BY APOSTLE ORSON HYDE, IN HIS PUBLICATION, "THE FRONTIER GUARDIAN,"
UNDER DATE OF JUNE 27, 1849, ISSUED AT COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA.
Twenty-seventh of June, 1844. Eventful period in the calendar of the
nineteenth century! That awful night! I remember it well: I shall
never forget it! Thousands and tens of thousands will never forget
it! A solemn thrill--a melancholy awe comes o'er my spirit! The
memorable scene is fresh before me! It requires no art of the pencil,
no retrospection of history, to portray it. The impression of the
Almighty Spirit on that occasion will run parallel with eternity! The
scene was not portrayed by earthquake, or thunderings, and lightnings,
and tempests; but the majesty and sovereignty of Jehovah was felt far
more impressively in the still, small voice of that significant hour,
than the roaring of many waters, or the artillery of many thunders,
when the spirit of Joseph was driven back to the bosom of God, by an
ungrateful and bloodthirsty world! There was an unspeakable something,
a portentious significancy on the firmament and among the inhabitants
of the earth. Multitudes felt the whisperings of woe and grief, and
the forebodings of tribulation and sorrow that they will never forget,
though the tongue of man can never utter it. The Saints of God, whether
near the scene of blood, or even a thousand miles distant, felt at
the very moment the Prophet lay in royal gore, that an awful deed was
perpetrated. O, the repulsive chill! the melancholy vibrations of the
very air, as the prince of darkness receded in hopeful triumph from
the scene of slaughter! That night could not the Saints sleep, though
uninformed by man of what had passed with the Seer and Patriarch,
and far, far remote from the scene; yet to them sleep refused a
visitation--the eyelids refused to close--the hearts of many sighed
deeply in secret, and inquired, "Why am I thus?"
One of the Twelve Apostles, while traveling a hundred {284} miles from
the scene of assassination, and totally ignorant of what was done, was
so unaccountably sad, and filled with such unspeakable anguish of heart
without knowing the cause, that he was constrained to turn aside from
the road and give utterance to his feelings in tears and supplications
to God. Another Apostle, twelve hundred miles distant, while standing
in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, with many others, was similarly
affected, and was obliged to turn aside to hide the big tears that
gushed thick and long from his eyes. Another, President of the High
Priests, while in the distant state of Kentucky, in the solitude of
midnight, being marvelously disquieted, God condescended to show
him, in a vision, the mangled bodies of the two murdered worthies,
all dripping in purple gore, who said to him, "We are murdered by a
faithless state and cruel mob."
Shall I attempt to describe the scene at Nauvoo on that memorable
evening? If I could, surely you would weep, whatever may be your
faith or skepticism, if the feelings of humanity are lodged in your
bosom; all prejudice and mirth would slumber, till the eye of pity had
bedewed the bier, and the heart had found relief in lamentation. Before
another day dawned, the messenger bore the tidings into the afflicted
city; the picket guards of the city heard the whisper of murder in
silent amazement, as the messenger passed into the city. There the
pale muslin signal for gathering the troops hung its drooping folds
from the Temple spire (as if partaking of nature's sadness), and made
tremulous utterance to the humble soldiery to muster immediately. As
the dawn made the signal visible, and the bass tone of the great drum
confirmed the call, fathers, husbands, and minor sons, all seized
the broken fragment of a dodger, or a scanty bone, for the service
that might be long and arduous before their return, or swallowed some
thickened milk (as might be the case), and fled to the muster ground;
the suspicious mother and children followed to the door and window,
anxious to see the gathering hosts emerge from their watch-posts and
firesides, where rest and food were scanted to the utmost endurance.
The troops continued to arrive, and stood in martial order, with a
compressed lip and a quick ear. They waited with deathly but composed
silence, to hear the intelligence that mournful spirits had saddened
their hearts with during the night. The speaker stood up in the midst,
not of a uniform soldiery of hirelings, for they had no wages; their
clothing was the workmanship of the diligent domestic--the product
of wife and daughters' arduous toil; their rations {285} were drawn
from the precarious supplies earned in the intervals between preaching
to the states and nations of the earth, and watching against the
intrusions and violence of mobs. The speaker announced the martyrdom
of the Prophet and Patriarch, and paused under the heavy burden of the
intelligence.
But here I must pause; my pen shall touch lightly, as it must feebly,
that hallowed--that solemn and ever-memorable hour! The towering
indignation; the holy and immutable principle of retribution for crime
that dwells eternally in the bosom of God, insensibly impelled the
right hand almost to draw the glittering sword, and feel the sharpness
of the bayonet's point and its fixedness to the musket's mouth. But the
well-planted principle of self-command, and also of observing the order
of Heaven and the counsel of the Priesthood, soon returned the deadly
steel to the scabbard; and the victorious triumph of loyalty to God,
in committing evil-doers to Him that judgeth righteously, and who hath
said, "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay," prevailed over the billows
of passion; and in the transit of a fleeting moment the holy serenity
of the soldiery, depicted by an occasional tear, showed to the angels
and men that the tempest of passion was hushed, and wholly under the
control of the spirit of wisdom and of God!
_It is just as mean and contemptible in the eyes of angels and the
Almighty, to go to law, and thereby wrong a fellow-being, as it is
to steal his property._
--_Brigham Young_.
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DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS: ITS FAITH
AND TEACHINGS.