{"collection":"mor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/mor/tfd/chap04.htm","path":"mor/tfd/chap04.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/mor/tfd/chap04.htm","text":"\"He sees that this great roundabout, The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs and its businesses-\"\nCowper\nTHE ecclesiastical is first in evidence in this modern city of the saints. This \nyou would expect in view of its earlier history and because of its existence as \na religious center.\n\"Where is the Beehive?\" I ask in the innocence of my tenderfoot knowledge. You see \nI had been told by some joker that the principal church building was so called because \nit was always crowded like a hive, when the bees are busy honey making.\nCertainly at the times of meeting, the Tabernacle, for so the Mormons called the \ncentral place of worship in their accustomed Old Testament phraseology, was like \na hive of bees, for it fairly swarmed with people. In those days, and in that place \ntheir was no dearth of attendants and few empty seats. There was nothing original \nor spec-tacular to draw the crowd beyond the names of the celebrated Mormon leaders. \nTheir services were, in themselves, rather plain and commonplace.\nI found my way, guided by the stream of common looking people, to the entrance of \nthe Tabernacle. It was no tent or temporary structure like those reared by special \ncollections to house evangelists on revival occasions. This was a solidly built \nstructure and, because of its peculiar shape, was called by the outsider \"the Soup \nTureen.\"\nIt did look like one on a very large scale, inverted so the bottom was the top with \nthe cover removed. On stubby pillars, with low walls, a huge oblong dome covered \na generous space, making an immense interior under one roof. It was perfect in its \nacoustics. You could almost hear a pin drop if silence prevailed.\nAn immense organ, erected at the end and lifted high up to near the roof, made the \ngiant space resonant with musical sounds. A genius played it the day I was there. \nIt throbbed and sobbed as though voicing the woes and throes through which these \npeople had found their way to this mountain land of theirs.\nA choir as large as an ordinary church audience sang well during the occasions for \nsong. The audience itself was worthy of the place and filled all its twelve thousand \nseats with a mixed multitude of men, women, and children. The last were decidedly \nvisible and sometimes audible. There was no church finery in dress but, in place \nof the usual \"go-to-meeting\" garments, was the evident interest on the faces of \nalmost every one present. There was just one phrase of scripture that came into \nmy mind unsolicited as I looked at the long lines of faces directed one way.\n\"All these have come out of great tribulation.\" Whatever their faith and its faults \nthey had suffered for it, and having paid in tears a goodly price for what they \nhad obtained, they seemed by their earnest gaze at the leaders who spoke to them \nto prize it seriously.\nThe speaking was by many and from unique Pulpits. Below the organ and choir, a large \nspace was given over to tiers of seats in a wide semicircular form. These were occupied \nby the Seventy and the Apostles of the church.\nThis was no one-man pulpit. Furthermore each of these tiers of seats had its pulpit \nin the exact center of the tier; so from above down there were these pulpit-tribunes \nin line with each other and facing the center aisle of the Tabernacle.\nThe lower tier and pulpit was for the Apostles and the President or Revelator of \nthe church. In this case it was Brigham Young. I heard several speak from these \ntribunes of different tiers. This speaking was interspersed with choir and congregational \nsinging. That of the choir was excellent in voice and execution. That of the people \nwas vociferous but commonplace. The speaking was of the same order as the sinking, \nand was full of platitudes and rehearsals of the sufferings of these people at the \nhands of the outsider. There was, of course, some ground for what they said and \nthe speakers made the most of it to a very sympathetic audience.\nBut I came to see and hear Brigham Young, whose name to me was synonymous with Mor-monism. \nMy wish was gratified, for this leader was present. He was a big man in head, face \nand frame. Full-bearded like most Mormon elders, he poised well as a leader, and \nlooked at ease as he sat in the lower tier with the Apostles. He rose to speak at \nlast and stepped into the pulpit-tribune of the apostolic tier, and his voice and \ndiction were that of a master of assemblies.\nA fine presence and forceful speech riveted the attention of all, but the subject \nmatter was a disappointment. Nothing out of the ordinary was uttered. He upbraided \n\"his saints\" like a Jeremiah or an Isaiah of the Jews, and yet he did not fail occasionally \nto insert a modicum of praise.\n\"You are not too good! Not as good as you ought to be! But you are better than the \nbest that these Gentiles can produce!\" Again and again he would say, \"Copy not their \nways, neither speak their words; their oaths and foulness. Follow my advice and \nlive your religion.\"\nIt struck me on hearing all this parade of speech, in these long services, that \nthe whole of Mormon church worship was a matter of \"too much speaking.