Letter From P. P. Pratt

Manchester, Aug. 12, 1841

To the Authorities and Members of the church of the saints in Nauvoo and vicinity, and to my old friends and associates in the kingdom of Jesus Christ:-Greeting:-

Dearly beloved,

It seemeth good unto me after an absence of two years, to stir up my own memory and yours, by addressing a few lines to you as a token of our mutual love, and of my lasting remembrance and respect. How often while surrounded with the objects of a foreign land and engaged in the busy scenes of life, surrounded with myriads of smiling and friendly faces, I call to mind the scenes of other days, the friends of my youth, or the companions of the morning of my life. How often I imagine while surveying the countenance of some of my new acquaintance, or gazing upon the congregation of rejoicing hundreds, (who were strangers to me but yesterday, but who are made nigh by the blood of Christ,) that I behold in their features some outlines of those faces which I have beheld in other lands, and with which I have rejoiced amid other scenes. One looks like Newel Knights, another like John Murdock, a third resembles Lyman Wight, and a fourth reminds me of Ezekiel or Hezekiah Peck (of Colesville) a fifth seems to resemble E. Partridge or Isaac Morley; but on a more minute examination, alas! the illusion vanishes as a dream of the morning: it is not the heart or hand of these old friends that I embrace; but some near acquaintance-dear to my heart as a saint; but not endeared by so many kindred scenes of mutual joy and sorrow. Thus, while otherwise happy in the performance of duty, and in the enjoyments of good society I long after my own native country, and the friends of my youth, yea, my bosom yearns, and my heart, as it were, fires within me.

But I must say with the poet:

"Former friends, how oft, I've sought them

Just to cheer the drooping mind;

But they're gone like leaves of autumn

Driven before the dreary wind."

Yes, they are gone, many of them to Eternity-worn out by the rolling wheels of time, and by hardship and exposure, for the cause of truth, or cut down by sudden death as martyrs in the cause of God, they sleep where wo and sorrow can never reach them more, and where oppression can never come. Their spirits mingle in the purer scenes of joys celestial-mid immortal throngs, but this is our sorrow that in this mortal life we shall see their faces no more.

I am now 34 years of age-next year I pass the narrow straight of middle life, the half way house between life's opening and its close. I stand as it were on a pinnacle between two worlds, and hardly know to which I belong-perhaps my old acquaintance are as numerous in heaven as on earth, and I hardly know in the division of my affections, to which I am the most attached.

It is now eleven years since I first embraced the fulness [fullness] of the gospel: three small branches, consisting of about fifty member in all, were then the only people connected as Latter Day Saints. I was one of those who took the first mission to the western states, in which the fulness [fullness] of the gospel was first introduced into Ohio, (commencing at Kirtland,) Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, and into the Indian territory, among the Lamanites.

When countless millions shall throng the courts of the New Jerusalem which is soon to be built in Jackson county, Missouri, upon the consecrated spot, then perhaps it may be remembered that in 1830, in the depth of a howling winte [winter]

five men penetrated Missouri's wilds, and traveled on foot from St. Louis to Independence, Jackson county, wading in snow to the knees the greater part of the way for 300 miles; and all this as may be said, without money or friends, except as they made them. These are the first footsteps ever made in that state by Latter Day Saints-these first placed their feet upon that holy ground, where shall stand the great temple of our God, the resort of the nations, and the joy of the whole earth.

Of those five men, Peter Whitmer is now in his grave, two are turned away from the fellowship of the church, and the other two, F. G. Williams and myself are yet alive, and blessed with the grace of God we are yet counted worthy of a place among you. Thus I find myself a monument of mercy, spared like an oak amid the tempest, and to God be ascribed all the glory; for were it not for his peculiar longsuffering and goodness I might now have been an outcast from the commonwealth of Israel, or cut down by untimely death without beholding in this life the establishment of Zion.

