At Halsey's wayside meetings the old hymns and the old tunes were sung.
The new doctrine embraced all that was supposed to be alive in the old;
it repudiated only what was supposed to be dead. It offered that
enlargement of human powers which the belief in wonders implies, a new
form of church government, a new land to live in, a new hope of a
visible and glorious church, and, above all, a living prophet. If the
personality of the prophet seemed more attractive to those who believed,
not having seen him, to Susannah, who knew the baseness of his origin so
well, the sudden increase of his influence over hundreds of people
seemed the greatest of marvels; and it was impossible but that even his
person should gain some added grace from the reflected light of success.
Halsey was only one of a dozen successful Mormon preachers who were
converging with their train of followers upon the first station of the
new church.
There is no spot in northern Ohio more lovely than the five hills or
bluffs that rise from the banks of the Chagrin River and its tributary
brooks twelve miles to the south-east of what is now the city of
Cleveland. On the shores of the river and its streams lie green levels;
from these the bluffs rise steeply for some one or two hundred feet to
tablelands of great fertility.
The site for the first Mormon temple was on the highest of these hills
overlooking the three valleys. Its foundations were quickly laid.
Around it upon the slope and tableland, up and down the valleys, and
upon the opposite hills, the wooden houses of the converts began to
spring up, not unlike in colour to a crop of mushrooms, and very like in
the suddenness of their growth.
Not long after Susannah and Halsey had reached Kirtland, Joseph Smith,
with a convert named Rigdon, went on, with missionaries who were
travelling farther west, in order to find in the wilderness the place
that was appointed for the building of Zion or the New Jerusalem. At the
same time all those men among the converts who were deemed fit were sent
out in couples to preach the new Gospel, some back to the eastern States
whence they had come, some to Canada, some to the south. To Joseph Smith
it was given to know who was to go and who to stay. Halsey was directed
to remain, to receive and establish the new converts who came, to tithe
their property for the building of the temple, and to found, according
to Smith's direction, a school of the prophets.
"And to thy wife, Susannah, it shall be given to teach the children such
worldly learning as she has herself acquired, until it may be possible
for us to appoint for them a more learned male instructor."
Joseph Smith spoke these words in the room which served him as business
office and chapel. He was drawing on his gloves, ready to go forth upon
the journey to Missouri.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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