Modern Saints and Seers Part 10

Militant as well as constructive, the Mormon leaders, like many other reformers, believed themselves to be charged with a mission from on high, and were quick to condemn as rebels all who failed to rally to the standard of the "Latter-Day Saints." Joe Smith was not content with making thousands of converts, but, after having turned his colony at Independence into an "a.r.s.enal of the Lord," and surrounding himself with a veritable army, he proclaimed that, as the Bible gave the saints empire over all the earth, the whole State of Missouri should be incorporated in his "New Jerusalem." The "Gentiles" replied with a declaration of war, and Joe Smith and his twelve apostles were seized, publicly flogged, divested of their garments, tarred and feathered, and chased out of the State with shouts and laughter and a hail of stones.

The Mormons took up arms. The Governor of Missouri called out the militia. Vanquished in the encounter that followed, the Mormons had to abandon all their possessions and take flight. They then founded a town called Far West, and remained there for three years, at the end of which time fresh aggressions and more battles drove them out of the State of Missouri into that of Illinois, where they built the large town of Nauvoo. Many thousands of fresh recruits were won over, but once again their designs for the acquisition of land--as well as of souls--stirred up a crusade against them. Joe Smith and the other leaders of the sect were taken prisoners and shot--a procedure which endowed Mormonism with all the sacredness of martyrdom. To escape further persecutions, the Saints decided on a general exodus, and the whole sect, men and women, old people and children, numbering in all about eighty thousand souls, set forth into the desert.

It was a miserable journey. They were attacked by Red Indians, and decimated by sickness; they strayed into wrong paths where no food was to be found; they were buried in snowdrifts; and many of them perished.

But the others, sustained by an invulnerable faith, and by the undying courage of their leaders, pushed on ever further and further, until in the summer of 1847, after the cruel hardships of a journey on foot over nearly three hundred leagues of salt plains, the head of the column reached the valley of the great Salt Lake. Here Brigham Young's strategic vision beheld a favourable situation for the re-establishment of the sect. He himself, with a hundred and forty-three of his companions--the elite of the church--directed the construction of the beginnings of the colony, and then returned to those who had been left behind, bringing back a caravan of about three thousand to the spot where the New Jerusalem was to be built.

It was given the name of Utah, and Filmore, the President of the United States, appointed Brigham Young as governor. The latter, however, desired to become completely autonomous. He was soon in conflict with those under him, and his open hostility to the American const.i.tution caused him to be deposed. His successor, Colonel Stepton, finding the situation untenable, resigned almost at once, and the Mormons, recovering their former militancy and independence, then sought to free themselves altogether from the guardianship of America, and to be sole masters in their own territory. In order to reduce them to submission, President Buchanan sent them a new governor in 1857 with some thousands of soldiers. The Mormons resisted for some time, and finally demanded admittance into the Union. Not only did Congress refuse this request, but it pa.s.sed a law rendering all polygamists liable to be brought before the criminal courts. The War of Secession, however, interrupted the measures taken against the sect, which remained neutral during the military operations of the North and South. Brigham Young, who had remained the Mormons' civil and religious head, occupied himself only with the economic and worldly extension of his church, until in 1870, five years after the termination of the war, the attention of Congress was once more directed towards him. For the second time the Mormons were forbidden by law to practise polygamy, under penalty of deportation from America, but they resisted energetically and refused to obey. Defying the governor of Utah, General Scheffer, they rallied fanatically round Brigham Young, who was arraigned and acquitted--and the Mormon Church remained ruler of the colony.

After Young's death, government was carried on jointly by the twelve apostles, until on October 17th, 1901, George Smith was elected universal President of all branches.

A Frenchman, Jules Remy, who visited the Mormons some time back, has given a striking description of them:--

"Order, peace and industry are revealed on every side. All these people are engaged in useful work, like bees in a hive, thus justifying the emblem on the roof of their President's palace. There are masons, carpenters, and gardeners, all carrying out their respective duties; blacksmiths busy at the forge, reapers gathering in the harvest, furriers preparing rich skins, children picking maize, drovers tending their flocks, wood-cutters returning heavily loaded from the mountains.

Others again are engaged in carding and combing wool, navvies are digging irrigation ca.n.a.ls, chemists are manufacturing saltpetre and gunpowder, armourers are making or mending firearms. Tailors, shoemakers, bricklayers, potters, millers, sawyers--every kind of labourer or artisan is here to be found. There are no idlers, and no unemployed. Everybody, from the humblest convert up to the bishop himself, is occupied in some sort of manual labour. It is a curious and interesting sight--a society so industrious and sober, so peaceful and well-regulated, yet built up of such divers elements drawn from such widely differing cla.s.ses. . . .

