1830, with some thirty members present.
During the winter, the adherents moved to Ohio, where
by the spring the membership had increased to one
thousand souls. For one reason or another the Mormons
proved unpopular neighbors, and kept moving from
one locality to another. In 1839, they purchased some
land in Illinois on the bank of the Mississippi, and
settled the town of Nauvoo, under a special charter
which gave them independent local government. The
population was about three thousand in 1841, and was
estimated at fourteen thousand three years later. Here

»7
Joseph Smith reached the zenith of his adventurous
career. He was not only the autocrat of the commu
nity in all religious matters, but he held control in
secular affairs as well, and being able to deliver a solid
Mormon vote, his influence extended into the politics
of the State. His ambitions, however, were boundless,
and by this time his conceit had swelled to egomania,
and his mind was at times deranged. In 1844, he
entered himself as candidate for the Presidency of the
United States, and sent east some two thousand mis
sionaries to canvass in his interest. His own estimate
of his ability and his position in the universe he recorded
in November, 1843, thus:
"I know more than all the world put together.

"I combat the error of ages; I meet the violence
of mobs ... I cut the Gordian knot of powers,
and I solve mathematical problems of universities
with truth, diamond truth, and God is my right-
hand man."
But on June 27th, 1844 he was murdered by a mob
composed chiefly, it seems, of ex-Mormons.

CHAPTER II.

THE MORMONS MOVE WEST
BRIGHAM YOUNG
The next President of the "Church of Jesus Christ
of Latterday Saints" was Brigham Young. The
prophet had dreamed of founding an Empire in the Far
West — on the hint of a Jesuit missionary, who had
travelled and lived among the Indians in the Rocky
Mountains — and at this grave crisis in the affairs of
the church, it seemed that the hour for carrying out
this idea was come. Young was a man just fitted for
the task. Shrewd practical sense, indomitable courage
and great force of will, were his leading characteristics.
He loved hard work, and always took his full share.
The present Bishop of Norwich, who met him in Salt
Lake City in later years, (1864) describes his appear
ance thus: "Not at all a bad looking man, of fair
height, stout and broad-shouldered. His face was
rather fleshy, with clear complexion, not pale, but
with no color, square rather narrow forehead, small
clearly cut chin, and cold blue eyes — his manner was
agreeable, but that of a man of powerful will accustomed
to have his own way absolutely. He took all the
conversation to himself; when anyone else was speaking
his attention seemed to fade away. But he was not
uncourteous." (A Bishop in the Rough, pp 117 and
118.) By 1847 the migration westward was determined
on and the plans settled. Early in that year Young
led the first train of Mormon emigrants into the wilder
ness, and after a daring and toilsome journey entered

the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The tired way
farers hailed it on sight as their Land of Promise.
Salt Lake City was promptly laid out in a fine posi
tion, seventeen miles from the Great Lake, and at the
mouth of a canon whence issued a bright mountain
stream, "City Creek." Streets were planned of
generous width, and blocks of forty rods by forty in
size. Each block would thus contain ten acres, and was
to be divided into eight lots, affording eight families
ample room for a vegetable and fruit garden. The
settlement of the surrounding country was undertaken
in a vigorous fashion. As the immigrants came into
the valley, colonies were pushed out into favorable
localities. Brownville, afterwards Ogden, was founded
in the spring of 1848; Provo, in March, 1849. The
territorial legislature in January, 1851, chartered the
cities of Salt Lake, Ogden, Manti and Parowan. The
census for 1850 showed 11,000 inhabitants; three years
later the bishops estimated it at 18,206.
The region at the date of Brigham Young's arrival
belonged to Mexico, and had it remained a distant
province of the Mexican Government the Mormons
might have long enjoyed that political independence
which they so ardently desired. But on July 4th,
1848, it was ceded to the United States of America,
and Young had to modify his ambition. He petitioned
Congress in 1849 that his people should be admitted
to the rights of Statehood; but his petition was refused
and the district was formed into the Territory of Utah.
No district, indeed, could be made into a State unless
it had a population of sixty thousand; and to attain
this qualification, Young set to work with splendid

3»
EMIGRANT TRAIN
energy. The missionary system of the church had
always been admirable, and now greater efforts were
made not only to secure converts to the new gospel,
but to bring them out as rapidly as might be to the
New Zion. Emissaries went to Germany, Italy, Nor
way, and Russia with traveller's tales of the Golden
West, but the British Isles proved by far the most
favorable recruiting ground. In 1840, after three
years of labor (the first missionaries having landed in
1837) the general conference in England reported "in
all 4,019 Saints." In 1851 there were 30,747 in the
United Kingdom, of whom 4,848 were in Wales and
only a few in Ireland, where Mormonism had not been
preached till the previous year. From 1837 to 1851,
it was reported that 50,000 people had been baptized
Mormons in Great Britain, of whom nearly 17,000
migrated to Utah between 1848 and 1851. Only 732
converts left England for Salt Lake in 1852, but the
year following, there were 2,312; 2,458 the next, and
44,425 in 1855. To help travellers on their road,
Young organized in 1849 the Perpetual Emigration
Fund, out of which money for the journey was advanced
to intending emigrants. This Fund did remarkable
service, assisting, in the forty years of its existence,
no fewer than fifty thousand needy converts on the
way to Utah. The organization shipped emigrants
from Liverpool to Salt Lake Valley for a fee that ranged
from £10 to £13 apiece. The packets landed at New
Orleans, and the travellers were there transferred to
steamboats, which took them up the Mississippi to
St. Louis, and thence to Council Bluffs. Here they
were divided into companies of ten, fifty and one hun

dred, every party of ten being given a wagon, two oxen,
two milch cows, and a tent, and every man carrying
a rifle. The journey from New Orleans to the desti
nation took three months. A new and cheaper plan
of travel was devised in 1855 to increase still more the
rate of immigration. Parties were to cross the plains
on foot, pushing their effects in hand-carts before them,
wagons being supplied only for tents, for extra provi
sions, and for those who were too feeble to walk. Thir
teen hundred "hand-cart emigrants" left Liverpool,
and at Iowa City started on their tramp to Salt Lake.
Of the five companies into which they were divided,
four got through safely; the last, starting in July, was
caught by the snow and storms of winter and only
arrived at its goal in November, having suffered intensely
from hunger, cold and exhaustion and having buried
by the road side sixty-seven men, women and infants.
The dismay caused by this disaster put an end at once
to the hand-cart scheme and to this day it is a proud
boast if an old Saint can claim that he, or she, was one
of the "Hand-cart Brigade."
The influx, however, did not slacken. By the next
year there were some 25,000 inhabitants in Utah, and
by 1858 an estimated population of more than forty
thousand. The great majority of these immigrants
into Utah were foreigners or of foreign extraction;
four-fifths of them, it is said, were English. The manager
of the shipping agents for the New Orleans packets
made in 1851 a report on the Mormon emigrants from
Liverpool, in the course of which he described them
as "generally intelligent and well behaved, and many
of them highly respectable;" the means they took

