_Just Before the End of the World_
The years of the Civil War passed by, and the prayer of Joel Rae was
answered. But the time was now rapidly approaching when the Son of Man
was to come in person to judge Israel and begin his reign of a thousand
years on the purified earth. The Twelve, confirmed by Brigham, had long
held that this day of wrath would not be deferred past 1870. In the mind
of Joel Rae the time had thus been authoritatively fixed. The date had
been further confirmed by the fulfilment of Joseph's prophecy of war.
The great event was now to be prepared for and met in all readiness.
It was at this time that he betrayed in the pulpit a leaning toward
views that many believed to be heterodox. "A likely man is a likely
man," he preached, "and a good man is a good man--whether in this Church
or out of it." He also went so far as to intimate that being in the
Church would not of itself suffice to the attainment of glory; that
there were, to put it bluntly, all kinds of fish in the gospel net;
sinners not a few in Zion who would have to be forgiven their misdeeds
seventy times seven on that fateful day drawing near.
Bishop Wright, who followed him on this Sabbath, was bold to speak to
another effect.
"Me and my brethren," he insisted, "have received our endowments, keys,
and blessings--all the tokens and signs that can be given to man for his
entrance through the celestial gate. If you have had these in the house
of the Lord, when you depart this life you will be able to walk back to
the presence of the Father, passing the angels that stand as sentinels;
because why?--because you can give them the tokens, signs, and grips
pertaining to the holy priesthood and gain your eternal exaltation in
spite of earth and hell. But how about the likely and good man outside
this Church who has rejected the message of the Book of Mormon and ain't
got these signs and passwords? If he's going to be let in, too, why have
doorkeepers, and what's the use of the whole business? Why in time did
the Lord go to all this trouble, any way, if Brother Rae is right? Why
was Joseph Smith visited by an angel clad in robes of light, who told
him where the golden plates had been hid up by the Lord, and the Urim
and Thummim, and who laid hands on him and give him the Holy Ghost? And
after all that trouble He's took, do you think He's going to let
everybody in? Not much, Mary Ann! The likely men may come the roots on
some of our soft-hearted Elders, but they won't fool the Lord's Christ
and His angel gatekeepers."
Elder Beil Wardle, on the other hand, showed a tendency to side with
the liberalism of Brother Rae. He cited the fact that not all
revelations were from God. Some were from perverse human spirits and
some from the very Devil himself. There was Elder Sidney Roberts, who
had once suffered a revelation that a certain brother must give him a
suit of finest broadcloth and a gold watch, the best to be had; and
another revelation directing him to salute all the younger sisters,
married or single, with a kiss of holiness. Urged to confess that these
revelations were from the Devil, he had refused, and so had been cut off
and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan in the flesh.
"And you can't always be sure of the Holy Ghost, either," he continued.
"When the Lord pours out the Holy Ghost on an individual, he will have
spasms, and you would think he was going to have fits; but it don't make
him get up and go pay his debts--not by a long shot. Of course I don't
feel to mention any names, but what can you expect, anyway? A flock of a
thousand sheep has got to be mighty clean if some of them ain't smutty.
This is a large flock of sheep that has come up into this valley of the
mountains, and some of them have got tag-locks hanging about them. But
it don't seem to pester the Lord any. He sifted us good in Missouri, and
He put us into another sieve at Nauvoo, and I reckon His sieve will be
brought along with Him on the day of judgment. And if there are some
lost sheep in the fold of Zion, maybe, on the other hand, there's some
outside the fold that will be worth saving; that will be broke off from
the wild olive-tree and grafted on to the tame olive-tree to partake of
its sap and fatness."
Joel Rae would have taken more comfort in this championship of his views
if it were not for his suspicion that Elder Wardle sometimes spoke in a
tone of levity, and had indeed more than once been reckoned as a
doubter. It was even related of him that a perverted sense of humour had
once inspired him to deliver an irreverent and wholly immaterial address
in pure Choctaw at a service where many others of the faithful had been
moved to speak in tongues; and that an earnest sister, believing the
Holy Ghost to be strong upon her, had thereupon arisen and interpreted
his speech to be the Lord's description of the glories of their new
temple, which it had not been at all. Such a man might have a good
heart, as he knew Elder Wardle to have; but he must be an inferior guide
to the Father's presence. He was even less inclined to trust him when
Wardle announced confidentially at the close of the meeting that day,
"Brother Wright talks a good deal jest to hear his head roar. You'd
think he'd been the midwife at the borning of the world, and helped to
nurse it and bring it up--he's that knowing about it. My opinion is he
don't know twice across or straight up about the Lord's secret doings!"
Yet if he had sought to render a little elastic the rigid teachings of
the priesthood, he had done so innocently. The foundations of his faith
were unshaken; for him the rock upon which his Church was built had
never been more stable. As to doubting its firmness, he would as soon
have blasphemed the Holy Ghost or disputed the authority of Brigham,
with whom was the sacred deposit of doctrine and all temporal and
spiritual power.
So he sighed often for those Gentile sheep on whom the wrath of God was
so soon to fall. Even with the utmost stretching of the divine mercy,
the greater part of them must perish; and for the lost souls of these he
grieved much and prayed each day.
