BRIGHAM YOUNG.
“I look upon Mohammed and Brigham as the very best men that God could
send as ministers to those unto whom He sent them,” wrote Elder
Frederick Evans, of the “Shaker” village of New Lebanon, in a letter to
us, inclosing another by way of introduction to the Mormon president.
Credentials from the Shaker to the Mormon chief--from the great living
exponent of the principle of celibacy to the “most married” in all
America--were not to be kept undelivered; so the moment we had bathed we
posted off to a merchant to whom we had letters, that we might inquire
when his spiritual chief and military ruler would be home again from his
“trip north.” The answer was, “To-morrow.”
After watching the last gleams fade from the snow-fields upon the
Wasatch, we parted for the night, as I had to sleep in a private house,
the hotel being filled even to the balcony. As I entered the
drawing-room of my entertainer, I heard the voice of a lady reading, and
caught enough of what she said to be aware that it was a defense of
polygamy. She ceased when she saw the stranger; but I found that it was
my host‘s first wife reading Belinda Pratt‘s book to her
daughters--girls just blooming into womanhood.
After an agreeable chat with the ladies, doubly pleasant as it followed
upon a long absence from civilization, I went to my room, which I
afterward found to be that of the eldest son, a youth of sixteen years.
In one corner stood two Ballard rifles, and two revolvers and a militia
uniform hung from pegs upon the wall. When I lay down with my hands
underneath the pillow--an attitude instinctively adopted to escape the
sand-flies, I touched something cold. I felt it--a full-sized Colt, and
capped. Such was my first introduction to Utah Mormonism.
On the morrow, we had the first and most formal of our four interviews
with the Mormon president, the conversation lasting three hours, and all
the leading men of the church being present. When we rose to leave,
Brigham said: “Come to see me here again; Brother Stenhouse will show
you everything;” and then blessed us in these words: “Peace be with you,
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence, and somewhat anxiously
put the odd question: “Well, is he a white man?” “White” is used in Utah
as a general term of praise: a white man is a man--to use our
corresponding idiom--not so black as he is painted. A “white country” is
a country with grass and trees; just as a white man means a man who is
morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land in which others than
Utes can dwell.
We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse‘s question; but it was
impossible not to feel that the real point was: Is Brigham sincere?
Brigham‘s deeds have been those of a sincere man. His bitterest
opponents cannot dispute the fact that in 1844, when Nauvoo was about to
be deserted, owing to the attacks of a ruffianly mob, Brigham rushed to
the front, and took the chief command. To be a Mormon leader then was to
be a leader of an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in a
Missourian county in which almost every man who was not a Mormon was by
profession an assassin. In the sense, too, of believing that he is what
he professes to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In the wider sense
of being that which he professes to be he comes off as well, if only we
will read his words in the way he speaks them. He tells us that he is a
prophet--God‘s representative on earth; but when I asked him whether he
was of a wholly different spiritual rank to that held by other devout
men, he said: “By no means. I am a prophet--one of many. All good men
are prophets; but God has blessed me with peculiar favor in revealing
His will oftener and more clearly through me than through other men.”
Those who would understand Brigham‘s revelations must read Bentham. The
leading Mormons are utilitarian deists. “God‘s will be done,” they, like
other deists, say is to be our rule; and God‘s will they find in written
Revelation and in Utility. God has given men, by the actual hand of
angels, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants, the
revelation upon Plural Marriage. When these are exhausted, man, seeking
for God‘s will, has to turn to the principle of Utility: that which is
for the happiness of mankind--_that is of the church_--is God‘s will,
and must be done. While Utility is their only index to God‘s pleasure,
they admit that the church must be ruled--that opinions may differ as to
what is the good of the church, and therefore the will of God. They
meet, then, annually, in an assembly of the people, and electing church
officers by popular will and acclamation, they see God‘s finger in the
ballot-box. They say, like the Jews in the election of their judges,
that the choice of the people is the choice of God. This is what men
like John Taylor or Daniel Wells appear to feel; the ignorant are
permitted to look upon Brigham as something more than man, and though
Brigham himself does nothing to confirm this view, the leaders foster
the delusion. When I asked Stenhouse, “Has Brigham‘s re-election as
prophet ever been opposed?” he answered sharply, “I should like to see
the man who‘d do it.”
Brigham‘s personal position is a strange one: he calls himself prophet,
and declares that he has revelations from God himself, but when you ask
him quietly what all this means, you find that for prophet you should
read political philosopher. He sees that a canal from Utah Lake to Salt
Lake Valley would be of vast utility to the church and people--that a
new settlement is urgently required. He thinks about these things till
they dominate in his mind, and take in his brain the shape of physical
creations. He dreams of the canal, the city; sees them before him in his
waking moments. That which is so clearly for the good of God‘s people
becomes God‘s will. Next Sunday at the Tabernacle he steps to the front,
and says: “God has spoken; He has said unto his prophet, ‘Get thee up,
Brigham, and build Me a city in the fertile valley to the South, where
there is water, where there are fish, where the sun is strong enough to
ripen the cotton plants, and give raiment as well as food to My saints
on earth.’ Brethren willing to aid God‘s work should come to me before
the Bishops’ meeting.” As the prophet takes his seat again, and puts on
his broad-brimmed hat, a hum of applause runs round the bowery, and
teams and barrows are freely promised.
Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove a failure, but this
is not concealed; the prophet‘s human tongue may blunder even when he is
communicating holy things.
“After all,” Brigham said to me the day before I left, “the highest
inspiration is good sense--the knowing what to do, and how to do it.”
In all this it is hard for us, with our English hatred of casuistry and
hair-splitting, to see sincerity; still, given his foundation, Brigham
is sincere. Like other political religionists, he must feel himself
morally bound to stick at nothing when the interests of the church are
at stake. To prefer man‘s life or property to the service of God must be
a crime in such a church. The Mormons deny the truth of the
murder-stories alleged against the Danites, but they avoid doing so in
sweeping or even general terms--though, if need were, of course they
would be bound to lie as well as to kill in the name of God and His holy
prophet.
The secret polity which I have sketched gives, evidently, enormous power
to some one man within the church; but the Mormon constitution does not
very clearly point out who that man shall be. With a view to the
possible future failure of leaders of great personal qualifications, the
First Presidency consists of three members with equal rank; but to his
place in the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of Trustee in Trust,
which gives him the control of the funds and tithing, or church
taxation.
All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham‘s place in Utah.
Stenhouse said one day: “I am one of those who think that our President
should do everything. He has made this church and this country, and
should have his way in all things; saying so gets me into trouble with
some.” The writer of a report of Brigham‘s tour which appeared in the
Salt Lake _Telegraph_ the day we reached the city, used the words: “God
never spoke through man more clearly than through President Young.”
One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the morality of the Mormon
people, he said: “Our penalty for adultery is death.” Remembering the
Danites, we were down on him at once: “Do you inflict it?” “No;
but--well, not practically; but really it is so. A man who commits
adultery withers away and perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon
a mission that may last for years, if he lives not purely--_if, when he
returns, he cannot meet the eye of Brigham, better for him to be at once
in hell._ He withers.”
Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his own power over the
Mormon people: “Let the talking folk at Washington say, if they please,
that I am no longer Governor of Utah. I am, and will be Governor, until
God Almighty says, ‘Brigham, you need not be Governor any more.’”
Brigham‘s head is that of a man who nowhere could be second.