OLDEST HOUSE IN SALT LAKE CITY
to preserve order and cleanliness on board, he said,
were "admirable and worthy of imitation." The same
authority stated that the outgoing Mormons were
"principally farmers and mechanics;" and quoting
from the books of the company, he reported that from
October, 1850, to March, 1851, there had left for Utah,
108 laborers, 25 stone masons, 25 power-loom weavers,
20 engineers, 19 farmers, 19 tailors, 16 miners, 15 shoe
makers, 10 joiners, and lesser numbers of shipwrights,
sawyers, saddlers, nailors, butchers, watchmakers,
etc. (The Mormons; A Contemporary History; Anon;
Office of the National Illustrated Library, London,
1851, pp 250-252.) An analysis of the arrivals in Utah
between 1850-1854 shows that 28 per cent, were labor
ers, 27 per cent, mechanics, 14 per cent, miners, and it
was asserted that all trades were represented among
the elect and all professions save that of the law.
The life to which these immigrants came was a rough
and hard one. Their struggle for existence was bitter,
and under conditions which to them were strange.
The valleys were dry and barren save for unprofitable
sagebrush, so that no crops could be grown without
irrigation. In the winter heavy snow fell and the
temperature dropped below zero. Hostile Indians
infested the neighborhood. Fellowship in difficulty
and danger drew the people together, and they learned
to revere their autocratic President, who was always
ready to face an emergency with sense and courage
and whose strong optimism and cheery good humor
forbade despondency.
In a pioneer period such as this, the niceties of legal
procedure could not be observed, and justice was rough

and ready. Such discipline as existed lay in the hands
of Young and his lieutenants; and though his ideas
of right and wrong were not those of the New Testa
ment, he kept a certain kind of order with vigor and
resolution.
He was aided in this not easy task by two executive
committees. Both of these were secret; one was
respectable, the other was not. The former of the
two was called "The Kingdom of God," or the "Council
of Fifty." It was founded for the purely secular
purposes of controlling the politics of the State. It met
in the strictest privacy, and so well has its existence
been concealed that today, though it has been defunct
for many years, only a handful of older Mormons know
of its name or its work. The other of the two socie
ties was the "Danites," dubbed "Brigham's Destroy
ing Angels." The members of this band, which had
been instituted by the prophet, swore to obey him and
the first Presidency of the church "in all things the
same as supreme God" and to uphold them "right or
wrong." Young and others of the leaders did not
hesitate to threaten openly with death schismatics
and other persons obnoxious to the hierarchy and the
dark and cruel fate of many such proves that these
menaces were not idle ones. As a disciplinary measure,
there was introduced at this period the doctrine of
Blood Atonement. According to this, certain sins
(especially it is said that of adultery) could only be
expiated by the shedding of the wrong doer's blood,
and those who felt themselves guilty of such mortal
sin were advised to confess and ask that their life should
be taken. A few, but not many persons, were sacri

ficed under this doctrine. More notorious was the
system of polygamy, which was first openly taught
and adopted in these days. This barbarous institu
tion is significant of the ideal of womanhood entertained
by the Mormon leaders and of the position that women
held at the time in Utah. It is said not to have been
ever practised by more than six per cent, of the men;
but it brought misery into many homes and many
women's hearts, and drew in its train the penalty that
Christendom was horrified, and that the name Mor-
monism became, and long continued to the world at
large, a synonym for polygamy and loose living.
These sensational parts of Mormonism naturally
drew the attention of spectators. Tales of Young's
rule are usually tales of blood and tears, 'and the custom
of non-Mormon writers and gossips is to depict the
religion of Young's days as a hell-broth of polygamy
and blasphemy, issuing in adultery, mutilation, and
murder. But such stories give a distorted presenta
tion of the general condition of the people. Doctrines,
it is plain, were preached and practised which will
forever stain the memory of the Mormon faith; and
the hierarchs did many things which not even the
rudeness of the pioneer life can in any measure justify.
But these wild and wicked acts were planned and per
petrated by only a small section of society. The
general impression made upon observers of the Mormons
in Salt Lake City at this time was most favorable.
• Bishop Tuttle, in 1867, wrote, "There seems to be less
profanity, rowdyism, rampant and noisy wickedness
among the young Mormons than among the youth of
any other town or city where I've been. Drunken

ness is a crime almost unknown among them." (Rem
iniscences p 110.) And the present Bishop of Norwich
passing through Salt Lake three years earlier formed
the same opinion. "Their order, apparent morality —
setting aside for the moment the question of polygamy
— and sobriety are certainly remarkable. Never have
I seen a community outwardly so peaceable, orderly
and well conducted. There are no saloons, no grog
shops, no billiard tables and only one hotel in a popu
lation of 16,000 people. The streets are always quiet.
The men move about on their business; the women do
their shopping and marketing. In the evening all
return to their homes, and by soon after ten o'clock,
theatre and ball nights excepted, the town is wrapped
in slumber." (A Bishop in the Rough, p 112.)
The rank and file of the body was composed of honest
and decent people, upright in their conduct and sincere
in their belief. Immigrants from the lower classes of
European nations, and therefore unaccustomed to
political freedom, they found submission to the hie
rarchy natural. They feared Young and honoured God:
and were content to live out their simple lives in labor
and obedience and obscurity.
For some years the Mormons enjoyed isolation,
and managed to maintain a virtual autonomy. In
assertion of their independence, they even went to war
with the Federal Government. But their seclusion
did not last for long. Fate seemed against them.
The cession of the district to the States in 1848 was
followed in 1849 by the discovery of gold in California.
Many eyes were now turned westward and a steady
stream of fortune-seekers began to flow across the

continent. Gentile civilization crept over the plains
nearer and nearer and "sectarians" soon began to
settle in Zion itself and the adjoining country. When, in
1 867, our Church started work in Utah, there were in the
Territory three hundred United States soldiers at the
two army posts, Camp Douglas and Fort Bridger,
two hundred "Gentiles" in the service of the Stage
Company, and some five hundred more in Salt Lake
City and the rest of the Territory, making in all a non-
Mormon population of a thousand souls.

CHAPTER III.

