Life and Character Sketch of President Lorenzo Snow

IMPROVEMENT ERA. Vol. n. JUNE, 1899. No. 8.

LIFE AND CHARACTER SKETCH OF LORENZO SNOW, PRESIDENT OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER- DAY SAINTS, AND GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT OF THE YOUNG MEN'S MUTUAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS.

BY NEPHI ANDERSON.

When the time came for a nation of freemen to be formed in the earth, a nation wherein could be exercised freedom of conscience and of religious worship, the Lord raised up strong, noble men and inspired them to do his will in the matter. Such were the founders of our nation, both warriors and statesmen. When the time came for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be restored to the earth, by and through which the earth should be sanctified and prepared for the reign of the King of kings, what more natural than that the Lord should have at hand souls, valiant and true, whose hearts could be touched and moved by the divine

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message, and whom he might call out and make mighty in establishing the principles of the Gospel in the earth! Such was truly the case. History has done justice to such names as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, but such as Smith, Young, Pratt, Taylor, Woodruff must wait awhile. The assertion is often made by perverters of the truth that the Latter-day Saints operate among the unlearned only, and that Mormonism flourishes best where ignorance is most dense. Aside from the teachings of the Church that "The glory of God is intelligence," and that "no man can be saved in ignorance," a long list of names might be made that would irrefutably disprove such an assertion; and prominent among that list would be the names of President Lorenzo Snow, and his gifted sister, Eliza R. Snow. If there be virtue in Puritan blood, why should that virtue be lost when one becomes a member of the Church of Jesus Christ? President Snow is a direct discendent of the Puritans who landed at Plymouth Rock.

II.

In the year 1814 the State of Ohio was in the extreme "West,'' wild and sparsely settled. Here in the northeastern part of the state, in the small town of Mantua, Lorenzo Snow was born, April 3, 1814. Being the oldest of three brothers, much of the responsibility and work of his father's family would naturally fall upon him;

and we are told that he proved himself worthy of this trust. As a boy he was a great reader, and as a young man he was an earnest student, completing his schooling at Oberlin College. At this time the Saints were building up the town of Kirtland, not far from Mantua. His sister Eliza was teaching school there, and at the close of his college course she invited him to come to Kirtland and attend a class engaged in the study of the Hebrew language. On the way to Kirtland he met Elder David W. Patten, who engaged him in conversation on the principles of the Gospel. This conversation deeply impressed the young man, and from that time a new field of thought was opened to his mind. At Kirtland he became acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith. He was baptized by Apostle John Boynton, in June, 1836,

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and shortly after received a powerful testimony of the truth. Added to this were the many manifestations of the power of God which he witnessed in the meetings held in the Kirtland Temple. In the spring of 1837 Lorenzo went on his first mission, traveling through Ohio ''without purse and scrip." In 1838 the Snow family moved to Missouri, where they witnessed some of the outrageous scenes of mobocracy there enacted. From this point Elder Snow made another missionary journey through the states of Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky. While in the latter state he heard of the expulsion of the Saints from Missouri, and made his way to Kirtland, a distance of five hundred miles, which he walked in winter. The next two winters Lorenzo taught school in Portage County, Ohio. In the Spring of 1840 Elder Snow left Nauvoo for a mission to England. He traveled slowly eastward, mostly on the Erie Canal, and crossed the ocean in the steerage of a sailing vessel, the voyage lasting forty-two days. After laboring for some time in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, he was appointed to preside over the London Conference, in which capacity he labored until January, 1843, when he returned with a company of two hundred and fifty Saints. On his arrival at Nauvoo he was warmly received by the Prophet Joseph, who shortly after sent him on another mission to Ohio. While in this labor he heard of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, and returned to Nauvoo. Up to this time Elder Snow was unmarried. His missionary labors had occupied his mind to the exclusion, seemingly, of matrimonial affairs. Some time before the Prophet's death Elder Snow had had a conversation with him about celestial marriage, in which the prophet taught him the rightfulness of the doctrine of a plurality of wives, and now, not justifying himself longer in the neglect of this duty, he made up for lost time by taking two wives at the same time. He received his endowments with his wives in the Nauvoo Temple, and left with the exodus from Illinois, being a captain of ten when the company was organized by President Brigham Young. In the spring of 1847 he was appointed to preside at Pisgah, one of the temporary resting places of the Saints in their journey westward. Here he organized the Saints, planned for

