Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 19
ОглавлениеFOREWORD.
This is a question frequently asked, but I do not remember that an answer has been ever before put in print. It would be easy to record the names of the ministers and the Christian sects to which they belonged who began the agitation in Missouri which resulted in such disgraceful scenes of mob-violence, robbery and murder, and the final expulsion of from twelve to fifteen thousand people from their homes and the state. It would only be a matter of time and space to set down the names of the ministers and the sects they represented, who began and continued that abominable campaign of slander and falsehood which terminated in the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and the expulsion of more than twenty thousand Latter-day Saints from the confines of the United States. But is it worth while? Is it not enough to say that so-called ministers of the gospel quite generally took the leading part in this opposition. They headed bands of men who burned the homes of our people; they sat on drumhead militia court-martials to try Joseph Smith, and condemned him to be shot in the public square at Far West; it was a sectarian minister who led the mob that murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage prison; it was a somewhat noted preacher who led the mob forces against Nauvoo and expelled the aged, the weak and helpless from that city after the great bulk of the Mormon people had departed into the western wilderness in search of new homes. So we might continue all down the line of our experience. The mobbings in the southern states have quite generally been led by so-called ministers of the gospel; as also all the unfriendly agitation in Utah and elsewhere. But it isn't worth while to dwell too long in our thought on these matters, or to take them too seriously. God has a reward that will be ample for all those who have suffered martyrdom in his cause, and those who have assailed it he doubtless will remember in his own time and way, and we need not wish them any harm, and we do not. If we could affect them in any way it would be to mitigate their difficulties. For a man to carry with him through eternity the recollection of an injustice he has inflicted upon the innocent; to be compelled always to remember a murder committed, must of itself be a terrible punishment. So I say if we could affect the persecutors of the Saints in any way it would be to mitigate their sufferings, not to increase them. We will try not to remember the wrongs of Missouri; and will try to forget the fate of Nauvoo. We will remember only that in those troublous days there were noble men, and women too, who befriended our people and who did what they could to make light their burdens and ease their sorrows—God bless them!
Which of the Sects Have Opposed Mormonism Most.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, Aug. 8, 1903.
