Source: Charles Lemuel Thompson, The Soul of America: The Contribution of Presbyterian Home Missions (New York: Revell, 1919), 110-117. Google Books link.
The Mormon field is far too extensive and insistent to permit of indifference on the part of the Christian Church. It it were only the fanatical dream of a few visionaries in the mountains we might trust to American influences surrounding it to bring about its speedy decline. But when we consider that more than fifteen hundred missionaries are at work—mainly in Christian lands, that they have distributed two million copies of their Bible—The Book of Mormon—and millions of tracts, the American Church must wake to her duty.
The idea that polygamy is the only objection to Mormonism, that if this were eliminated the cult would be negligible, is viewing the subject far too superficially. It presents and urges—often in alluring forms—a pernicious set of doctrines entirely destructive of the Christian system. There is no space here to give any account of those doctrines. The system, beginning in the disordered brain of one man in New York, moved westward with startling rapidity first to Kirtland, Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Nauvoo, Illinois, again to Missouri, encountering in each state such opposition that the hierarchy determined on a removal beyond the jurisdiction of the United States, where their plans could mature without hindrance. The beautiful valley between the Rockies and the Sierras was selected.
In 1864 Dr. Henry Kendall on his way to the Pacific Coast passed through Salt Lake City. Brigham Young, little dreaming of the voice he would thus let loose, asked him to preach in the Tabernacle. Dr. Kendall gave a ringing message of gospel truth which still rings among those mountains. The following years have made it plain that the word of the Lord runs swiftly.
Christianity was first introduced into Utah by the Rev. Norman McLeod and Dr. John King Robinson, respectively chaplain and surgeon in General Connor’s army at Fort Douglas. They opened in Salt Lake City preaching service and a Sunday school. In October, 1866, during the absence of Mr. McLeod, Dr. Robinson was assassinated and Mr. McLeod, being warned by threatening letters, did not return. The work consequently came to an abrupt end.
In the summer of 1867 two young Episcopal clergymen, Messrs. Foote and Haskins, began services in Salt Lake City. Two years later the Rev. Melancthon Hughes and the Rev. Sheldon Jackson established a Presbyterian Church at Corinne, a Gentile town on the northern shore of the great Salt Lake. Though Corinne was a non-Mormon town, the opposition directed from Salt Lake City strove to kill the work. Encouraged by the Home Board Mr. Jackson, a young missionary, decided on a bold step. He would meet the enemy at headquarters. He found in the Rev. Josiah Welch a young man of heroic mould who, in 1871, began services in the Mormon capital. Brigham Young had closed against him every hall. But Welch hired a hay loft over a livery stable and went to work. On November twelfth, 1871, the First Presbyterian Church was organized consisting of eleven members.
Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. Early in the history of Mr. Welch’s work it became apparent that something must be done for the education of the children of Salt Lake City. Mormon schools were not only inefficient, they were a subtle propaganda for spreading the Mormon doctrine. He induced Mr. John M. Coyner and his wife and daughter, who were teaching at Fort Lapwai, Idaho, to come to Salt Lake City and undertake the training of the children of the congregation. This school was opened in the basement of the church April twelfth. This was the beginning of Salt Lake Collegiate Institute. It enrolled sixty-three pupils in the first year and in two years grew to an attendance of one hundred sixty-five.
After ten years of service Mr. Coyner retired and Dr. J. T. Millspaugh carried on a growing work until 1890. He was then elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in Salt Lake City. Thus the Christian schools of the Woman’s Executive Committee prepared the way for a system of public schools in Utah. In 1891 Professor R. J. Caskey, who had been connected with the school for four years, became the principal and so continued until 1904. The Institute grew rapidly during all these years and finally became a part of Westminster College, a completed educational plant of which the state and our Church may justly be proud.
Mt. Pleasant. The Presbytery of Utah was organized in 1874. It consisted of only three ministers and one elder. With the reluctant consent of the presbytery the Rev. Duncan J. McMillan, who had gone to Utah in search of health, went to Mt. Pleasant in San Pete County, more than one hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, to open missionary work. On Sunday, March seventh, by invitation of the Mormon Bishop, he addressed the Mormon Sunday school and in the evening preached to a large congregation in the Mormon Tabernacle. In the evening he held a conference with a group of the Apostate Mormons in an unfinished dance hall which they had erected for social purposes.
In that town Brigham Young had been hailed as “King Brigham.” This was more than some Mormons could stand, so the young preacher found quite a number of people disposed at least to consider the message he was bringing. He succeeded in winning these newly made friends to his view. Accordingly they gave him the property, subject to a building debt of a thousand dollars which he was to assume. He was to complete and furnish the building, maintain a school for at least five years, and credit the shareholders, on the tuition of their sons and daughters, with the amounts of their investments severally on the property.
