When the exodus from Nauvoo took place, the Mormons were
roughly estimated at four thousand souls and probably about that number
made the first settlement in Utah; but they have increased now to over
two hundred and fifty thousand in the United States with societies in
England, Wales and Scandinavia, all flourishing and sending yearly to
Salt Lake as many as they can find means to transport. The history of
this people will probably never be fully written, but they endured
hardships, privations, sufferings, torture and death. Their settlement
of Utah was one of extreme peril and anxiety, and for years it was a
question whether they would survive or perish. Had they been actuated by
conscience, by pure religious zeal, by patriotism, by any of the nobler
sentiments, they would have made an enviable reputation in history and
gone down to posterity as a society commanding the respect and
veneration of the world; but when it is known that no community or state
even would tolerate them and that they sought this uninhabitable wild,
this unknown and then foreign territory, to escape the punishment of
their crimes, and to practise an abhorrent and barbarous tenet of their
faith, their glory departs and they look and will look in the light of
history abject and pitiable.
Pages:
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103