The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical Society of PennsylvaniaKane, Thomas L. (Thomas Leiper)
History
The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Kane, Thomas L. (Thomas Leiper)
Latter Day Saint churches
With other neighbors the Mormons have no trouble. We have had large
numbers of them in Philadelphia, and elsewhere to the East, for now
nearly twenty years past, whose good citizenship is no subject of
discussion with those who have daily business dealings with them. In
England too, they number nearly twice as many adult members as the
Baptists in Pennsylvania. Once indeed, when their religion was first
preached in that country--it was at the very time their earliest trial
before Lynch J., in Missouri, was pending--a charge was laid against
them in a manufacturing borough there, that they had made away with
an Elizabeth, or Betsey Martin, one of their new converts; and the
beginning of a mob entered upon its examination. But to her British
Majesty's Government, which holds the old fashioned notions of law
and order, it mattered as little if it were the case of Betty Martin
a Mormon, as of Betty Martin the Cyprian: a commonplace Government
Magistrate decided there should be no mob, and a commonplace legal
investigation decided the charge was groundless. The Mormons have
therefore been free to preach and sing and pray in the United Kingdom
to this hour; and I remark that Evangelic sectaries of my own
persuasion there, do battle with them in print on the same terms as
with Millerites, Wesleyans, or Seventh, or Every Day Baptists.
It is observed to me with a vile meaning, that I have said little about
the Mormon women. I have scarcely alluded to them, because my memories
of them are such that I cannot think of their character as a theme for
discussion. In one word, it was eminently that which for Americans
dignifies the names of mother, wife, and sister. Of the self-denying
generosity which went to ennoble the whole people in my eyes, I
witnessed among them the brightest illustrations. I have seen the ideal
Charity of the statue gallery surpassed by the young Mormon mother, who
shared with the stranger's orphan the breast of milk of her own child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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