The "Danite band," a name of fear in the Mississippi Valley, is said by anti-Mormons to consist of men between the ages of seventeen and forty-nine. They were originally termed Daughters of Gideon, Destroying Angels-the Gentiles say Devilsand, finally, Sons of Dan, or Danites, from one of whom it was prophesied that he should be a serpent in the path. They were organized about 1837, under D. W. Patten, popularly called Captain Fearnot, for the purpose of dealing as avengers of blood with Gentiles; in fact, they formed a kind of "Death Society," Desperadoes, Thugs, Hashshashiyun-in plain English, assassins in the name of the Lord. The Mormons declare categorically the whole and every particular to be the calumnious invention of the impostor and arch apostate Mr. John C. Bennett, whilom mayor of Nauvoo; that the mystery and horror of the idea made it equally grateful to the knave and fool who persecuted them, and that not a trader could be scalped, nor a horse-stealer shot, nor a notorious villain of a Gentile knived without the deed of blood being attributed to Danite hands directed by prophetic heads. It was supposed that the Danites assume savage disguises: "he has met the Indians" was a proverbial phrase, meaning that a Gentile has fallen into the power of the destroying angels. I but express the opinion of sensible and moderate neutrals in disbelieving the existence of an organized band of "Fidawi;" where every man is ready to be a Danite, Danites are not wanting. Certainly, in the terrible times of Missouri and Illinois, destroying angels were required to smite secretly, mysteriously, and terribly the first-born of Egypt; now the necessity has vanished. This, however, the Mormons deny, declaring the existence of the Danites, like that of spiritual wives, to be, and ever to have been, literally and in substance totally and entirely untrue. Meanwhile we had nearly ascended the Jebel Nur of this new Meccah, the big toe of the Wasach Mountains, and exchanged the sunny temperature below for a cold westerly wind, that made us feel snow: the air improved in purity, as we could judge by the effects of carcasses lying at different heights. The bench up which we trod was gashed by broad ravines, and bore upon its red soil a growth of thin sage and sunflower. A single fossil and two varieties of shells were found: iron and quartz were scattered over the surface, and there is a legend of gold having been discovered here. Presently, standing upon the topmost bluff, we sat down to enjoy a view which I have attempted to reproduce in a sketch. Below the bench lay the dot-like houses of Zion. We could see with bird's-eye glance the city laid out like a chessboard, and all the length and breadth of its bee-line streets and four years ago), and Revelations in the Last Times." Messrs. Smith and Young's vaticinations will be found quite as respectable as the "Visions of an Aged Nun" and the "Predictions of Sister Rosa Columba." Prophecy, being the highest aim of human induction, is apparently universally and equally diffused. . crow-flight avenues, which, bordered by distance-dwarfed trees, narrowed to threads as they drew toward a vanishing point. Beyond the suburbs stretched the valley plain, sprinkled with little plantations clustering round the smaller settlements, and streaked by the rivulets which, arising from the frowning pine-clad heights on the left, flowed toward the little Jordan of this young Judea on the right. The extreme south was bounded by the denticulated bench which divided like a mole the valleys of the Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Already autumn had begun: the purpling plain and golden slopes shed a dying glory over the departing year, while the mellowing light of evening, and aerial blue from above, toned down to absolute beauty each harsher feature of the scene. After lingering for a while over the fair coup d'œil, we descended, holding firm the sage-bushes, the abrupt western slope, and we passed by the warm Harrowgate spring, with its sulphury blue waters, white lime-like bed, and rushy margins in dark earth, snowcapped with salt efflorescence. As we entered the city we met a noted Gentile innocently driving out a fair Saint: both averted their faces as they passed us, but my companion's color darkened. All races have their pet prohibitions and aversions, their likes and dislikes in matters of sin. Among the Mormons, a suspicion of immorality is more hateful than the reputation of bloodshed. So horse-thieving in the Western States is a higher crime than any other-in fact, the sin which is never forgiven. An editor thus unconcernedly sums up the history of one lately shot when plundering stock: "He was buried by those who meted out to him summary justice, not exactly attending to law, but upon a more speedy, economical, and salutary principle, and a stake was placed at the head of his grave, on which was inscribed 'A. B. Bshot for horse-stealing, July 1, 1860." Entering the city by the northwest, we passed the Academy of the 7th Ward. Standing in a 10-acre block, it is a large adobe building with six windows, built for a hotel, and bought for educational purposes by the Prophet. Forms and tables, scattered with the usual school-books, were the sole furniture, and the doors were left open as if they had nothing to defend. My companion had a truly brotherly way of treating his co-religionists; he never met one, however surly-looking, without a salute, and when a door was opened he usually walked in. Thus we visited successively a water-power-mill, a tannery, and an English coachmaker, painter, and varnisher. Some of the houses which we passed were neat and cleanly curtained, especially that belonging to an Englishwoman whose husband, Captain R, had lately left her in widowhood. We finished with the garden of Apostle Woodruff, who introduced us to his wife, and showed us work of which he had reason to be proud. Despite the hard, ungrateful soil which had required irrigation for the last ten years, there were apricots from Malta, the Hooker strawberries, here worth $5 the plant, plum-trees from Kew Gardens, French and Californian grapes, wild plum and buffalo berry, black currants, peaches, and apples -with which last we were hospitably loaded-in numbers. The kitchen garden contained rhubarb, peas, potatoes, Irish and sweet, asparagus, white and yellow carrots, cabbages, and huge beets: the sugar-cane had been tried there, but it was not, like the sweet holcus, a success. The last time I walked out of Great Salt Lake City was to see the cemetery, which lies on the bench to the northeast of the settlement. There is but one cemetery for saint and sinner, and it has been prudently removed about three miles from the abodes of the living. The tombs, like the funeral ceremonies, are simple, lacking the "monumental mockery" which renders the country church-yard in England a fitter study for farce than for elegy. On occasions of death, prayers are offered in the house, and the corpse is carried at once to its last home. The grave-yard is walled round, and contains a number of occupants, the tombs being denoted by a stone or board, with name and date, and sometimes. a religious sentence, at the head and foot. CHAPTER IX. Latter-Day Saints.