Announcement was made that a school would be opened on Monday, March twenty-second, provided a sufficient number of pupils were pledged. Before the date forty-four pupils were enrolled, but the promise of the temporary use of a few benches from an unused hall was revoked and the opening of the school had to be postponed until seats could be provided. The young preacher bought rough lumber, carried it on his shoulder from the lumber yard about two blocks away, and with a few tools and nails he constructed the furniture in time to open the school on April nineteenth. The school soon reached an attendance of a hundred and fifty pupils. Later it grew to academic proportions and became known as the “Wasatch Academy,” an institution that is well equipped in every way and generously maintained by the Woman’s Board. In this connection it is proper to state the relation of the work in Utah to the organization of the Woman’s Executive Committee.
Woman’s Executive Committee. At the third meeting of presbytery, which was held in Ogden, March 1877, Dr. Jackson, coming all the way from Denver to insure a quorum, an overture was prepared and sent up to the General Assembly asking that the Board of Home Missions be authorized and empowered to undertake the support and supervision of the schools established and to be established among the Mormons. Dr. Jackson took a copy of the overture and secured its adoption by the Presbytery of Colorado. The General Assembly acceded to these requests and the outcome was the creation of the Woman’s Executive Committee which was organized in the Bible House, New York City, in 1878.
Thus were established forty-two mission schools, through which, during the ten years, it was estimated that seventy-five thousand young people had passed under the instruction of Christian teachers. Out of these schools had grown twelve churches and the feeble presbytery had become a synod, embracing two great territories. Five years later a new order of things had come about and a new era had dawned, which brought statehood to Utah.
The names and achievements of the noble army of missionaries, ministers and teachers, who wrought in this field in these ten years, are worthy to be written in the annals of the Board of Home Missions and upon the records of the Presbyterian Church.
New Stations. From 1874 the work developed in many directions. Southward to St. George fourteen stations were opened. At Ephraim and Manti the Rev. George W. Martin was assigned in 1879. To that field he gave forty years of most devoted life, even to his death in 1919.
South of Salt Lake City are Springville, Spanish Fork and Payson. Here the valiant soldier of the Cross, the Rev. W. Leonard, wrought from 1877 till his death in 1885.
North of Salt Lake is Ogden, the second city in the state. Missionary work began there in 1878. The Rev. George W. Gallagher was the first pastor. He was followed, in 1880, by the Rev. James F. Knowles, and he, in 1885, by the Rev. Josiah McClain, whose name should always be mentioned in connection with successful work in Utah. He made headway in the face of bitter opposition. The domination of the priesthood in the civil and educational life of the city had become so intolerable that the non-Mormon element, roused to action, demanded and secured a share in the management of the town. In this work the four mission churches—the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and Congregational churches—had a deciding share. The work now extended north through the Cache Valley. Brigham, a town so thoroughly Mormon that it took the name of the Apostle, boasted that no one non-Mormon should ever find a home there. But the Rev. S. L. Gillespie from Corinne did. The teamsters who brought his goods to town were disciplined for their crime. But by the generous personal help of Dr. Kendall property was secured and the mission established. The bishop, unable to prevent the purchase of the property, tried the effect of an anathema. He cursed the house, the well, the garden and all the premises of the missionary. But, as Dr. Wishard says, the curse proved to be a great fertilizer. The yield of vegetables that year was unusually large.
Very soon other stations were opened in the Cache Valley. In 1878 Mr. Calvin M. Parks, a Bible school teacher in Washington, was summoned by Sheldon Jackson to go to this beautiful valley to open it to the gospel. He began in Logan and then in swift evangelism pushed up the valley to Millville, Hyrum, Wellsville and Mendon. These missions have had various experiences, but all are parts of the gospel movement that is bound to liberate Utah from the Mormon curse. In most of these places the school has been planted beside the Church. In some places it has been the persistent Christian force after circumstances had made necessary the closing of the church.
Rev. Samuel E. Wishard, D.D. The autumn of 1886 marks an important date in the further progress of the work. It was then that the Home Board called the Rev. Samuel E. Wishard from Kentucky to become, first, a general missionary, and in 1891 Synodical Missionary of Utah. He began by holding evangelistic meetings, first in Salt Lake City and then swiftly in many of the new and struggling mission stations,—Ogden, Brigham and Logan in the northern part of the state, and then Mt. Pleasant, St. George and other points on the southern border attested the power of the gospel. For nearly twenty years this devoted leader with voice and pen gave himself to the heroic task of letting the light of God’s truth in on the Cimmerian gloom that had darkened that beautiful land. On a review of his long service he has permitted himself to say:
“The truth of the gospel is making its way down through the fissures of this slowly opening system. In God’s good time it will reach the lowest strata of this obdurate organization and we or our successors will see such a turning to God as will reward His Church for all her toil and sacrifice.”