It was more than ten years since that day in the Meadows, and the blight
there put upon his person had waxed with each year. His hair showed now
but the faintest sprinkle of black, his shoulders were bent and rounded
as if bearing invisible burdens, and his face had the look of drooping
in grief and despair, as one who was made constantly to look upon all
the suffering of all the world. Yet he wore always, except when alone, a
not unpleasant little effort of a smile, as if he would conceal his
pain. But this deceived few. The women of the settlement had come to
call him "the little man of sorrows." Even his wife, Lorena, had divined
that his mind was not one with hers; that, somehow, there was a gulf
between them which her best-meant cheerfulness could not span. In a
measure she had ceased to try, doing little more than to sing, when he
was near, some hymn which she considered suitable to his condition. One
favourite at such times began:--
"Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin,
And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts his race and taints us all.
"Soon as we draw our infant breath,
The seeds of sin grow up for death;
The law demands a perfect heart,
But we're defiled in every part."
She would sing many verses of this with appealing unction, so long as he
was near; yet when he came upon her unawares he might hear her voicing
some cheerful, secular ballad, like--
"As I went down to Coffey's mills
Some pleasure for to see,
I fell in love with a railroad-er,
He fell in love with me."
The stolid Christina listened entranced to all of Lorena's songs,
charmed by the melody not less than she was awed by her sister-wife's
superior gifts of language. The husband, too, listened not without
resignation, reflecting that, when Lorena did not sing, she talked. For
the unspeaking Christina he had learned to feel an admiration that
bordered upon reverence, finding in her silence something spiritually
great. Yet of the many-worded Lorena he was never heard to complain
through all the years. The nearest he approached to it was on a day
when Elder Beil Wardle had sought to condole with him on the affliction
of her ready speech.
"That woman of yours," said this observant friend, "sure takes large
pie-bites out of any little talk that happens to get going."
"She _does_ have the gift of continuance," her husband had admitted. But
he had added, hastily, "Though her heart is perfect with the Lord."
The fact that she was sealed to him for eternity, and that she believed
she would constitute one of his claims to exaltation in the celestial
world, were often matters of pious speculation with him. He wondered if
he had done right by her. She deserved a husband who would be saved into
the kingdom, while he who had married her was irrevocably lost.
There had been a time when he read with freshened hope the promises of
forgiveness in that strange New Testament. Once he had even believed
that these might save him; that he was again numbered with the elect.
But when this belief had grown firm, so that he could seem to rest his
weight upon it, he felt it fall away to nothing under him, and the truth
he had divined that day in the desert was again bared before him. He saw
that how many times soever God might forgive the sins of a man, it would
avail that man nothing unless he could forgive himself. He knew at last
that in his own soul was fixed a gauge of right, unbending and
implacable when wrong had been done, waiting to be reckoned with at the
very last even though the great God should condone his sin. It seemed to
him that, however surely his endowments took him through the gates of
the Kingdom, with whatsoever power they raised him to dominion; even
though he came into the Father's presence and sat a throne of his own by
the side of Joseph and Brigham, that there would still ring in his ears
the cries of those who had been murdered at the priesthood's command;
that there would leap before his eyes fountains of blood from the
breasts of living women who knelt and clung to the knees of their
slayers--to the knees of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints; that he would see two spots of white in the dim light of a
morning where the two little girls lay who had been sent for water; that
he would see the two boys taken out to the desert, one to die at once,
the other to wander to a slower death; that before his sinful eyes would
come the dying face of the woman who had loved him and lost her soul
rather than betray him. He knew that, even in celestial realms exalted
beyond the highest visions of their priesthood, his soul would still
burn in this fire that he could not extinguish within his own breast. He
knew that he carried hell as an inseparable part of himself, and that
the forgiveness of no other power could avail him. He no longer feared
God, but himself alone.
From this fire of his own building it seemed to him that he could obtain
surcease only by reducing the self within him. As surely as he let it
feel a want, all the torture came back upon him. When his pride lifted
up its head, when he desired any satisfaction for himself, when he was
tempted for a moment to lay down his cross, the cries came back, the sea
of blood surged before him, and close behind came the shapes that
crawled or moved furtively, ever about to spring in front and turn upon
him. Small wonder, then, that his shoulders bent beneath unseen burdens,
that his air was of one who suffered for all the world, and that they
called him "the little man of sorrows."
With this knowledge he learned to permit himself only one great love, a
love for the child Prudence. He was sure that no punishment could come
through that. It was his day-star and his life, the one pleasure that
brought no suffering with it. She was a child of fourteen now, a
half-wild, firm-fleshed, glowing creature of the out-of-doors, who had
lost with her baby softness all her resemblance to her mother. Her hair
and eyes had darkened as she grew, and she was to be a larger woman,
graver, deeper, more reserved; perhaps better calculated for the Kingdom
by reason of a more reflective mind. He adored her, and was awed by her
even when he taught her the truths of revealed religion. He closed his
eyes at night upon a never-ending prayer for her soul; and opened them
each day to a love of her that grew insidiously to enthrall him while he
was all unconscious of its power--even while he knew with an awful
certainty that he must have no treasure of his own which he could not
willingly relinquish at the first call. She, in turn, loved and
confided in her father, the shy, bent, shrunken little man with the
smile.
"He always smiles as if he'd hurt himself and didn't want to show it
before company," were the words in which she announced one of her early
discoveries about him. But she liked and ruled him, and came to him for
comfort when she was hurt or when Lorena scolded. For the third wife did
not hesitate to characterise the child as "ready-made sin," and to
declare that it took all her spare time, "and a lot that ain't spare,"
to neat up the house after her. "And her paw--though Lord knows who her
maw was--a-dressing her to beat the cars; while he ain't never made over
me since the blessed day I married him--not that _much_! But, thank
heavens, it can't last very long, with the Son of Man already started,
like you might say."