The Pilgrims took with them the Bible and implements of labour from Europe to the New World; and it may be said with justice, that these two are, to this day, great powers in the cultivation of the New World. Religious and spiritual life develope themselves in proportion to physical improvement. The human being and humanity are regarded, and advanced pre-eminently with reference to their heavenly and their earthly relationship: everything else is secondary.
Spiritual life must be here regarded principally in its form as churches, and in the results thence accruing.
North America is usually upbraided, in Europe, with its many dissimilar religious sects, its many separated churches. Nevertheless it may be perceived at the same time that they are possessed of an essential unity in doctrine and life, although each individual sect has, as its germ, gathered itself around some one individual truth which it elevates for its standard.[1]
This was its purpose, its mission, its necessity, “God
- ↑ “What, even the Mormons?” you may ask, suspiciously. Without
being able to speak with precision of that which is distinctive in the
doctrines of the Mormons, I must still say, on the ground of what I was
able to collect in America regarding this sect—its leaders and doctrines,—that
I believe the accusations laid to their charge are for the greater part
untrue. The Mormons acknowledge, as theirs, the revelation of Christ
and the Bible. Their later prophets (as I myself had the opportunity of
ascertaining) have given merely more close and more special prophecies
of Christ, but no new doctrines. I was assured by an intellectual man—not
a Mormon—who had resided two years among the Mormons in
Utah, that the morals of the people were remarkably pure, and that the
Mormon women were above all blame.
The founder of the sect, Joe Smith, was a man of simple education, but possessed of extraordinary natural gifts, even of that secondary prophetic kind which is known in Scotland under the name of “second-sight.” He himself believed in his revelations,—at least in a part of them. After his death, the Mormon community was governed by men whom Joe Smith appointed to be his successors. They rule, as Smith had done, according to the word of the Bible, and the inspiration of the Spirit. The hierarchical character of the government under prudent leaders, constitutes its present strength, and has caused its rapid prosperity, under the Anglo-American moral law and order—which even in the Valley of the Salt Lake shows its formative powers—that very form of government constitutes its danger and may probably one day bring about its fall. And that day will be whenever it violates the sanctity of private life. Should the inspiration of the government permit polygamy, the Anglo-American home will never allow it.
