Читать книгу The Women of Mormondom - Edward W. Tullidge - Страница 4

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A STRANGE RELIGIOUS EPIC—AN ISRAELITISH TYPE OF WOMAN IN THE AGE.

AN epic of woman! Not in all the ages has there been one like unto it.

Fuller of romance than works of fiction are the lives of the Mormon women. So strange and thrilling is their story—so rare in its elements of experience—that neither history nor fable affords a perfect example; yet is it a reality of our own times.

Women with new types of character, antique rather than modern; themes ancient, but transposed to our latter-day experience. Women with their eyes open, and the prophecy of their work and mission in their own utterances, who have dared to enter upon the path of religious empire-founding with as much divine enthusiasm as had the apostles who founded Christendom. Such are the Mormon women—religious empire-founders, in faith and fact. Never till now did woman essay such an extraordinary character; never before did woman rise to the conception of so supreme a mission in her own person and life.

We can only understand the Mormon sisterhood by introducing them in this cast at the very outset; only comprehend the wonderful story of their lives by viewing them as apostles, who have heard the voices of the invisibles commanding them to build the temples of a new faith.

Let us forget, then, thus early in their story, all reference to polygamy or monogamy. Rather let us think of them as apostolic mediums of a new revelation, who at first saw only a dispensation of divine innovations and manifestations for the age. Let us view them purely as prophetic women, who undertook to found their half of a new Christian empire, and we have exactly the conception with which to start the epic story of the Women of Mormondom.

They had been educated by the Hebrew Bible, and their minds cast by its influence, long before they saw the book of Mormon or heard the Mormon prophet. The examples of the ancient apostles were familiar to them, and they had yearned for the pentecosts of the early days. But most had they been enchanted by the themes of the old Jewish prophets, whose writings had inspired them with faith in the literal renewal of the covenant with Israel, and the "restitution of all things" of Abrahamic promise. This was the case with nearly all of the early disciples of Mormonism—men and women. They were not as sinners converted to Christianity, but as disciples who had been waiting for the "fullness of the everlasting gospel." Thus had they been prepared for the new revelation—an Israel born unto the promises—an Israel afterwards claiming that in a pre-existent state they were the elect of God. They had also inherited their earnest religious characters from their fathers and mothers. The pre-natal influences of generations culminated in the bringing forth of this Mormon Israel.

And here we come to the remarkable fact that the women who, with its apostles and elders, founded Mormondom, were the Puritan daughters of New England, even as were their compeer brothers its sons.

Sons and daughters of the sires and mothers who founded this great nation; sons and daughters of the sires and mothers who fought and inspired the war of the revolution, and gave to this continent a magna charta of religious and political liberty! Their stalwart fathers also wielded the "sword of the Lord" in old England, with Cromwell and his Ironsides, and the self-sacrificing spirit of their pilgrim mothers sustained New England in the heat and burden of the day, while its primeval forests were being cleared, even as these pilgrim Mormons pioneered our nation the farthest West, and converted the great American desert into fruitful fields.

That those who established the Mormon Church are of this illustrious origin we shall abundantly see, in the record of these lives, confirmed by direct genealogical links. Some of their sires were even governors of the British colonies at their very rise: instance the ancestor of Daniel H. Wells, one of the presidents of the Mormon Church, who was none other than the illustrious Thomas Wells, fourth governor of Connecticut; instance the pilgrim forefather of the apostles Orson and Parley Pratt, who came from England to America in 1633, and with the Rev. Thomas Hooker and his congregation pioneered through dense wildernesses, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts, and became the founders of the colony of Hartford, Conn., in June, 1636; instance the Youngs, the Kimballs, the Smiths, the Woodruffs, the Lymans, the Snows, the Carringtons, the Riches, the Hunters, the Huntingtons, the Patridges, the Whitneys, and a host of other early disciples of the Mormon Church. Their ancestors were among the very earliest settlers of the English colonies. There is good reason, indeed, to believe that on board the Mayflower was some of the blood that has been infused into the Mormon Church.

This genealogical record, upon which the Mormon people pride themselves, has a vast meaning, not only in accounting for their empire-founding genius and religious career, but also for their Hebraic types of character and themes of faith. Their genius is in their very blood. They are, as observed, a latter-day Israel—born inheritors of the promise—predestined apostles, both men and women, of the greater mission of this nation—the elect of the new covenant of God, which America is destined to unfold to "every nation, kindred, tongue and people." This is not merely an author's fancy; it is an affirmation and a prophecy well established in Mormon myth and themes.

If we but truthfully trace the pre-natal expositions of this peculiar people—and the sociologist will at once recognize in this method a very book of revelation on the subject—we shall soon come to look upon these strange Israelitish types and wonders as simply a hereditary culmination in the nineteenth century.

Mormonism, indeed, is not altogether a new faith, nor a fresh inspiration in the world. The facts disclose that its genius has come down to the children, through generations, in the very blood which the invisibles inspired in old England, in the seventeenth century, and which wrought such wonders of God among the nations then. That blood has been speaking in our day with prophet tongue; those wonderful works, wrought in the name of the Lord of Hosts, by the saints of the commonwealth, to establish faith in Israel's God and reverence for His name above all earthly powers, are, in their consummation in America, wrought by these latter-day saints in the same august name and for the same purpose. He shall be honored among the nations; His will done among men; His name praised to the ends of the earth! Such was the affirmation of the saints of the commonwealth of England two hundred and thirty years ago; such the affirmation of the saints raised up to establish the "Kingdom of God" in the nineteenth century. Understand this fully, and the major theme of Mormonism is comprehended. It will have a matchless exemplification in the story of the lives of these single-hearted, simple-minded, but grand women, opening to the reader's view the methods of that ancient genius, even to the establishing of the patriarchal institution and covenant of polygamy.

That America should bring forth a peculiar people, like the Mormons, is as natural as that a mother should bear children in the semblance of the father who begat them. Monstrous, indeed, would it be if, as offspring of the patriarchs and mothers of this nation, America brought forth naught but godless politicians.