Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
"In our apparel and deportment we will not pattern after nor encourage
foolish and extravagant fashions, and cease to import or buy from
abroad any article which can be reasonably dispensed with, or which
can be produced by combination of home labour. We will foster and
encourage the producing and manufacturing of all articles needful for
our consumption as fast as our circumstances will permit.
"We will be simple in our dress and manner of living, using proper
economy and prudence in the management of all intrusted to our care.
"We will combine our labour for mutual benefit, sustain with our faith,
prayers, and works those whom we have elected to take the management of
the different departments of the order, and be subject to them in their
official capacity, refraining from a spirit of fault-finding.
"We will honestly and diligently labour and devote ourselves and all we
have to the order and to the building up Of the Kingdom of God."
Under these general regulations a great number, as I have said,
enrolled themselves, and they may be considered therefore to
constitute, as it were, a Knight Templar commandery within a
Fellowcraft lodge. All are "brethren;" these are illustrious brethren.
All are pashas; these are "of many tails." All are mandarins of heaven;
these wear the supreme button.
But the temporal object of the Order was not served by such transfers
of moral obligations; by the hypothecation of personal piety; by
the investment of spiritual principles in a common fund. You cannot
get much working capital out of mortgages on a man's soul. Calchas
complained bitterly when the Athenian public paid their vows to the
goddess in squashes. The collector, he said, would not take them in
payment of the water-rates. So it has fared with the Order of Enoch. It
is wealthy in good intentions, and if promises were dollars could draw
large checks.
Here and there, however, local fervour took practical shape. The Kings
of Kingston planted their family flag on the wind-swept Circleville
plain. At Sunset another communistic colony was established, and in
Long Valley, in the canyons of the Rio Virgin, was inaugurated the
"United Order of Orderville."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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