Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 3/Number 1/Editorials
Messenger and Advocate.
KIRTLAND, OHIO, OCT. 1836.
We have frequently had occasion to notice the vast difference there was between men of liberal minds, and the narrow minded sectarian bigots of this very religious generation in which we live. All, or nearly all, profess to be republicans in principle, to allow every man to think as he pleases in matters of religion, and to worship God agreeably to the dictates of his own conscience, but no sooner than one comes forward and pleads for the religion of the bible, the plain unvarnished truth as taught by the Savior and his apostles, than those whose crafts are in danger, whose systems are schemes devised by men, and cannot bear investigation, set up the stale cry of false prophet, false teacher, away with him. A little sober reflection, we should suppose, would teach them two things: first that their great uneasiness when any system differing from their own is brought to view, is a good witness to the world of their consciousness of the falsity of their own. And, secondly of the wickedness and corruption of their hearts in continuing to embrace it.
A man, who knows his religion is the religion of heaven has nothing to fear from all the arts or crafts of men or even devils themselves. Truth certainly can lose nothing by investigation, and, we have always thought that that scheme of things devised by the great God for the salvation of men, shone brighter and brighter the more it was developed, and reflected greater honor and the most glory upon its divine Author, when it is the best understood.
Our friend, the extract of whose letter we have inserted below, may be a Jew, a Mahomedan, a pagan or an infidel, that is a matter between him and his God, and we have no disposition to controvert his legal claim to the right of thinking as he pleases.—One thing we can say, in the sincerity of our hearts, that we admire his kindness and liberality of feeling towards us, and would have him assured that we reciprocate them most heartily. If all men would be willing to hear our cause, and then judge from the force of evidence we can adduce, instead of judging before they hear the whole matter, we should have little to fear, and every thing to hope in the progress of truth and correct principles. But as it was anciently so it is now, "evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."
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"Permit me to give you a mere glance at my opinions, or rather views of that base spirit of persecution now stalking abroad, sapping the vitals of our government; and which will shake it to its very foundation before the present generation shall have passed from the stage of action. This anti-christian spirit is now levelling all its batteries of evil speaking and defamation, against the society of Latter Day Saints, vulgarly called "Mormons," exhibiting the straining of the strings of every scheme to exterminate the society, and if possible, drive its members from the land, without leaving them an abiding place any where. To establish this fact the public eye need only be cited to the awful and alarming treatment they have received in Missouri. There, to prepare the illiterate fanatics and superstitious dolts, for scenes of rapine and blood, we see publications, in relation to their emigration, of the most barefaced and malignant falsehoods ever set before any people—falsehoods, the writers evidently knew to be such! If we tolerate or squint at this evil, base and envious spirit, where will it stop or who will be safe? Our boasted liberties and blood-bought inheritance will be at an end, and no society or person will be safe.
"I have read nearly all the publications of this society, as well as those against them, and have formed, I think, an impartial opinion:—I have cultivated a limited personal acquaintance with many of their leading men, and I do assure you, that I have formed a high estimate of them, as christians and as men. They possess all those shining virtues and ennobling traits of philanthropy and generous bearing that endears man to his fellow, and smooth our passage through this unfriendly world. I have not been altogether convinced of the truth of their religious faith, but am certain that their charity and liberality far exceed that of many others. And as to their temperate habits and moral conduct none can, in truth, find fault.
"It would be a Herculean task to point out the innumerable falsehoods and misrepresentations, sent out detrimental to this society. The tales of those days in which Witches were burnt, and the ridiculous inconsistencies of those who directed the building of the funeral pire, could be no more absurd than the every-day tales, relative to the conduct and professions of the "Mormons."