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Lily Dougall - The Mormon Prophet

L >> Lily Dougall >> The Mormon Prophet



The Mormon Prophet

BY

LILY DOUGALL

Author of The Mermaid, The Zeitgeist, The Madonna of a Day, Beggars All,
Etc.


TORONTO

THE W.J. GAGE COMPANY (LIMITED)
1899

COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved._




PREFACE.


In studying the rise of this curious sect I have discovered that certain
misconceptions concerning it are deeply rooted in the minds of many of
the more earnest of the well-wishers to society. Some otherwise
well-informed people hold Mormonism to be synonymous with polygamy,
believe that Brigham Young was its chief prophet, and are convinced that
the miseries of oppressed women and tyrannies exercised over helpless
subjects of both sexes are the only themes that the religion of more
than two hundred thousand people can afford. When I have ventured in
conversation to deny these somewhat fabulous notions, it has been
earnestly suggested to me that to write on so false a religion in other
than a polemic spirit would tend to the undermining of civilised life.

In spite of these warnings, and although I know it to be a most
dangerous commodity, I have ventured to offer the simple truth, as far
as I have been able to discern it, consoling my advisers with the
assurance that its insidious influence will be unlikely to do harm,
because, however potent may be the direful latitude of other religious
novels, this particular book can only interest those wiser folk who are
best able to deal with it.

As, however, to many who have preconceived the case, this narrative
might, in the absence of explanation, seem purely fanciful, let me
briefly refer to the historical facts on which it is based. The Mormons
revere but one prophet. As to his identity there can be no mistake,
since many of the "revelations" were addressed to him by name--"To
Joseph Smith, Junior." He never saw Utah, and his public teachings were
for the most part unexceptionable. Taking necessary liberty with
incidents, I have endeavoured to present Smith's character as I found it
in his own writings, in the narratives of contemporary writers, and in
the memories of the older inhabitants of Kirtland.

In reviewing the evidence I am unable to believe that, had Smith's
doctrine been conscious invention, it would have lent sufficient power
to carry him through persecutions in which his life hung in the
balance, and his cause appeared to be lost, or that the class of earnest
men who constituted the rank and file of his early following would have
been so long deceived by a deliberate hypocrite. It appears to me more
likely that Smith was genuinely deluded by the automatic freaks of a
vigorous but undisciplined brain, and that, yielding to these, he became
confirmed in the hysterical temperament which always adds to delusion
self-deception, and to self-deception half-conscious fraud. In his day
it was necessary to reject a marvel or admit its spiritual significance;
granting an honest delusion as to his visions and his book, his only
choice lay between counting himself the sport of devils or the agent of
Heaven; an optimistic temperament cast the die.

In describing the persecutions of his early followers I have modified
rather than enlarged upon the facts. It would, indeed, be difficult to
exaggerate the sufferings of this unhappy and extraordinarily successful
sect.

A large division of the Mormons of to-day, who claim to be Smith's
orthodox following, and who have never settled in Utah, are strictly
monogamous. These have never owned Brigham Young as a leader, never
murdered their neighbours or defied the law in any way, and so vigorous
their growth still appears that they claim to have increased their
number by fifty thousand since the last census in 1890. Of all their
characteristics, the sincerity of their belief is the most striking. In
Ohio, when one of the preachers of these "Smithite" Mormons was
conducting me through the many-storied temple, still standing huge and
gray on Kirtland Bluff, he laid his hand on a pile of copies of the Book
of Mormon, saying solemnly, "Sister, here is the solidest thing in
religion that you'll find anywhere." I bought the "solidest" thing for
fifty cents, and do not advise the same outlay to others. The prophet's
life is more marvellous and more instructive than the book whose
production was its chief triumph. That it was an original production
seems probable, as the recent discovery of the celebrated Spalding
manuscript, and a critical examination of the evidence of Mrs. Spalding,
go far to discredit the popular accusation of plagiarism.

Near Kirtland I visited a sweet-faced old lady--not, however, of the
Mormon persuasion--who as a child had climbed on the prophet's knee. "My
mother always said," she told us, "that if she had to die and leave
young children, she would rather have left them to Joseph Smith than to
any one else in the world: he was always kind." This testimony as to
Smith's kindheartedness I found to be often repeated in the annals of
Mormon families.