All these people, born in varied and often contradictory faiths, brought up for the most part in ignorance and prejudice, having lived, some virtuously, some indifferently, some in complete abandonment to their lowest animal instincts, differing among themselves as to climate, language, customs, tastes and nationality, are here drawn together to live in a state of harmony far more perfect than that of ordinary brotherhood. In the centre of the American continent they form a new and compact nation, with independent social and religious laws, and are as little subject to the United States government that harbours them as to that, for instance, of the Turks."

Such they were, and such they have remained, ever developing their activities and industries, and--as another traveller has said--having no aim save that of turning their arid and uncultivated "Promised Land"

into a fertile Judea--an aim in which they have marvellously succeeded.

III

Mormonism owes its success chiefly to its practical interpretation of the Communistic ideals, and to its determination to encourage labour by means of religion and patriotism, setting before it as object the satisfaction of each individual's social needs, under the direction of those who have proved themselves capable and vigilant and worthy of confidence. It is a republic from which are banished the two most usual causes of social collapse--idleness and egotism; a hive, according to its founder, in which each bee, having his particular function, is always under the eye of those who direct individual activities in the interests of collective welfare. The President of the Mormon Church is its moving spirit. He surveys it as a whole, encourages or moderates its energies, according to circ.u.mstances, preserves order and regularity, and exercises his paternal influence over every cell of the hive, giving counsel when needed, redressing grievances, preventing false moves, yet leaving to every corporation not only its administrative freedom but its own powers for industrial extension.

Under these conditions the Church of the Latter-Day Saints unites the social and economic advantages of individual and collective labour.

The corporations are like st.i.tches that form a net, holding together through community of interests and a general desire for prosperity, yet each having its own separate formation and the power to enlarge itself and increase its activities without compromising the others or lessening their respective importance. One of the most remarkable is the "Mercantile Co-operative Society of Sion," the central department of wholesale and retail trade. It was founded in 1863 by Brigham Young, who was its first president, and is in direct relationship with the Mormon colonies all over the world, having a capital fund of more than a million dollars which belongs exclusively to the Mormons. Its organisation, like that of all Mormon inst.i.tutions, is based upon the deduction of a t.i.the of all profits, which practically represents income tax. The "Sugar Corporation" has an even larger capital, and was founded directly by the church through the advice of Brigham Young, who recommended that Mormon industries should be patronised to the exclusion of all others. The salt industry also is of much importance, the Inland Crystal Salt Company having at great expense erected elaborate machinery in order to work the salt marshes around the Great Lake, and to obtain, under the best possible conditions, grey salt which is converted into white in their refineries. Other corporations under the presidency of the supreme head of the Mormon Church are the "Consolidated Company of Railway Carriages and Engines," the "Sion Savings Bank," the "Co-operative Society for Lighting and Transport,"

and the chief Mormon paper, the _Desert Evening News_, which is the official organ of the church, and has a considerable circulation.

IV

These corporations are not only commercial or industrial inst.i.tutions, but are animated by a spirit that is pre-eminently fraternal. Their heads are concerned with the well-being of every member, and material, moral or intellectual a.s.sistance is given to all according to their needs.

To each corporation is attached a "delegate," whose functions do not appear to be of great importance, but who renders, in reality, services of considerable value. The man who holds this post is one of unimpeachable honesty and integrity, with a kind and conciliatory disposition, chosen for these qualities to act as intermediary between the bishop and the "saints" of all cla.s.ses, from the highest to the lowest. He has free entry into the Mormon homes, and is always ready to give advice and counsel to any member of the church in his district; and he even penetrates into the houses of the Gentiles, wherever a Mormon, man or woman, may happen to be employed. Take, for instance, the case of a young Scandinavian servant-girl, living with "unbelievers." The mother, who had remained in Europe, wished to rejoin her daughter, but the girl had not been able to raise more than a third of the sum necessary to pay the expenses of the journey. The delegate took note of this and referred the case to the bishop, who, after inquiry, sent the old mother the required amount.

