_Some Inner Mysteries Are Expounded_
The hosts of Israel had been forced to tarry for the winter on the banks
of the Missouri. A few were on the east side at Council Bluffs on the
land of the Pottawattamie Indians. Across the river on the land of the
Omahas the greater part of the force had settled at what was known as
Winter Quarters. Here in huts of logs, turf, and other primitive
materials, their town had been laid out with streets and byways, a large
council-house, a mill, a stockade, and blockhouses. The Indians had
received them with great friendliness, feeling with them a common cause
of grievance, since the heavy hand of the Gentile had pushed them also
to this bleak frontier.
To this settlement early in November came the last train from Nauvoo,
its members wearied and wasted by the long march, but staunch in their
faith and with hope undimmed. It was told in after years how there had
leaped from the van of this train a very earnest young man, who had at
once sought an audience with Brigham Young and certain other members of
the Twelve who had chanced to be present at the train's arrival; and
how, being closeted with these, he had eagerly inquired if it might not
be the will of the Lord that they should go no farther into the
wilderness, but stand their ground and give battle to the Gentiles
forthwith. He made the proposal as one who had a flawless faith that the
God of Battles would be with them, and he appeared to believe that
something might be done that very day to force the matter to an issue.
When he had made his proposal, he waited in a modest attitude to hear
their views of it. To his chagrin, all but two of those who had listened
laughed. One of these two, Bishop Snow,--a man of holy aspect whom the
Church Poet had felicitously entitled the Entablature of Truth,--had
looked at him searchingly, then put his hand upon his own head and
shaken it hopelessly to the others.
The other who had not laughed was Brigham himself. For to this great man
had been given the gift to look upon men and to know in one slow sweep
of his wonderful eyes all their strength and all their weakness. He had
listened with close attention to the remarkable plan suggested by this
fiery young zealot, and he studied him now with a gaze that was kind. A
noticeable result of this attitude of Brigham's was that those who had
laughed became more or less awkwardly silent, while the Entablature of
Truth, in the midst of his pantomime, froze into amazement.
"We'd better consider that a little," said Brigham, finally. "You can
talk it over with me tonight. But first you go get your stuff unloaded
and get kind of settled. There's a cabin just beyond my two up the
street here that you can move into." He put his large hand kindly on the
other's shoulder. "Now run and get fixed and come to my house for supper
along about dark."
Somewhat cooled by the laughter of the others, but flattered by this
consideration from the Prophet, the young man had gone thoughtfully out
to his wagons and driven on to the cabin indicated.
"I _did_ think he was plumb crazy," said Bishop Snow, doubtfully, as if
the reasons for changing his mind were even yet less than compelling.
"He _ain't_ crazy," said Brigham. "All that's the matter with him, he's
got more faith than the whole pack of us put together. You just remember
he ain't like us. We was all converted after we got our second teeth,
while he's had it from the cradle up. He's the first one we've caught
young. He's what the priesthood can turn out when they get a full swing
with the rising generation. We got to remember that. We old birds had to
learn to crow in middle life. These young ones will crow stronger;
they'll out-crow us. But all the better for that. They'll be mighty
brash at first, but all they need is to be held in a little, and then
they'll be a power in the Kingdom."
"Well, of course you're right, Brother Brigham, but that boy certainly
needs a check-rein and a curb-bit right now," said Snow.
"He'll have his needings," answered Brigham, shortly, and the informal
council dispersed.
Brigham talked to him late that night, advancing many cogent reasons why
it should be unwise to make war at once upon the nation of Gentiles to
the east. Of these reasons the one that had greatest weight with his
listener was the assurance that such a course would not at present be
pleasing in the sight of God. To others, touching upon the matter of
superior forces they might have to contend with, he was loftily
inattentive.
Having made this much clear, Brigham went on in his fatherly way to
impress him anew with the sinfulness of all temporal governments outside
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Again he learned from
the lips of authority that any people presuming to govern themselves by
laws of their own making and officers of their own appointing, are in
wicked rebellion against the Kingdom of God; that for seventeen hundred
years the nations of the Western Hemisphere have been destitute of this
Kingdom and destitute of all legal government; and that the Lord was now
about to rend all earthly governments, to cast down thrones, overthrow
nations, and make a way for the establishment of the everlasting
Kingdom, to which all others would have to yield, or be prostrated never
more to rise. Thus was the rebuff of the afternoon gracefully atoned
for.
From matters of civil government the talk ranged to affairs domestic.
"Tell me," said the young man, "the truth of this new order of celestial
marriage." And Brigham had become animated at once.
"Yes," he said, "when the family organisation was revealed from Heaven,
and Joseph began on the right and the left to add to his family, oh,
dear, what a quaking there was in Israel! But there it was, plain
enough. When you have received your endowments, keys, blessings, all the
tokens, signs, and every preparatory ordinance that can be given to a
man for his entrance through the celestial gate, then you can see it."
He gazed a moment into the fire of hickory logs before which they sat,
and then went on, more confidentially:
"Now you take that promise to Abraham--'Lift up your eyes and behold the
stars. So shall thy seed be as numberless as the stars. Go to the
seashore and look at the sand, and behold the smallness of the particles
thereof'--I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you
understand--'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as
those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles there are, say
in a cubit foot of sand--about one thousand million particles. Think of
that! In eight thousand years, if the inhabitants of earth increased one
trillion a century, three cubic yards of sand would still contain more
particles than there would be people on the whole globe. Yet there you
got the promise of the Lord in black and white. Now how was Abraham to
manage to get a foundation laid for this mighty kingdom? Was he to get
it all through one wife? Don't you see how ridiculous that is? Sarah saw
it, and Sarah knew that unless seed was raised to Abraham he would come
short of his glory. So what did Sarah do? She gave Abraham a certain
woman whose name was Hagar, and by her a seed was to be raised up unto
him. And was that all? No. We read of his wife Keturah, and also of a
plurality of wives which he had in the sight and favour of God, and from
whom he raised up many sons. There, then, was a foundation laid for the
fulfilment of that grand promise concerning his seed."
