THE LATTER-DAY ILIAD--REPRODUCTION OF THE GREAT HEBRAIC DRAMA--THE
MEANING OF THE MORMON MOVEMENT IN THE AGE.
It was "a gathering dispensation." A strange religion indeed, that
meant something more than faith and prayers and creeds.
An empire-founding religion, as we have said,--this religion of a
latter-day Israel. A religion, in fact, that meant all that the name of
"Latter-day Israel" implies.
The women who did their full half in founding Mormondom, comprehended,
as much as did their prototypes who came up out of Egypt, the
significance of the name of Israel.
Out of Egypt the seed of promise, to become a peculiar people, a holy
nation, with a distinctive God and a distinctive destiny. Out of modern
Babylon, to repeat the same Hebraic drama in the latter age.
A Mormon iliad in every view; and the sisters understanding it fully.
Indeed perhaps they have best understood it. Their very experience
quickened their comprehension.
The cross and the crown of thorns quicken the conception of a
crucifixion. The Mormon women have borne the cross and worn the crown
of thorns for a full lifetime; not in their religion, but in their
experience. Their strange destiny and the divine warfare incarnated in
their lives, gave them an experience matchless in its character and
unparalleled in its sacrifices.
The sisters understood their religion, and they counted the cost of
their divine ambitions.
What that cost has been to these more than Spartan women, we shall
find in tragic stories of their lives, fast unfolding in the coming
narrative of their gatherings and exterminations.
For the first twenty years of their history the tragedy of the
Latter-day Israel was woeful enough to make their guardian angels weep,
and black enough in its scenes to satisfy the angriest demons.
This part of the Mormon drama began in 1831 with the removal of the
church from the State of New York to Kirtland, Ohio, and to Jackson,
and other counties in Missouri; and it culminated in the martyrdom of
the prophet and his brother at Nauvoo, and the exodus to the Rocky
Mountains. In all these scenes the sisters have shown themselves
matchless heroines.
The following, from an early poem, written by the prophetess, Eliza R.
Snow, will finely illustrate the Hebraic character of the Mormon work,
and the heroic spirit in which these women entered into the divine
action of their lives:
My heart is fix'd--I know in whom I trust.
'Twas not for wealth--'twas not to gather heaps
Of perishable things--'twas not to twine
Around my brow a transitory wreath,
A garland decked with gems of mortal praise,
That I forsook the home of childhood; that
I left the lap of ease--the halo rife
With friendship's richest, soft, and mellow tones;
Affection's fond caresses, and the cup
O'erflowing with the sweets of social life,
With high refinement's golden pearls enrich'd.
Ah, no! A holier purpose fir'd my soul;
A nobler object prompted my pursuit.
Eternal prospects open'd to my view,
And hope celestial in my bosom glow'd.
God, who commanded Abraham to leave
His native country, and to offer up
On the lone altar, where no eye beheld
But that which never sleeps, an only son,
Is still the same; and thousands who have made
A covenant with him by sacrifice,
Are bearing witness to the sacred truth--
Jehovah speaking has reveal'd his will.
The proclamation sounded in my ear--
It reached my heart--I listen'd to the sound--
Counted the cost, and laid my earthly all
Upon the altar, and with purpose fix'd
Unalterably, while the spirit of
Elijah's God within my bosom reigns,
Embrac'd the everlasting covenant,
And am determined now to be a saint,
And number with the tried and faithful ones,
Whose race is measured with their life; whose prize
Is everlasting, and whose happiness
Is God's approval; and to whom 'tis more
Than meat and drink to do his righteous will.
* * * *
Although to be a saint requires
A noble sacrifice--an arduous toil--
A persevering aim; the great reward
Awaiting the grand consummation will
Repay the price, however costly; and
The pathway of the saint the safest path
Will prove; though perilous--for 'tis foretold,
All things that can be shaken, God will shake;
Kingdoms and governments, and institutes,
Both civil and religious, must be tried--
Tried to the core, and sounded to the depth.
Then let me be a saint, and be prepar'd
For the approaching day, which like a snare
Will soon surprise the hypocrite--expose
The rottenness of human schemes--shake off
Oppressive fetters--break the gorgeous reins
Usurpers hold, and lay the pride of man--
The pride of nations, low in dust!
And there was in these gatherings of our latter-day Israel, like as in
this poem, a tremendous meaning. It is of the Hebrew significance and
genius rather than of the Christian; for Christ is now Messiah, King of
Israel, and not the Babe of Bethlehem. Mormondom is no Christian sect,
but an Israelitish nationality, and even woman, the natural prophetess
of the reign of peace, is prophesying of the shaking of "kingdoms and
governments and all human institutions."
The Mormons from the beginning well digested the text to the great
Hebrew drama, and none better than the sisters; here it is:
"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and
from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will
shew thee;
"And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and
make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing;
"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth
thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."
And so, for now nearly fifty years, this Mormon Israel have been
getting out of their native countries, and from their kindred, and from
their father's house unto the gathering places that their God has shown
them.
But they have been driven from those gathering places from time to
time; yes, driven farther west. There was the land which God was
showing them. At first it was too distant to be seen even by the eye of
faith. Too many thousands of miles even for the Spartan heroism of the
sisters; too dark a tragedy of expulsions and martyrdoms; and too many
years of exoduses and probations. The wrath of the Gentiles drove them
where their destiny led them--to the land which God was showing them.
And for the exact reason that the patriarchal Abraham and Sarah were
commanded to get out of their country and from their kindred and their
father's house, so were the Abrahams and Sarahs of our time commanded
by the same God and for the same purpose.
"I will make of thee a great nation." "And I will make my covenant
between me and thee, and I will multiply thee exceedingly." "And thou
shalt be a father of many nations." "And I will establish my covenant
between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for
an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and thy seed after thee."
To fulfill this in the lives of these spiritual sons and daughters of
Abraham and Sarah, the gathering dispensation was brought in. These
Mormons have gathered from the beginning that they might become the
fathers and mothers of a nation, and that through them the promises
made to the Abrahamic fathers and mothers might be greatly fulfilled.
This is most literal, and was well understood in the early rise of the
church, long before polygamy was known. Yet who cannot now see that
in such a patriarchal covenant was the very overture of patriarchal
marriage--or polygamy.
So in the early days quite a host of the daughters of New
England--earnest and purest of women--many of them unmarried, and most
of them in the bloom of womanhood--gathered to the virgin West to
become the mothers of a nation, and to build temples to the name of a
patriarchal God!