, the leaders, chosen under a pretense of
revelation from God, maintain an unassailable sanctity in the eyes of
the people, who are themselves priests. These people implicitly believe
that the voice of the leader is the voice of God. They follow with a
passionate devotion that is made up of a fanatical priestly faith and
of a sympathy that sees their Prophets "persecuted" by an ungenerous,
impure and vindictive world. We love that for which we suffer; and it
has become the inheritance of the Mormons to love the priesthood, for
whose protection their parents and grandparents suffered, and under
whose oppressions they now suffer themselves.

Joseph Smith, the original Prophet, was slain in the Carthage jail; to
the Mormon mind this is proof that he was the anointed of God and that
he sealed his testimony with his blood, as did the Savior. John Taylor,
afterwards President of the Church, was not slain at Carthage, but only
wounded; and this to the Mormons is proof that he was of the eternal
kindred of the Prophets, because, under God's direction, he gave his
blood to their defense. But Willard Richards, a companion of Smith and
Taylor, was not even injured at Carthage; and this is accepted as proof
that God had charge of his holy ones, and would not permit wicked men
to do them harm. When the people left Nauvoo and journeyed through Iowa,
some of the citizens of that state would not harbor them; and this is
argued as evidence that the Mormon movement was God's work, since the
hand of the wicked was against it; but in some localities of Iowa the
emigrants were aided, and this also is proof that the Mormon movement
was God's work, since the hearts of the people were melted to assist
it. When Johnston's army was sent to Utah, it was proof that the Mormon
Church was the true Church, hated and persecuted by a wicked nation;
when Johnston's army withdrew without a battle, it was a new guarantee
of the divinity of the work; and it is even believed among the Mormons
that the Civil War was ordained from the heavens, at the sudden command
of God, to compel Johnston's withdrawal and save God's people.

In the same way the persecutions of "the raid," and the cessation
of those persecutions--the early trials of poverty and the present
abundance of prosperity--the threat of the Smoot investigation and the
abortive conclusion of that exposure--are all argued as proofs of the
divinity of a persecuted Church or given as instances of the mi