T. B. H. Stenhouse

“ If anything can tend to encourage the supposition that Joseph Smith was a sincere enthusiast, maddened with religious frenzies, as many have been before and will be after him; and that he had a strong invincible faith in his own high pretensions and divine mission, it is the probability that, unless supported by such feelings, he would have renounced the unprofitable and ungrateful task, and sought refuge from persecution and misery in private life and honourable industry. ”

“ The Mormons were driven out of Jackson county and their enemies were now successful, but war was only begun. The Saints never yield to wrong while life serves them. They can be vanquished and humbled, but never conquered. The very nature of their faith forbids the thought—"The Lord is on our side"—to yield is to deny the faith. When undoubted facts are against them, they admit defeat, but then only. ”

“ Joseph saw in them only instruments subordinate to his own success—he was to be the head and front of everything. It was difficult for free-born Americans cradled in democracy to comprehend at once Joseph's theocracy. It takes time for men to strangle their truest instincts. Joseph had none of that experience himself, and he could not appreciate the cost of it in others. All the manliness of his ambitious nature found ample scope in working out what he believed to be his divine mission, and in announcements of faith. ”

“ This Jackson county trouble has been a sad affair for the Mormon Church in many ways. It was, to say the least, very questionable instruction to declare "ye shall avenge me of mine enemies." There is enough of natural vindictiveness in men without elevating vengeance into a religious obligation. No people as zealous and devoted as the Mormons could receive such a commandment without partaking of its spirit and reducing it to practice. It makes it a duty for every fanatic to curse and avenge in the Lord's stead. ”

“ Had the Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred in any of the neighbouring Territories, and that crime was clearly the work of white people, the Mormons would have despised them, hated them, and in all probability would have refused all intercourse with them.
That Brigham Young is by his natural instincts a bad man, or that his apostles and his bishops are men of blood, is not true. Here and there among them a malicious man is met with, but, apart from religion, the ruling men in Utah would be considered good citizens in any community. ”

“ We have not been permitted to lift the veil, and show you the perpetrators of this horrible murder—a murder most atrocious in its inception, brutal and cowardly in its execution a crime which in many respects stands without a parallel. But the blood of a pure and honourable man, shed in the streets of your city, calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance, and I trust the cry will be heard and answered ”

“ The assassination of Joseph Smith was deplored by every right-thinking person. Aside from the horror and detestation naturally entertained against the crime of murder, it was readily seen that the dignity of martyrdom was the Prophet's crown of glory. ”

“ Behold I say unto you the redemption of Zion must needs come by power, therefore I will raise up unto nay people a man who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel, for ye are the children of Israel and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage, by power, and with a stretched-out arm, and as your fathers were led at the first, even so shall the redemption of Zion be. ”

“ This "gift of healing" has also been experienced more in Europe than in America, for the young Saints in Europe have more faith than the older Saints in the very bosom of the Church. Their spiritual nature is worked up to the greatest intensity, and they are always prepared to see angels, behold visions, dream dreams, speak in tongues and prophesy. ”

“ The written invitation is the breathing of their souls' best and divinest impulses—the Deity of their nature recognizing one common parentage in the family of man, reaching forth the hand of fellowship to humanity everywhere; but, in the practical part, in intercourse with mankind, it is the trampled worm still in agony, the remembrance of "persecutions" that chills every forward, generous impulse and withers the soul with the baneful teaching that "he that is not for us is against us." ”

“ With the acceptance of what they deemed the new revelation of Christ, there was no sacrifice too great to make, and no self-abnegation with which they would not strive to adorn their lives. Primitive Mormonism was to the youthful disciples the fulness of the everlasting gospel, with all the blessings, gifts and powers enjoyed by the early Christian Church, and all the promises of glory and honour in the world to come that inspired the first disciples of Christ. ”

“ Nearly all the leading men during the first years of Mormon history fell out with Joseph over his personal rule; but Brigham was among the very few who clung to him. He never—or, at the farthest, but once only—challenged Joseph's right to do as he pleased, and he permits none to dispute his own.
But the Saints grew weary, and it was necessary to direct their attention away from home. So "the Lord" revealed to Joseph that "in order to save His Church" a foreign mission must be improvised, and Great Britain was selected as the new field of labour. ”

“ The breathings of every anguish-burthened soul among the Hebrews, in its longing for the restoration of monarchy and glory to Israel, are accepted as Divine inspiration and revelation pointing directly to the times in which we live. That disturbing dream of the King of Babylon, interpreted by Daniel, has been a perennial fountain of living waters to the Mormon preacher. ”

“ It is strangely argued that this first "miracle" in the Mormon Church was an evidence of the divine mission of Joseph Smith and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Elder Orson Pratt reasons thus on the subject: —
"The great miracle that was wrought upon Newell Knight, and that, too, before he became a member of the Church, and in the presence of some eight or nine of his neighbours, must have given him the most perfect knowledge of the truth of the Book of Mormon; and it must also have been a convincing testimony to all who saw him." . . . ”

