Part 41 (1/2)

W. W. Phelps moved that Rigdon ”be cut off from the church, and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until he repents.” The vote by the Council in favor of this motion was unanimous, but when it was offered to the church, some ten members voted against it. Phelps at once moved that all who had voted to follow Rigdon should be suspended until they could be tried by the High Council, and this was agreed to unanimously, with an amendment including the words, ”or shall hereafter be found advocating his principles.” After compelling President Marks, by formal motion, to acknowledge his satisfaction with the action of the church, the meeting adjourned.

Rigdon's next steps certainly gave substance to his brother's theory that his mind was unbalanced, the family having noticed his peculiarities from the time he was thrown from a horse, when a boy.* He soon returned to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where his first step was to ”resuscitate” the Messenger and Advocate, which had died at Kirtland. In a signed article in the first number he showed that he then intended ”to contend for the same doctrines, order of government, and discipline maintained by that paper when first published at Kirtland,” in other words, to uphold the Mormon church as he had known it, with himself at its head. But his old desire for original leaders.h.i.+p got the better of him, and after a conference of the members.h.i.+p he had gathered around him, held in Pittsburg in April, 1845, at which he was voted ”First President, Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and Translator,” he issued an address to the public in which he declared that his Church of Christ was neither a branch nor connection of the church at Nauvoo, and that it received members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints only after baptism and repentance.** In an article in his organ, on July 15, 1845, he made a.s.sertions like these: ”The Church of Christ and the Mormons are so widely different in their respective beliefs that they are of necessity opposed to one another, as far as religion is concerned.... There is scarcely one point of similarity.... The Church of Christ has obtained a distinctive character.”

* Baptist Witness, March I, 1875.

**Pittsburg Messenger and Advocate, p, 220.

Rigdon told the April conference that he had one unceasing desire, namely, to know whether G.o.d would accept their work. At the suggestion of the spirit, he had taken some of the brethren into a room in his house that morning, and had consecrated them. What there occurred he thus described:--

”After the was.h.i.+ng and anointing, and the patriarchal seal, as the Lord had directed me, we kneeled and in solemn prayer asked G.o.d to accept the work we had done. During the time of prayer there appeared over our heads in the room a ray of light forming a hollow square, inside of which stood a company of heavenly messengers, each with a banner in his hand, with their eyes looking downward upon us, their countenance expressive of the deep interest they felt in what was pa.s.sing on the earth. There also appeared heavenly messengers on horseback, with crowns upon their heads, and plumes floating in the air, dressed in glorious attire, until, like Elisha, we cried in our hearts, 'The chariots of Israel and the hors.e.m.e.n thereof.' Even my little son of fourteen years of age saw the vision, and gazed with great astonishment, saying that he thought his imagination was running away with him. After which we arose and lifted our hands to heaven in holy convocation to G.o.d; at which time was shown an angel in heaven registering the acceptance of our work, and the decree of the Great G.o.d that the kingdom is ours and we shall prevail.”

While the conference was in session, Pittsburg was visited by a disastrous conflagration. Rigdon prayed for the sufferers by the fire and asked G.o.d to check it. ”During the prayer” (this quotation is from the official report of the conference in the Messenger and Advocate, p.

186), ”an escort of the heavenly messengers that had hovered around us during the time of this conference were seen leaving the room; the course of the wind was instantly changed, and the violence of the flames was stayed.”

Rigdon's attempt to build up a new church in the East was a failure.

Urgent appeals in its behalf in his periodical were made in vain. The people addressed could not be cajoled with his stories of revelations and miraculous visions, which both the secular and religious press held up to ridicule, and he had no system of foreign immigration to supply ignorant recruits. He soon after took up his residence in Friends.h.i.+p, Allegheny County, New York, where he died at the residence of his son-in-law, Earl Wingate, on July 14, 1876. In an obituary sketch of him the Standard of that place said:--

”He was approached by the messengers of young Joseph Smith of Plano, Ill., but he refused to converse or answer any communication which in any way would bring him into notice in connection with the Mormon church of to-day. It was his daily custom to visit the post-office, get the daily paper, read and converse upon the chief topics of the day. He often engaged in a friendly dispute with the local ministers, and always came out first best on New Testament doctrinal matters. Patriarchal in appearance, and kindly in address, he was often approached by citizens and strangers with a view to obtaining something of the unrecorded mysteries of his life; but citizen, stranger and persistent reporter all alike failed in eliciting any information as to his knowledge of the Mormon imposture, the motives of his early life, or the religious faith, fears and hopes of his declining years. Once or twice he spoke excitedly, in terms of scorn, of those who attributed to him the manufacture of the Mormon Bible; but beyond this, nothing. His library was small: he left no ma.n.u.scripts, and refused persistently to have a picture of himself taken. It can only be said that he was a compound of ability, versatility, honesty, duplicity, and mystery.”

One person succeeded in drawing out from Rigdon in his later years a few words on his relations with the Mormon church. This was Charles L.

Woodward, a New York bookseller, who some years ago made an important collection of Mormon literature. While making this collection he sent an inquiry to Rigdon, and received a reply, dated May 25, 1873. After apologizing for his handwriting on account of his age and paralysis, the letter says:--

”We know nothing about the people called Mormons now.* The Lord notified us that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were going to be destroyed, and for us to leave. We did so, and the Smiths were killed a few days after we started. Since that, I have had no connection with any of the people who staid and built up to themselves churches; and chose to themselves leaders such as they chose, and then framed their own religion.

* The statement has been published that, after Young had established himself in Utah, be received from Rigdon an intimation that the latter would be willing to join him. I could obtain no confirmation of this in Salt Lake City. On the contrary, a leading member of the church informed me that Young invited Rigdon to join the Mormons is Utah, but that Rigdon did not accept the invitation.

”The Church of Latter-Day Saints had three books that they acknowledged as Canonical, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Commandments.

For the existence of that church there had to be a revelater, one who received the word of the Lord; a spokesman, one inspired of G.o.d to expound all revelation, so that the church might all be of one faith.

Without these two men the Church of Latter-Day Saints could not exist.

This order ceased to exist, being overcome by the violence of armed men, by whom houses were beaten down by cannon which the a.s.sailents had furnished themselves with.

”Thus ended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and it never can move again till the Lord inspires men and women to believe it.

All the societies and a.s.semblies of men collected together since then is not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, nor never can there be such a church till the Lord moves it by his own power, as he did the first.

”Should you fall in with one who was of the Church [of] Christ, though now of advanced age, you will find one deep red in the revelations of heaven. But many of them are dead, and many of them have turned away, so there are few left.

”I have a ma.n.u.script paper in my possession, written with my own hands while in my {30th. year}, but I am to poor to do anything with it; and therefore it must remain where it [is]. During the great fight of affliction I have had, I have lost all my property, but I struggle along in poverty to which I am consigned. I have finished all I feel necessary to write.

”Respectfully,

”SIDNEY RIGDON.”*