Page:History of Utah.djvu/89

 part a wilderness, and Missouri was the United States limit, the lands beyond being held by the aborigines. There were some settlements between Lake Erie and the Mississippi River, but they were recent and rude, and the region was less civilized than savage. The people, though practically shrewd and of bright intellect, were ignorant; though having within them the elements of wealth, they were poor. There was among them much true religion, whatever that may be, yet they were all superstitious—baptists, methodists, and presbyterians; there was little to choose between them. Each sect was an abomination to the others; the others were of the devil, doomed to eternal torments, and deservedly so. The bible was accepted literally by all, every word of it, prophecies, miracles, and revelations; the same God and the same Christ satisfied all; an infidel was a thing woful and unclean. All the people reasoned. How they racked their brains in secret, and poured forth loud logic in public, not over problems involving intellectual liberty, human rights and reason, and other like insignificant matters appertaining to this world, but concerning the world to come, and more particularly such momentous questions as election, justification, baptism, and infant damnation. Then of signs and seasons, God's ways and Satan's ways; likewise concerning promises and prayer, and all the rest, there was a credulity most refreshing. In the old time there were prophets and apostles, there were visions and miracles; why should it not be so during these latter days? It was time for Christ to come again, time for the millennial season, and should the power of the almighty be limited? There was the arch-fanatic Miller, and his followers, predicting the end and planning accordingly. “The idea that revelation from God was unattainable in this age, or that the ancient gifts of the gospel had ceased forever, never entered my head,” writes a young quaker; and a methodist of that epoch says: “We believed in the gathering of Israel, and in the restoration