The reasonableness of our own religious ways and views may be best judged by transferring them to some other and opposing creed, in order to see how they looked in that changed light.—Author, chap. i.
When certain parties laughed at the Pope, the Pope said that people ought not to laugh at Religion.—Author, chap. xv.
This chapter, like its two predecessors, is to be devoted to one particular feature, but which, as in these other cases, will be found also illustrative of the time at which we have now arrived. In this chapter, then, I propose to deal with religious aspects. After five centuries of retrospect, how fared the various religious bodies of our country? How fared our great national Church, reconstructed, as we had left it, upon the comprehensive basis of Scripture? What were the religious aspects of the world generally?
The future, Gray would assert, belonged to Mormon truth. Might he but see what his Church would be five hundred or a thousand years hence!—Author, chap. i.
The Mormon Church had by this time taken the first position in its original stronghold, the great United States of America, and from that centre its churches and missions extended conspicuously over all the rest of the world. The head of the Church at the time in question was Pope-President Brigham XIV., who wielded his vast spiritual sway at the great Mormon metropolis, St. Brigham, formerly Salt Lake City, from whence, periodically, the Holy Fathers of the Church, of most blessed memory to all believers, issued their encyclicals, not merely urbi et orbi, like another erroneous and once pretentious Church, but in these days of science as Religion's handmaid, alike to the city, the world, and the universe. Such being the great Mormon standpoint, let us glance at one of Pope Brigham's encyclicals of this time. After an outpouring of blessing and parental love over all the faithful, he surveyed, in strains of wrathful pity, the whole outside Gentile world. How blessed a thing, he said, if the reign of God could be substituted all over the earth, instead of the reign of man! Must they not continue to aim at this most blessed attainment! An inscrutable Providence still tolerates religious error and irreligious agency in the world. It was not for them to presume to imitate such mysterious indifference. They must ever be ready, either by help of the blessed Danites, or by other available agency, to secure the whole earth for the blessed Saints' use, to the due honour of God, and the full maintenance of His Truth.
Their Holy Church had its trials. There was constant and cruel persecution, at the instance of an opposing or indifferent secular arm, in hindering and circumscribing the Church in her divinely appointed domain of morals and religion, and denying her right, as the superior authority, to define the line which should separate the inferior secular power. Not only all over the world, but even in our own holy city St. Brigham, Roman, Greek, Anglican, miscellaneous Protestant, and countless other religious errors, are freely permitted to be taught, to the great distress of our loving heart, which would have all to be saved, and even by force if necessary, through Mormon truth. Then, again, there is an accursed so-called "liberal" element in our midst—a camp of traitors, whom the Church, but for the yearnings of her too loving heart even over disobedient and rebellious children, would and should have long ago expelled. Would not the political vote, which the Church could command, if all her members were but faithful, have long ago rectified many of her wrongs? Withal, however, the Church had also
He would first turn to the divinely inspired infallibility of the earthly head of the Church, the prophet, priest, and revelator, who alone received Heaven's instructions. When profane objectors outside asked how the successors to our holy and blessed but fallible Joseph were infallible and therefore greater than their original, we easily answered such theological error and confusion by the plain statement that "the infallibility of the successor of Joseph is a tradition from the beginning of the Mormon faith." And when it was again helplessly asked from outside how all this could be known, we were promptly ready to rejoin that "The Church itself can and does know its own evidence and its own tradition." The Church is thus above mere history.
And again, spite of all trials, was not this, in many respects, a blessed time to the Church? Were not the "holy relics" of old but blessed and still fragrant saints the objects of the daily worship of the faithful? Were there not miraculous apparitions still all about us, the holy and blessed old St. Joseph and St. Brigham appearing and reappearing to many? If these divinely sent apparitions were now vouchsafed only to young children and some few women, that was but a fitting rebuke and punishment to the unbelief of the age. It was indeed sad to think that the many striking miracles, so well established in the Church's earlier traditions, had now ceased in consequence of unbelief. But the Church's triumph was none the less for the simple believing minds of its true flock. The unquestioning faith of young children had been especially rewarded by miraculous apparitions—apparitions, too, which, in an exemplary way, it could hardly be doubted, had been of purpose made punitively invisible to the scepticism of more advanced years.
