Joseph was still staring at the man in wonder. “No,” he finally said. “This surely ain’t justice.”
The man leaned over closer. “About last night...” His eyes dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
What was last night?
Nathan wondered. He turned to Oliver, who just lifted his shoulders, his own face showing puzzlement.
Joseph was touched. He reached out and placed a hand on the man’s knee. “It’s all right, Mr. Boyd. Thank you.”
The constable’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. Nathan strained to hear his words. “I’ve got to warn you, Mr. Smith. Even if the court acquits you, these men are determined to have you. They’ve laid plans to catch you afterwards. They mean to tar and feather you, then rail ride you out of town.”
Oliver gasped, audibly enough that the constable turned around. “That’s right,” he said. “Make no doubt about it. They mean to have their way.”
“Well, they’re not going to!” Newel said fiercely.
That brought several heads around, and Joseph shook his head quickly in warning. The constable ignored them. His head came up, his mouth now set and determined. “I’ll see to it that no one hurts you,” he said.
Joseph was visibly touched. He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, good friend.”
It was full light when they finally stopped outside the gate in front of the home of Emma’s sister. The sun had not yet come over the eastern hills but was only minutes away from doing so. There were five of them—Nathan, Joseph, Oliver, David Whitmer, and Newel Knight.
Mr. Seymour’s “witnesses” had taken until two o’clock in the morning to finish their testimony. That was followed by two hours of closing arguments by both the prosecuting and defending lawyers. All charges had finally been dismissed. As John Reid summed it up to the judges in his final argument, “Joseph Smith is like the three Hebrews of the Old Testament cast into the fiery furnace. He has come through these proceedings without so much as the smell of smoke on his clothes.” But in spite of the acquittal, the three justices of the peace had then launched into a bitter, half-hour diatribe of insult and invective against Joseph. They severely reprimanded him for his behavior—behavior that he had just been acquitted of!
Then had come the wild flight in the night, with Constable Boyd running flank and Joseph’s four companions spiriting him through the dark, past the men waiting to catch him, through the air heavy with the smell of hot tar.
Nathan couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had ever been so totally exhausted as he was now—physically, emotionally, spiritually. He felt as if someone had nailed his feet to a couple of tree stumps, then tossed a shovelful of sand into his eyes. In the last forty-eight hours he had barely slept during four of them. And the last four days seemed like one long ride on a stagecoach where every few hours the team would bolt and the coach would careen wildly down the road before someone brought it to a halt again.
Joseph looked at the lot of them and laughed softly.
Oliver’s hands hung down at his side. His eyes were bloodshot and bleary. David’s chin was covered with the dark stubble of his beard. Newel’s shirt was rumpled and soiled. Nathan looked as if he had been hit over the head with a hayrack.
Oliver looked at his companion in surprise. “What do you find to laugh about, Joseph?”
Gesturing first at himself, then at the others, Joseph chuckled even more loudly. “We look more like candidates for an embalming room than living human beings.”
“Even a coffin sounds good right now,” Newel agreed, smiling a little in spite of himself.
Nathan did not smile. He turned away quickly. He was in no mood for laughter.
Joseph sensed something was wrong. “Nathan? Are you all right?”
He spoke without turning. “I’m fine, Joseph. Just very, very tired.”
“It has been a long and black night,” Joseph agreed. “We’re all tired.” Then he put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and turned him gently around. He peered into Nathan’s eyes in that way he had of looking into your very soul. “Is that really all, Nathan?”
Nathan looked down, not able to meet his gaze.
“What is it, Nathan?” Oliver said. “What’s wrong?”
Suddenly the dam inside Nathan burst and it all came out in a bitter torrent. “Yes, Joseph, it was a long and black night. And the night before in South Bainbridge was a long and black night. And a couple days before that was the Sabbath, a day that should have been peaceful and holy, a day when we hoped to perform the holy ordinance of baptism. But was it peaceful and holy? No. Instead the servants of hell are allowed to come in with their taunts and gibes and ridicule and break it up.