In criticising my former stories several reviewers, some of them
distinguished in letters, have done me the honour to remark that there
was latent laughter in many of my scenes and conversations, but that I
was unconscious of it. Be that as it may, those who enjoy unconscious
absurdity will certainly find it in the utterances of the self-styled
prophet of the Mormons. Probably one gleam of the sacred fire of humour
would have saved him and his apostles the very unnecessary trouble of
being Mormons at all.

In looking over the problems involved in such a career as Smith's, we
must be struck by the necessity for able and unprejudiced research into
the laws which govern apparent marvels. Notwithstanding the very natural
and sometimes justifiable aspersions which have been cast upon the work
of the Society for Psychical Research, it does appear that the
disinterested service rendered by its more distinguished members is the
only attempt hitherto made to aid people of the so-called "mediumistic"
temperament to understand rather than be swayed by their delusions.
Whether such a result is as yet possible or not, Mormonism affords a
gigantic proof of the crying need of an effort in this direction; for
men are obviously more ignorant of their own elusive mental conditions
than of any other branch of knowledge.

L.D.

MONTREAL, December, 1898.




THE MORMON PROPHET.




_BOOK I._




CHAPTER I.


In the United States of America there was, in the early decades of this
century, a very widely spread excitement of a religious sort. Except in
the few long-settled portions of the eastern coast, the people were
scattered over an untried country; means of travel were slow; news from
a distance was scarce; new heavens and a new earth surrounded the
settlers. In the veins of many of them ran the blood of those who had
been persecuted for their faith: Covenanters, Quakers, sectaries of
diverse sorts who could transmit to their descendants their instincts of
fiery zeal, their cravings for "the light that never was on sea or
land," but not that education by contact with law and order which, in
older states, could not fail to moderate reasonable minds.

With the religious revivals came signs and wonders. A wave of peculiar
psychical phenomena swept over the country, in explanation of which the
belief most widely received was that of the direct interposition of God
or the devil. The difficulty of discerning between the working of the
good and the bad spirit in abnormal manifestations was to most minds
obviated by the fact that they looked out upon the confusing scene
through the glasses of rigidly defined opinion, and according as the
affected person did or did not conform to the spectator's view of truth,
so he was judged to be a saint or a demoniac. Few sought to learn rather
than to judge; one of these very few was a young man by name Ephraim
Croom. He was by nature a student, and, being of a feeble constitution,
he enjoyed what, in that country and time, was the very rare privilege
of indulging his literary tastes under the shelter of the parental roof.

In one of the last years of the eighteenth century Croom the elder had
come with a young wife from his father's home in Massachusetts to settle
in a township called New Manchester, in the State of New York. He was a
Baptist by creed; a man of strong will, strong affections, and strong
self-respect. Taking the portion of goods which was his by right, he
sallied forth into the new country, thrift and intelligence written upon
his forehead, thinking there the more largely to establish the
prosperity of the green bay tree, and to serve his God and generation
the better by planting his race in the newer land.

The thirtieth year after his emigration found him a notable person in
the place that he had chosen, with almost the same physical strength as
in youth, stern, upright, thrifty, the owner of large mills, of a
substantial wooden residence, and of many acres of land. He was as rich
as he had intended to be; his ideal of righteousness, being of the
obtainable sort, had been realised and strictly adhered to. The one
disappointment of his life was the lack of those sturdy sons and
daughters who, to his mind, should have surrounded the virtuous man in
his old age. They had not come into the world. His wife, a good woman
and energetic helpmeet, had brought him but the one studious son.

Ephraim was thirty-two years of age when a young girl, strong,
beautiful, impetuous, entered under the sloping eaves of his father's
huge gray shingle roof. The girl was a niece on the maternal side. Her
New England mother had, by freak of love, married a reckless young
Englishman of gentle blood who was settled on a Canadian farm. Pining
for her puritan home, she died early. The father made a toy of his
daughter till he too died in the fortified town of Kingston, on the
northern shore of Lake Ontario. No other relatives coming forward to
assume his debts or to claim his child, their duty in the matter was
clear to the minds of the Croom household, and the girl was sent for.
Her name was Susannah, but she herself gave it the softer form that she
had been accustomed to hear; when she first entered the sitting-room of
the grave Croom family trio, like a sunbeam striking suddenly through
the clouds on a dark day, she held out her hand and her lips to each in
turn, saying, "I am Susianne."

