Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Religion
Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Missions
Karl G. Maeser read a vicious attack upon the "Mormons"--about the
"Danites" and the "Destroying Angels," and so on, and so forth. Then
he found in the same article that the "Mormons" were industrious, that
they were frugal, that there was not a poor-house in all the territory
of Utah, that the fifteen per cent of Gentile population, among them
then furnished eighty-five per cent of the criminals, according to
United States statistics, compiled by the Gentiles themselves. He
found that there was not one saloon in the entire territory of Utah,
and that the only place where whiskey was sold was in Salt Lake City;
and, to the disgrace of the city government, they were selling it.
That is what he found on the temperance question. He found that there
was not a single house of ill fame in the whole of Utah. He found that
the people went to bed at night with their front and back doors open.
After reading all this he said to himself: "The man who wrote this
illustrated article for the magazine is a liar. The fruits of honesty,
industry sobriety, and brotherly love do not grow among immoral and
wicked people," so he sent for some tracts, investigated the gospel and
embraced it. On the night of his baptism, which occurred at midnight,
he looked up to heaven and said, in substance: "O, God, if what I have
done tonight meets with your approval, and you will give to me the
witness of the Spirit that this gospel, that I believe, is in very deed
the truth, that I may know it, I pledge my life, if need be, to its
promulgation and its advancement."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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