But O! how many scenes of joy and sorrow, of trail and suffering, of meeting and parting, of life and death, have we been called to pass through since that time. How many have been the travels, the toils, the sufferings, the hopes, the fears, the feelings, the disappointments, the blessings, the glories, the signs, the wonders, the deliverences [deliverance's] experienced by the servants of the Most High God. There has the entire church been disinherited, plundered and driven-and their settlements been broken up. Time and again has the deadly weapon been aimed at its leaders, and some of them slain.-All these things have I seen with my eyes-yea they have fallen on my right hand and on my left, wounded, bleeding, dying for the cause of Zion, and yet not a bone of mine has been broken, though part of my blood has been shed; yea prisons, chains, and dungeons have compassed us round about, the cold ground has been our lodging place, and murderers and demons have kept watch over our slumbers, and lulled us to sleep with songs of blasphemy; recounting with horrid triumph their thefts, whoredoms, rapes and murders. Yet out of all these things the Lord has delivered us, and has caused the nations of the proud to tremble before us, and the meek of the earth to hail us as the messengers of salvation.

Two years have scarcely elapsed since I took leave of Nauvoo and of the society of the saints in the west, and never shall I forget the scenes of suffering through which they were then passing; houseless, and pennyless[penniless], dwelling in tents, in wagons, or under the trees; sick and dying. The majority scattered abroad through persecution, and the Nauvoo meeting of a Sabbath, scarcely bringing together one hundred people, and not 30 dwellings in the town.

But what is the astonishing news which now salutes my ears. "Shall the earth bring forth in a day, or shall a nation be born at once, for as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children." I am now informed that about 1200 houses are erected in Nauvoo and hundreds more in progress; and that the earth is cultivated for miles in every direction as the garden of Eden, where two years ago all was desolate loneliness, and that the walls of the temple are now erecting.

Dear brethren, while you are prospered by the hand of God in doing so much at home, the same spirit has wrought mightily in us, in lifting an ensign to the nations and a standard to the people far abroad, and the ships of Tarshish are beginning to bring thy sons from afar and thy daughters from the ends of the earth. Already something near one thousand souls have been gathered to Zion from the isles of the sea, and thousands more are preparing to come shortly.

Sept. 12th. Dear brethren, the many duties of life have thus far prevented me from finishing this communication; it is now Sunday morning, and the pleasantest morning I ever saw in England. The sky is clear, the sun bright, the weather warm and pleasant-I take a few moments before going to meeting, to finish this epistle; in a few hours I shall be in the Hall with some five hundred saints and friends, many of whom will never see it again; for on next week Monday, the ship Tyrean will sail from Liverpool for New Orleans with 204 passengers bound for Nauvoo. Near one half of these are from Manchester and vicinity, and are our old friends here; but their places are fast filling up with new converts: thus you see our mission is of a nature calculated to subject us to important changes,

and scenes continually varying. We form society, and break it up, we gather a congregation, and send if off, we increase, and then decrease, we get friends and acquaintance and they vanish away, we form intimacies, and they are broken off; thus it is one continual scene of parting with friends and making more; of breaking off old acquaintance and forming new; all these things are calculated to excite the mind, and to give peculiar feelings, of a mingled nature and not easily described.

Dear brethren, we feel extremely anxious to do something for the temple, but at present the money is all swallowed up in emigration; a few of those who come over in the Tyrean will have a little money, and perhaps they will do some little for the temple; but it will take what they have to provide them a home; indeed many of them will land without a shilling. The distress is such in this country that the saints will go to Zion whether they can carry any thing with them or not. They had rather be slaves in America than to starve in this country. I cannot keep them back,-go they will, and go they must, or perish: many respectable people are seeking a passage with us, who are not saints, as yet.

I have obtained a few dollars for the temple, from two or three individuals, and am in hopes to add something to it, before the sailing of the "Tyrean," and some more before the sailing of the next ship, (in October,) but very few can be found who can spare a sovereign without really distressing themselves. I shall send the mite, for the temple by brother Joseph Fielding who is expecting to take the lead of this company. He will bring it to you in safety if he is spared, and I hope it will be acceptable though small.

I have just heard from Elder Hyde, he was taking passage down the Danube for Constantinople, he is well, and in good spirits.

When I shall see Nauvoo I know not, perhaps it may be many years; but my heart is there, and there my friends and kindred dwell. I must now close: please accept this in token of my lasting rememberance [remembrance], and pray for me-Farewell.

Yours in the bonds

of everlasting freedom,

P. P. PRATT.