“Where is the Lord, Joseph? We’re doing his work. The Knights only wanted to do his will and be baptized. Or take you as another example. You’re his prophet, Joseph. You’ve been obedient. So why all this? Twice you have been taken through the mockery of a trial. Twice you have stood before a mob and been humiliated with lies of the blackest hue. Why? Why, Joseph? Why doesn’t God intervene in your behalf?” He broke free from Joseph’s grasp and turned away. “I’m sorry, Joseph, but I guess I find precious little to laugh about right now.”
For several moments there was no sound but the first sounds of the morning. Behind the house a rooster crowed, then crowed again. In the distance a horse whinnied its response.
Finally, Nathan felt an arm go round his shoulder. Joseph sighed, then sighed again. When he spoke it was with some sadness and yet with firmness too. “I don’t have all the answers, Nathan. And believe me, I’ve asked myself those questions many times.”
“But?”
“But whenever I get to feeling real down about these kinds of things, I remember the Savior’s counsel to his Apostles the night before his death.”
He turned away and looked out across the open fields, now touched by the first rays of the sun. “He warned them of coming trouble. He spoke not only of his own death, but of the future when they would face similar trials.”
He swung back around, his eyes now soft and filled with wonder. “ ‘If the world hates you,’ the Savior told them, ‘don’t be surprised, for it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you. But you are not of the world. You have been chosen out of the world, and so the world hates you too.’ ”
He stopped. Nathan felt a sudden shame shoot through him. He had not thought about the Savior in this. He was so caught up in his own weariness, his own spiritual exhaustion, that he had not once thought of the Savior.
Joseph’s eyes got a faraway look in them. “Then he finished by saying, ‘In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ ”
It was somehow as if someone had taken a lamp down into the dark recesses of Nathan’s soul, and held it up high, so that the light penetrated into every corner. “That is the answer, isn’t it?” he said, half in wonder.
Joseph nodded. “Tribulation will continue to come, but let us always strive to be of good cheer.”
Chapter Five
One of the great ironies of American history was that the land of the free and the home of the brave was also, for the first two centuries after its colonization, a land of religious intolerance and persecution. It was one thing to make an amendment to the Constitution which read, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”; it was quite another to write that law on the fleshy tablets of people’s hearts.
In retrospect, it was not surprising that troubles arose. The colonists brought with them from Europe several deeply ingrained assumptions about religion. Each state or community had only one legal religion that was protected by the government and supported by taxes from the citizens. To attempt to establish another church or foster differing religious beliefs was therefore viewed not only as heresy but also as a civil crime.
In areas where civilization’s veneer was still thin and law enforcement scattered, religious persecution often thrived. Those viewed as a threat to orthodox society were socially ostracized, defamed, mobbed, or expelled. The Society of Friends—the Quakers—experienced cruel opposition when they first sent missionaries into the colonies in the midseventeenth century. Roman Catholics commonly faced ugly, violent confrontations. Preachers and missionaries from various religions out of the main line of the American tradition were hounded and ridiculed, pelted with rotten eggs, tarred and feathered, drowned out by shouting or the banging of drums, or sometimes beaten mercilessly.
While the Mormons were not unique in being persecuted, they took more than their share of abuse because, in addition to going against the established religious traditions of the time, they also taught religious exclusivity. In their minds, the original Church founded by the Master had been broken up and gone into apostasy after his death. That meant all other religions, Catholic and Protestant, were without authority and did not represent the Church of Jesus Christ. That did little to endear them in the hearts of their neighbors, and least of all in the hearts of the ministers and religious leaders of established churches.
But if this was a time of religious opposition, it was also a time of religious revivalism. All across the face of the country, but more particularly along the frontier, men and women began to reconsider religion as an option in their lives. Church membership rose sharply. Newspapers proclaimed the imminence of the Second Coming. Tens of thousands of good, decent people began to turn their hearts to God.