That first time Ephraim kissed her. It was done in surprise and
embarrassed formality. He knew, when the moment was past that his
parents had perceived that Susannah needed more decorous training. He
concurred in believing this to be desirable, for the manners that had
surrounded him were very stiff. Yet the memory of the greeting remained
with him, a thing to be wondered at while he turned the whispering
leaves of his great books.

Susannah had travelled from the Canadian fort in the care of the
preacher Finney. He was a revivalist of great renown, possessing a
lawyer-like keenness of intellect, much rhetorical power, and Pauline
singleness of purpose. That night he ate and slept in the house.

The original Calvinism of the Croom household had already been modified
by the waves of Methodist revival from the Eastern States. Finney was an
Independent, but Martha Croom had an abounding respect for him; his
occasional visits were epochs in her life. She had prepared many baked
meats for his entertainment before the evening of his arrival with
Susannah, but while he was present she devoted herself wholly to his
conversation.

The feast was spread in the inner kitchen. In the square brick fireplace
burning pine sticks crackled, bidding the chill of the April evening
retire to its own place beyond the dark window pane. The paint upon the
walls and floor glistened but faintly to the fire and the small flames
of two candles that stood among the viands upon the table.

The elder Croom sat in his place. He was burly and ruddy, a wholesome
man, very silent, very strong, a person to be feared and relied on.
Ephraim believed that force went forth from his father's presence like
perfume from a flower. There were many kinds of flowers whose perfume
was too strong for Ephraim, but he felt that to be a proof of his own
weakness.

Martha Croom, also of New England stock, was of a different type. At
fifty years she was still as slender as a girl--tall and too slender,
but the small shapely head was set gracefully on the neck as a flower
upon its stalk. Her hair, which was wholly silvered, was still abundant
and glossily brushed. Her mind was not judicial. She was more quick to
decide than to comprehend, full of intense activities and emotions.

"I have heard," said the preacher slowly, "certain distressing rumours
concerning--"

Mrs. Croom gave an upward bridling motion of her head, and a red spot
of indignant fire came in each of her cheeks. "Joe Smith?", she cried.
"A blasphemous wretch! And there is nothing, Mr. Finney, that so well
indicates the luke-warmishness into which so many have fallen as that
his blasphemy is made a jest of."

Ephraim moved uneasily in his chair.

Mr. Croom made a remark brief and judicial. "The Smiths are a _low_
family."

Mrs. Croom answered the tone. "If the dirt beneath our feet were to
begin using profane language, I don't suppose it would be beneath our
dignity to put a stop to it."

"It is the Inquisition that my mother wishes to reinstate," said
Ephraim.

The master of the house again spoke with the _naivete_ of unquestioning
bias. "No, Ephraim; for your mother would be the last to interfere with
any for doing righteousness or believing the truth."

Mrs. Croom's slender head trembled and her eyes showed signs of tears at
her son's opposition. "If God-fearing people cannot prevent the most
horrible iniquities from being practised in their own town, the laws are
in a poor condition."

"You have made no candid inquiry concerning Smith, mother; your judgment
of him, whether true or false, is based on angry sentiment and wilful
ignorance."

The preacher sighed. "This Smith is deceiving the people."

"His book," said Ephraim, "is a history of the North American Indians
from the time of the flood until some epoch prior to Columbus. It would
be as difficult to prove that it was not true as to prove that Smith is
not honest in his delusion. We can only fall back upon what Butler would
call 'a strong presumption.'"

Mrs. Croom, consciously or not, made a little sharp rap on the table,
and there was a movement of suppressed misery like a quiver in her
slender upright form. Her voice was low and tremulous. "If you'd got
religion, Ephraim, you wouldn't speak in that light manner of one who
has the awful wickedness of adding to the words of the Book."

Ephraim continued to enlighten the preacher in a stronger tone. "Whether
the man is mad or false, almost all the immoralities that you will hear
reported about him are, as far as I can make out, not true. He doesn't
teach that it's unnecessary to obey the ten commandments, or beat his
wife, nor is he drunken. He's got the sense to see that all that sort of
thing wouldn't make a big man of him. It's merely a revised form of
Christianity, with a few silly additions, that he claims to be the
prophet of."

