Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/40

6 The polygamic faith contended for to-day was not in the original programme, neither has it contributed to create the power that now reigns in Utah. It was the monogamic spiritual life and understanding of primitive Christianity that built up the organization which gave power and influence to Joseph Smith. It was the hearer's faith in Peter of Galilee, more than in Joseph of New York, that induced thousands of professing Christians to add the new prophet to their faith, and to accept his revelations. It was their confidence that the Holy Ghost had been poured out upon disciples in Judea, eighteen hundred years before, which made the promises in America possible of belief, and acceptable in the nineteenth century, and it is this reduplication of faith in the disciples to-day in Utah and throughout the world, and not the assumed genius or ability, with which he is generally credited, which clothes Brigham Young with that unchallenged authority which is a marvel to all outside the Church.

The Mormon organization is thorough and complete. It permeates every position and condition of life, and controls and governs everything from the cradle to the grave. It is a combination of iron military rule and Jesuitical penetration and perseverance, and as such in course of time it became intolerable to the very men who made it. The leading elders, the "witnesses" and the first apostles have almost all apostatized from the more recent doctrines of Joseph and Brigham, while they still cling to the original faith and believe in the ministering of angels, &c. It is this deeply rooted conviction of heavenly manifestations and their own phenomenal experience, that has held and now holds the people together, and not the personal influence of Joseph Smith, and still less that of his successor.

There is much in the first announcement of Mormonism, and its claim to divine origin through revelation, that may well be questioned; but there is little in the early faith which the Bible believer can easily assail from that standpoint. The