In the ten years I lived in Salt Lake City, which was from 1869 to 1879, I never heard any talk among the Mormons about the gift of speaking the unknown tongue, or the interpretation thereof, as they claimed to have in Missouri. They, however, claimed to possess all the gifts of the Apostolic age and, as I have stated in another place, the keys of St. Peter. They believed in church authority, as do the Catholics, and in a personal God; they differ widely, however, from their Catholic brethren when they come to the marriage relation, the Mormons believing their bishops and elders should each have many wives, the Catholics, on the other hand, denying marriage to their priests.
Mormon communities, like all others, are made up of those who are reliable and those who are not—in other words, the good and the bad. Polygamy, which was practiced among them for more than a quarter of a century, they claimed upon scriptural authority was practiced in the Apostolic days. Let that be as it may, perhaps there never was a time in the march of civilization when to adopt such a practice would have been in more direct opposition to the moral sense of the civilized world than the present one of the nineteenth century.
In by-gone days, when the people depended upon their own and home productions for their living, the larger a man's family, with every one a worker, the easier it was for him to get along. Not so now, however, but it is just the reverse.
The Mormons believed that church and state should be one, and that the laws of God should be the laws of the land; therefore many of them persisted in practicing polygamy after Congress passed laws prohibiting it, preferring, as they said, to practice the higher law in disobedience to the laws made by men, and many of them have gone, singing and dancing, to the penitentiary, consigned there by the courts for violating the statutes because of their belief.
CHAPTER V.
THE MORMONS' MECCA.
The new Mormon temple marks the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from the day when Brigham Young and his few followers first set foot in the new promised land. It is a work commenced in the wilderness, and completed forty years afterward.
The laying of the cap-stone of the temple recorded the culmination of a work the Mormon people have been eagerly anticipating for nearly two generations. It recalls, too, many chapters of history abounding in interest. It tells a tale of patience, industry, and unswerving devotion to an object and a religious principle.