OCR Text |
Show PRACTICAL POLYGAMY, & c. 159 tory. How we may peaceably remove this disgrace I will make the subject of some concluding remarks in another chapter. CHAPTER XVIII. WHERE THE MORMONS COME FROM, AND HOW THEY REACH SALT LAKE. IN almost every country where the Protestant churches of Great Britain and the United States have their missionaries, there may also be found the preachers of Mormonism sent out from the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The earnestness and enthusiasm of this infatuated people in their missionary labor, when viewed in the abstract, must command universal admiration. That their sect should increase in numbers from year to year under their missionary system among the classes that compose the proselytes is not surprising ; nor is it surprising that the cor rupt church holds within her walls so many of her converts when we consider all the circumstances in the case : the class of people ; their delusion, and how they are isolated in Utah with all avenues to their enlightenment closed. Nineteen- twentieths of the additions to the Mormons that take place from year to year, are from the most degrad ed of the peasantry of Europe, while Great Britain pro bably furnishes three times as many as all of the rest of the world ( including our country) combined. The following statement of the emigration to Utah for several years, is obtained from the work of Captain Burton on the Mormons. This writer possessed remarkable facilities for obtaining cor- |