—Of the Mormon Religion. No less an authority than Alexander von Humboldt has characterized positive religions in general as consisting of an historical novelette more or less interesting, a system of cosmogony more or less improbable, and a code of morals mostly pure.* Two thirds of this description apply to the faith of the Latter-Day Saints: they have, however, escaped palæological criticism by adopting Genesitic history, and by "swallowing Eve's apple" in the infancy of their spiritual life. Before proceeding to comment upon the New Dispensationfor such, though not claiming or owning to be, it is-I may compare the two leading interpretations of the word "Mormon," which, as has been well remarked,t truly convey the widely diverging opinions of the opposers and supporters of Mormonism. Mormon (uopuwv) signifies literally a lamia, a maniola, a female spectre; the mandrill, for its ugliness, was called Cynocephalus mormon. "Mormon," according to Mr. Joseph Smith's Mormonic, or rather Pantagruelic interpretation, is the best-scil., of mankind. "We * A somewhat free version of "toutes les réligions positives offrent trois parties distinctes; un traité de mœurs partout le même et très pur, un rêve géologique, et un mythe ou petit roman historique : le dernier élément obtient le plus d'importance." -LX. Letter, Dec. 3d, 1841. The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints, by Lieutenant J. W. Gunnison, of the United States Topographical Engineers. Philadelphia, 1852. say from the Saxon good, the Dane god, the Goth goder, the German gut, the Dutch goed, the Latin bonus, the Greek kalos, the Hebrew tob, and the Egyptian mon. Hence, with the addition of More, or the contraction Mor, we have the word Mormon, which means literally "more good." By faith it is said man can remove mountains: perhaps it will also enable him to believe in the spirit of that philology that revealed unto Mr. Joseph Smith his derivation, and rendered it a shibboleth to his followers. This is not the place to discuss a subject so broad and so long, but perhaps— the idea will suggest itself—the mind of man most loves those errors and delusions into which it has become self-persuaded, and is most fanatic concerning the irrationalities and the supernaturalities to which it has bowed its own reason. Unaccountably enough, seeing that it means "more good," scil., the best of mankind, the word Mormon is distasteful to its disciples, who look upon it as Jew by a Hebrew, Mohammedan by a Moslem, and Romanist or Puseyite by the sectarian Christian. They prefer to be called Latter-Day Saints, or, to give them their title in full, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in contradistinction to the Former-Day Saints. Latter Day alludes to the long-looked-for convulsion that will end the present quiescent geologic epoch. Its near approach has ever been a favorite dogma and improvement subject of the Christian Church, from the time of St. Paul to that of Mr. Joseph Smith, and Drs. Wolff and Cumming;* for who, inquires Panurge, "is able to tell if the world shall last yet three years?" Others read it as a prophecy that "Gentilism," alias "the corrupted Christianity of the age," is "on its last legs." Even as "Saints" is a term which has been applied from time immemorial in the Apocalypse and elsewhere to the orthodox, i. e., those of one's own doxy, and as Enoch speaks of "saints" before the Flood or Noachian cataclysm, so the honorable title has in these days been appropriated by seers, revelators, and prophets, and conferred upon the Lord's chosen people, i. e., themselves and their followers. According to anti-Mormons, the name Latter-Day Saints was assumed in 1835 by the Mormons at the suggestion of Sidney Rigdon. Before beginning a description of what Mormonism really is, I would succinctly lay down a few positions illustrating its genesis. 1. The religious as well as the social history of the progressive Anglo-Saxon race is a succession of contrasts, a system of reactions; at times retrogressive, it has a general onward tendency toward an unknown development. The Unitarians of New England, for instance, arose out of Calvinism. The Puritanism of the present generation is the natural consequence of the Rationalism which preceded it. 2. In what a French author terms "le triste état de dissolution *The Mormon Prophet fixed "the end of the world" for A.D. 1890; Dr. Cumming, I believe, in 1870. dans lequel gît le Chrétienté de nos jours"-the splitting of the Church into three grand divisions, Roman, Greek, and Eastern, the convulsion of the Northern mind, which created Protestantism, and the minute subdivision of the latter into Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Lutherans and Calvinists, Quakers and Shakers, the multiform Methodists and various Baptists, and, to quote no farther variétés des églises, the Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Universalists - a rationalistic race finds reason to inquire, "What is Christianity?" and holds itself prepared for a new faith, a regeneration of human thought-in fact, a religious and social change, such as the Reformation of the sixteenth century represented and fondly believed itself to be.* 3. Mormonism boasts of few Roman Catholic or Greek converts; the French and Italians are rare, and there is a remarkable deficiency of Germans and Irish-those wretched races without nationality or loyalty - which have overrun the Eastern American States. It is, then, to Protestantism that we must look for the origin of the New Faith. 4. In 1800-1804, and in 1820, a mighty Wesleyan "revival," which in Methodism represents the missions and retreats of Catholicism, had disturbed and excited the public mind in America, especially in Kentucky and Tennessee. The founder of Mormonism, Mr. Joseph Smith, his present successor, and his principal disciples and followers, were Campbellites, Millerites, Ranters, or other Methodists. Wesleyan sectarianism, like the old Arab pagan * Religious Denominations in the United States, according to the Census of 1861. (From the " American Almanac" of 1861.) |