The people of Clay county when they called upon the Saints to peaceably remove from their borders and seek a locality where they could form a community that should be largely, if not exclusively, made up of their own Church membership, indicated very clearly that it was the religion of the Saints that was the chief cause of complaint against them. In a document they published setting forth the reasons why they suggested such removal, they said; "The religious tenets of this people are so different from the present churches of the age, that they always have, and always will, excite deep prejudices against them in any populous country where they may locate. We, therefore, in a spirit of frank and friendly kindness, do advise them to seek a home where they may obtain large and separate bodies of land, and have a community of their own."[[40]]
Again, after the surrender at Far West, when the Church leaders had been betrayed into bondage; after the Saints had delivered up their arms; after they had signed over their properties to defray the expenses of the "war;" and when the whole body of the Church was making hasty preparations to depart from the state, a number of the brethren were assembled on the temple square at Far West, and in the course of a long speech, which he read[[41]] to them, General John B. Clark said:
"I am sorry, gentlemen, to see so great a number of apparently intelligent men found in the situation you are; and oh! that I could invoke that Great Spirit, the Unknown God, to rest upon you, and make you sufficiently intelligent to break that chain of superstition, and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism with which you are bound—that you no longer worship a man! I would advise you to scatter abroad, and never again organize yourselves with Bishops, Presidents, etc., lest you excite the jealousies of the people, and subject yourselves to the same calamities that have now come upon you."
This to a people whose leaders had been betrayed into the hands of their enemies; who themselves had been disarmed, though acting only in defense of their homes and families; who had been compelled at the muzzle of the musket to sign away their property to defray the expenses of the militia mobs that had brought their calamities upon them; who were then under an order of expulsion from the state and making hurried preparations for their enforced departure—this to men who had sacrificed or had been robbed of the most sacred rights of American citizenship! And he who thus addressed the brethren impudently told them in the very speech from which I quote, that he approved of all that had been done to them! But the foregoing quotation is not made in order to point out the mockery of the speech; or the mixture of hypocrisy and blasphemy in it; or the utter contemptibility of him who delivered it. I quote the passage merely to point out the fact that it was hatred of their alleged "superstition" and "fanaticism," in other words the religion of the Saints that was the cause of their persecution. The crimes against which the Saints are warned for the future—under penalty of having their present troubles revisited upon them—is gathering together in large bodies, and organizing themselves with Bishops, Presidents, etc. In other words it was the religion of the people and the organization which was both the depository of its doctrines, and the instrumentality by which they were promulgated—the Church—which was the object of the Missourians' animosity, the thing they were determined to destroy.
Later, when the Prophet Joseph and other leading brethren were under examination before Judge Austin A. King at Richmond, Ray county, special inquiry was made as to the belief of the witnesses in the declaration of the Prophet Daniel: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."[[42]]
The judge on being answered that the Saints believed the prophecy, turned to the clerk and told him to write the answer down as it was "a strong point for treason!"[[43]] I call it another evidence that it was the religious beliefs of the Saints that constituted their offense. True the Prophet and several other brethren were technically held for trial on the charge of "treason, murder, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny and perjury," but no one in Missouri ever seriously believed the charges since they were wholly untrue or grew out of those acts of self defense, and defense of their families against the aggressions of mob violence—a course which all men have a right to take in the protection of their own lives and the preservation of their homes from the hand of the despoiler.