Again, two neighbours might be disputing over the question of the boundary between their respective properties. The delegate would do all in his power to settle the affair amicably, and to restore harmony; and failing in this would bring the two parties concerned before the bishop. Or there might be an invalid requiring medicine and treatment, an old person needing help, a layette to be bought for a new-born child--in all such cases the delegate sees that the needs are supplied, for the strength of this Church of the Latter-Day Saints lies in the fact that all the Mormons, from the President down to the humblest workman, call themselves brothers and sisters and act as such towards one another. Thanks to the delegate, who is friend, confidant and confessor in one, immediate help can be obtained in all instances, and no suffering is left unrelieved.

Thus it comes about that there are no poor among the Mormons, and very few criminals. The delegate has no need to search into the secrets of men's minds, for all are open to him. To a great extent he is able to read their innermost hearts, for men speak freely to him, without veils or reservations. As far as is possible he sees that their desires are granted; he notifies all cases of need to the Relief Societies; he conducts the sick and aged to the hospitals; he is the messenger and mouthpiece for all communications from the people to the bishop and from the bishop to his flock.

It is the delegate also who is charged with the duty of seeing that one-tenth of each person's income, whatever its total sum may be, is contributed for the upkeep of the Mormon faith and its church. He reminds the dilatory, and admonishes the forgetful, always in friendly fashion. In fact it is he, who--to use a popular expression--brings the grist to the mill. This contribution of a tenth part obviates all other taxation, and as it is demanded from each in proportion to his means, its fairness is disputed by none.

V

Brotherly co-operation also prevails in the Mormon system of colonisation. The leaders of the church have always been aware of the dangers of overcrowding, and at all times have occupied themselves with the founding of new settlements to receive the surplus population from the centres already in activity. It is for this reason that the church has been so urgent in seeking and demanding new territory to irrigate and cultivate, in Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Idaho, and even as far afield as Canada. The transplanting of a swarm from the parent hive is undertaken with the greatest care. Let us take for example the colonisation of the Big Horn Valley, in the north of Wyoming. Before coming to a decision the apostles themselves inspected the locality, which had been recommended as suitable for a new colony of saints.

Finding that it fulfilled all requirements, they published their resolve in the official Press, and invited all who desired to become members of the colony to present themselves before their bishop with the necessary guarantees. The President of the church then sought out a brother capable of organising the scheme, and this brother, proud and grateful at being chosen for such a mission, sold all his goods and took up his new responsibilities. On the appointed day the new colonists grouped themselves around their leader, with their wagons, baggages, provisions, agricultural tools, horses and cattle, and so on.

One of the twelve apostles being appointed as guide, they set forth for the Big Horn Valley. Here they built their dwelling-places, dug a ca.n.a.l to provide water for the whole settlement, founded all kinds of co-operative societies, including one for the breeding of cattle--and prospered.

In this way, upon a Socialism quite distinct from that of the European theorists, and differing widely from that practised by the New Zealanders, are built up inst.i.tutions, which have given proof, wherever started, of their power of resistance to human weaknesses. The Mormon colonies, fundamentally collectivist, like the sect from which they originally sprang, still bear the imprint given to them by the initiators of the movement. Each one becomes industrially and commercially autonomous, but all are firmly held together in a common brotherhood by the ties of religion. The Big Horn Mormons, although so far away, never for a single day forget their brothers of Salt Lake City, and all alike hold themselves ever in readiness to render mutual a.s.sistance and support.

VI

The Mormon considers activity a duty. Co-operation implies for him not only solidarity of labour but union of will, and these principles are applied in all phases of his public or private life--in politics, education, social conditions of every kind, and even amus.e.m.e.nts. He holds it obligatory under all circ.u.mstances to contribute personal help or money according to his means, knowing that his brothers and sisters will do likewise, and that he can rely upon them with absolute certainty.

Nevertheless, dissension does occasionally arise in the heart of this close-knit brotherhood. The authority of the President, or that of the apostles and bishops may be the cause of rivalries and jealousies, as in the case of Joseph Morris, Brigham Young's confidant, who wished to supplant his chief. He and his partisans were a.s.saulted and put to death by Young's adherents. A spirit of discord also manifests itself at times in the national elections, and there are plottings and intrigues, especially when there seems to be hope of supremacy in Congress, or when one of the twelve apostles offers himself as candidate for the Senate without first consulting the Mormon Church.

Such shadows are inseparable from all human communities. What it is important to study in the Church of the Latter-Day Saints is the evolution of a communism which has more than half a century of activity to its credit, and which, in contrast to so many other fruitless attempts, has given marked proofs of a vitality that shows no sign of diminishing.

