The same week was saved Rosmas Anderson, who had incurred rejection from Israel and eternal wrath by his misbehaviour. Becoming submissive to the decree of the Church, when it was made known to him by certain men who came in the night, it was believed that his atonement would suffice to place him once more in the household of faith. He had asked but half a day to prepare for the solemn ceremony. His wife, regretful but firm in the faith, had provided clean garments for her sinful husband, and the appointed executioners dug his grave. They went for him at midnight. By the side of the grave they had let him kneel and pray. His throat had then been cut by a deft hand, and he was held so that his blood ran into the grave, thus consummating the sacrifice to the God of Israel. The widow, obeying priestly instructions, announced that her husband had gone to California.
Then the soul of William Parrish at Springville was saved to eternal glory; also the soul of his son, Beason. For both of these sinful ones were on the verge of apostasy; had plotted, indeed, and made secret preparations to leave the valley, all of which were discovered by church emissaries, fortunately for the eternal welfare of the two most concerned. Yet a few years later, when the hated Gentiles had gained some shadow of authority in the new Zion, their minions were especially bitter as to this feat of mercy, seeking, indeed, to indict the performers of it.
As to various persons who met death while leaving the valley, opinion was divided on the question of their ultimate salvation. For it was announced concerning these, as their bodies were discovered from time to time, that the Indians had killed them. This being true, they had died in apostasy, and their rejection from the Kingdom was assured. Yet after awhile the Saints at large took hope touching the souls of these; for Bishop Wright, the excellent and able Wild Ram of the Mountains, took occasion to remark one Sabbath in the course of an address delivered in the tabernacle: “And it amazes me, brethren, to note how the spirit has been poured out on the Lamanites. It really does seem as if an Injun jest naturally hates an apostate, and it beats me how they can tell ’em the minute they try to sneak out of this valley of the Lord. They must lie out in them hills jest a-waiting for apostates; and they won’t have anything else; they never touch the faithful. You wouldn’t think they had so much fine feeling to look at ’em. You wouldn’t suspect they was so sensitive, and almost bigoted, you might say. But there it is—and I don’t believe the critters will let many of these vile apostates get beyond the rocky walls of Zion.” Those who could listen between the words began to suspect that the souls of such apostates had been duly saved.
Yet one apostate the very next day was rash enough to controvert the Bishop’s views. To a group of men in the public street at high noon and in a loud voice he declared his intention of leaving for California, and he spoke evil of the Church.
“I tell you,” he said, in tones of some excitement, “men are murdered here. Their murder is planned by Bishops, Priests, Elders, and Apostles, by the President and his Counsellors, and then it is done by men they send to do it. Their laying it on to the Indians don’t fool me a minute. That’s the kind of a church this is, and you don’t ketch me staying in it any longer!”
Trees had been early planted in the new settlement, and owing to the care bestowed upon them by the thrifty colonists, many were now matured. From a stout limb of one of these the speaker was found hanging the following morning. A coroner’s jury hastily summoned from among the Saints found that he had committed suicide.
Another whose soul was irrevocably lost was Frederick Loba, who had refused to take more than one wife in spite of the most explicit advice from his superiors that he could attain to but little glory either in this world or that to come with less than three. He crowned his offense by speaking disrespectfully of Brigham Young. Orders were issued to save his soul; but before his tabernacle could be seized by those who would have saved him, the wretched man had taken his one wife and fled to the mountains. There they wandered many days in the most inclement weather, lost, famished, and several times but narrowly escaping the little band that had been sent in pursuit of them; whose members would, had they been permitted, not only have terminated their bodily suffering, but saved their souls to a worthy place in the life to come. As it was, they wandered a distance of three hundred miles, and three days after their last food was eaten, the man carrying the woman in his arms the last six miles, they reached a camp of the Snake Indians. These, not sharing with their Utah brethren the prejudice against apostates, gave them a friendly welcome, and guided them to Fort Laramie, thereby destroying for the unhappy man and his wife their last chance of coming forth in the final resurrection. But few at this time were so unlucky as this pair; for judgment had begun at the house of the Lord, and Israel was attentively at work.
It was now that Joel Rae became conscious that he was facing directly away from the glory he had so long sought and suffered for. Though as yet no blood for Israel had been shed in his actual presence, he had attended the meetings of the Sons of Dan, and was kept aware of their operations. It seemed to him in after years that his faculties had at this time been in trance.
He was seized at length with an impulse to be away from it all. As the days went by with their tragedies, he became half wild with restlessness and a strange fear of himself. In spite of his lifelong training, he knew there was wrong in the air. He could not question the decrees of the priesthood, but this much became clear to him,—that only one thing could carry with it more possibilities of evil than this course of the Church toward dissenters—and that was to doubt that Brigham Young’s voice was as the voice of God. Not yet could he bring himself to this. But the unreasoning desire to be away became so strong that he knew he must yield to it.
Turning this in his mind one day he met a brother Elder, a man full of zeal who had lately returned from a mission abroad. There had been, he said, a great outpouring of the spirit in Wales.