Mrs. Croom began to weep bitterly.

The elder Croom asked a pertinent question. "Why do you wilfully
distress your mother, Ephraim?"

"Because, sir, I love my mother too well to sit silent and let her
think that injustice can glorify God."

It was a family jar.

Finney was a man of about forty years of age; his eyes under
over-reaching brows were bright and penetrating; his face was shaven,
but his mouth had an expression of peculiar strength and gentleness. He
looked keenly at the son of the house, who was held to be irreligious.
And then he looked upon Susannah, whose beauty and frivolity had not
escaped his keen observation. He lived always in the consciousness of an
invisible presence; when he felt the arms of Heaven around him, wooing
him to prayer, he dared not disobey.

He arose now, setting his chair back against the wall with preoccupied
precision. "The spirit of prayer is upon me," he said; and in a moment
he added, "Let us pray."

Susannah was eating, and with relish. She laid down her bit of pumpkin
pie and stared astonished. Then, being a girl of good sense and good
feeling, she relinquished the remainder of her supper, and, following
her aunt's example, knelt beside her chair.

The two candles and the firelight left shadowy spaces in parts of the
room, and cast grotesque outlines against the walls. Nothing was
familiar to Susannah's eye; she could not help looking about her.
Ephraim was nearest to her. He was a bearded man, and seemed to her very
old. She saw that his face looked pale and distressed; his eyes were
closed, his lips tight set, like one bearing transient pain. At the end
of the table her uncle knelt upright, with hands clasped and face
uplifted, no feature or muscle moving--a strong figure rapt in devotion.
On her other side, as a slight tree waves in the wind, her aunt's slim
figure was swaying and bending with feeling that was now convulsive and
now restrained. Sometimes she moaned audibly or whispered "Amen." Across
the richly-spread table Susannah saw the preacher kneeling in a full
flickering glare of the pine fire, one hand upon the brick jamb, the
other covering his eyes, as if to hide from himself all things that were
seen and temporal in order that he might speak face to face with the
Eternal.

It was some time before she listened to the words of the prayer. When
she heard Ephraim Croom spoken of by name, there was no room in her mind
for anything but curiosity. After a while she heard her own name, and
curiosity began to subside into awe. After this the preacher brought
forward the case of Joseph Smith.

Before the prayer ended Susannah was troubled by so strong a sense of
emotion that she desired nothing so much as relief. It seemed to her
that the emotion was not so much in herself as in the others, or like an
influence in the room pressing upon them all. At length a kitten that
had been lying by the hearth got up as if disturbed by the same
influence, and, walking round the room, rubbed its fur against Ephraim's
knee. She saw the start run through his whole nervous frame. Opening his
eyes, he put down his hand and stroked it. Susannah liked Ephraim the
better for this. The kitten was not to be comforted; it looked up in his
face and gave a piteous mew. Susannah tittered; then she felt sorry and
ashamed.




CHAPTER II.


Two quiet years passed, and Susannah had attained her eighteenth
birthday.

On a certain day in the week there befell what the aunt called a
"season" of baking. It was the only occasion in the week when Mrs. Croom
was sure to stay for some length of time in the same place with Susannah
beside her. Ephraim brought down his books to the hospitable kitchen,
and sat aloof at a corner table. He said the sun was too strong upon his
upper windows, or that the rain was blowing in. The first time that
Ephraim sought refuge in the kitchen Mrs. Croom was quite flustered with
delight. She always coveted more of her son's society. But when he came
a third time she began to suspect trouble.

Mrs. Croom stood by the baking-board, her slender hands immersed in a
heap of pearly flour; baskets of scarlet currants lay at her feet. All
things in the kitchen shone by reason of her diligence, and the windows
were open to the summer sunshine. Susannah sat with a large pan of red
gooseberries beside her; she was picking them over one by one.
Somewhere in the outer kitchen the hired boy had been plucking a goose,
and some tiny fragments of the down were floating in the air. One of
them rode upon a movement of the summer air and danced before Susannah's
eyes. She put her pretty red lips beneath it and blew it upwards.

Mrs. Croom's suspicions concerning Ephraim had produced in her a desire
to reprove some one, but she refrained as yet.