CHAPTER II

THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS

Joe Smith was, to speak plainly, nothing but an adventurer. Having tried more than twenty avocations, ending up with that of a gold-digger, he found himself at last at the end of his resources, and decided, in truly American fashion, that he would now make his fortune.

He thereupon announced that he was in close communication with Moses, and that he had in his possession the two mosaic talismans, Urim and Thummim, and the ma.n.u.script of the Biblical prophet, Mormon--the latter having as a matter of fact been obtained from Solomon Spaulding, pastor of New Salem, Ohio, in 1812.

It was different with John Alexander Dowie, who with remarkable wisdom seized the psychological moment to appear in the United States as a Barnum and a Pierpont Morgan of religion combined. By what was an indisputable stroke of genius, he incorporated into his religion the most outstanding features of American life--commerce, industry, and finance, the tripod upon which the Union rests. What could be more up-to-date than a commercial and industrial prophet, business man, stock-jobber, and organiser of enterprises paying fabulous dividends?

And--surely the crowning point of the "new spirit!"--the man who now declared himself to be the most direct representative of G.o.d upon earth was accepted as such because people saw in him, not only the Messianic power that he claimed, but an extraordinary knowledge of the value of stocks and shares side by side with his knowledge of the value of souls!

He was of Scottish origin, and had reached his thirtieth year before his name became known. As a child he was disinclined to take religion seriously, and had a habit of whistling the hymns in church instead of singing them. Later he was distinguished by a timidity and reserve which seemed to suggest that he would never rise above the environment into which he had been born. His studies and his beliefs--which for long showed no sign of deviating from the hereditary Scottish faith--were under the direction of a rigidly severe father. At the age of thirteen his parents, attracted by the Australian mirage of those days, took him with them to Adelaide, and he became under-clerk in a business house there, serving an apprenticeship which was to prove useful later on. At twenty he returned to Edinburgh, desiring to enter the ministry, as he believed he had a religious vocation, and plunged into the study of theology with a deep hostility to everything that was outside a strictly literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Full of devotion and self-abnegation in his desperate struggle with the powers of evil, he read the Holy Book with avidity, and was constant in his attendance at theological conferences. Thus, nourished on the marrow of the Scotch theologians, he returned to Australia and was ordained to the priesthood at Alma. Soon afterwards he was appointed minister to the Congregational Church in Sydney, where his profound learning was highly appreciated.

He who desires to attract and instruct the ma.s.ses must have two gifts, without which success is impossible--eloquence and charm. Dowie had both. As an orator he was always master of himself, yet full of emotion, pa.s.sionate in his gestures, and easily moved to tears.

We must admit that he did not, like so many others, owe his influence to his environment. In New South Wales, where he made his _debut_ as a preacher at Sydney, his eloquence and his learning made so great an impression--especially after he had emerged victorious from a controversy with the Anglican bishop, Vaughan, brother to the Cardinal--that the governor of the province, Sir Henry Parkes, offered him an important Government position. He refused to accept it, desiring, as he said, to consecrate his life to the work of G.o.d.

Persuaded--or wishing to persuade others--that he had been personally chosen by G.o.d to fulfil the prophecy of St. Mark xvi. 17, 18, he took up the practice of the laying-on of hands, claiming that in this way, with the help of prayer, the sick could be cured. On these words of the evangelist his whole doctrine was based. Through a.s.siduous reading he familiarised himself with medical science, as well as with hypnotism, telepathy and suggestion, his aim being to organise and direct a crusade against medicine as practised by the faculty. He gathered together materials for a declaration of war against the medicos, attacking them in their, apparently, most impregnable positions, and showing up, often through their own observations, the fatal inanity--in his eyes--of their therapeutics. At the same time he managed to acquire experience of commerce, finance and administration, and, thus equipped, he opened his campaign. Thaumaturgy, science, occultism, eloquence, knowledge of men and of the world--all these he brought into play. The prestige he gained was remarkable, and of course the unimpeachable truth of Bible prophecy was sufficient to establish the fact of his ident.i.ty with the expected Elias!

"Logic itself commands you to believe in me," he said in his official manifesto. "John the Baptist was the messenger of the Alliance (which is the Scotch Covenant), and Elias was its prophet. But Malachi and Jesus promised the return of the messenger of the Alliance, and of Elias the Restorer. . . . If we are deceived, it is G.o.d who has deceived us, and that is impossible. For the office with which we are charged is held directly from G.o.d, and those who have helped us in founding our Church, and who have given us their devotion, testify that they have been instructed to do so by personal revelations."

