The Mormon sisterhood take up their themes of religion with their Mother Eve, and consent with her, at the very threshold of the temple, to bear the cross. Eve is ever with her daughters in the temple of the Lord their God.
The Mormon daughters of Eve have also in this eleventh hour come down to earth, like her, to magnify the divine office of motherhood. She came down from her resurrected, they from their spirit, estate. Here, with her, in the divine providence of maternity, they begin to ascend the ladder to heaven, and to their exaltation in the courts of their Father and Mother God.
Who shall number the blasphemies of the sectarian churches against our first grand parents? Ten thousand priests of the serpent have thundered anathemas upon the head of "accursed Adam." Appalling, oftentimes, their pious rage. And Eve—the holiest, grandest of Mothers—has been made a very by-word to offset the frailties of the most wicked and abandoned.
Very different is Mormon theology! The Mormons exalt the grand parents of our race. Not even is the name of Christ more sacred to them than the names of Adam and Eve. It was to them the poetess and high priestess addressed her hymn of invocation; and Brigham's proclamation that Adam is our Father and God is like a hallelujah chorus to their everlasting names. The very earth shall yet take it up; all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve shall yet shout it for joy, to the ends of the earth, in every tongue!
Eve stands, then, first—the God-Mother in the maternal trinity of this earth. Soon we shall meet Sarah, the Mother of the covenant, and in her daughters comprehend something of patriarchal marriage—"Mormon polygamy." But leave we awhile these themes of woman, and return to the personal thread of the sisters' lives.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE HUNTINGTONS—ZINA D. YOUNG, AND PRESCINDIA L. KIMBALL—THEIR TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE KIRTLAND MANIFESTATIONS—UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF JOSEPH SMITH—DEATH OF MOTHER HUNTINGTON.
Who are these thus pursued as by the demons that ever haunt a great destiny?
As observed in the opening chapter, they are the sons and daughters of the Pilgrim sires and mothers who founded this nation; sons and daughters of the patriots who fought the battles of independence and won for these United States a transcendent destiny.
Here meet we two of the grand-nieces of Samuel Huntington, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of Connecticut, and President of Congress.