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Show Page 79 And the attraction must have been great. Wilford Woodruff, who had preceded Pratt's arrival by a few weeks, pleaded with his fellows for help. He had baptized nearly a thousand converts on his own - "I cannot do the work alone," he cried. Most converts were found, as in Woodruff's case, among members of reformist congregations. He had baptized nearly the entire membership of a sect called the "United Brethren," which had 8 opted for a lay ministry. Despite the notorious intractability of the Scots, two young elders, Samuel Mulliner and Alexander Wright, had already a small branch of some twenty converts in the west of Scotland when Orson Pratt arrived there. He began his work with the organization of the branch at Paisley, a few miles from Glasgow. The typical British convert here had followed a checkered religious life - usually they were skeptical, but curious and easily swayed by earnestness rather than bombast or institutional rhetoric. One of the first dozen, John Leishman of Johnstone, had migrated from Methodism to the "Relief Church" - after eight years of forlorn dissatisfaction, he had abandoned all churches. Mildly intrigued, he stopped to hear Mulliner and Wright, listened at the door while they prayed, and was immediately convinced "they were sent of God." Leishman, a cotton-spinner by trade, eventually joined, traveled to Utah in the first Perpetual Emigrating Fund company, and founded a faithful Mormon dynasty. This was the sort of humble malcontent Orson sought to deliver from the "Babylon" of 9 Great Britain. Orson Pratt determined to sway the capital, Edinburgh, where it appears no missionary had ever preached. Late in May he climbed a hill above Edinburgh Castle, dedicated the land of Scotland and asked the Lord for two hundred souls. A heathered crag known to natives as "Arthur's Seat," the mountain overlooks the ruins of a Medieval fortress, but to the many |