MODERN MORMONISM
19 0 9
GREAT MORMON TEMPLE, SALT LAKE CITY
Three and forty years have passed since Bishop
Tuttle drove in the stage coach into Salt Lake City.
During that time, the forces of civilization and the
energies of many Christian societies have been at
work; and the whole economic and religious position
has been changed. Wastes have blossomed into or
chards, villages have grown into cities, the mines have
given wealth where before was simple comfort; the
railroad has made travel easy and brought Salt Lake
within three days of New York. Politically, the
"Mormon church" is no longer the unquestioned
dictator of the State, and in the Capital "the Gentiles"
hold control. The hierarchy no longer lord it over
the rank and file as they did a generation ago, and a
spirit of democracy begins to pervade its members.
The religion too, of the "Latterday Saints" is altered
for the better; and the more discreditable elements
of Mormon ecclesiasticism have disappeared.
At the present hour, nothing is more remarkable to
the observer of .the Mormonism in Utah than the
cohesiveness of its votaries. Joseph Smith aimed to
make the Saints a people apart, and he succeeded.
He called his converts to leave their homes and come
to him along with all their possessions, thus giving a
local unity to his church. He made himself the Saints'
religious autocrat, whose verdict was the final expres
sion of absolute truth, thus securing ecclesiastical and
religious uniformity. He directed his followers in

their temporal concerns too, and labored not without
success to make himself leader and despot in all the
affairs of life, big and small, financial and military and
civic. The separation of the Saints in early days
was also promoted in a way effective as unexpected
by the unpopularity they aroused wherever they went;
and when they emigrated across the continent, openly
practised polygamy and even went to war with the
Federal Government, they showed how complete an
independence they wanted and how eagerly they
wanted it. Even today their sentiment of exclusive-
ness is strong. The Saint still feels that he is an Ishmae-
lite and regards the Gentile as an outsider. His mental
attitude shows a strange mixture of fear and suspicion
with superiority and contempt. He is hyper-sensitive
to adverse criticism, elated by any faint praise and
delights to seek and print in his church organ, The
Deseret News, any appreciative notice of his church
that the most obscure newspaper contains. Yet he
proclaims that his faith is the faith of the future, which
will one day fight and vanquish the Roman Catholic
Church in the battle for the ecclesiastical control of
the whole world.
The outward expression of the zealous party spirit
and cohesion of the Saints is seen in their organization.
It may be said that it is perfect. No way to improve
it is to be descried. The more one studies it, the more
one discovers to admire.
There are two orders of priesthood in the Mormon
church; the Aaronic or lesser, believed to have been
conferred on Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in
1829 by John the Baptist, and the Melchizedek, which

they say was conferred on Joseph Smith by Peter,
James and John shortly afterwards. (Doctrines and
Covenants, No. 107.) In the former order are four
primary offices, Bishop, Priest, Teacher and Deacon;
in the latter four also, High Priest, Apostle, Seventy
and Elder. Boys not yet in their teens are appointed
deacons, so that the "officers of the church" form a
considerable proportion of the entire membership.
The church is governed by a President with whom
are associated two counsellors . Next in authority stand the
Twelve Apostles, whose "calling is to build up the church
in all nations." The Seventies are organized into various
councils known as quorums, and constitute the main mis
sionary corps of the church . There are in all a hundred and
sixty of these quorums. Elders are organized in quorums
of ninety-six members, priests in quorums of forty-
eight, teachers of twenty-four, deacons of twelve;
each quorum has a president and two counsellors.
As we divide a country into dioceses and parishes,
the Mormons divide it into stakes and wards. The
stakes number fifty-seven in all and each is sub-divided
into wards; if a locality is not well enough developed
to be organized as a ward, it is known as a branch,
presided over by an elder or priest. In missionary
districts, at home and abroad, Conferences and Mis
sions are organized, of which there now exist twenty-
one, six of these being in the United States. The
government of the stake is modelled on that of the
whole "church." At its head is a quorum of three
High Priests (a President and two Counsellors) who
have legislative, judicial and executive authority.
Under this body is the council of twelve High Priests,

whose powers are judicial. All the High Priests of a
stake are organized into a committee, from which are
selected the men appointed to the higher offices of the
stake and the Bishopric of wards. Other officers are
the Stake Clerk, the Clerk of the High Council, Clerk
of the High Priests' Quorum and Tithing Clerk. It
is a peculiarity of the Mormon system that every
meeting, whether for prayer, for business, for study,
or for any other purpose, has its Secretary or Clerk, and
is fully recorded in minutes. The ward, like the stake,
is governed by a presidency of three High Priests, a
President and two Counsellors. The President always
holds the office of Bishopric and is commonly called
Bishop. A ward may comprise as many as ten or
fifteen hundred people.
Two. general conferences of the entire church are held
in Salt Lake City yearly, one in April, the other in
October. At these the general authorities of the church
are voted for by the people and public business is
attended to; the popular vote, however, is purely
formal, since they always do what their leaders bid.
Each stake has a quarterly conference, each ward an
annual one.
The missions are located in practically all parts of
the world, and each is directed by a President on the
spot. Thus the church is represented by active mis
sionaries in Australia and England, in Hawaii and
Mexico, in Japan, New Zealand and the Netherlands,
in Samoa and Denmark (the Scandinavian mission)
in South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the Society
Islands and Sweden.

Besides these main organizations are others, which
fall into two classes. First, boards of education and
church schools, and secondly, auxiliary organizations.
The general "Board of Education" was created in 1888.
Its object is to establish and maintain a system of
Mormon Schools in which Mormonism shall be taught
in addition to the ordinary secular subjects. It meets
monthly, itself elects its own numbers and appoints
a General Superintendent, who exercises a close super
vision over all the Mormon schools. Under the General
Board work the Stake Boards, each of which consists
of the President of the Stake, with his two Counsellors,
and two, three, or four others appointed by him. Every
Bishop acts as the Board for his ward. The organiza
tion of these schools was effected in 1875. It includes
universities and colleges, state academies and semina
ries. There are now nineteen of these in all, nine in
Utah, four in Idaho, three in Arizona, three in Mexico.
The auxiliary organizations are six in number, the
Relief Society, the Sunday School, the Young Men's
Mutual Improvement Association, the Young Ladies'
Mutual Improvement Association, the Primary Asso
ciation, and the Religion Class. The form of govern
ment in all of these bodies is, as usual in the Mormon
system, threefold, and they are subordinate to the main
authorities of "the church," the stake and the ward.
Nominations to the central and supreme Board are
made by the First Presidency; nominations to the
Stake Board by the Stake Presidency; and to the
Ward Board by the Bishop. Thus in these instances
as in others the appointment of officers is kept in the
hands of the constituted authorities, and the people

