--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 10 published: 1905-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "A Response to Frederick M. Smith," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 10 (August 1905): 776–780.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0810unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0810unse start_page: 776 end_page: 780 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0810unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Response to Frederick M. Smith TTG IMPROVEMENl ERA. they are at the call of the people, night and day, serving, toiling, planning, for their welfare. Let me in closing this little epistle to the readers of the Era, enjoin the young men, and the middle aged and old also, for that matter, to make investigation of these thmgs, for tliemselves, and to obtain a testimony for themselves concerning the integrity of the leaders, and their jast government of the affairs of the Church True converts to the Gospel truths always do this in sincerity, prayer, earnestness. Let them also seek an individual testimony concerning the temporal things of the Church, and satisfy themselves of these as they have satisfied themselves of the truths of the Gospel. They shall find that the Church, in these affairs, is being conducted strictly on the lines of the principles of justice and honesty, and with a view to the best good of the whole people. They will find that the authorities are neither heartless tyrants nor highway robbers, as the political writers, for reasons of their own, and in their lying and insinuating way, would have men believe. Having a personal knowledge and testimony, the individual member of the Church will stand unmoved in the dirty whirlwind of their abuse. Not only that, but the members will be prepared and anxious to correct by word and action the errors and the lies, — in patience, love, and calmness, —even as they would errors in doctrine. They will find, also, that in our little community affairs, in which it is designed that we assist each other temporally and spiritually, there is not the slightest danger to the progress of business men, of whatever creed, or to the integrity of the state or the nation. If we are true to ourselves, and to God, we cannot be false, nor a menace either, to our fellow citizens or to our country. Joseph F. Smith. A RESPONSE TO FREDERICK M. SMITH. Mr. Frederick M. Smith, first counselor in the presidency of the Reorganized church, is taking a "whack" at the "Mormons." — EDITOR'S TABLE. 777 True, he has plenty of company, but is he justified by fact and rea- .? son, Let us test you, Mr. Smith. From your standpoint, if your church were of divine origin, you would occupy in your official position therein about the same relation to the world that the Apostle James occupied in the early Christian church for a few years prior to his martyrdom. If your claim be true, then, you are a grand figure in the gallery of human destiny; if it is false, you are, to say the least, a charlatan and a fraud. Let us inquire whether, in your assault on the Latter-day Saints, you speak the truth, or whether you have unbridled your tongue in falsehood, deceiving your own heart; in which latter case the Apostle James says your religion is vain. In your open letter to the people of this country, you assert that the "feelings of revulsion" which you say exist in the minds of the residents of Royalton and Sharon, Vermont, at the suggestion of a monument to the memory of your grandfather, Joseph Smith the Prophet, are due to "some of the beliefs and practices of the church which has recently come so prominently before the public as a result of the work of the United States Senate committee on Privileges and Elections, in its recent investigation of the standing of Senator Smoot of Utah." Your statement charging the unpopularity of your grandfather to the showing made in the Smoot investigation is so explicit, and the facts so well known, that it is capable of proof or disproof. Joseph Smith the Prophet himself wrote this of his own unpopularity and of the "feelings of revulsion" exhibited toward him by the people of the eastern and middle states, when he announced that he had had a divine manifestation from the Throne of Grace: "My telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make me a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects all united to persecute me." Were the "feelings of revulsion" thus generally and copiously exhibited toward Joseph Smith the Prophet, in the early twenties of the last century, even before the tragic scenes of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, due to anticipation of the Smoot investigation, which came on three quarters of a century later? How easy it was to test you, Mr. Smith. Your own words, and those of your honorable grandfather, who differs from you in that he states facts, display you in the garb of Ananias, the liar, rather than wearing the mantle of James, the Apostle. You have means of escape; the proof of history is that absolutely no whatever unpopularity attaches to Senator Smoot is due rather to Joseph Smith's claims as a prophet, and the principles advanced by him than vice versa. You also claim regarding Joseph Smith that "as a public man he never taught nor practiced polygamy." It is well you put in those words, "public man," on which to play fast and loose. Your act leaves the loophole that privately, as a religious teacher, be both taught and practiced polygamy, which is a fact. Then you quote Judge Phillips to show that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints is not the church organized by your grandfather. Passing that for the present, I will examine your attitude toward your grandfather and polygamy. You