In to the Yukon

by William Seymour Edwards

THE MORMON “LION HOUSE.”

All the morning we have been viewing concrete, practical Mormondom, and the sight has been most instructive. High above the buildings of the city tower the imposing spires and pinnacles of the Temple, the most immense ecclesiastical structure on the North American continent. Thirty years was it in building, all of native granite, and costing more than four millions of dollars. It stands in the central square of the city, surrounded by a high adobe wall, and a Gentile may view only the exterior.

Then we visited the famous Tabernacle beneath whose turtle-shaped roof 10,000 worshipers may sit, and whose acoustic properties are unrivaled in the world. You can hear a whisper and a pin drop two hundred feet away. In it is the immense organ possessing five hundred and twenty stops, which, like the two great structures, was conceived and constructed by the genius and patience of the Mormon architects. We were shown about the grounds of the ecclesiastical enclosure—though not permitted to enter the Temple—by a courteous-mannered lady whose black eyes fired with religious enthusiasm as she explained the great buildings. “My son is a missionary in Japan, giving his life to the Lord. He preaches in Japanese, and is translating our holy books into the Japanese tongue,” she said, turning to an intelligent Japanese tourist who was of our party.

We also bought some Mormon literature in the fine, modern sky-scraper buildings of the Deseret News, and the bright young man, selling us the books, showed us with evident pride the stores of elegantly printed and bound volumes, all done here in Salt Lake City. They print their books in every modern tongue, and their missionaries distribute them all over the world.

Later, we viewed the fine college buildings where higher education is given to the Mormon youth. We also saw the famous “Lion House,” over whose portal lies a sleeping lion, once the offices of Brigham Young, now occupied by the ecclesiastical managers of the church. And also we viewed the “Beehive House,” where once Brigham dwelt; the Tithing House, where is received and stored the ecclesiastical tithe tax of ten per cent. of all crops raised and moneys earned by the devoted Mormon believers; and the great bank run in connection with it.

All these evidences of practical, organized, devoted religious world zeal have we beheld gathered and centrally grouped in the great city founded and raised by these curious yet capable religious delusionists.

I asked about Mormonism of a Gentile stranger from another State, and he replied in deferential tones: “No man in his senses now throws stones at the Mormons; they are among the most industrious, most thrifty and most respected people of the West.”

To wander along and through the residence section of the city is also a thing to surprise. Street after street of fine private dwellings, each mansion standing in its own garden, upon its own lawn. Many of them very modern, and many of them far exceeding in cost and imposing elegance any residence Charleston, West Virginia, can yet boast—equal to the most sumptuous homes of Pittsburg and St. Louis—and most of them owned and lived in by cultivated families of the Mormon cult. And how the zeal and faith and religious ardor of this strange sect even now to-day burns in the atmosphere of this their Holy City! It is the same spirit that we met in Holy Moscow, Russia’s sacred capital—but more enlightened, more practical.