History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
1820-1830.
A Glance Eastward—The Middle States Sixty Years Ago—Birth and
Parentage of Joseph Smith—Spiritual Manifestations—Joseph
Tells his Vision—And is Reviled—Moroni Appears—Persecutions
—Copying the Plates—Martin Harris—Oliver Cowdery—Transla-
TIO n-—The Book of Mormon—Aaronic Priesthood Conferred—Conversions—The
Whitmer Family — The Witnesses — Spaulding
Theory—Printing of the Book—Melchisedec Priesthood Conferred—Duties
of Elders and Others—Church of Latter-day
Saints Organized—First Miracle—First Conference—Oliver Cowdery
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 theYutas 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
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