They had been educated by the Hebrew Bible, and their minds cast by its influence, long before they saw the book of Mormon or heard the Mormon prophet. The examples of the ancient apostles were familiar to them, and they had yearned for the pentecosts of the early days. But most had they been enchanted by the themes of the old Jewish prophets, whose writings had inspired them with faith in the literal renewal of the covenant with Israel, and the "restitution of all things" of Abrahamic promise. This was the case with nearly all of the early disciples of Mormonism,--men and women. They were not as _sinners_ converted to Christianity, but as _disciples_ who had been waiting for the "fullness of the everlasting gospel." Thus had they been prepared for the new revelation,--an Israel born unto the promises,--an Israel afterwards claiming that in a pre-existent state they were the elect of God. They had also inherited their earnest religious characters from their fathers and mothers. The pre-natal influences of generations culminated in the bringing forth of this Mormon Israel. And here we come to the remarkable fact that the women who, with its apostles and elders, founded Mormondom, were the Puritan daughters of New England, even as were their compeer brothers its sons. Sons and daughters of the sires and mothers who founded this great nation; sons and daughters of the sires and mothers who fought and inspired the war of the revolution, and gave to this continent a magna charta of religious and political liberty! Their stalwart fathers also wielded the "sword of the Lord" in old England, with Cromwell and his Ironsides, and the self-sacrificing spirit of their pilgrim mothers sustained New England in the heat and burden of the day, while its primeval forests were being cleared, even as these pilgrim Mormons pioneered our nation the farthest West, and converted the great American desert into fruitful fields.