# The Conversion of Mormonism

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> 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.
>
> — *The Conversion of Mormonism (Used by permission of the curator)*