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their maintenance, and did much to alleviate the suffering attendant upon that memorable journey. The next year he moved to the mountains, arriving in Salt Lake City in the fall. On February 12, 1849, Elder Snow was ordained a member of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles. At the October Conference, the same year, he was called on a mission to Italy. After visiting London and Paris, he arrived at Genoa, on June 25th, 1850. Here in the midst of Catholicism, it seemed impossible to gain an opening, and the task was indeed a discouraging one; but in the Piedmont Valley, among the Protestant Waldenses, the Elders began their work with considerable success. President Snow now issued a number of publications— "The Voice of Joseph," "The Ancient Gospel Restored," "The Only Way to be Saved." Under his direction the Book of Mormon was translated into Italian. From Italy the Gospel was sent to Switzerland, where a good opening was made. While upon this mission President Snow planned some extensive missionary operations. He certainly was imbued with the spirit of "preaching the Gospel to every kindred, nation, tongue, and people." Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Malta, and even far-off India came under the vision of his mind's eye. He sent missionaries to Calcutta and Bombay, where branches of the Church were organized. At Malta many converts were made. While at the latter place, on his journey towards the east, he was released and called home, arriving at Salt Lake City, July 30, 1852. In 1853 he was elected a member of the Legislature of Utah, which position he occupied for twenty-nine years, ten of which he was President of the council. In the fall of 1853 Elder Snow was directed by President Young to locate fifty Box Elder County, and was families in appointed President of that Stake of Zion. Brigham City was founded and settlers invited to make their home there. The Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association was organized. This was a system of co-operative enterprises somewhat in the spirit of the United Order, and which gave employment to a large number of people. Remembering that the country was new and unbroken, and its resources undeveloped, the greatness of the task

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will be seen; an idea of which may be gained when it is known that the following industries were put in operation and were successful for many years: a large woolen mill, a tannery, a boot and shoe shop, a hat factory, a sheep herd, a cattle herd, a cheese factory, saw mills, blacksmith, tailor, furniture, wagon and tin shops. The value of the products of these industries in the year 1875 was about $260,000. In1864 Elder Snow became a member of a company of Elders sent to the Sandwich Islands on Church business. After reaching the islands, and while trying to go on shore through the surf, the boat containing Elder Snow capsized and he was thrown into the sea. After some time he was taken from the water, but to all appearance he was dead. The brethren worked over him for about an hour before life came back to his body. In October, 1872, President Snow, with a party of tourists, visited Palestine, returning in July of the next year. President Snow did not escape the persecutions for plural marriage. He was convicted on three counts, under the segregation ruling of the Utah courts, and served eleven months, until the ruling was declared invalid by the Supreme Court of the United States, when he was released. At the general conference, April 7, 1889, Elder Snow was sustained as President of the Twelve Apostles. When the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, April 6, 1893, he was appointed to preside in that sacred edifice. At the conference held October, 1898, President Wilford Woodruff having died, Lorenzo Snow was sustained as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in all the world.

III.