are called upon for a merely formal ratification of
decisions already made.
The Relief Society is for the succor of the poor and
distressed. It was founded on St. Patrick's Day, 1842,
the first President being Emma Smith, wife of the
prophet. In its long history, this society has accom
plished a great deal of good.
"The Deseret Sunday School Union" dates from
June, 1872. It is governed by a Board of twenty-six
members, whose duties are the supervision of the Mor
mon Sunday Schools the world over. It plans courses
of study for class work, formulates rules and methods
by which these courses are worked out, introduces
and applies principles of pedagogy in the schools,
publishes books, maps, and charts, compiles statistics
and holds general and district conventions. The
Juvenile Instructor is the official organ of the Union.
The stake and ward have Sunday School organizations
of their own, with many officials. The ward Sunday
School meets in the morning from ten o'clock till
eleventhirty or eleven forty-five. There are classes for all
ages from the young children up to the parents. The
session takes the place of our morning service. It
opens with prayer, after which follows their sacrament,
at which all partake of bread and water (wine is never
used) including the children; then follows singing,
the lesson period and the closing exercises. The parents'
class makes a study of secular and practical topics,
such as house decoration, or the care of children, dis
cussing these matters freely in an informal way. The
detail with which a record of these meetings is kept is
peculiar. Not only the number of those in attendance

I'

MORMON TEMPLE, LOGAN
each Sunday, and such facts, are noted, but also the
proportion of those who drink no tea or coffee, who use
no tobacco, and who pay their tithing in full. Any
teacher who is absent is required to send a letter of
excuse and this is read aloud before the whole Sunday
School. There is an annual meeting at which a sum
mary of the minutes for the year is given. The attend
ance at these Sunday School sessions is excellent.
The young men and the young women both have
"Mutual Improvement Associations." The purpose
of these is generally the study of theology, literature,
history and kindred subjects. These societies meet
once each week in the evening, and no branch of Mormon
work creates among the young more eager interest.
The organization follows the usual plan of a central
controlling body, working through Stake and Ward
Boards.
The Primary Associations are conducted by women
with the object of educating the children in morality
and religion and encouraging industrial occupation as
an offset to idleness and street loafing. Children of
both sexes from four to fourteen are cared for. The
organization is, as usual, . threefold, and the ward or
local officers keep in close touch with all the children
of their districts, not only busying themselves with the
religious welfare of the children, but with planning and
directing their recreation, dances, pastimes and parties
galore. The enrollment of children is about 50,000.
The last of the subsidiary organizations is the "Reli
gion Class." The object of this institution is to sup
plement the work of the Sunday Schools for those who
do not attend the Mormon schools. The disproportion

of giving two hours a week to the study of religion and
thirty to that of the three R's struck "the Latterday
Saints" as an evil which must be remedied; and the
"Religion Classes," started in 1890, are the remedy.
"The practical training of the children in personal
duties and requirements of the gospel, as testimony-
bearing, prayer, the committing to memory of important
passages of scripture, learning sacred songs and hymns,
drawing lessons from real life as found in biography,
becoming acquainted with forms and ordinances of the
church, as well as government" are given as the leading
functions of these classes.
The missionary system, of which we have spoken in
passing, is another branch, and one of the most remark
able, of the Mormon work. Over fifteen hundred
missionaries are always in the field, and each worker
is kept out for two years, or, if he has to learn the
language of the foreign country he is labouring in, for
three years. The smallest details of all phases of this
work are carefully planned and zealously executed.
In the matter of emigration, for example, the Mormon
Foreign office acts as shipping agent for any party of
converts leaving England for Utah. Labels written
out, and printed directions as to taking ship, are sent
to the emigrants. When the party arrives at the port,
they are taken in charge and conducted thence to their
destination by a returning elder, just like so many
Cook's tourists. One of the special directions is that
all Mormon travellers must be cheerful and uncomplain
ing, bearing the inconveniences of the journey with
composure, and if redress be ever necessary appealing
to none but the elder in charge; it is further advised

that in whatever particulars they may be economical,
they are not to grudge tips. The reason is given that
they have a reputation to maintain, and that more
Mormons will be following after them. At all the chief
stations across the continent, the party is met by Mor
mon elders, who offer them courtesy and give them
any needed assistance, as, for example, by taking care
of them if they miss connections, and providing them
with free lodging in the homes of the Mormons of the
town.
Thus by this great scheme of organization, which
keeps nearly every member busy, the Mormons are
bound and held together. The community is further
compacted by its being centered in Utah, and there
constituting a body far larger than any other organized
body, and by the Mormon sentiment that they exclude
and are excluded by the "sectarians." Nor must it be
forgotten that the elect of "the Mormon church" are
members of a secret fraternity. Any Saint recom
mended by the Bishop of his ward can be admitted to
the privileges of the Temple, but no other person what
soever. The neophyte "going through the Temple"
witnesses a drama in which a "modern parson," Elohim,
the Devil, Adam and Eve, Peter, James and John,
take part, is invested with certain mystic signs, words
and grips, and swears various oaths of secrecy. The
ceremonies of the Temple are still regarded by the
impregnably orthodox and by the bucolic with respect
and awe.
By reason of this compactness, the task of drawing
away Mormons from their faith to a better one is dif
ficult. But though the number of converts from

5'
Mormonism is not large, the way in which Mormonism
itself has been developed is remarkable and portentous.
The Mormon Church, it is true, still hankers after earthly
dominion. It is the only religious society in America,
except the Roman Catholic, which maintains a lobby
at Washington. But it no longer holds the dictator
ship of all things temporal and spiritual as it once did
in Utah. The presence of large numbers of "Gentiles"
has modified its power in the State and ended its control
of Salt Lake City; and among its own members a new
spirit of independence is budding and bearing fruit in
spite of the cold and bitter displeasure of the hierarchs.
This sudden and startling appearance of a demand
for freedom of thought and conscience is the hope of
the religious future of the Mormons. At one time,
this organization threatened to become a close, ambi
tious, oligarchy, carefully organized and armed with
fanaticism. But history proves that religious despo
tism can only be maintained by a successful appeal to
superstition and fear. It is for this reason that a
hierarchy like that of the Roman Catholic Church has
always aimed at impressing so terrible a sense of its
own omnipotence and infallibility on the sensitive and
malleable minds of young children that they will never
have sufficient courage to defy it. But there was
always a strong strain of Protestantism among the
Mormons. They wished and tried to have the exclu
sive education of their own youth, and to impress them
indelibly with dogmas, but they did not make such
indoctrination a cardinal and essential part of their
system. Till recently the Mormons neglected educa
tion. Their schools in Utah in the early days were poor,
STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, LOGAN
few and miserably attended. In 1867, Salt Lake City
had nearly 20,000 inhabitants, but not a single book
store. St. Mark's School was patronized by Mormons
because of its comparative excellence, and though
the authorities opposed this, they did not imperatively
prohibit it. The system of parochial schools was not
instituted until 1875, and even then it was only in self-
defence that this step was taken against the aggres
siveness of the mission schools of the inflowing denomi
nations.
"The Enabling Act of 1890" by which Utah was
admitted as a State into the Union, contained an irre
vocable ordinance that provision should be made for
the establishment and maintenance of a system of
public schools, which should forever be open to all
children of the State and be free from sectarian control.
No other State, it is said, has in its constitution a clause
which so effectually safeguards the public schools from
ecclesiastical interference. But the Mormon church
did not contentedly keep its pledge. The religion
classes were started at the semi-annual conference in
1890. Under the supervision and care of the General
Board of Education, these classes were taught Mormon-
ism until December 6th, 1904, in the public schools.
It was admitted by the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction in the Smoot investigation (Sen. Com. Vol.
II, pp. 370-373) that among the six hundred and six
public schools of the State, there were three hundred
and thirty-six religion classes, that usually the sessions
of these followed those of the regular school and that
more frequently than not, they had the same teachers.
But at the end of 1904, School Superintendent and

