837 



YOUNG, BRIQHAM. 



YOUNG, EDWARD. 



833 



The burden of his teaching is, "Do your duty and leave us to do ours; 

 cleave to the truth, and let the brethren come and pay their labour 

 tithings." " Do those things which are necessary to be done, and let 

 those alone that are not necessary, and we shall accomplish more than 

 we do now ; " or, as he condensed it in what is printed at the head of 

 the ' Mormon ' aa " the Mormon's creed " " Mind your own business." 



Mormoniam owes its present shape to the genius of Brigham Young. 

 Taking the latest official ' Account of the Faith and Doctrines of the 

 Church,' aa we find it in the ' Mormon' of May 9, 1857, there appears 

 little more than a somewhat obscure expansion of the creed as left by 

 Joseph Smith, which we gave in vol. v., col. 556. But it contains the 

 express declaration, "we believe that Qod will continue to give reve- 

 lations by visions, by the ministry of angels, and by the inspiration of 

 the Holy Qhoat, until the Saints are guided into all truth ;" and with 

 this assertion of continuous revelation, it must be remembered that 

 Young is the ' prophet and revelator ' through whom all revelation 

 must proceed or be sanctioned. The creed and even the ' sacred ' 

 writings of such a sect must, it is evident, be only of secondary 

 importance; and accordingly, the Book of Mormon seems to be now 

 by general consent seldom referred to : Young's revelations have in 

 fact superseded it. Among the more important deviations from the 

 received doctrines of Christianity which have become primary articles 

 of Mormon faith under Youug's revelations are that the Supreme 

 Deity is a material being, having the form in the likeness of which he 

 made man ; that there " are Gods many " of an inferior order ; that 

 man pre-existed in a spirit world ; and that for the building up of the 

 church Saints are, as in the first dispensation, to have 'sealed' to them 

 " plural wives." This last, from its contradiction to the very spirit of 

 Christianity and the whole tenor of modern civilisation, and the 

 importance which Mormons themselves attach to it, has come to be 

 very naturally regarded as the distinctive feature of the system. It 

 may not therefore as it is to Brigham Young that its adoption by 

 the body (if not its introduction) is undoubtedly due, and as we 

 referred to this article for information on the subject be out of place 

 to show exactly how he teaches it. The doctrine itself of the duty of 

 the Saints to take a " plurality of wives" he declares was not his own 

 invention or his own seeking. It was revealed to him by Joseph 

 Smith, and he received it with the deepest grief. "I was not desirous," 

 he says (' Journal of Discourses,' iii. 266), " of shrinking from any 

 duty, nor of failing in the least to do as was commanded, but it was 

 the first time in my life I had desired the grave, and I could hardly 

 get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy 

 the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin," &c. 

 Having received the revelation however he did not " shrink from the 

 duty," and he is said to have several wives and numerous children. 

 He himself, in a speech delivered at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, 

 July 14, 1855 (reported in ' Journ. of Disc.,' iii. 265), says, "Suppose 

 that I had had the privilege of having only one wife, I should have 

 had only three sons, for these are all that my first wife bore ; whereas 

 I now have buried five sons and have thirteen living." The doctrine 

 is however not for the outside world, but only for the Saints. He says, 

 " This law was never given of the Lord for any but his faithful 

 children ; and it is not for the ungodly at all. No man has a right to 

 a wife or wives unless he honours the Priesthood and magnifies his 

 calling before God." But it is a doctrine which must not be gainsaid. 

 In his discourse on 'Marriage Relations' he has the hardihood to 

 declare " Now, if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and 

 continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned ; and I will go 

 still further, and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that 

 the Lord has given, and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that 

 you will be damned." This * plurality of wives ' is however only a 

 part of what he calls the doctrine of ' marriage relations,' which is the 

 very life of the system ; but we have neither space nor desire to pur- 

 sue the subject further. The importance he attaches to it may be seen 

 from a brief quotation : " The whole subject of the marriage relation 

 is not in my reach, nor in any other man's reach on the earth. It is 

 without beginning of days or end of years ; it is a hard matter to 

 reach. We can tell some things with regard to it : it lays the founda- 

 tion for worlds, for angels, and for the Gods; for intelligent beings 

 to be crowned with glory, immortality, and eternal lives. In fact it is 

 the thread which runs from the beginning to the end of the holy 

 Gospel of salvation of the Gospel of the Son of God it is from 

 eternity to eternity." 



It would probably be a mistake, notwithstanding all that has been 

 said on the subject, to suppose that the practice of polygamy is general 

 in Utah. 'Plural wives,' as we have seen, can only be sealed to 

 Saints; and as the maintenance of families is expensive in Utah, and 

 by law a separate room must be provided for each wife, it will be- 

 obvious that prudential considerations will in some measure keep 

 down the practice a fact indeed which Young himself laments in 

 one of his addresses. Moreover at the Census of 1850 there was a 

 considerable majority of adult males, and the disparity of the sexes 

 has gone on increasing since. It is probable therefore that the practice 

 chiefly prevails among (if it is not confined to) the ' rjper saints ' and 

 persons in comparatively affluent circumstances. Mr. Chandless, an 

 acute observer and an impartial writer, savs, "Judging from those 

 families with which I have been more or 'less acquainted, and also 

 from the build of the houses (which last, though of course uncertain, 



is a better test than might be supposed), I should conjecture the 

 polygamist households throughout the city to be in a decided 

 minority." Of the tendency of the system to lower the tone of 

 domestic morality and to degrade female character, and of its evil 

 consequences in every respect, there can, we suppose, be no doubt; 