\" It was speech \ngone to seed. The flower, perfume and color, was fled as a summertime past, and \nthe husks of the harvest were only left. I had seen the very opposite of this in \nreligious conventions, where speech was forgotten in intonations, invocations and \nreverberations of ceremonial pomp. So goes the pendulum or religious custom, from \none extreme to another. They observed a very democratic communion service. Bread \nand water; for here the wine was turned to water. All were given these emblems of \ncommunion. Even the little children and babes drank out of the glasses, which were \nfilled constantly from white stone pitchers, passed along by a band of ushers. We, \ntoo, who were \"outsiders\" and Gentiles were generously included in this religious \nrepast. Of course the bread was but a morsel and the water but a swallow, but there \nwas no \"fencing of tables,\" after the manner of those old Covenanters, who fought \nfor their faith in troubled Scotland.\nWith the final anthem and last words, the great audience swarmed out of this hive \nof humanity, like the bees after flowers. We went out after fresh air and relief. \nFor I heard many a sound, like a sigh of satisfaction, when the service was over \nand outdoors was a possibility. The streets adjacent were like city sidewalks during \nshowtime, as this great crowd went homeward.\nI saw another side of this city's life the next day. I was introduced by Dr. Welch \nto Governor Emery, who represented the Powers that Be at Washington, D. C., and \nnot the powers that were in Mormondom. He and Judge Beatty were together and I heard \nsome words, in course of a brief interview, which showed that the Federal authorities \nwere non-sympathetic, if not antagonistic, to the majority of the people of this \ncountry. Of course they were appointees of the president and depended not on this \nlocality for their positions. They evidently were like the Missourians of a previous \ngeneration, as they were in need of \"being shown\" whether any good thing could come \nout of such a thing as a modern Zion. They discounted the over-zeal of the Latter \nDay Saints, and doubted their loyalty to the Union; more especially as most Mormons \nvoted the democratic ticket, a ticket which to all good republicans of those reconstruction \ndays, was almost the same as sympathy with secession.\nThe bitterness of the Civil War was yet voiced in the talk of most of these civil \nservants, who could not forget the late strife.\nUtah had its Mormon legion which made Brigham Young and the Hierarchy of the church \nindependent of, if not opposed to, the Union. I found, and did not wonder much at \nit, that the representatives of the Federal Government all felt as though they were \nliving in hostile territory.\nI heard Governor Emery speak at a meeting to promote higher education in the Territory. \nThis was at the opening of a collegiate institution in Salt Lake City. What he said \nwas well said, and so it ought to have been since he was a very long time in saying \na very little. He spoke with a deliberation that was almost painful to one's patience, \nand with a caution that outdid any Scot I ever heard speak on a crisis: but he spoke \nwith decision and most earnestly to the effect that a new order of intellectual \nteaching must be pushed in the Territory if it was to advance and be worthy of the \nfuture times. He said the war of swords was over but the war of words had yet to \nbe fought and settled, before true republican freedom could dominate the offices \nof the Territory. He did not wave a bloody-shirt, as some of the political men of \nthat day were wont to do, but he did point several times to the evidence of Uncle \nSam's presence in the camp at Fort Douglas.\nThat speech led me to make a visit to the Fort on the next day, where the regiment \nof blue soldiers were stationed.\nDown in the city I found a guardhouse and a sentry stationed there, who paced back \nand forth with rifle and fixed bayonet. He was a mere boy in the sky-blue uniform \nand forage cap of the days of the sixties. This guardhouse held a half dozen men \nin telegraphic communication with the Fort on the bench land, overlooking the city \nto the north. This guardhouse was well down in the city on First South Street, and \nin full view of the Amelia palace-Brigham Young's principal home -the Tithing House \nof Zion Co-operative Mercantile Institution, and the Tabernacle.\nThere is no need to describe Camp Douglas; it was just like any ordinary military \nheadquarters to be found in the West during this period. Parked artillery with frowning \nguns were pointed Zionward. There were such guns as they then had, but mere pop-guns \nin comparison with the modern scientific weapons of the twentieth century. Yet these \nguns over-awed Zion and were meant to do so.\nSeditious speech had been common on the streets of this mountain city a few years \nprevious, when the people were restless under the newfelt pressure of the Federal \nand victorious Republic. Utah had come in line with Texas, California, Arizona and \nsuch outlying regions, which were so hard to reach because remote from the seat \nof government. Moreover many hostile Indians roamed between the middle settled West \nand the plains and mountains neighboring to Salt Lake City. In the days when the \nMormons had their own militia it was not an uncommon remark, in everyday talk, to \nhear such words as these:\n\"We can whip these U-nited States if they git too interferin'.\"\nSo I was not surprised, when I chatted with the boys in blue, to hear one of them \nsay, as he patted the black muzzle of a big gun:\n\"Say, Doc, these little fellers are trained onto that old soup-tureen, you visited \nthe other day.\" Said another:\n\"Gosh! wot a hole for the daylight we could let into its roof.\"\nIt never so happened that such extremities were necessary, but there were times \nwhen feeling and faction ran very high. When a spark might have led to a blaze, \nwhich would have started a small internal war, much worse and more bloody than any \nIndian raid.","title":"Chapter IV: Church, State and Camp","type":"page"}