School Boards were notified that such classes violated
the spirit of the Constitution and Statutes, and from
that time on the public schools have been free from
sectarianism.
The Mormons, coming from the lower strata of the
population, have been on the whole an unlearned and
unthinking people, and therefore credulous. But there
is plenty of evidence that their young men have been
touched by the modern spirit of inquiry and are begin
ning to think for themselves and to demand liberty
to do so. Intercourse with Gentiles, enterprising and
independent men, owing soul-and-body service to no
man, has naturally encouraged this trend, and will
increasingly continue to do so. The old European
idea of serfdom, in which so many Mormons were
reared before they immigrated from the old countries
to Deseret, has been discarded and the American ideals
of a common manhood absorbed. And the widening
effect of foreign travel on the young men and women
sent out as missionaries is not to be overlooked. For
almost one thousand of these are despatched each year,
and all, before they return, have gained a new under
standing of the great world and its spiritual and intel
lectual activities. Thus the missionary enterprise of
the organization, while it brings many converts to
Mormonism, also draws Mormonism nearer the his
toric standards of Christianity.
The difference between the Mormonism of '47 and
that of today is great and obvious. "Blood Atone
ment" is gone; polygamy, though still taught by the
authorities as the right state of man, is shunned by
the young generation and is entered into now rarely and

furtively. The Saints are turning from the "Book of
Mormon" to the Bible, from the Old Testament to the
New Testament; their views are broadening, their
desire for material power is becoming less dominant.
Yet this process of revolution is far from having reached
its limits. Mormonism has much to learn yet. The
Mormon religion, uplifted as it has been, is still an
unspiritual and unreasonable system.
The theology propounded by the prophet is stained
and saturated with a gross materialism, and this trait
remains a controlling one of Mormonism to the present
time. Some attempts have been made within the
organization to spiritualize his doctrine, but have met
with official and popular disfavor; for it is the special
pride of the Mormons that they take these teachings
and those of the Bible in the most literal sense, and today
as of old, proof texts are the magic weapons in the Latter-
day Saints' armoury. There prevails throughout the
system a lack of idealism and of appeal to the more
lofty, delicate, and divine elements in man's nature.
Such virtues as honesty, neighborliness, church loyalty,
industry are common; far more common indeed than
the Gentile world acknowledges; but the higher reli
gious virtues and graces are yet wanting. The Mormon
has no reverence, or even respect, for places. His
behavior at his services is more than free and easy,
and no outward signs of a sense of worship are to be
discerned. The children run about, the people talk
in whispers, sometimes a man will read his paper. It
seems that the only person who ever kneels in meeting
house or tabernacle is the elder as he blesses the ele
ments, bread and water, at their "Lord's Supper."

Dances are held in the ward meeting houses, at which
the conventions are not strictly observed; in some of
the less central meeting houses, their dances are such
that only Dickens in his breeziest mood could do justice
to them. The Mormon is on familiar terms with the
Deity, and, regarding himself as a younger brother of
the Almighty specially favored, he is tempted to self-
complacency and arrogance. He is, in fact, supremely
well satisfied with himself and all that is his. The
less education he has, the more confident he feels that
what he does not know of religion is not knowledge.
While he fears the Gentile, he looks down upon him;
and is taught to condemn the poor negroes as an ac
cursed race, who must not be admitted to any eccle
siastical office. A sense of the infinity of the Divine,
of the power of prayer, the rapture of adoration and the
awful and unspeakable sublimity of the Unseen and the
Eternal, these and all such experiences find no expres
sion in this latter day religion. A Mormon mystic
would seem a contradiction in terms.
Nor is Mormonism much more reasonable than it
is spiritual. The converts to the faith have been
drawn from the illiterate grades of society, and in the
rough rural life of the west they have had little oppor
tunity or time — even if they had the taste — for
acquiring knowledge; and their religion fits their
mental condition. There prevails general ignorance

of the most common facts of Church history and Biblical
scholarship; few indeed of their numerous theologians
know anything of ancient or modern theology — one
of them, for instance, holding a high position as eccle-
siast and educator, expressed himself the other day as
amazed and incredulous when told that the New Testa
ment was written in Greek.

CHAPTER IV.

OUR CHURCH AT WORK
1867— 1910

1. Under Bishop Tuttle
2. Under Bishop Leonard
3. Under Bishop Spalding
BISHOP TUTTLE
I. Bishop Tuttle's Administration
When the representatives of our Church came to
Utah in 1867, they had the field to themselves. In
Salt Lake City, a Roman priest had bought ground for
a future church and an army chaplain had preached
in a hired room, but no church body was, or had been,
at work in the Territory. There was a handful of non-
Mormons in the town, who were pleased to have non-
Mormon services, and a Union Sunday School some
fifty pupils strong.
The primary duty of Bishop Tuttle was obviously
to proclaim among the schismatics the Historic Gospel.
There was a question, however, as to the manner in
which that Gospel should be presented. He chose
(not without opposition from the fiercer anti-Mormons)
to preach its upbuilding truths and to steer away from
polemics and denunciation. He spoke little, if at all,
of the errors which were in existence around him;
but sought to deserve and win the unwilling respect
of the Mormons and to show them, both in life and
doctrine, a higher truth than they yet knew. If they
could see that, they would themselves anathematise
their old mistakes; and if they could not, his anathemas
would merely rouse their resentment.
The principle involved in this policy has been con
sistently followed by our Church in Utah ever since.
To indulge in satire and invective is easy and tempting,
and at times would seem expedient. But the Church

