188 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
though his appearanco could not be wrested to indi- cate anything against him, yet he would manifest all I had heard of him when he began to preach. I sat uneasily and watched him closely. He commenced preaching, not from the book of Mormon, however, but from the bible; the first chapter of the first of Peter was his text. He commenced calmly, and con- tinued dispassionately to pursue his subject, while I sat in breathless silence, waiting to hear that foul aspersion of the other sects, that diabolical disposi- tion of revenge, and to hear that rancorous denuncia- tion of every individual but a Mormon. I waited in vain; I listened with surprise; I sat uneasy in my seat, and could hardly persuade myself but that he had been apprised of my presence, and so ordered his discourse on my account, that I might not be able to find fault with it; for instead of a jumbled jargon of half-connected sentences, and a volley of imprecations, and diabolical and malignant denuncia- tions heaped upon the heads of all who differed from him, and the dreadful twisting and wresting of the scriptures to suit his own peculiar views, and attempt to weave a web of dark and mystic sophistry around the gospel truths, which I had anticipated, he glided along through a very interesting and elaborate dis- course, with all the care and happy facility of one who was well aware of his important station and his duty to God and man."^^
No event, probably, that had occurred thus far in the history of the saints gave to the cause of Mor- monism so much of stability as the assassination of Jo- seph Smith. Not all the militia mobs in Illinois, in Missouri, or in the United States could destroy this cause, any more than could the roundheads in the
^' Machay^s The Mormons, 131-3. Of course views as to Joseph Smith's character are expressed in nearly all the works published on Mormonism. With the exception, perhaps, of Maliomet, no one has been so much bespat- tered with praise by his followers and with abuse by his ad\'ersaries as the founder of this faith.
