xxii INTRODUCTION.
Mountains; spreading over the Great Basin; and the Church sending thence its missionaries to the nations, was the rolling forth of the "stone" of prophecy, which was to "become a great mountain and fill the whole earth." [1]
The dim light of a far distant past, added to their own revelations, preserves among the Mormons a perpetual conflict between barbarism and civilization, for the people are, in head and heart, far in advance of their religious teachings. Hence the frequent "apostacy."
No faith could well be more liberal than written Mormonism. In the beginning of its mission it was a beautiful ideal to those thoroughly imbued with its inspiration; yet no professors of religion in the nineteenth century could be more bitterly bigoted than the rigidly orthodox and ignorant among the Mormons to-day. Without intending it, probably, and, it may be, even without realizing it, as others do who differ from them, their profession and their practice have been the very antipodes of each other. In moments of creed-writing they are liberal and broadly cosmopolitan in sentiment, warmly inviting to "fair freedom's feast," away up in the Rocky Mountains—
"Christian sects and pagan,
Pope, and Protestant, and Priest,
Worshippers of God or Dagon.[2]"
But when once the Plains have been traversed, there the reception of, and intercourse with, the religious stranger have been like the chilling breezes of the frigid zone. After all, this very paradox is harmonious and consistent even in its contradictions. The written invitation is the breathing of their souls' best and divinest impulses—the Deity of their nature recognizing one common parentage in the family of man, reaching forth the hand of fellowship to humanity everywhere; but, in the practical part, in intercourse with mankind, it is the tram-