Mormon truth coming direct from Heaven, through its inspired earthly head, consequently he alone was infallible upon earth. In two grand instances in particular, in the Church's experience, was this direct revelation triumphantly and most publicly manifested to the whole world.
1. When, in our earlier history, the secular power persisted in interfering with our "peculiar domestic institution," and, forsooth, in describing as human immorality that which, under heavenly guidance, our most Holy Church's authorities had sanctioned; and just as the Church, to all mere human seeming, was about to succumb to this gross secular attack, a direct revelation, just at the critical time, saved her. That revelation, as we all know, was to the effect that the sealing of the woman by material and consummating marriage was unnecessary, spiritual marriage being sufficient, nay, even preferable, as being less sensual, as well as a simpler and higher course. In one moment our devouring enemies were utterly baffled in their machinations, and the Church's triumph complete.
2. The great controversy about "The Language of Heaven" must ever be an inspiring recollection of the Church, as being conspicuously one amongst her many, triumphs. The Holy Father, Brigham the First, of far-off but ever blessed memory, in addressing some foreign-speaking emigrants, then recently arrived in Utah, had exhorted them to acquire the English language, for English, he added, is the language of heaven. This remarkable statement passed comparatively unnoticed at the time. But after the Church had passed through the definitions of the infallibilities of her great earthly Head, the high import of this revealed and recorded utterance of the prophet, priest, and revelator of Mormon truth could not possibly be longer overlooked. Here then, truly, was a wondrous fact, given to the world through the Church. Where and how could mere science have attained such knowledge? And yet this said science was forthwith busy with difficulties, and brought on a controversy that required all the bracing up of true faith. But, in this memorable controversy, while the fainter hearts amongst us at first hesitated, faith plunged boldly in, and pushed as boldly on to the victorious end.
At its outset, and for long after, the controversy was a fierce one, for science, in her blind self-reliance, had asserted that English was not even an ancient language, much less, as the language of heaven, the original tongue. But Heaven, which surely knew best, had answered differently; and thenceforward the Church, by her whole education and ability, defended and proved Heaven's answer. Soon the literature of the sacred subject became, on the Church's side at least, a huge library of itself; while the Church, as she was justly entitled, held in contemptuous disregard those of her opponents who adventured into the controversy without first mastering its literature. And thus the Church had admittedly, at last, all the argument to herself; or, in other words, she emerged from the fight completely victorious. She was able to trace the original English of the Garden of Eden—perfect then, as now spoken, but lapsing, after the Fall and Babel, into Hebraic and other inferiorities, to be thenceforward redeemed, through our transitional and Hebrew-looking old English character, into the modern letters and language of perfect English, the language alike of earth and heaven.
Other popes or religious heads sought at this time to enter a periodic appearance, as well as the Mormon, although not always with equal commanding authority. Rome still held up her old head, but now at last in diminished power, and with relatively reduced following. She had continued her independent self-developing career, but every successive doctrinal step had developed a limping human element, unable to keep up with the pace, and either left behind by voluntary secession, or forcibly expelled by the truth-avenging Church. Thus, when the personal infallibility was defined and proclaimed towards the end of the nineteenth century, it was permissively an "Ex-Cathedra-only-Infallibility." But when the "Wholly-Infallible" question came on in the next century, and the grudging and faith-wanting spirit of the Ex-Cathedra-only-Infallible was finally condemned by the Church, and its half-hearted maintainers had seceded or been expelled, the triumphant Church emerged with narrowed dimensions; and these were afterwards still further successively reduced when the popes were made equal to angels, then superior to angels, and so on; the Church, however, always concurrently maintaining that all these steps were alike within the knowledge and tradition of the Church from the very first.