The meeting of discordant elements of society—New England people and people from the Southern States, descendants of Puritans and descendants of Cavaliers—may have been a cause of dislike, and, on the part of the Missourians, a cause of irritation against the Saints; the suspected existence of anti-slavery sentiments among the Saints may have been to the Missourians a cause of distrust; the interest of the Saints in the Indians and the beliefs of the former in the future rehabilitation of the latter as a people favored of God, may have been, under all the circumstances, a cause of uneasiness to the Missourians; and the desire to plunder the Saints and to profit by dispossessing them of their lands and homes might have been, and doubtless was, an incentive to many of the mob who participated in the events which culminated in the expulsion of the Saints from the state; but, at bottom, I repeat, it was the destruction of the religion of the Saints, and of the organization that taught its doctrines, and controlled its membership in ecclesiastical affairs, that were the objectives of all that agitation, violence and injustice, which make up the persecution of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri. But how shall the truth of this be established beyond reasonable doubt? Listen:—
The author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" gives the following pen-picture of conditions with reference to religious toleration which obtained in the empire under the reign of the Antonines, Adrian and Marcus Aurelius, second century, A. D, "The firm edifice of Roman power was raised and preserved by the wisdom of ages. The obedient provinces of Trajan and the Antonines were united by laws, and adorned by arts. They might occasionally suffer from the partial abuse of delegated authority; but the general principle of government was wise, simple, and beneficent. They enjoyed the religion of their ancestors, whilst in civil honors and advantages they were exalted, by just degrees, to an equality with their conquerors. The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancor; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials. As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had lived or who had died for the benefit of their country, were exalted to a state of power and immortality, it was universally confessed that they deserved, if not the adoration, at least the reverence, of all mankind. The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed in peace their local and respective influence: nor could the Roman who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. The visible powers of nature, the planets, and the elements, were the same throughout the universe. The invisible governors of the moral world were inevitably cast in a similar mould of fiction and allegory. Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine representative; every art and profession its patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar votaries. A republic of gods of such opposite tempers and interests required, in every system, the moderating hand of a supreme magistrate, who, by the progress of knowledge and flattery, was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an eternal parent, and an omnipotent monarch. Such was the mild spirit of antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference, than to the resemblance, of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities. * * * * Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world, who all introduced and enjoyed the favorite superstitions of their native country. Every city in the empire was justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient ceremonies; and the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes interposed to check this inundation of foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition, of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently prohibited; the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their worshippers banished from Rome and Italy. But the zeal of fanaticism prevailed over the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exiles returned, the proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing splendor, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the Roman deities. * * * * Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind."[[44]]
Some Christian editors of Gibbon's great work, in their annotations, hold that the author of the "Decline and Fall" gives in the foregoing a too favorable view of pagan religious toleration; but after giving due weight to the instances of intolerance they cite in evidence of their contention, and viewing them in connection with the extent of the empire and the period of time covered by Gibbon's description, I do not regard them as of sufficient importance to warrant any change in the representation made by our author of conditions as to religious toleration in the Roman empire at the time of which he writes. Especially, since Gibbon himself in a foot note admits that "some obscure traces of an intolerant spirit appears in the conduct of the Egyptians," the case chiefly relied upon by his critics to disprove his description of universal religious toleration in the empire; and in the same note he refers to the Christians and the Jews as forming an important exception; so important an exception indeed that he promises, and subsequently gives, a distinct chapter to the discussion of the subject.[[45]]
It is to Christianity as the chief exception to the Roman policy of universal religious toleration that I wish now to direct attention. Let it be borne in mind that the spirit of universal religious toleration within the Roman empire claimed for the second century of our era, largely obtained also in the first century. It was in this reign of universal religious toleration that the Christian religion was brought forth and developed. Christ was born in the eighteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in the Roman province of Palestine, in which, also, His personal labors as religious teacher and reformer were chiefly confined. In the villages of Galilee, and subsequently in Samaria and Judea and in the ancient city of Jerusalem, He went about doing good; speaking words of encouragement to the oppressed and the poor; healing the sick; opening the eyes of the blind; cleansing the lepers; teaching, as no one ever taught before, the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of men, and proclaiming Himself the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world. He gathered about Him a few devout followers, and from their number He established a priesthood and organized a Church to perpetuate the gentle doctrines He Himself taught. Strangely enough, notwithstanding the beauty and purity of His moral precepts, and the gentleness of His own deportment, proclamation of His doctrines everywhere incited hostility. The people of the village in which He was reared rejected Him. His own people, the Jews, were so hostile that they at last clamored for His execution; and so deep was their hatred that they were willing that responsibility for the shedding of His blood should be upon their heads and upon the heads of their children after them, if only the Roman authorities would sanction His execution! He was finally crucified amid the rejoicings of His enemies.