Susannah having wafted the summer snowflake aloft, still sat, her young
face tilted upward like the faces of saints in the holy pictures, her
bright eyes fixed upon the feather now descending. Ephraim looked with
obvious pleasure. Her head was framed for him by the window; a dark
stiff evergreen and the summer sky gave a Raphaelite setting.

The feather dropped till it all but touched the tip of the girl's nose.
Then from the lips, puckered and rosy, came a small gust; the fragment
of down ascended, but this time aslant.

"You didn't blow straight enough up," said Ephraim.

Susannah smiled to know that her pastime was observed. The smile was a
flash of pleasure that went through her being. She ducked her laughing
face farther forward to be under the feather.

Mrs. Croom shot one glance at Ephraim, eager and happy in his watching.
She did what nothing but the lovelight in her son's face could have
caused her to do. She struck the girl lightly but testily on the side of
the face.

Ephraim was as foolish as are most men in sight of a damsel in distress.
He made no impartial inquiry into the real cause of trouble; he did not
seek Justice in her place of hiding. He stepped to his mother's side,
stern and determined, remembering only that she was often unwise, and
that he could control her.

"You ought not to have done that. You must never do it again."

With the print of floury fingers on her glowing cheeks the girl sat more
astonished than angry, full of ruth when her aunt began to sob aloud.

The mother knew that she was no longer the first woman in her son's
love.

It was without doubt, Mrs. Croom's first bitter pang of jealousy that
lay at the beginning of those causes which drove Susannah out upon a
strange pilgrimage. But above and beyond her personal jealousy was a
consideration certainly dearer to a woman into whose inmost religious
life was woven the fibre of the partisan. As she expressed it to
herself, she agonised before the Lord in a new fear lest her unconverted
son should be established in his unbelief by love for a woman who had
never sought for heavenly grace; but, in truth, that which she sought
was that both should swear allegiance to her own interpretation of
grace. In this prayer some good came to her, the willingness to
sacrifice her jealousy if need be; but, after the prayer another thought
entered into her mind, which she held to be divine direction; she must
focus all her efforts upon the girl's conversion. In her heart all the
time a still small voice told her that love was the fulfilling of the
law, but so still, so small, so habitual was it that she lost it as we
lose the ticking of a clock, and it was not with increased love for
Susannah that she began a course of redoubled zeal.

The girl became frightened, not so much of her aunt as of God. The
simple child's prayer for the keeping of her soul which she had been in
the habit of repeating morning and evening became a terror to her,
because she did not understand her aunt's phraseology. The "soul" it
dealt with was not herself, her thoughts, feelings, and powers, but a
mysterious something apart from these, for whose welfare these must all
be sacrificed.

Susannah had heard of fairies and ghosts; she inclined to shove this
sort of soul into the same unreal region. The dreary artificial heaven,
which seemed to follow logically if she accepted the basal fact of a
soul separated from all her natural powers, could be dispensed with
also. This was her hope, but she was not sure. How could she be sure
when she was so young and dependent? It was almost her only solace to
interpret Ephraim's silence by her own unbelief, and she rested her
weary mind against her vague notions of Ephraim's support.

One August day Mrs. Croom drove with her husband to a distant funeral.

In the afternoon when the sunshine was falling upon the fields of maize,
when the wind was busy setting their ribbon-like leaves flapping, and
rocking the tree-tops, Ephraim Croom was disturbed in his private room
by the blustering entrance of Susannah.

The room was an attic; the windows of the gable looked west; slanting
windows in the shingle roof looked north and south. The room was large
and square, spare of furniture, lined with books. At a square table in
the centre sat Ephraim.

When Susannah entered a gust of wind came with her. The handkerchief
folded across her bosom was blown awry. Her sun-bonnet had slipped back
upon her neck; her ringlets were tossed.

"Cousin Ephraim, my aunt has gone; come out and play with me." Then she
added more disconsolately, "I am lonely; I want you to talk to me,
cousin."

The gust had lifted Ephraim's papers and shed them upon the floor. He
looked down at them without moving. Life in a world of thoughts in which
his fellows took no interest, had produced in him a singularly
undemonstrative manner.

Susannah's red lips were pouting. "Come, cousin, I am so tired of
myself."

But Ephraim had been privately accused of amative emotions. Offended
with his mother, mortified he knew not why, uncertain of his own
feeling, as scholars are apt to be, he had no wish then but to retire.

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