Meanwhile, our national Anglican Church, Protestant and Scriptural, had pursued her quiet and steady, her comprehensive but unprivileged way. She avoided, in her teaching, those extreme views and doctrines which she held to have been tacked on, by after developments, to the simplicity of the original gospel, and which ever tended to throw a certain moral improbability over religion. She thus undermined and essentially weakened one of the most active irritants to scepticism. Thus, too, she was able to count a much larger roll of Christian belief, and much more of Church attendance, than there had been in the comparatively meagre response of the past, all its sectarian and Sabbatarian zeal notwithstanding.
Reed was specially strong for common-sense in religion.—Author, chap. i.
Turning next from this quiet even-tenour religious life of the great body of our society of that time, let us now view, in their more energetic aspects, the many, but in a comparative sense with the world's enlarged population, the numerically small surrounding sects. Ever aggressive as all of these were, alike upon the main body of quiet respectable society, and upon each other, the aggression was ever most vigorous where the doctrine was most extreme and the membership most limited. Truth, as they each explained this striking feature of their respective cases, lay deep in a well, and it was ever fewer and fewer who followed the descent to its most rigorous depths. These small outflanking bodies, then, all skirmished incessantly with the great mass of steady and quiet society, which, in their view, had been lulled to destroying sleep by devices of the evil one. But withal they still more vigorously turned upon one another.
Let us glance for a moment at some of their controversies and contests. None were more contentious or more self-assertive than the various small Ultra-Calvinistic bodies. In particular, the Unmitigated Calvinists, as from a lofty pinnacle of faith, looked down in contempt, even upon such seemingly near kindred as the Mitigated and Reason-Reconciliation Calvinists; and as for the Use-of-means Calvinists, these Unmitigateds would not, spiritually speaking, even touch them with the tongs. These Unmitigated Calvinists claimed to be always equal to the uttermost extremity of their principles, scorning to shirk, in their ultra-elective doctrine, even the original chance-medley of the divine dice. The more they slapped mere human reason in the face, and the more unhesitatingly they accepted the slaps, the more were they assured of inclusion in the small number of the elect.
The Unmitigated Calvinists had special strife at times with the Reason-Reconciliation Calvinists, which, according, at least, to the record of the latter, were not always a success. The Reason-Reconciliation Calvinists have recorded the following triumph over their opponents. The latter had sought to pose the other with the following problem: Supposing Scripture to assert that a circle was a square, in what way was the revealed fact to be taken? The Unmitigateds had no sooner delivered their question, than they rushed the ground, by anticipation, with what seemed to them the only possible answer, namely, that the Scripture fact was to be believed simply as given. But the Reason-Reconciliationists entirely opposed this conclusion. "How," said they, "could a thing be what, in the very terms of the proposition, it was not?" Their solution was completely different. They first defined the figure in question to be a circular square, and then, whatever that might be, they believed it accordingly.
These Reason-Reconciliationists record other victories. The Ultra-Wesleyans had complained that, in the terrible Calvinistic system, the divine hate seemed far broader cast than the divine love; whereas with them, on the contrary, the love so overflowed, as well-nigh to put the other out of sight. There ought, as they contended, to be, at the least, an equality. But the Reason-Reconciliationists hastened to explain. They frankly admitted that, on a merely numerical consideration their opponents might be right. But, on the other hand, as to that prime difficulty, the comparative handful of the saved, the unutterable infinity of the love, and that too from all eternity, and wholly without reference to personal deserts in its objects, made up altogether a leverage sufficient to bring the balance to an even beam.
