Mormons Fighting the Devil

Soon the miraculous power of the Spirit, which the Mormon leaders claimed had returned to the church, seemingly began to be manifest. Attempts were made to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to restore strength to the limbs of cripples, and to raise the dead; but all failed. I personally witnessed some of these attempts, and the only manifestations that were apparent were after the fashion claimed by the Methodists.

These performances, however, were utterly ridiculous. They claimed to have the gift of tongues and talked with all sorts of gibberish. They claimed to have a special mission to the Indians, and they went through all sorts of Indian performances, some of them, in pantomime, tomahawk and scalp each other, and rip open the bowels and tear out the entrails. At one meeting at which I was present three of them, one a Negro, were impelled by the Spirit to go out and preach to the Indians. They left the meeting house on the run, went up a steep hillside, mounted stumps, and began holding forth in gibberish to an imaginary audience. This was of common occurrence and night was frequently made hideous by their unearthly screams and yells.

On this occasion, Brother Tanuer and I quietly left our seats in the meeting and went through a cornfield to where they were. About a dozen of the village people were gathered around. We crouched down and crawled up as near as we could without being seen. Brother Tanuer, who was something of a ventriloquist, slapped his hands to his mouth and imitated the screams of a panther. The preachers jumped from their perches and, with their audience, started double quick for the meeting house. Two of the preachers had presence of mind enough to take the hill catering, but the Negro started straight down. As there was some snow and ice on the ground, his feet slipped and he sat down with a thud, and as he struck the ground, forgetting his strange tongue, he cried out in plain English, "O Lord, here we go." Evidently he thought he was a goner. We had a short cut back through the cornfield, so we hastened back ahead of them. When they arrived we were quietly sitting in our seats. They had a wonderful experience to relate of a terrible conflict with the devil from which they barely escaped with their lives, especially the Negro. We had hard work to keep straight faces. The story got out and created much amusement in the neighborhood.