The husband complied with a dubious look on his face, while the Elders proceeded to change and dry their clothes, and soon he returned and reported that the heavy shower which had fallen had so filled all the ditches and low places that they would have no difficulty in finding water deep enough.
Within two hours from the arrival of the Elders the lady was baptized and confirmed, she being the first one to embrace the gospel in the region known as "Land's End."
The Elders ever found a home at her house and enjoyed the privilege of holding meetings in her school-house for years, and she remained faithful, but her husband, although he was kind to the Elders and willing to entertain them, never joined the Church. He was an infidel and an astrologer.
CHAPTER II.
ELDER ELIAS MORRIS FALLS WITH A SCAFFOLD A DISTANCE OF THIRTY FEET WITHOUT BEING HURT—GIFT OF HEALING POSSESSED BY ELDER ABEL EVANS—A WOMAN HEALED WHO HAD HER FACE EATEN AWAY BY A CANCER—STORM AT SEA REBUKED—A BROKEN LEG CURED—A BROKEN SKULL MENDED-FEVER ON SHIPBOARD STOPPED BY THE PRAYER OF FAITH.
Elder Elias Morris, now a resident of Salt Lake City, labored extensively as a local and traveling Elder in the Welch mission in an early day. In illustration of the manner in which the Lord's power was often manifested in preserving the lives of His servants, he relates an instance from his experience:
While acting as a local Elder in his native place, laboring at his trade during the week and preaching in the surrounding villages on Sundays, he once had occasion to speak of the signs which the Savior had promised should follow believers: "In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly, thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." He argued that the enjoyment of those promised blessings was not limited to the believers who lived when the Savior was upon the earth, but that the faithful Latter-day Saints also shared the same. The sectarian preachers of the neighborhood who listened to or heard of Elder Morris' remarks on that occasion ridiculed them, and one especially, a Methodist deacon, had a great deal to say about them. In repeating those remarks and commenting on them to others, he also exaggerated what had been said, even asserting falsely that Elder Morris had claimed that if he were to fall from the top of a quarry it would not hurt him. Elder Morris heard of this deacon's exaggerated stories and flippant comments, but did not deign to notice them, although he was well acquainted with the man, in fact he was at that very time in his employ.
A few days afterwards Elder Morris happened to be engaged upon a three-story building, pointing the front, and for that purpose was sitting on a hanging scaffold near the top of the wall. All at once he felt the scaffold giving way, the planks upon which it rested, and which projected from the inside of the building, having become loosened. He called immediately to a fellow workman engaged inside the building to come to his relief, but before the man reached the window to grasp the plank, the scaffold fell and Brother Morris with it. With a silent prayer to God for help, and fully realizing his danger, he dropped the distance of thirty feet or more, alighting on his thigh on the stone pavement. In an instant he was upon his feet, and placing his hand on a window sill, he sprang lightly into the lower room of the building and escaped the falling planks, which did not reach the ground until after he had, and came forth the next minute unharmed. He did not even feel the slightest pain from the fall.
It happened that the Methodist deacon, one of the owners of the building, and Elder Morris' father were in the street in front of the building at the time of the accident, and the latter was almost paralyzed with fear at the sight of his boy falling down, and no less surprised and overjoyed at seeing him walk forth the next moment unscathed. The deacon, too, seemed very much astonished and hardly able to believe the evidence of his own sight when he saw the man whose religious pretentions he had ridiculed so much pass through such an ordeal and appear unhurt. Elder Morris noticed his surprised look as he approached him, and thought it a fitting opportunity to tax him with the slander and ridicule which he had been indulging in at his expense. He accordingly did so, and then asked ironically, hinting at the story which the deacon had circulated about him, "Isn't that almost equal to falling off a quarry?" The deacon acknowledged that it was, and declared that some supernatural power must have saved him in that instance at least.