SALT LAKE CITY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17645, 23 December 1922, Page 5

SALT LAKE CITY.

A SUNDAY WITH THE MORMONS. It ia a memory of four years ago, in the fall of 1918, one month before the 'Armistice, writes S.K.R- in the "Manchester Guardian." The season was of surpassing beauty. I had come southward through the Rocky Mountain States—Montana, Idaho, Utah the wonder of the autumn woods being displayed in a crystal air and a steady brilliance of sunlight such as we in Western Europe do not know. _ The was ending, just as the majority of those good Western people (in the matter of material well-being perhaps the most fortunate in the world) were becoming aware of it. The Sunday of my brief stay in Salt Lake City chanced to be the great day of the Mormon Church's autumn assembly. From all the towns and farm settlements of Utah and the neighbouring States the members of the Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints ha;l come together. On Sunday morning I stood in the tabernacle enclosure and watched them pouring into the morning meeting in a stream that looked as thougli it could never end. It was a crowd startlingly different from any that, you would see iu New York or Chicago. In the first place, unless I am greatly mistaken, the English-Ame-rican type prevailed, as it does noc today in any industrial centre of Ihe United States; and in the second it was much less dressy in the standardised fashion of America. To English eyes it seemed familiar, for in a remarkable degree it had the characteristics of such a crowd as one may see at a political or religious gathering in London or Northern England, ex.cept for one thing —the preponderance of the rural element. The Mormon tabernacle is a vast auditorium, built more than fifty years ago and still the most perfect convention hall in America. It is a pure ellipse, 250 feet by 150. The self-supporting wooden roof, made originally by a marvel of dovetailing without a metal nail, is exactly like a meaVdsh cover; or, seen from abovo outside, like an airship at rest. Jts seating capacity is 8000, but another 2000 can be added by the simplest means. Round a good half of the structure there are sliding doors and panels- When' these are thrown open the space is enlarged, and the building can be emptied in two or three -minutes. The acoustics are commonly praised as miraculous. There is a mighty organ, the carved woodwork of which is the only relief to an interior otherwise as bare as the barest Puritan meeting-house. - On this Convention Sunday there is an imposing array on the rostrum of the Mormon hierarchy—apostles, elders, bishops, and presidents of territorial divisions. The vast crowd rises as ( the old President of the Church — Joseph F. Smith, nephew of the Mormon prophet —comes forward to start the proceedings. He is 77, and is marked for death a few weeks later. He is almost the only man in the assembly who exactly reproduces the Mormon of tradition and caricature: tall, lean, frock-coated, with a white' goat beard. From a tiny hymn-book and in a high clear voice he announces the opening hymn. "Come, let us anew our journey pursue"; and' then, as Cunninghame Graham-once wrote in a classic sketch, "loud from every throat the ! -pious doggerel peals." Mormon hymn-singing must be the_ most surprising thing of the kind in the world. A 'burly conductor* wields the baton, the great organ,is not too insistent, and the entire congregation joins in. ' They sing without the book; they all know every line of every verse, and they sing with the whole force of mind and body. I shall never forget the fervour and utter confidence in the voices and faces of those .thousands of hardworked and hard-bit-ten Utah farmers and their wivee as at the end they threw out the words of the Divine welcome to which they are looking forward, "Enter irito My joy and sit down on My throne!" _ 1 _ ■ As it is a conference meeting and not a morning service there are three addresses. One by a young apostle is a plain moral homily about daily religions duty, and is quite well spoken. The others are barren and stupid beyond belief; not a gleam of knowledge, or thought, or sense; not a toulh of religious emotion -or experience. And for some two hours 10,000 men and women and young people sit or stand without a movement. listening to .this indescribable twaddle, and believing it to be the I sound and saving gospel. It is enough to make you weep, These, plainly, are 1 good people, extraordinarily simple and laborious, members of a sect which, .after incredible beginnings, has built up a community in a transformed region; a community of some half-million Western Americans gathered from the ends of the earth, and yet amazingly | withdrawn from the modern world, try- , ing to nourish the spirit on the chopped straw of a revelation alleged to have been bestowed ninety years ago upon one Joseph Smith, of Vermont I In the afternoon of that same Sunday \I was driven round by a friendly Mormon bishop. Salt like City is smaller than most people suppose—something less than liio,ooo in population. It is better planned and 'much better iooked after than most large towns of. the American continent. Brigham Young created a scheme of ten-acre squares, with the temple enclosure as civic centre. This enclosure is surrounded by a high stone wall —a very rare thing in America. It is unduly crowded, for it contains the temyie as well as the tabernacle. The temple is not a cathedral for assembly; it is the holy-of-holies for ordination and all the most solemn ceremonial of the Latter-Day Saints. The Gentile is rigorously excluded. The structure was completed in 1893, after being many years in building. It is of plain ungrained light-grey granite, all the blocks being hand-cut. The city is divided into 47 wards\ each of which is an episcopal charge. A Mormon bishop, indeed, is simply a neighbourhood organiser, operating from the chapel of his ward, which is the centre of education and recreation as well as of worship. The Latter-Day "Saints have from the beginning made a point of providing their own amusement, and by this means have, as they contend, kept their young people more successfully than any other Church on the* American continent has done. Every centre has a weekly dance and 'a cinema, together with nightly educational classes. Mormons hav© never had any hostility io the drama. They still show you the first small theatre built by Brigham Young. Another principle upon which they rely is the w«de6t possible sharing of communal service. Every member of the Church is given something to do, with a definite responsibility ■ attached. The members of the Mormon hierarchy work through a complicated system of committees. And eince, as a matter of course, the Mormon teacher or missioner has his bread-labour besides his spiritual calling, they escape the problems inseparable from a paid ministry. Salt Lake City itself is no longer governed by the Mormons, but as the majority of the rural population belongs to the community they continue to control the affairs of the State. In the late afternoon of tjie following gay I left Lake City by the Union Pacific that runs north along the valley. To the west you see the Salt Lake, lj'intr beyond the stretch of alkaline soil, with which so far no one h-is been able to do anything. Eastward, as the declining sun steeps, the land in n splendid autumn glow, there lie the evidences of the marvellous Mormon achievement; a desert vallev transformed into a smiling home of industry and fruitfulnes<?; fine farms, v orchards, and cattle, with the Lombardy poplar adding to the vegetation an element of sombre dignity,'