History of Utah - 1889 Author:Hubert Howe Bancroft Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE STORY OF MORMONISM". 1820-1830. A Glance Eastward—The Middle States Sixty Years Aoo—Birth And Parentage Of Joseph Smith—Spiritual Manifes... more »tations—Joseph Tf.lls His Vision—And is Reviled—Moroni Appears—Persecutions —Copying The Plates—Martin Harris—Oliver Cowdery—Transla- Tion—the Book Of Mormon—Aaronic Priesthood Conferred—Con- Versions— The Whitmer Family — The Witnesses — Spauldino Theory—Printing Of The Book.—Melchisedec Priesthood Con- Ferred—Duties Of Elders And Others—Church Of Latter-day Saints Organized—First Miracle—First Conference—Oliver Cow- Dery Ordered To The West. Let us turn now to the east, where have been evolving these several years a new phase of society and a new religion, destined presently to enter in and take possession of this far-away primeval wilderness. For it is not alone by the power of things material that" the land of the Yutas is to be subdued; that mysterious agency, working under pressure of high enthusiasm in the souls of men, defying exposure, cold, and hunger, defying ignominy, death, and the destruction of all corporeal things in the hope of heaven's favors and a happy immortality, a puissance whose very breath of life is persecution, and whose highest glory is martyrdom—it is through this subtile and incomprehensible spiritual instrumentality, rather than from a desire for riches or any tangible advantage that the new Israel is to arise, the new exodus to be conducted, the new Canaan to be attained. Sixty years ago western New York was essentially a new country, Ohio and Illinois were for the most QUALITY OP MATERIAL. 37 part a wilderness, and Missouri was the United States limit, the lands beyond being held by the aborigines. There were some settlements between Lake Erie and the Mississippi River, but the...« less