History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

164 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
time, though citizens of the commonwealth, they had
not been in sympathy with other citizens; though
religionists, they were in deadly opposition to all other
religions; as a fraternity, bound by friendly compact,
not alone spiritually but in temporal matters, in buying
and selling, in town-building, farming, and stock-raising,
in all trades and manufactures, they stood on vantage-ground.
They were stronger than their immediate
neighbors—stronger socially, politically, and industrially
; and the people about them felt this, and while
hating, feared them.
It is true, that on their first arrival in Zion they
were not wealthy ; neither were their neighbors. They
were not highly educated or refined or cultured;
neither were their neighbors. They were sometimes
loud and vulgar of speech ; so were their neighbors.
Immorality cropped out in certain quarters; so it did
among the ancient Corinthians and the men of modern
Missouri; there was some thieving among them;
but they were no more immoral or dishonest than
their persecutors who made war on them, and as
they thought without a shadow of right.
There is no doubt that among the Mormons as
among the gentiles, perhaps among the Mormon
leaders as among the gentile leaders, fornication and
adultery were practised. It has been so in other ages
and nations, in every age and nation; it is so now,
and is likely to be so till the end of the world. But
when the testimony on both sides is carefully weighed,
it must be admitted that the Mormons in Missouri
and Illinois were, as a class, a more moral, honest,
temperate, hard-working, self-denying, and thrifty
people than the gentiles by whom they were surrounded.
Says John D. Lee on entering the Missouri
fraternity and, at the time of this remarking, by
no means friendly to the saints, "The motives of the
people who composed my neighborhood were pure;
they were all sincere in their devotions, and tried to
square their actions through life by the golden rule . . .