has been wise and considerate enough to avoid such
methods entirely. It has realized that what appear
to ourselves absurdities, or worse, are to the sincere
Latterday Saint inextricably bound up with his most
revered convictions. "The Pearl of Great Price"
is as precious to his soul as the Gospel of St. John to
ours, and polygamy was taught by one whom he
believes was the inspired confidant of God and Jesus
Christ. The task of enlightenment, therefore, is a
delicate and difficult one; and it cannot be done with
a club. The true and successful missionary must be
a friend and a teacher of the good in the spirit of fellow
ship; not a superior being standing on a pedestal and
denouncing evil. It is for such reasons as these that
the Church has avoided taking the negative side in a
debate on the value of Mormonism; and has strictly
confined herself to a promulgation of the constructive
elements in the historic Faith.
But Bishop Tuttle started other than evangelical
work. The Latterday Saints showed little interest in
education. They called their houses of worship,
school houses and kept day-schools in them; but these
were entirely under the control of the ecclesiastical
authorities, and payment of tuition was exacted. They
were, too, of a very elementary character. There was
not a single bookstore in the whole Territory. At the
request of the local "Gentiles," our missionaries started
a school almost as soon as they reached Salt Lake City.
Its success was great, and as opportunity offered,
other schools were established in various parts of the
country.

6a
ST. MARK'S CATHEDRAL, SALT LAKE CITY
A third line of activity was represented by the found
ing of St. Mark's Hospital. With the opening of the
mines which followed the completion of the Overland
Railway, accidents requiring surgical care became
more and more frequent. Need of accommodation
for the sick and injured became pressing. To meet
this demand, St. Mark's Hospital was opened under
the auspices of the Church on April 30, 1872, in a rented,
two-roomed adobe building. The work was supported
by subscriptions from several large mining companies
in the Territory, with a monthly fee of $1.00 from the
men in their employ and by subscriptions from some
business men in the city. Bishop Tuttle also advanced
money from his trust funds and loans were made by
friends. From the first, current expenses were met
by the income. For four years the work of the hospital
was carried on in these humble quarters. Then a
large lot with a good brick building was purchased at
a cost of $4,500, $2,700 of which was raised in Salt
Lake. The hospital commended itself to all people
whatever their beliefs. The sick poor were sent by the
county authorities, who were all Mormons, and paid
for out of the county revenue.
The first attention of the Church was always given
to her spiritual responsibilities. Her supply of men
and means was small, but she managed to hold services
in many towns, to keep resident priests in several, and
in a few to erect Houses of Worship. The Church
of the Good Samaritan in Corinne, which then was
considered likely to become an important city, was put
up in 1870. This was the first non-Mormon house of
worship built in Utah. In the summer of 1871, St.

Mark's Cathedral, from designs by Upjohn, was so
far completed that services could be held in its base
ment. Three years later, on Ascension Day, the
Cathedral was consecrated in the presence of the Bis
hops of Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska and ten clergy
men. In 1875, the Church of the Good Shepherd was
built in Ogden, and in 1880, Salt Lake City was pro
vided with a second place of worship, St. Paul's Chapel.
Later, other churches were erected in Eureka and Park
City, mining camps, and in Logan, a beautiful town
in the north of the Territory. After the withdrawal
of Bishop Tuttle from Utah to be Bishop of Missouri,
the congregation of St. Paul's organized themselves
as an independent parish, and two more chapels were
built in the city, St. Peter's and St. John's.
It -is a principal duty of a western Bishop to be a
circuit rider, and the more considerable settlements
in the State were visited by the Bishop. When oppor
tunity offered, a priest would hold services in such
places from time to time, or lay services would be
regularly carried on; and when practicable, a resident
minister would be appointed. In this respect our
policy is different from that of the Roman Catholic
Church, which has concentrated its efforts in the capital,
does no missionary work in the outlying towns and but
little for their own scattered communicants. The
Protestant denominations have pursued a policy similar
to ours, and have many ministers at work throughout
the State.
Only in two towns outside Salt Lake City, were
resident clergymen maintained, in Ogden and in Logan.
Mr. Gillogly undertook regular work in Ogden in July,

ST. PAUL'S, SALT LAKE CITY
1870, holding services first in a freight car, next in the
passenger room of the railway station, and then in an
old saloon. The Rev. W. H. Stoy went to live in Logan
in 1873. Occasional services, however, were held
wherever possible, in Corinne, Plain City, Layton, and
later in Bingham Canon, Park City and Eureka, in
Provo (1892) and in Springville. One of Bishop Leo
nard's most successful enterprises was St. Paul's Asso
ciate Mission, organized with headquarters in Salt
Lake, under the direction of Rev. J. W. Crook and
later by the Rev. Ellis Bishop. The clergymen of the
Mission lived in St. Paul's Rectory, there were daily
celebrations of the Holy Communion, and daily Morn
ing and Evening Prayer were said. Two clergymen
and sometimes a lay reader went from the Mission to
towns outside for services, caring for seven or eight
missions at once. This plan proved to be one of the most
effective and economical missionary agencies, and has
lately been adopted by Bishop Spalding.
Education was a part of the Church's programme
for which she showed a concern second only to her
interest in religion. St. John's School was started in
Logan in 1873; St. Paul's School, in Plain City, at the
same time; Ogden and Layton had schools, too, and
for a time, some school work was done in Corinne, and
also in Springville. The population of the Territory,
however, and of the State, too, till very recently, was
concentrated almost entirely in Salt Lake City, and
here the Church found the greatest encouragement
and did the bulk of her educational work. She had
three schools here, St. Mark's Grammar School, a day-
school for boys and girls; St. Mark's school for girls,

6S
also a day-school; Rowland Hall, a boarding and day-
school for girls. The grammar school had four houses,
first, an old bowling alley on Main Street, second, two
old stores opposite the alley on Main Street; third,
Independence Hall; fourth, its own building opposite
City Hall, first occupied in 1873. The day-school for
girls was housed in the Sunday School room of St.
Mark's Cathedral. This was entirely a self-supporting
school. It eventually became merged in Rowland
Hall, as its primary department. The lot and building
for Rowland Hall were given in memory of Benjamin
Rowland of Philadelphia, by his wife and daughter;
the boarding school of Rowland Hall was opened in
1881.