"Godliness cannot be conferred, but must be acquired," says President Snow; and towards that end his life has truly been shaping. Herein lies the foundation, the basic principle, of Mormonism: that man is a child of God; that this life is a school of experience wherein to be tried, to be taught, to be developed in all the Godlike faculties and attributes inherited from the Eternal Father. The ideal, then, is not a one-sided development but a sym-

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metrical growth of the whole. "The playing of many parts" must tend to that development, to which the Perfect must have attained. President Snow's spheres of action have been many, for we have seen him as student^ teacher, missionary, writer, organizer of missions, pioneer, colonizer, a prisoner for conscience sake. Apostle, Temple President, President of the Church. As a student, "hid up with his book," is a phrase that became proverbial of him in the household; and the habits thus early formed have served him well. As a teacher, he gained a high reputation in managing wild country boys and bringing them up to a high degree of excellence in their studies. As a missionary, he started at the beginning and has gone through the whole course. He must, therefore, be well acquainted with every phase of missionary life. On foot and alone in a newly settled country, without purs6 or scrip; enduring the long, weary ocean voyage of early days; in the cities of England, mingling with the crowds of London, or presenting the Book of Mormon to Queen Victoria; in priest-bound, classical Italy; in the Alps of Switzerland; — among the natives of the islands of the sea surely every Elder in the Church may know that his president feels for him, because he can know of his trials and understand his situations. As a writer. President Snow is closely akin to his gifted sister. His Gospel tracts have had a wide circulation. His letters, describing his travels and labors, abound in strong, beautiful language, and are replete with philosophical and historic allusions, and are often of a high, poetic order. Tullidge, the historian, says of one of President Snow's letters: "It is its beautiful enthusiasm, tenderness of spirit and tone, and the graphic eloquence of the description which constitute the charm of this gem of epistolary literature." President Snow is essentially of a deeply spiritual nature, yet he has come in contact and struggled with the grosser elements of earth. Being one of the pioneers of the West, he must of necessity have passed through the hardships of those early days. Mormonism teaches a very close relationship between the spiritual and the temporal. In President Snow spirituality is combined with an ability to grasp material situations. He has shown his skill as an organizer in many ways, and especially in the industrial enter-

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prises at Brigham City. Although these undertakings were not enduringly successful, the fact still remains that President Snow demonstrated to the world what can and might be done in the way of co-operation under more favorable circumstances than those under which he worked. Then President Snow has been behind prison walls for the testimony of the truth. His life in the Utah Penitentiary was one of calm fortitude, showing to his brethren how to endure even this hardship in the spirit of him whom they served. President Snow was seventy-two years old at this time, yet his name stands at the head of the list of those who declined to accept deliverance by repudiating their wives and children. As Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Church, President Snow has already shown that God always has the right man for the right place. Although at this writing he is eighty-five years old, he attends to the duties of his ofiice every day. The little storm through which the Church is passing does not disturb our captain. With a keen, alert eye and a firm hand he stands on the bridge, and under God's direction we shall see that the ship will get safely through the squall. Meanwhile with much fervor the Saints may sing:— "We thank thee 0, God for a prophet To guide us in these latter days.

IV.

A characteristic of President Snow's sermons and writings is an unbounded faith —a reaching out towards the infinite, depicting the glory of man's estate, the possibilities and perfectness of his future. He is not satisfied with knowledge second-hand, a trait exhibited from the beginning. When he joined the Church he wanted a testimony for himself, and he got it. As President Snow often refers to this wonderful manifestation, his own account of it should be of interest. After detailing how he had pondered on the promised testimony, he says a spirit of darkness seemed to take possession of him; but he retired to his usual place of prayer and now his own account: "I had no sooner opened my lips in an effort to pray than I heard a

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sound just above my head like the rustling of silken robes; and imme- God descended upon me, completely enveloping my diately the Spirit of whole person, filling me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, and 0, the joy and happiness I felt! No language can describe the almost instantaneous transition from a dense cloud of mental and spiritual darkness into a refulgence of light and knowledge as it was at that time imparted to my understanding. I received a perfect knowledge that God lives, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and of the restoration of the holy Priesthood, and the fullness of the Gospel. It was a complete baptism —a tangible immersion in the heavenly principle or

element, the Holy Ghost; and even more real and physical in its effects

upon every part of my system than the immersion by water,"

