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Show CHAP. V. THE BOWERY.-MR. KIMBALL'S STYLE. 263 spared by their own preachers). ' After a long suit of advice, d propos de rien, to missionaries, he blessed, amen'd, and sat down. I confess that the second President's style startled me. But presently I called to mind Luther's description* of Tetzel's sermon, in which he used to shout the words Bring! bring! bring! with such a horrible bellowing, that one would have said it was a mad bull rushing on the people and goring them with his horns; and D'Aubigne"'s neat apology for Luther, f who, " in one of those homely and quaint, yet not undignified similitudes which he was fond of using, that he might be understood by the people," illustrated the idea of God in history by a game of cards! " . . . Then came our Lord God. He dealt the cards: . . . This is the Ace of God. . . . " Mormons also think it a merit to speak openly of " those things we know naturally:" they affect what to others appears coarseness and indelicacy. The same is the case with Oriental nations, even among the most modest and moral. After all, taste is in its general development a mere affair of time and place; what is apt to froisser us in the nineteenth may have been highly refined in the sixteenth century, and what may be exceedingly unfit for Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame is often perfectly suited to the predilections and intelligence of Wales or the Tessin. It is only fair to both sides to state that Mr. Kimball is accused by Gentiles of calling his young wives, from the pulpit, "little heifers;" of entering into physiological details belonging to the Dorcas Society, or the clinical lecture-room, rather than the house of worship; and of transgressing the bounds of all decorum when reproving the sex for its penchants and ridicules. At the same time, I never heard, nor heard of, any such indelicacy during my stay at Great Salt Lake City. The Saints abjured all knowledge of the " fact," and-in this case, nefas ab hoste doceri-so gross a scandal should not be adopted from Gentile mouths. After Mr. Kimball's address, a list of names for whom letters were lying unclaimed was called from the platform. Mr. El-dridge, a missionary lately returned from foreign travel, adjourned the meeting till 2 P.M., delivered the prayer of dismissal, during which all stood up, and ended with the benediction and amen. The Sacrament was not administered on this occasion. It is often given, and reduced to the very elements of a ceremony; even water is used instead of wine, because the latter is of Gentile manufacture. Two elders walk up and down the rows, one carrying a pitcher, the other a plate of broken bread, and each Saint partakes of both. Directly the ceremony was over, I passed through the thirty carriages and wagons that awaited at the door the issuing of the congregation, and returned home to write my notes. . Before appearing in the " Desere't News" the discourses are always recom- * History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Book iii., chap. i. f Ditto, Preface. |