One such person was a young man, Parley P. Pratt by name, living with his wife, Thankful, in the northern part of Ohio. They read the Bible earnestly and felt a great longing for a church that had the characteristics of the Church in New Testament times. One day a preacher by the name of Sidney Rigdon came into the area. He led a group of Reformed Baptists who called themselves
seekers.
They too were looking for a return to a more biblical church, and the Pratts quickly joined with them.
But still that did not satisfy the inner longing that seemed to drive Parley. He went to the scriptures like a thirsting man to a cool mountain spring. He began to write passages on slips of paper. He called them his “promissory notes” from the Lord—things like “All things are possible to him that believeth,” or “Whosoever shall forsake father or mother, brethren or sisters, houses or lands, wife or children, for my sake and the gospel’s, shall receive an hundred fold in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.”
In the spring of 1830, the promissory notes came due. “I feel called upon by the Holy Ghost,” he told his brother William, “to forsake my house and home for the gospel’s sake; and I will do it, placing both feet firm on these promises with nothing else to rely upon.”
The farm was sold—at a substantial loss—and their affairs settled. By late summer they set out, with ten dollars in cash in hand and limitless faith in their hearts. They determined first to visit their families back in New York State, then to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit wherever they might lead them.
But the young man didn’t reach home. As they moved eastward along the Erie Canal, the Spirit prompted him to disembark at Newark and send his wife on to their families. Newark was a small canal town about eight miles east of Palmyra.
It was near the close of a summer’s day late in August. Hyrum Smith moved slowly along Stafford Road, about a mile south of Palmyra Village, just across the line of Manchester Township. Ahead of him several milk cows moved briskly along, anxious now to reach the barn so they could be relieved of the weight in their bulging udders.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Hyrum turned around to see where the voice had come from. About fifty yards away a young man was hurrying to catch him. Hyrum slowed his step. The man was plainly dressed, but his clothes were well cared for. He was clean shaven but with long sideburns that came down below his ears. His face was round and full, his mouth generous and quickly given to a smile. Dark eyes, alert and intent, peered out from beneath bushy brows.
“Yes?” Hyrum said as the man came up to him, a little out of breath.
“Excuse me, but could you tell me of the whereabouts of Joseph Smith, the translator of the Book of Mormon?”
Hyrum’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you ask?”
“I was told in the village that his family lived in this neighborhood.”
“But why do you seek him?”
The face was devoid of any guile; the answer came out as simple and as straightforward as if from a child. “A day or so ago, as I was traveling through the countryside preaching, a man gave me the Book of Mormon. I have read a goodly portion of it and know that it is true. I must find the man who is responsible for it.”
Hyrum was still a little reticent. “He’s gone to Pennsylvania, more than a hundred miles’ distance from here.”
The young man’s face fell. There was no mistaking his disappointment. He sighed, considering what next to do. “Then can you direct me to his father, or any other member of the family?” he finally said. “I must know more about this book.”
Satisfied, Hyrum stuck out his hand. “My name is Hyrum Smith. I am Joseph’s older brother.”
“For true?” the man cried in delight. He pumped Hyrum’s hand vigorously. “I am Parley P. Pratt, and most delighted to make your acquaintance, sir.”
On September first—having traveled with Hyrum Smith to Fayette to meet the Whitmers and others—Parley P. Pratt was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ by the hand of Oliver Cowdery, who had by then returned to Fayette.
“Are you ready, Lydia?”
“Almost. Give me just a moment.”
Lydia stood in front of a small mirror which hung from the wall of one of the upper bedrooms in the Peter Whitmer, Sr., home. It was now the third week in October, and the nights were frosting hard. Some heat from the great fireplace in the kitchen below them came up the stairs, but not much. Little puffs of frosty breath filled the air between Lydia and the mirror as she worked to fasten a locket around her neck. She was having trouble because her long hair kept falling across her hands.