II. The Church under Bishop Leonard
The .years 1889 and 1890 brought great changes in
conditions in Utah. The Mormon party was defeated
at the polls in February, and the Gentiles took pos
session of the city government, the Senior Warden of
St. Mark's Cathedral becoming the first non-Mormon
Mayor of Salt Lake. Soon after, the County also
passed from the control of the Mormons and great
improvements followed. The population rapidly in
creased. Salt Lake more than doubled its population
in ten years, and the gain was especially marked among
the Gentiles. The number of communicants in Utah
now reached 500.
During the next year, the Mormon leaders pronounced
in favor of division among the people on national
lines in politics — not officially, but giving the influence

ST. MARY'S CHURCH, PROVO, UTAH
of their names to the movement. With the rise of the
American Party in ^Salt Lake and the election of a
school board, and the consequent Gentile control of
the public schools, the attendance at St. Mark's School
decreased steadily, and after twenty-five years of
useful service, the school was closed. Rowland Hall,
however, continued to grow in numbers. In this same
year, the capacity of the building was increased by a
small brick addition of one storey, which was used as a
main school room. There were few conveniences in
the building. It was lighted by coal oil lamps and
heated by nineteen stoves. However the faculty was
strong, the instruction of a high order, and the influence
good. A three storey building, erected in 1892 was
enlarged in 1898 by a gift from the Woman's Auxiliary
in New York, and the west building remodeled. Thirty-
seven boarders and a total of one hundred and eighty
pupils were present this year. In 1900, a legacy of
$33,364.65 was received for the school. Of this, $8,000
was used for improvements and the remainder invested.
The school was then not quite self-supporting, but
free from debt, and with an endowment of $25,000.
Bishop Leonard at the same time decided to close the
other schools supported by the Church throughout
the State, judging it right and wise that the non-Mor
mons should go to the public schools and not let these
fall wholly into the control of the dominant organiza
tion. The teachers and some of the students in these
schools had been a valuable nucleus for the missionary's
work in their little communities, and the loss of these
proved serious in several cases. But the decision was
certainly best for the good of the State.

St. Mark's Hospital, meantime, was doing the public
good service. By 1886, the disbursements had been
$143,178, less than $1,500 of which had come from the
east. Soon its capacity was increased to twenty-five
beds by the addition of wooden wings, but it quickly
outgrew its new quarters. Large grounds in the north
ern part of the city were purchased and the present
building begun. This was completed in the panic
year, 1893, and the Hospital was moved to its new,
third home, scantily furnished and heavily mortgaged.
From five to six hundred men were being cared for
every year. During the hard times before and after
1893, many of the mines were closed, and the effect
of this was felt in St. Mark's Hospital, which depended
largely upon the monthly dues paid by the miners. •'■ j
A Training School for Nurses was organized the
following year. To make room for patients, the nurses
were moved to a rented house in the neighborhood.
Every bed was occupied and many applicants turned
away. The very rapid increase in the number of
patients soon made necessary the addition of three
wards, and even this did not keep pace with the growth
of the hospital. In 1897, the Hamilton wing was
added. For these improvements, all but $1,000 was
provided in Utah. During 1899 to 1900, 1,361 pa
tients were treated with an average of five charity
cases per day for the year.
In 1861, a company of surveyors was sent from Salt
Lake City to explore the Uintah Basin in Northeastern
Utah. They reported that the land was desolate and
unfit for settlement. Therefore, in 1865, the Govern
ment made a treaty with the larger Indian tribes in

THE RIGHT REV. FRANKLIN S. SPALDING, D. D.
Missionary Bishop of Utah
the northern and eastern portions of Utah, whereby
all the Indians withdrew from other parts of the ter
ritory to this Uintah Basin. Then there were 5,000
Indians. In 1880, 1,200 White River Utes, after a
bloody war, were removed to this Reservation from
Colorado. In 1908, it was accurately known that
not more than 1,500 Indians survived. Until 1897
nothing was done by any Christian missionary for
these Indians. Then Bishop Leonard established our
Mission at Randlett, where a Church, rectory and a
small infirmary were built. In a short time, the work
was extended and St. Elizabeth's Hospital and Mission
was established at Whiterocks.

III. Under Bishop Spalding
The west had filled up rapidly during the Episcopate
of Bishop Leonard, and, as the needs increased while
the supply of men and means did not, the load on the
Bishop's shoulders became more and more burdensome.
The District of Salt Lake (as constituted in 1898)
covered two hundred thousand square miles and com
prised Western Colorado, half of Nevada, and the
south-west corner of Wyoming, as well as Utah. The
work was like work in foreign lands and too expensive
to be carried on with the allotted appropriation. Bishop
Spalding reported in 1905 that the Church gave $1,500
a year for use in Utah, while the Presbyterians were
spending $80,000 and the Methodists (on missionaries'
salaries alone) $16,000.
On Bishop Spalding's arrival in the west, January,
1905, he found in Utah three self-supporting parishes,

the Cathedral of St. Mark, St. Paul's Church, both in
Salt Lake City, and the Church of the Good Shepherd
in Ogden. The energies of the rectors of these parishes
were inevitably occupied in the care of their own people
and they could do but little work for the Mormons.
Occasional services were held at Logan and Plain City,
a Candidate for Holy Orders was at work in Provo,
Springville, and Eureka, and a layman in Layton.
In Salt Lake City, Rowland Hall was exerting a strongly
beneficent influence and St. Mark's Hospital was doing
valuable service to the community, but was in debt
to the amount of $40,000. It was plain that men
and money were imperatively needed. St. Mark's
Hospital, the first hospital to be built not only in Utah,
but in the whole inter-mountain country, was in peril
of having to be closed and sold.
After paying visitations through his District, in the
course of which he travelled 13,935 miles by rail and
1,159 by stage and wagon, the Bishop went east to
beg. He was successful. By January, 1907, the debt
on the Hospital was paid in full. On May 1st, the
Bishop Leonard Memorial Nurses' Home was opened.
The old school building of Rowland Hall, quite inade
quate for the growing school, was torn down and re
placed by a new building at a cost of $51,000, the Brunot
legacy providing $39,000 and $12,000 remaining a
debt. In Park City and Logan work was extended.
That Utah was naturally a distinct Missionary Dis
trict, with problems of its own which needed the skill
of a specialist, had always been evident. Not, until
1907, however, was the General Convention able to
segregate the Mormon State and assign it to one Bishop.