A zealous Ultra-Mormon elder had challenged all outer Gentile error to a discussion upon proofs of Mormon truth; and the challenge had been accepted, not without general surprise, by a quiet Anglican bishop. On the principle, once for all, that one ultra-zealot could be out-argued only by another zealot still more ultra than himself, these ultra-type sectaries were usually let alone by all quiet and sensible mortals. And how, then, fared this exceptional case? The account of it, transmitted by the Mormon side, is very awful indeed, as illustrating the natural depravity and unreason existing everywhere outside of Mormon truth. When that truth was vindicated by such convincing incidents as even infants of six or seven years—twice blessed little saints—longing and praying to be quit of this vile earth, that they might ascend at once to Mormon paradise, at whose bright shining gates those most holy and fragrant saints of the Church, Joseph and Brigham, were ever waiting to receive and welcome them,—when all this, and much more to the like decisive effect, was duly set forth, what was the answer of the opposing son of Belial? He merely said, in reply, that there were still available certain old institutions, at Hanwell and Bedlam, where such ecstatic states were carried to still higher perfection, and for which, therefore, all such true Mormons should go on to qualify.
Miraculous intervention, on their special behalf, was the great aim and ambition of these various and interwarring sects. Each body claimed, of course, countless invisible miracles in its own behalf; and each knew that while its own miracles were true, those of most of the others were but the devices of the devil. But what was specially longed for by each body—and, oh, how longed for!—was but one unmistakable miracle that might, perforce, be seen and acknowledged by all other and opposing bodies. Many attempts were made by one and another, and with no small adroitness, to force Heaven, as it were, to show its hand in their special case. "Answers to prayer" had been in chief favour as a leverage of this kind, and most sects had more or less of a triumphant record in this way. There had been quite a mania in that particular direction about this time; and this trap system, as it was called, had resulted in various triumphs to many various sects. Let us turn for illustration to the case of one of these bodies, which had been even more than usually paraded by its members for its signally striking results.
This was the prayer-answering case of the Ultra-Evangelicals, a residuary body, left behind after the great mass of the original membership had subsided into the common national and scriptural church. This body had selected an ingenious and notable plan for forcing, as it were, an answer to prayer; and its members have themselves put on record their high satisfaction with its success. A church order was issued to the effect that all the Ultra-Evangelical Hospitals, on the one side of a certain line, should be diligently prayed for, while all on the other side should be as diligently omitted from prayer. The hospital was still a necessary feature in life's crowding conditions, and religious and proselytizing zeal were always still more wanting and wishing and creating the necessity. After a due interval, the results were collected and reduced.
There was no small consternation throughout the body at the first aspects of the result. There appeared, indeed, as expected, a difference between the two sides; but it was, after all, but an unimportant matter, and, what was much worse still, it was actually against the side prayed for. Hereupon, however, a member, who belonged to the Statistical Society, administered some comfort, for the moment, by the explanation that the hostile fraction, as it was called, would have entirely disappeared had the areas of cases been larger. But the Church leaders were soon aware of the utter unsatisfactoriness of this secular explanation of the said fraction. That indication as they now, after due deliberation, held was obviously divine disapproval of what had been done, and as such it was, when rightly viewed, as much a prayer-answering miracle as would have been any other result.
And thus the whole business was about to be finally disposed of, and indeed with the expression of no small satisfaction to most of the body, when an event occurred which altered entirely the aspect of the whole case. An old woman had confessed to having prayed for the proscribed hospitals. What the poor woman actually did was to emit an involuntary ejaculation on behalf of an only daughter, who lay at the time in one of the hospitals of the proscribed series. But this was, in effect, of course, a prayer for all in that particular hospital; and, if for one hospital, then for all in the proscribed list. Indeed, the poor old creature herself at last saw all this as clearly almost as the zealous brethren who had suggested it all to her.
Well, then, here was truly a grand marvel! The poor woman's daughter indeed died, as one more unit of the current hospital averages. But there remained the amazing fact, and not more amazing than beneficially humbling to our natural pride, that the mere casual ejaculation of this one poor old woman had been of equal, nay, even of fractionally greater, efficacy than the united supplications, disciplined and marshalled forth, from the whole Church!