“ Having contributed both by tongue and pen, from the rostrum and by the press, with the best years of his life and with whatever talents he possessed, to teach the Mormon faith while he believed it, he now considers it due equally to the Mormons as to the public to exhibit what that earnest people have accomplished, and thus exemplify the ease with which a religiously-disposed community may naturally mistake the legitimate results of united faith and labour for the special mark of Divine guidance. ”

“ The anti-Mormons were, however, determined that the followers of Joseph should leave the county, and they resolved to get rid of them—"peaceably, if we can: forcibly, if we must, and believing, as we do, that the arm of the civil law does not afford us a guarantee, or at least a sufficient one, against the evils which are now inflicted upon us, and seem to be increasing by the said religious sect, deem it expedient and of the highest importance to form ourselves into a company for the better and easier accomplishment of our purpose." ”

“ Three "witnesses" were to be favoured with a "manifestation" and, from among the personal friends of Joseph, David Whitmer was selected to join Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris with the assurance that if they would exercise faith they should have a view of the plates and also of the Urim and Thummim. They did exercise faith, and in their "testimony," prefixed to the Book of Mormon, they "declare with words of soberness that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates and the engravings thereon." ”

“ The Mormon newspapers very properly declaim against "the people" of Utah being branded as murderers, because murders have been committed within their Territory, and, further, they protest against the great "crimes being charged to Brigham Young. Unfortunately for these defenders, no sane person, in or out of the Territory of Utah, ever did hold "the people" responsible for the black deeds of their history, and if the Prophet is selected by the universal judgment of mankind to bear the charge of crimes, his own teachings may have had something to do with inducing that conclusion. ”

“ The missionaries had no compensation, but whenever one was required, Joseph could with the greatest facility call an elder to labour in "the Lord's" vineyard. It was nothing to him at what sacrifice this might be done. It was "a day of sacrifice," and the greater that was the nobler the reward in the world to come. The labour that is hired is limited, but the labour of the Mormon elders was never over. ”

“ It is now over thirty-seven years since the first Missouri persecution began, but the Saints who were then expelled from Jackson county still believe in a triumphal return to their inheritances and still expect to see the temple built in "this generation."
In the very nature of things, the "generation" in which the revelation and prophecy were delivered must pass away without witnessing their fulfilment, yet the last of these Jackson county Saints will go down to his grave believing that there has been no failure. ”

“ To the mass of the Mormon people it is no simple matter to meet in argument their own teachers—men who have seldom, if ever, been vanquished in discussion when met by the most talented ministers of other religions. When to this difficulty is added the people's own personal experience of the power of healing in the Church, something more than an opponent's denunciation is required to deliver them from the thraldom of an unquestioning faith. ”

“ THE PROMISED LAND.—"The Lord" calls for "the Strength of his House" to reinstate the Exiled Saints in Jackson County—Two hundred and five Elders respond The Prophet becomes Commander-in-Chief of "the Armies of the Lord"—A Revelation promising Restoration to the Exiles—Joseph is the Man like unto Moses to lead them to Victory. An eastern sage has said that "the beginning of strife is like the letting out of water"—it is easier to commence hostilities than to stop them and thus it proved in the history of the Missouri troubles, for the end has not yet come. ”

“ Under their leadership the Mormon people have aided to conquer the western desert and to transform a barren and desolate region of a hitherto "unknown country" into a land that seems destined at no distant day to teem with millions of human beings, and which promises to stand preëminent among the conquests of the republic. It is doubtful whether any collective body of other citizens—unmoved by religious impulses—would ever have traversed the sandy desert and sage-plains, and have lived an age of martyrdom in reclaiming them, as the Mormons have in Utah. ”

“ Let the student of history determine for himself whether there can be found in connection with the Mormon movement any defined purpose of the Ruler of the Universe, or whether it is aught else than one of those ten thousand mysterious providences which have had a work to perform in human development, and which, after performing that work, have passed away, leaving their impress upon the history of the world. ”

“ Summed up, Mormonism demands perfect submission total dethronement of individuality blind obedience. There is no middle path. The crowning error of Brigham Young is the claim to " a Priesthood that is infallible." ”

“ There is much in the first announcement of Mormonism, and its claim to divine origin through revelation, that may well be questioned; but there is little in the early faith which the Bible believer can easily assail from that standpoint. The difficulty which controversialists have experienced when in argument with Mormon casuists has been their readiness to admit all that prophets and apostles have ever said, while they tie themselves to none. In handling the revelations of modern science and discovery they are never surprised. ”

“ Some one is for ever trying to make the relations between the heavens and the earth better than they actually are.
Preceding the advent of Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris was Joseph's scribe while he was translating the plates. The spouse of Harris was undeveloped in her spiritual nature in the Mormon sense, and, seeing her husband devoting much of his time and not a little of his money in aid of the work, she resolved to have some satisfaction. Martin, willing to meet the demands of his wife and her abettors, importuned Joseph for permission to exhibit the translation. ”

“ 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 destruction, not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such a marvellous power as I had never before felt in any being. ”

“ Verily this is the Word of the Lord, that the City New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the Saints, beginning at this place, even the place of the Temple, which Temple shall be reared in this generation, for verily this generation shall not pass away until an house shall ~be built unto the Lord, and a cloud shall rest upon it, which cloud shall be even the glory of the Lord which shall fill the house. ”