 but it is only just to say that the accounts in popular works of fiction 

 of its leading to gross and open profligacy are contradicted by the 

 testimony of all trustworthy witnesses. On this writers like Stans- 

 bury, Gunnison, Carvalho, and Chandless are agreed, however they 

 may differ in opinion as to the tendency of particular portions of the 

 system and the character of the leaders. It must be remembered too 

 in connection with this point, that the Mormons hold that, along with 

 the doctrine which they profess to receive as it was received under the 

 ' first dispensation,' they must adopt in spirit, and as soon as permitted 

 in letter also, the safeguards with which the ' marriage relation ' was t 

 fenced about by the laws of Moses, and that punishment by death ought 

 inevitably to follow any infraction of them ; and, as shown in a noted 

 instance, of which the particulars have been published by authority, 

 where the injured individual under the present ''imperfect civil law" 

 takes the law in his own hands, no jury in Utah would do otherwise 

 than declare him innocent. 



Since the arrival of the Mormons in Utah, Brigham Young appears 

 only to have quitted the territory once, when he came on a mission to 

 the Saints in England. He has continued in reality the sole ruler 

 and law-giver of the people directing the movements of the society ; 

 the establishment of new settlements, which he constantly visits to 

 advise or reprove the brethren, as may be necessary (and he has a 

 sharp tongue) ; deciding in cases of ultimate appeal all disputes among 

 the brethren, who are enjoined not to carry their differences before 

 'gentile' judges; and he is always accessible to individuals who may 

 require advice on their spiritual or temporal concerns. Under his 

 energetic guidance settlements have extended " more or less thickly in 

 a line from north to south of 300 miles, along a string of valleys from 

 rim to rim of the basin." In these are included several ' cities,' but 

 they are all, except Salt Lake City, mere collections of ill-connected 

 adobe dwellings, and Salt Lake City itself has few stone buildings. 

 There are however large places of amusement in it dancing being 

 almost a religious institution mills, &c. The temple, which is 

 intended to surpass the famous temple of Nauvoo in splendour as 

 well as in size (it is 180 feet by 120), is built up to the basement. One 

 of the chief buildings in Salt Lake City is Brigham Young's house, 

 which is large, and has " another building almost detached a sort of 

 harem just completed in the orthodox gothic style." (Chandless.) 

 Of the population of the territory there has been no census pub- 

 lished since that of 1850, which was confessedly imperfect, when the 

 number returned was 11,380. It has since greatly increased, and in 

 the ' Millenial Star' for October 1857 it is, on the authority of informa- 

 tion received from Salt Lake City, August 1857, estimated at 80,000, 

 of whom 60,000 are Mormons : but these numbers are probably in 

 excess. The population of Salt Lake City was estimated by Mr. 

 Chandless in 1855 at "nearly 15,000:" in 1850 it was about 5000. 

 The Mormons have been " gathered from all parts of the earth," and 

 it has been frequently stated in American newspapers that the majority 

 are English. But there can be little doubt that the majority are 

 Americans. At the Census of 1850, of 11,380, the entire population, 

 only 2044 were " born in foreign countries," and there is no reason to 

 suppose that the proportions have since been materially altered. It 

 must however be confessed that Mormouism has taken hold of a large 

 number of our people. Mormon preachers and Mormon meeting- 

 houses are to be found throughout England, and Mormon publications 

 have a considerable circulation. Still more numerous comparatively 

 are the converts in Wales, and to what extent Mormon ideas are being 

 circulated there may be imagined when we say that we have before us 

 a list of 44 Mormon publications in the Welsh language. Of the 

 'trains' of Mormon emigrants who leave this country for Utah, a 

 large proportion are always Welsh ; it is stated that they are forming 

 distinct settlements in some of the smaller valleys, where they retain 

 their old habits and speak almost exclusively the language of the 

 Principality. At the Census of 1851 there were in England and Wales 

 " 222 places of worship belonging to this body, most of them however 



being merely rooms The attendance on the Census Sunday 



was morning, 7517 ; afternoon, 11,481 ; evening, 16,628." The Mor- 

 mon authorities stated their numbers in 1853 at upwards of 30,000, 

 but we have no adequate means of judging of their subsequent 

 increase or decrease. This country however is not the only one from 

 which disciples are drawn. Missionaries are constantly sent to 

 all parts of Europe, to India, Australia, and even to the Sandwich 

 Islands. Among the Saints in Utah are many Danes and Germans, 

 and some Frenchmen and Italians. All the brethren on entering Utah 

 have to present to the Church a tithe of their property, and subse- 

 quently to contribute a tithe of their income, and also a 'labour 

 tithing,' but for the last they may provide a substitute. 



YOUNG, EDWARD, was born in 1684 (and not in 1681, as is said 

 by Herbert, Croft, Chalmers, and other authorities) at Upham, a 

 village about eight miles from the city of Winchester, in Hampshire. 

 His father, the Rev. Edward Young, was born in 1643, was educated 

 at Winchester College, of which he became a Fellow, was rector of 

 Upham, was collated in 1632 to the prebend of Gillingham Minor in 



