OCR Text |
Show SALT LAKE CITY AND ITS CITIZENS. CITI-ZENS. (By Thos. O'Hagan. M. A., in February Donahoe's.) But as Salt Lake City has been for half a century the cradle and Mecca of Mormonism let us first for a moment mo-ment glance at the origin of its people and their faith. It will be well to say at the outset that while Brigham Young has been at "the head and front of its offending," its king, priest and prophet, Joseph Smith of Ontario county. New York, was its founder. He it was who when an illiterate lad of 15 saw a glorious vision, and the angel Moroni "in white robe and with a countenance coun-tenance like unto the light of heaven" made known to him the existence of metal plates covered with an ancient record. After Joseph's marriage to Emma Hale In 1S27 an angel delivered to him the plates of the book of Mormon Mor-mon which had been buried fourteen hundred years so runs the tale. This is the heavenly origin of Mormonism Mor-monism as set forth b3- its wily founders, found-ers, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, who mingled psalms with sensuality and made a mockery of God's angels In the courts of death. From every non-Catholic country in Europe poured in a tide of immigrants to the fat valleys of Utah, anxious to establish "stakes in Zion." as the Mormon Mor-mon settlements were designated. Denmark, Den-mark, Wales, Switzerland. Sweden. Scotland, Germany and the States contributed to these "Camps in Israel" many of the settlers being the dregs of society, whose moral leprosy would prove a menace to the life of any state. No wonder that through this omnium gatherum swept into the vortex or tide of Mormon emigration there was planted plant-ed more vice than virtue along the plains watered by the modern Jordan. |