There is perhaps no country where the seed sown by propagandists springs up more rapidly, where an idea thrown to the winds finds more surely a fertile soil in which to grow. A convinced and resolute man, knowing how to influence crowds by authoritative words, gestures and promises, can always be certain of attracting numerous followers. In America the conditions are without doubt propitious for the founders of new religions.
I
How is a new religion started in the United States? Joe Smith wakes up one morning with the thought that the hour has come for him to perform miracles, that he is called thereto by the Divine Will, that the existence and the secret hiding-place of a new Bible printed on sheets of gold have been revealed to him by an angel, and that its discovery will be the salvation of the world. He proclaims these things and convinces those who hear him, and the Book of the Mormons which he produces becomes sacred in the eyes of his followers.
In ever-increasing numbers they hasten first to Illinois, then to Utah; and when Brigham Young, Smith's successor, presents the Mormon colony with religious and political laws which are a mixture of Christianity, Judaism and Paganism, and include the consecration of polygamy, they found a church which claims more than a hundred thousand adherents, and is ruled by twelve apostles, sixty patriarchs, about three thousand high priests, fifteen hundred bishops, and over four thousand deans.
After being dissolved by the decree of the 10th of October, 1888, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints seemed to be lost, without hope of revival. The State of Utah, where Brigham Young had established it in 1848, was invaded by ever-growing numbers of "Gentiles," who were hostile to the Mormons, but these latter, far from allowing the debris of their faith to bestrew the shores of the Great Salt Lake, succeeded, on the contrary, in strengthening the foundations of the edifice that they had raised. The number of its adherents increased, and the colony became more flourishing than ever. If, at one time, it was possible to speak of its dying agonies, those who visit it to-day cannot deny the fact of its triumphant resurrection.
Two principal causes have been its safeguard: the firm and practical working-out of the economic and philanthropic principles upon which its organisation has always rested, and the resolute devotion and capability of those who direct it as the heads of one great family. Every member is concerned to maintain the regular and effective functioning of its mechanism, and all work for the same ends in a spirit of religious co-operation.
We must not lose sight of the fact that in addition to the elements they borrowed from Buddhism, Christianity, Gnosticism and Islam, the Mormons introduced into their new Gospel a social ideal inspired by the Communistic experiments of the first half of the nineteenth century. The founders of Mormonism—Joseph Smith, Heber Kimball, George Smith, the brothers Pratt, Reuben Hedlock, Willard Richards, and Brigham Young—were not visionaries, but men risen from the people who desired to acquire wealth while at the same time bringing wealth to those who took part in their schemes. We find in their doctrine, and in their legal and religious codes, not only the idea of multiple union claimed by Enfantin and his forty disciples of Ménilmontant, but also the theories of Buchez, who desired to free labour from the servitude of wages, to bring about solidarity of production, and to communalise capital, after first setting aside an inalienable reserve. They followed the example of Cabet in making fraternity, which should guarantee division of goods, the corner-stone of their social structure, and, avoiding the delusions of Considérant and other Communists, they brought about, stage by stage, the rapid and lasting development which has characterised their successive establishments in Missouri, Illinois, and on the borders of California.
II
Militant as well as constructive, the Mormon leaders, like many other reformers, believed themselves to be charged with a mission from on high, and were quick to condemn as rebels all who failed to rally to the standard of the "Latter-Day Saints." Joe Smith was not content with making thousands of converts, but, after having turned his colony at Independence into an "Arsenal of the Lord," and surrounding himself with a veritable army, he proclaimed that, as the Bible gave the saints empire over all the earth, the whole State of Missouri should be incorporated in his "New Jerusalem." The "Gentiles" replied with a declaration of war, and Joe Smith and his twelve apostles were seized, publicly flogged, divested of their garments, tarred and feathered, and chased out of the State with shouts and laughter and a hail of stones.
The Mormons took up arms. The Governor of Missouri called out the militia. Vanquished in the encounter that followed, the Mormons had to abandon all their possessions and take flight. They then founded a town called Far West, and remained there for three years, at the end of which time fresh aggressions and more battles drove them out of the State of Missouri into that of Illinois, where they built the large town of Nauvoo. Many thousands of fresh recruits were won over, but once again their designs for the acquisition of land—as well as of souls—stirred up a crusade against them. Joe Smith and the other leaders of the sect were taken prisoners and shot—a procedure which endowed Mormonism with all the sacredness of martyrdom. To escape further persecutions, the Saints decided on a general exodus, and the whole sect, men and women, old people and children, numbering in all about eighty thousand souls, set forth into the desert.