COMMON ROOM, ST. JOHN HOUSE, LOGAN
The Missionary District of Utah was then created and
Bishop Spalding assumed charge. The Church was
then in a position to serve the community with energy
and effect, and the work progressed with comparative
rapidity.
The work still follows its old threefold division, as
established by Bishop Tuttle and continued by Bishop
Leonard. Education is represented by Rowland Hall,
which today is admirably manned and equipped, and
out of debt. Philanthropy is represented by St. Mark's
Hospital, which has been greatly improved at the
price of a debt of $10,000 and now is for the first time
on such a financial basis that it can be supported locally
without external help. The religious work of the
Church now runs along two clearly marked paths;
the first path is that of the organized parish, whose
priest is not specifically a missionary but a rector, and
the second is that of the mission where the priest's
duty is to influence the Mormons as well as be a chap
lain to a handful of Church-folk. The Bishop is Mis
sionary-in-chief. As the number of clergy in Utah
is small, and the District still very large, he has to
spend much of his time going on circuit, and travels
some thousands of miles each year through such places
in the State as are accessible by train or stage.
Acting on the adage that "he who has the youth
has the nation," the Bishop decided to establish and
push missions first in the two college towns of Provo
and Logan. Provo is the seat of the oldest and largest
school and college of the Latterday Saints, called "The
Brigham Young University." (Founded 1876.) Some
1,200 students are in attendance here. Logan, with

7i
the State Agricultural College and the Brigham Young
College, is the most important educational centre in
Utah, with students numbering two thousand. In
the former town a priest and a deaconess are at work,
and a church and rectory have lately been built without
debt. In Logan, there is an Associate Mission of
two priests, a church and Mission House (with reading
room, library, game-room and baths) have been built,
with a small debt on the House; and the college stu
dents' appreciation of the facilities here offered them
is proved by the many hundreds of visits paid the
House during the year. In both places, the mission
aries are on terms of genuine friendship with the Mor
mon people. They are able to draw considerable
congregations of young Latterday Saints to listen to
their message, and those who listen are in the receptive
attitude of mind, and have come not to find fault but
to find help and light.
To these two centres of activity a third has
recently been added. St. Andrew's Associate Mission
has been organized to embrace the large oppor
tunities offered in Salt Lake City and its neighbor
hood. This field has been regularly worked hitherto
by the city missionary alone, Miss Napper; the Bishop,
the Dean, and the Rector of St. Paul's making such
incursions into it as their primary duties permitted.
There are two neat little chapels in the environs of the
city, and a chapel in St. Mark's Hospital, which are
now served by the missionaries; work at Murray has
been revived, and in Tooele and Garfield, two smelting
towns adjacent to Salt Lake, institutional and Church
work has been begun. The two priests of the Mission

7a
ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, LOGAN
are assisted in the increasing duties by a Deaconess.
In Northeastern Utah, in work among the Mormons
and non-Mormons, a priest and a woman worker are ren
dering devoted service. Here the work for the Indians
continues. Besides the Mission Priest, there are four
women workers, one of whom is a medical missionary.
The Church's work, though slight enough and quite
inadequate to the need and opportunity, is now much
stronger than it has ever been. Not since the very
early days, when we still retained the leadership we
won by being first in the field, has the influence of the
Church been so evident as it is today. For this reason,
the matter of policy is more important than in the ^iast,
and the contrast between the line we have taken and
that of other religious bodies is becoming more dis
tinct and striking.
There are in vogue at present three methods of
dealing with the Mormon problem. The first is that
of the Roman Church; the second, that of the evan
gelical denominations; the third, that of ourselves.
The Romanists have contributed little or nothing to
the solution of the difficulty, though by a studied dis
play of their organization's great wealth and worldly
power, aided by an unfailing courtesy of demeanor,
they have fixed the sense of their Church's grandeur
deep in the Mormon imagination. The Protestants
have done splendid service to the State through their
mission schools, and have shown admirable energy and
devotion in the cause of their faith. But their preachers
early adopted and are only slowly changing their mili
tant and derisive attitude towards the Mormons and
Mormonism. They tend to mingle politics with re

ligion. Mormonism, as we all know, is a religion with
a past, and they will not permit that past to be buried.
As the Puritans of New England fastened the Scarlet
Letter to the bosom of the adulteress' gown, so their
descendants -insist on keeping before the world's eyes
those ancient follies and sins of the Mormon organiza
tion, which it would be more wise and charitable to
forget. Their spirit is suggested by the following
quotation from an article by a leading Presbyterian
missionary in Utah, printed in the "Mormon Number"
of the Home Mission Monthly, October, 1908. "In
the mind of every member of a missionary society, the
feeling towards the Mormons and the work in Utah is
probably different from that towards mission work in
any part of the world. For the mountaineer, the
Indian, the Negro, the ignorant Chinese, even the most
degraded of the African races, you feel a kindly pity,
a tender and helpful sympathy for them in their lack
of knowledge or opportunity." The writer is certainly
correct in thus asserting that the feelings of Protestant
missionaries towards Mormons are "probably different"
from pity or sjTnpathy. The Latterday Saints are
made to know that between them and the orthodox
there is a gulf fixed; and the aptest text a preacher
can use for a sermon on them is "Woe unto you!" Such
treatment has embittered the Mormons towards those
of the cloth and tends to perpetuate a sentiment which
is thus expressed in Prof. Nelson's book, "Scientific
Aspects of Mormonism." "Let me disclaim," he says,
"any intention of arraigning ministers of the Gospel
in general, save as they resemble those in Utah. These
latter have declared war on us, and are therefore legiti

mate targets for counter-attack. Unable to agree
among themselves on tenet and doctrine, they have
yet found, deep in their spiritual bosoms, a common
bond of union — hatred of the Mormons."
Whether this attitude be right or wrong is the con
cern of those who adopt it. Everyone must note, how
ever, that it has compromised the evangelical message
which the ultra-Protestant missionaries have brought,
and roused a spirit of hostility and suspicion. The
number of converts made from Mormonism to a Chris
tian Creed by their preachers is small indeed.
Our Church endeavors, as it has always endeavored
in Utah, to confine itself to positive and constructive
effort. It observes that the people are becoming more
liberal, more independent, more intelligent, and that
their faith is modified and developed to suit their growth.
Its policy is to study the nature and causes of this
growth ; and then to work with it, direct it, and accel
erate it. Not to win over stragglers from the Mormon
hosts into its own fold, but radically to uplift the whole
Mormon religion towards Christianity, not only to
convert individual Mormons, but forthright to convert
Mormonism; such is our Church's deliberate and
consistent object.
Much has been done to this end; much more will be
done. We believe that the preaching in Utah of the
Historic Gospel, and of a more reasonable and spiritual
Faith, will put to shame the old Mormonism and compel
further eliminations and further substitutions- "The
Latterday Saints" have an admiration for the good
and the true as well as other men; and if the lives of
our Church people are more clean and kind than those

of the Mormon people, if our ministers are more coura
geous and intelligent than the Mormon ministers, if
our Church has in it more of the idealism and heroism
of Jesus than the Mormon system, if our religion gives
purer light to the soul in its aspirations after the
Divine than does the Mormon religion, then there will
be little need to decry Mormonism, for its eclipse will
be manifest to all seeing eyes and it will stand con
victed and condemned by the minds and consciences
of its own votaries.

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