have made Judge Phillips your own witness, and you are bound by what he says. Indeed, you roll it as a sweet morsel under your tongue. What does Judge Phillips say? That the women whom Joseph Smith took as plural wives "were but sports in nest hiding" — in other words, that your grandfather was a libertine, an associate of harlots. That is what you, Mr. Frederick M. Smith, call your grandfather. How you do honor him whom you sometimes seek to claim as the prophet of your church! There were but two horns to the dilemma ;one was that he was an honest polygamist, acting conscientiously under the covenant of God, but not openly because of popular sentiment against the practice, but honorably because in his heart he believed it to be a divine order, as did the prophets of old; the other was that he was a libertine and associate of lewd women. You chose the latter —though you knew by all the evidence that the former was the case — and thus villify the character of your paternal ancestor. Did you fancy EDITOR'S TABLE. 779 that thinking people would not discern your hypocrisy? No wonder a family which would do as you and your father have done have so come under the ban of Divine judgment that they have been "removed out of their place," in the Church of which your grandfather was the organizer and first Prophet. My quoted words are from the same church law that you quoted, Mr. Smith. Now to your claim that the Church of Jesus Chri-t of Latterday Saints is not the Church organized^by your grandfather, I will give YOU another chance, though in every essential particular I have been compelled to write you down the very opposite of a credible witness. You say your church organization is the one your grandfather started. If a man has a carriage and wants to go driving in it, he does not send his coachman to hitch his team to a wheelbarrow, the dissimilarity between the two vehicles makes them wholly distinct. If there is one thing besides the spirit or protecting providence of the Lord that has attended and distinguished the Church organized by Joseph Smith the prophet, it is the spirit of persecution directed toward that Church by other so-called religious bodies. The spirit of church progress and the spirit of church enmity always centered around the presiding officer of the Church he organized. The spirit of church enmity, or of persecution, followed him from boyhood, till a "lawless mob" took his life, as you admit; it drove the Church he organized from Ohio, from Missouri, from Illinois; it bathed it in the blood of martyrs, male and female. Did the spirit of persecution follow the Reorganized church? You admit that it did not; and, consequently, it is not heir to the distinctive features of the Church which the prophet organized. Your grandfather was arrested many times, and was under arrest at the time of his death. Has the president of your church inherited that antagonism? You glory in the fact that he has not. Then he did not succeed to his father's heritage; nor did the church your father presides over inherit the antagonism specially characteristic of the Church organized by your grandfather. The vehicle you are in is wholly distinct from the one provided through Joseph the prophet. You cannot get away from the logic and the fact. Further: As the spirit of persecution did not follow the Reorganized church, but did follow the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the prophet's death, the same as in his life, so the spirit or protecting providence of the Lord did not attend the Reorganized church, but did attend the true Church after the prophet's death, the same as in his life. This is history, and you cannot refute Even the devil recognized its facts. that the Reorganization was not the Church which his satanic mightiness had fought in the prophet's day, and enlisted the Reorganized leaders on the side of the evil one in the warfare against the divine work instituted through the Prophet Joseph Smith. But notwithstanding that warfare, the Church of Jesus Christ presents in its whole history a remarkable illustration of the protecting power of Providence in its behalf, which is parallel with the progress of the fundamental ideas of early Christianity, and which shows the ancient and the modern Church to be of the same type. Commenting on the progress of the early Christian church, the late Judge Black well said in his reply to Ingersoll: "It did this in the face of obstacles which, according to every human calculation, were insurmountable. was antagon- It ized by all the evil propensities, the sensual wickedness, and the vulgar crimes of the multitude, as well as the polished vices of the luxurious classes; was most violently opposed even by and those sentiments and habits of thought which were esteemed virtuous, such as patriotism and military heroism. It encountered not only the ignorance and the superstition, but the learning and philosophy of the time. Barbarism and civilization were alike its deadly enemies. The priesthood of every established religion and the authority of every government were arrayed against it. All these combined together and aroused to furious hostility, were overcome, not by the enticing words of man's wisdom, but by the simple presentation of a pure and peaceable doctrine, preached by obscure strangers, at the daily peril of their lives." That is a precise description of the onward march of the Church in this age. Joseph Smith, the Prophet, preached a pure and peaceful doctrine at the peril of his life. Have you done that, Mr. Frederick M. Smith? Hardly; but the Latter-day Saints have done it and do it, while you have joined the multitude in the vulgar crime of maligning and misrepresenting those who accept the divine mission of your grandfather, who honor him as a