This manifestation was repeated for a number of nights in succession. "The sweet remembrance of these glorious experiences," continues President Snow, "from that time to the present brings them fresh before me, imparting an inspiring influence which pervades my whole being, and I trust will to the close of my earthly existence." President Snow's associates bear testimony that ever amid the hardships of pioneer life the gentleness of his character has always been prominent, while his charity is unbounded; and although firmness is one of his marked characteristics, yet he has a manner of quietly drawing others to his way of thinking. Naturally the life experiences of such a man should mark themselves in the man himself; and who that has looked into the face of President Snow, observed those characteristic lines —the deep, keen eyes and finely modeled countenance, beaming with intelligence —can say aught but his must have been a life in the service of the Master? So much, then, from the standpoint of a devotee, one who believes him to be a Prophet of God. What would a disinterested, unbelieving outsider say of such a man? Let me here quote the testimony of the Rev. Dr. Prentis, a student of human nature, who gives, unsolicited, the following pen sketch of President Snow:

"ye are my witnesses." "Nothing is stranger in this strange world of inquiry and

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wonderment than the subtle power of the human heart to distil

itself through and utter itself permanently in the human face. Every face is either a prophecy or a history. The tender grace of a baby's face commanding peace to the troubled waves of the mother's heart, is but a prophecy of the conquered peace of a noble life upon which that warm heart may later lean. The droop of the school girl's eye lash, the furrow of the student's brow, the compression of the youth's lips in the various trials of life, are all

promises to the physiognomist of a tale that is yet to be told; but upon the countenance of the aged saint or sinner every line, every shade, every tracing speaks unerringly of a history of glorious triumph or disastrous defeat. Before the story is told and the character completed, regularity of feature, lines of texture, and delicacy of coloring may cover up from careless eyes the deadly work of spiritual destruction going on beneath the appearances; but when these have fallen like forest leaves in the autumn of life, and the hoar frost of winter whitens the head and furrows the smooth skin, the history of the life can no longer be hid, and men may read it as in an open book. By a subtle alchemy intractable to human control, the soul shines in the face, and the countenance is a monument of warning or a poem of benedictions. "Whatever estimate men may place upon the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, his fiercest detractors have never challenged his perfect knowledge of what was in man. To no one was this power of the soul to distil itself into the lineaments of the face better known than to him. Not to logical symmetry of doctrines, not to abstract beauty of truths revealed, but to the living beings who had 'walked with Jesus,' did the great Physiognomist appear as the best evidence of the power of the Gospel of peace. The face which speaks of a soul where reigns the Prince of Peace is his best witness. Now and then in a life spent in the study of men, I have found such a witness. Such was a face I saw today; saw where and when I least expected it; saw it in a business office, where great affairs

are transacted, where grave responsibilities are borne, and where serious troubles come. I had expected to find intellectuality, benevolence, dignity, composure and strength depicted upon the face of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

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Saints; but when I was introducted to President Lorenzo Snow, for a second I was startled to see the holiest face but one I had ever been privileged to look upon. His face was a power of peace; his presence a benediction of peace. In the tranquil depths of his eyes were not only the 'home of silent prayer,' but the abode of spiritual strength. As he talked of the 'more sure word of prophecy' and the certainty of the hope which was his, and the abiding faith which had conquered the trials and difficulties of tragic life, I watched the play of emotions and studied with fascinated attention the subtle shades of expression which spoke so plainly the workings of his soul; and the strangest feeling stole over me, man did not act from the that I 'stood on holy ground:' that this commonplace motives of policy, interest, or expediency, but he 'acted from a far-off center.' I am accustomed to study men's

faces, analyze every line and feature, dissect each expression, and note every emotion, but I could not here. What would be the use of my recording the earnestness of the brow, the sweetness of the mouth, and all my commonplace descriptive terms. The man is not reducible to ordinary description. If the Mormon Church can produce such witnesses, it will need but little the pen of the ready writer or the eloquence of the great preacher."