All the believers in Dowieism affirmed that John Alexander Dowie was Elias the Second, or Elias the Third (if John the Baptist were considered to be the Second), but Dowie himself went further still. He was too modern to base his influence on religion alone, and he actually had the cleverness to become not only a banker, manufacturer, hotel-keeper, newspaper proprietor, editor and multi-millionaire, but also the princ.i.p.al of a college and the "boss" of a political party which acknowledged him as spiritual and temporal pope and numbered over sixty thousand adherents. He had ten tabernacles in Chicago, and ruled despotically the munic.i.p.al affairs of one of the suburbs of the city.

II

It is interesting to study closely the way in which Dowie gradually attained to such a powerful position. Up to his arrival in Chicago, and even for some years after it, his career differed little from that of the ordinary open-air evangelist with long hair and vague theories, such as may be seen at the street-corners of so many English and American towns. In New South Wales his excessive ardour at temperance meetings in the public squares caused such disorder that he was twice imprisoned, and he came to the conclusion that Melbourne would offer better scope for his mission. He went there to establish a "Free Christian Tabernacle," but almost immediately an epidemic of fever broke out, and he became popular through his intrepidity in visiting the sick, whom he claimed to be able to cure by a secret remedy, the use of which, as a matter of fact, only resulted in augmenting the lists of dead. But to his religious propaganda the Australians turned a deaf ear, and after persevering for ten years he gave up, partly because the authorities had intimated that he had best pitch his camp elsewhere, partly, perhaps, because he was glad to leave what he later referred to as "that nest of antipodean vipers."

We find him in San Francisco in 1888, preaching his new religion at street-corners, and once more causing almost daily disturbances by the vigour of his eloquence. Here again his hopes miscarried, and from thenceforward he fixed his eyes on Chicago, where he should "meet the devil on his own ground."

This final resolution bore good fruit, for Chicago is pre-eminently "the city of Satan," and those who desire to wage war against him can always be sure of plentiful hauls, whatever nets they use. It is that type of American town where all is noise and animation, where the population is cosmopolitan, and confusion of tongues is coupled with an even greater confusion of beliefs; where it is possible to pursue the avocations of theologian and pork-butcher side by side, and no one is surprised. Called "Queen of the West" by some, Porkopolis (from its chief industry) by others, it is a giant unique in its own kind. While its inhabitants, in feverish activity, climb or are rushed in lifts to the nineteenth and twentieth storeys of its immense buildings, there is heard from time to time a call from regions beyond this life of incessant bustle; the voice of a preacher dominates the tumult, and this million and a half of slaughterers of sheep and oxen, jam-makers and meat-exporters, factory-hands, distillers, brewers, tanners, seekers of fortune by every possible means, suddenly remembers that it has a soul to be saved, and throws it in pa.s.sing, as it were, to whoever is most dexterous in catching it. In such a _milieu_ Dowie might indeed hope to pursue his aims with advantage.

His personality had a certain hypnotic fascination. His eloquence, his patriarchal appearance, his supposed power of curing even the most intractable diseases, his use of modern catch-words, his talent for decorating the walls of his little temple with symbols such as crutches, bandages and other trophies of "divine healing," all combined to bring him before the public eye. He had a dispute with the doctors, who accused him of practising their profession illegally, and another with the clergy, who attacked him in their sermons; the populace was stirred up against him, and laid siege to his tabernacle, and he himself threw oil upon these various fires, and became a prominent personage in the daily Press.

It is true that the arrest of some Dowieists whose zeal had carried them beyond the limits of the law of Illinois was commented upon; that long reports were published of the death of a member of the Church of Sion who had succ.u.mbed through being refused any medical attention save that of the high-priest of the sect; that much amus.e.m.e.nt was caused by the dispersal of a meeting of Dowieists by firemen, who turned the hose upon them; and much interest aroused by the legal actions brought against Dowie for having refused to give information concerning the Bank of Sion. All these affairs provided so many new "sensations."

But what is of importance is to attract the public, to hold their attention, to keep them in suspense. The time came when it was necessary to produce some more original idea, to strike a really decisive blow, and so Dowie revealed to a stupefied Chicago that he was the latest incarnation of the prophet Elijah. Then while the serious Press denounced him for blasphemy, and the comic Press launched its most highly poisoned shafts of wit against him, the whole of Sion exulted in clamorous rejoicings. For the prophet knew his Chicago.

Credulity gained the upper hand, and the whole city flocked to the tabernacle of Sion, desirous of beholding the new Elias at close quarters.