Mormon History
Mormon Preaching - 1867
The Daily Union Vedette – August 11, 1867
Special Correspondence to the N. Y. Tribune.
THE MORMONS.
________
Salt Lake City -- Despotism on the Great Plains -- Character of
Brigham Young -- His Wives -- Polygamy -- Schisms Among the Saints.
Salt Lake City, June 18, 1867.
I have seen Mormonism in its best garments only. Its dignitaries have made me
welcome. Its hospitality encompassed me. Its fruits and flowers; its light spots
and pleasant recreations were all before me....
Not only is licentiousness ever pleading the cause of polygamy, but the church
demands it of all men who can afford more than one wife, and women are caught
[sic - taught?] to consent to it on pain of eternal damnation. I heard four
Mormon sermons on Sunday -- two by fools and two by knaves. The one for
instance, who declared that he had seen Joseph Smith perfectly personated in
Brigham Young, when he thrust Rigdon out and assumed the Presidency himself,
even to a broken front tooth was simply a lunatic. In the course of his sermon
he gave the particulars of his conversion. He paryed to the Lord that if He
would appear in person to him he would believe, and the Lord appeared to him,
and he thenceforth became a saint. He was followed by one of the shrewdest of
the Elders, who argued with some plausibility that the original Church of Christ
had strayed and broken into descondant branches, and that it had been founded
again by Smith and Young, and was separate from the world and united in its
great work. In the afternoon we had an incoherent and senseless harangue from a
Cockney, but Brigham Young pulled him down by the coat tail in a short time and
took the pulpit himself. His speech would read away in the East like a foolish
ebullition of a conceited blackguard, but never were remarks more timely or
better adapted to the people he addressed. He argued for twenty minutes that not
one person in 40 knew how to take care of himself in either temporal or
spiritual matters... he told the young ladies of the church that they had no
capacity for taking care of themselves and their honor, and that the church with
its ceremonies and covenants was their only safety. He closed by demanding that
Gentiles and apostates be shunned in all dealings, even although it costs more
to purchase from a Saint. "You may answer," said he, "that it is none of my
d____d business. Perhaps it is not, just now, but the time will soon come when
it will be my business to testify respecting this people, and I pledge you that
those who disobey this command shall not enter into the staright gate....
let the righteous be saved, and the wicked go their way to everlasting
punishment." I saw poor infatuated Mormons shudder at this terrible anathema
from what they supposed to be an inspired oracle of God, and fear of his
malediction is one of the strongest elements of cohesiveness with the deluded
masses of his followers....
There are palpable signs of dissolution in the Mormon Church. The Josephites
)the followers of Smith) pronounce polygamy a sin, and they claim to be the true
Mormon Church and entitled to the church property. When Brigham went south last
Spring he had to cut off several hundred members for heresy, because they
adhered to Smith, and over 100 wagons of emigrants are now in the mountains on
their way east to escape his fearful venegance....