He peered again into the fire, and added, by way of clenching his
argument: "I guess it would have been rather slow-going, if the Lord had
confined Abraham to one wife, like some of these narrow, contracted
nations of modern Christianity. You see, they don't know that a man's
posterity in this world is to constitute his glory and kingdom and
dominion in the world to come, and they don't know, either, that there
are thousands of choice spirits in the spirit world waiting to
tabernacle in the flesh. Of course, there are lots of these things that
you ain't ready to hear yet, but now you know that polygamy is necessary
for our exaltation to the fulness of the Lord's glory in the eternal
world, and after you study it you'll like the doctrine. I do; I can
swallow it without greasing _my_ mouth!"
He prayed that night to be made "holy as Thy servant Brigham is holy;
to hear Thy voice as he hears it; to be made as wise as he, as true as
he, even as another Lion of the Lord, so that I may be a rod and staff
and comforter to these buffeted children of Thine."
His prayer also touched on one of the matters of their talk. "But, O
Lord, teach me to be content without thrones and dominion in Thy Kingdom
if to gain these I must have many wives. Teach me to abase myself, to be
a servant, a lowly sweeper in the temple of the Most High, for I would
rather be lowly with her I love than exalted to any place whatsoever
with many. Keep in my sinful heart the face of her who has left me to
dwell among the Gentiles, whose hair is melted gold, whose eyes are
azure deep as the sky, and whose arms once opened warm for me. Guard her
especially, O Lord, while she must company with Gentiles, for she is not
wonted to their wiles; and in Thine own good time bring her head
unharmed to its home on Thy servant's breast."
He fasted often, that winter, waiting and watching for his great
Witness--something that should testify to his mortal eyes the direct
favour of Heaven. He fasted and kept vigils and studied the mysteries;
for now he was among the favoured to whom light had been given in
abundance--men at whose feet he was eager to sit. He learned of baptism
for the dead; of the Godship of Adam, and his plurality of wives; of the
laws of adoption and the process by which the Saints were to people,
and be Gods to, earths yet formless.
There was much work out of doors to be done, and of this he performed
his share, working side by side with the tireless Brigham. But there
were late afternoons and long evenings in which he sat with the Prophet
to his great advantage. For, strangely enough, the two men, so unlike,
were drawn closely together--Brigham Young, the broad-headed,
square-chinned buttress of physical vitality, the full-blooded,
clarion-voiced Lion of the Lord, self-contained, watchful, radiating the
power that men feel and obey without knowing why, and Joel Rae, of the
long, narrow, delicately featured face, sensitive, nervous, glowing with
a spiritual zeal, the Lute of the Holy Ghost, whose veins ran fire
instead of blood. One born to command, to domineer; the other to
believe, to worship, and to obey. For the younger man it was a winter of
limitless aspiration and chastening discipline. In spite of the great
sorrows that weighed upon him, the sudden sweeping away of those he had
held most dear and the blasting of his love hopes, he remembered it
through all the eventful years that followed as a time of strange
happiness. Memories of it came gratefully to him even on the awful day
when at last his Witness came; when, as he lay fainting in the desert,
driven thence by his sin, the heavens unfolded and a vision was
vouchsafed him;--when the foundations of his world were shattered, the
tables of the law destroyed, and but one little feather saved to his
famished soul from the wings of the dove of truth. After all these
years, the memory of this winter was a spot of joy that never failed to
glow when he recalled it.
At night he went to his bunk in the little straw-roofed hut and fell
asleep to the howling of the wolves, his mind cradled in the thought of
his mission. He had a part in the great work of bringing into harmony
the labours of the prophets and apostles of all ages. In due time, by
the especial favour of Heaven, he would be wrapped in a sea of vision,
shown an eternity of knowledge, and be intrusted with singular powers.
And he was content to wait out the days in which he must school,
chasten, and prove himself.
"You have built me up," he confided to Brigham, one day. "I feel to
rejoice in my strength." And Brigham was highly pleased.
"That's good, Brother Joel. The host of Israel will soon be on the move,
and I shouldn't wonder if the Lord had a great work for you. I can see
places where you'll be just the tool he needs. I mistrust we sha'n't
have everything peaceful even now. The priest in the pulpit is thorning
the politician against us, gouging him from underneath--he'd never dare
do it openly, for our Elders could crimson his face with shame--and the
minions of the mob may be after us again. If they do, I can see where
you will be a tower of strength in your own way."
"It's all of my life, Brother Brigham."
"I believe it. I guess the time has come to make you an Elder."
And so on a late winter afternoon in the quiet of the Council-House,
Joel Rae was ordained an Elder after the order of Melchisedek; with
power to preach and administer in all the ordinances of the Church, to
lay on hands, to confirm all baptised persons, to anoint the afflicted
with oil, and to seal upon them the blessings of health.
In his hard, narrow bed that night, where the cold came through the
unchinked logs and the wind brought him the wailing of the wolves, he
prayed that he might not be too much elated by this extraordinary
distinction.