Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/39

Rh preacher of the Mormon Church, over thirty years ago, in his controversy with La Koy Sunderland, editor of Zion's Watchman, then published in New York, uttered the following prediction: "Within ten years from now (1838), the people of this country who are not Mormons, will be entirely subdued by the Latter-Day Saints or swept from the face of the earth; and if this prediction fails, then you may know that the Book of Mormon is not true." During that controversy, Parley was evidently annoyed at Mr. Sunderland, and, regarding his own indignation as the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he predicted that "within two years, La E-oy Sunderland will be struck dumb and incapacitated from speaking a loud word." At a later date, in taking farewell of New York, he penned a "Lamentation" for her citizens. In that effusion he tells the New-Yorkers: "When the Union is severed, when this mighty city shall crumble to ruin and sink as a millstone, the merchants undoing," &c., to "sing this lamentation and think upon me."

Parley was a sincere, good meaning man, who honoured extensively the institution of polygamy, and in adding to his family circle he aroused the wrath of an outraged husband, who pursued and killed him in Arkansas, in 1856; but the Union is not severed, New York stands where it did, with no particular signs of the "millstone," and Mr. La Boy Sunderland still lives in Massachusetts, a very forcible speaker as well as writer. Mormon history abounds with innumerable predictions equally veracious.