Defense of the Faith and the Saints. B. H. Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ City] with noble trees, will render it, by contrast with the surrounding regions, a second 'Diamond of the Desert.'" (Stansbury's Report, page 129.)

      Again, Lieutenant J. W. Gunnison of the Topographical Engineers, writing in 1853, said:

      "It [the Salt Lake Valley] is isolated from habitable grounds; having inhospitable tracts to the North and South, and the untimbered slope of the Rocky Mountains, nearly a thousand miles wide, on the east, and nearly a thousand miles of arid salt deserts on the west, broken up by frequent ridges of sterile mountains. The Great Basin is * * * over four thousand feet above the ocean. * * * It is a desert in character. * * * In the interior, fresh water becomes scarce, for these hills do not collect sufficient snow in winter * * * * to water the plains; and the consequence follows that these tracts are parched and arid, and frequently so impregnated with alkali as to make them unfit for vegetable life. * * * The land around Salt Lake is flat, and rises imperceptibly on the south and west, * * * and is a soft and sandy barren, irreclaimable for agricultural purposes. On the north the tract is narrow, and the springs bursting out near the surface of the water, the grounds cannot be irrigated." ("The Mormons," by J. W. Gunnison, pages 14, 15, 16.)

      These descriptions of Utah. Valley warrant Utah's Historian, Bishop Orson F. Whitney, in giving the splendid pen picture he writes of the valley on the arrival of the Pioneers, in saying:

      "It was no Garden of Hesperides upon which the Pioneers gazed that memorable morning of July 24, 1847. Aside from its scenic splendor, which was indeed glorious, magnificent, there was little to invite and much to repel in the prospect presented to their view. A broad and barren plain, hemmed in by mountains, blistering in the rays of the midsummer sun. No waving fields, no swaying forests, no verdant meadows to rest and refresh the weary eye, but on all sides a seemingly interminable waste of sagebrush, bespangled with sunflowers—the paradise of the lizard, the cricket and the rattle snake. Less than half way across the baked and burning valley, dividing it in twain—as if the vast bowl, in the intense heat of the Master Potter's fires, in process of formation had cracked asunder—a narrow river, turbid and shallow, from south to north in many a serpentine curve, sweeps on its sinuous way. Beyond, a broad lake, the river's goal, dotted with mountain islands; its briny waters shimmering in the sunlight like a silver shield. From the mountains, snow-capped, seamy and craggy, lifting their kingly heads to be crowned by the golden sun, flow limpid, laughing streams, cold and crystal clear, leaping, dashing, foaming, flashing, from rock to glen, from peak to plain. But the fresh canyon streams are far and few, and the arid waste they water, glistening with beds of salt and soda pools of deadly alkali, scarcely allowing them to reach the river, but midway well nigh swallows and absorbs them in the thirsty sands. These, the oak-brush, the squaw-berry, and other scant growths, with here and there a tree casting its lone shadow on hill or in valley; a wire-grass swamp, a few acres of withered bunch-grass, and the lazily waving willows and wild-rose bushes, fringing the distant streams, the only green thing visible. Silence and desolation reign. A silence unbroken, save by the cricket's ceaseless chirp, the roar of the mountain torrent or the whir and twitter of the passing bird. A desolation of centuries, where earth seems heaven-forsaken, where Hermit Nature, watching, waiting, weeps and worships God amid eternal solitudes." (History of Utah, Vol. I., pages 325–6.)

      The Mormons whom your Salt Lake Correspondent admits had the territory of Utah almost exclusively to themselves for about twenty-five years, converted the desert wilderness described in the foregoing quotations into a fruitful land, and redeemed it from savagery to civilization. By the creation of an irrigation system they demonstrated that the desert lands of the intermountain region could be converted into fruitful fields, and thus became Pioneers, not alone of Utah, but of the entire intermountain region, and became founders of modern irrigation farming, which now is developing into a great national movement, that looks to the reclamation of an extent of country beside which the extent of ancient empires becomes insignificant; and happy millions will yet partake of the blessings first disclosed as possible by the example in irrigation set by the Mormon people. And all such silly falsehoods and misrepresentations as those uttered by your jaundice-minded correspondent, can never rob them of the high honor accorded them by the nation for the part they have performed in so great and notable and far reaching enterprises.

      Your correspondent represents himself as having lived in Utah for over twenty-five years; and also as having had ample opportunity to study the "Mormon system" and its fruits, and then says:

      "I am forced to join with other careful students in declaring that from a social, civil and moral standpoint, no language is strong enough to set forth the evil fruits of the "Mormon system." Based on polygamy, how could the system be otherwise than rotten? Its central idea of government being that of priesthood rule, how could it be otherwise than anti-American? Having been founded and organized by a man as corrupt and immoral as the multiplied statements of Joseph Smith's acquaintances and neighbors prove that he was, how could it be otherwise than mischievous and immoral in its tendencies and results?"

      Really, after thinking of a man living in Utah for twenty-five years with exceptional opportunities to study the "Mormon system," one becomes quite disheartened when he witnesses such an exhibition of stupidity in apprehending, or a willingness to misrepresent as is exhibited in the foregoing quotation. First, if your correspondent had intelligence to understand the most simple proposition, he never would have made the statement that Mormonism is based on polygamy. Mormonism existed ten years and had spread through nearly all the states of the American Union, into Canada and Great Britain, before plural marriage was ever introduced into the Church. And notwithstanding that under the requirements of the laws of the land, the Church has discontinued the authorization of plural marriages, Mormonism still survives—much to the chagrin of such characters as your correspondent, and the Mormon Church was never more alive or prosperous than it is today. The doctrine of the rightfulness of plural marriage is in every sense but an incident in the "Mormon system" rather than a basic principle. Salvation in the Mormon religion is not made to depend upon a plurality of wives. On the contrary it teaches that either man or woman can be saved without marriage at all. That those in monogamous marriage relations may be saved, but it also is a fact that it has taught that men with a plurality of wives, if they have taken them under the sanction of God's law—a law which existed in the days of the Bible patriarchs as well as in these last days by special dispensation through Joseph Smith—may also be saved. Mormonism does teach, however, that marriage is essential to man's exaltation and progress in his saved condition, and that special blessings doubtless attended those who entered into plural marriage relations within the conditions and limitations referred to a moment since, but to regard plural marriages as the basis of Mormonism is not only ridiculous but an absolute misrepresentation of our faith.

      Equally absurd and untrue is your correspondent's second implied charge, viz., that the central idea of Mormon government is priesthood rule, therefore "how could it be otherwise than anti-American?" The gentleman leaves us in the mists here. What does he mean? Is it anti-American to have priesthood rule in an ecclesiastical institution—in a Church? What kind of rule would he have but that of a priesthood rule in such organizations? If it is anti-American to have priesthood rule in a church organization, then every church in the land is anti-American. But if the gentleman protests that this is not what he meant, but that he meant priesthood rule in civil government, then I must say to him that there is no ecclesiastical institution in all our land that in its doctrines more clearly recognizes the separation of the Church from the State than does the Mormon Church. In proof of which I quote on that head the following from an authoritative work on the doctrine of the Mormon Church:

      "We believe that religion is instituted of God, and that men are amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others; but we do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul. * * * * We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, СКАЧАТЬ