Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  He tossed the hairbrush onto the night table and leaned down, putting his face into her hair. He always loved to smell it after she had just washed it. He breathed deeply. Only then did he straighten and find her eyes in the mirror again. When he spoke, it was with studied nonchalance. “After having those brethren living with us for two weeks now, I think it would be a nice thing if we went to hear them preach their last Sunday. Don’t you?”

  Her expression made him laugh. “Now, don’t be jumping to conclusions here,” he warned. “I’m just curious, that’s all. I’ve been impressed with these two Apostles of yours. They’re good men. I’d like to see what kind of preachers they make.”

  She stood up slowly, moving close to him. “You’re not teasing me?” she asked softly. “You really would go?”

  He kissed her on the nose. “Yes, I really would.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Then she immediately frowned. “What will your father say?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, not seeming too concerned, “my father has never been a profaning man. That could very possibly change after tomorrow.”

  By spring of 1836, when the Kirtland Temple was dedicated, Carl and Melissa Rogers had been married almost five years and had their first two sons. By that time, Carl’s initial indifference toward the Church had, with persistent encouragement from his father, turned into open antagonism. At first as a concession, Melissa started going to his Methodist church services on one Sunday, then to her own on another Sunday. But each new request on her part to attend this meeting or that triggered additional conflict. None of it was terribly ugly or uncontrollably bitter, but it could often get heated and left a residue of tension in the home that lasted sometimes for days. So gradually concession turned to compromise and then to surrender. By nature Melissa was more of a peacemaker than a confronter, and contention bothered her deeply. Eventually, not only did her attendance at church stop, but even her personal forms of worship died away, and she and Carl slipped into a mutual understanding to leave discussions of Mormonism alone.

  Her keenest regret over her willingness to settle for peace over principle was that she had not attended the dedicatory services of the Kirtland Temple with her family. She had gone to her father’s home that evening and listened to them all as they described the almost unbelievable outpourings of the Spirit they had experienced. Even now, three years after the fact, almost any time she walked past the great building with its beautiful Gothic windows, the regrets for giving in on that particular point came flooding back.

  But on the afternoon of this day, as she and Carl walked slowly homeward from the temple, those feelings did not surface. She didn’t even think of them. She was still in a near-euphoric state of mind to think that Carl—and at his request—had gone with her to two meetings of the Saints. The group was nothing like the crowds that had once filled the temple, but the smallness of the congregation made for a more intimate service. And it gave Brigham, who spoke in the morning meeting, considerable time to develop his message on how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was like the church that Christ established while he was on the earth. She was particularly grateful that Brigham had quoted almost exclusively from the Bible. Melissa suspected that that was partially for Carl’s benefit. She couldn’t be sure, because during the hour-long sermon Brigham hadn’t seemed to look directly at Carl more than a time or two.

  This afternoon John Taylor had also preached a fine sermon and acted as though there was nothing at all unusual about having Carl present.

  “Do you know what Derek told me?” Carl asked.

  “What?” she said, coming out of her thoughts.

  “He said that Brigham considers himself to be a very poor preacher. Says that it is sheer pain for him to talk because his grammar is so poor. Says he always ends up with a headache trying to choose the words he needs in order to say what he wants to say.”

  “Really? Did you feel that way while he was preaching today?”

  “Not at all. I thought he spoke clearly and made his points well.”

  Wonderful! She wanted to sing it out, but did nothing more than slip her arm through his. “Me neither. I was impressed with how well he knows the scriptures. And did you notice? He didn’t have a single page of notes.”

  “I did,” came the quick reply, and he seemed impressed. The pastor at Carl’s church, which was really Carl’s father’s church, always brought in a large sheaf of meticulously written text, then read from it word for word. They were polished and wonderful sermons, but somehow Brigham’s simple, straightforward presentation seemed a welcome change to him.

  “I’m going to miss Derek and Matthew,” she said. “It’s been so good to have them here.”

  “I like Derek,” came the response. “He’ll be a good missionary.”

  “He will, especially among his own people.”

  They walked on. The evening was coming on quickly and the air was turning cold. Their breath hung in little clouds in the last of the daylight. Melissa laid her head against his shoulder as they walked. “Thank you, Carl.”

  “For what?”

  “For going with me today.”

  He shrugged. “I told you. I did it because I wanted to hear Brigham as a preacher.”

  “I know, but thank you anyway.”

  He nodded. After a moment, he looked down at her. “If you want to go to your services from time to time and take the children, I wouldn’t mind, Melissa.”

  Her head came up with a start. He laughed. “I don’t know if I’m just trying to be nice to you, or if I just want to pick a fight with Pa. But I’ve been thinking. I don’t think God really cares very much about which church a man goes to. I think what’s more important is how you live. How you treat people. Whether you try to be a good Christian. I’ve known some pretty good men that don’t go to any particular church at all, and they seem particularly happy.”

  Melissa was almost dizzy with surprise at this unexpected turn. “Would you come with me to our services?” she asked, holding her breath.

  Again his shoulders lifted and fell slightly. “Oh, perhaps. Actually, to be truthful, I’m getting tired of our services. I’ve even thought about going to the Campbellite congregation a couple of times, see what they’re like. Maybe even visit the Congregational church. That would send Father in a spin, I’ll tell you. Mormons and Congregationalists. They’re not his favorite peoples.”

  Melissa’s face fell and she had to turn away lest he see it. This wasn’t so much a response to Brigham Young’s teaching—though he seemed to have genuinely enjoyed it—as it was a general restlessness. Or maybe even more to the point, a way of showing his father that he was chafing under being told what to do, where to live, whom to accept and whom to reject. It was sharply disappointing, for she had momentarily hoped for much more than that. But then her mood brightened. Even if Carl never showed interest in the Church, if he would let her start attending services with the children, and maybe even come himself occasionally, that was miles from where they had been just two weeks ago. And because of that, she would be forever grateful that Derek and Matthew had swept into town and brought Brigham Young and Heber Kimball with them.

  The Apostles and their companions who had converged on Kirtland early in November left the city on the twenty-second, determined to travel together to New York City. But as usual, plans quickly changed. Heber dropped off to visit his family in western New York. Brigham Young and George A. Smith ran out of funds and stopped to work. At Brigham’s insistence, John Taylor went on with Derek and Matthew and Theodore Turley. They reached New York City two weeks before Christmas, exhausted, half-frozen, totally destitute. Gratefully, they found three of the Apostles already there and waiting for them—Parley and Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff. Had they delayed any further, they would have missed Wilford Woodruff, for he was planning to book passage on a packet ship scheduled to depart for Liverpool on December twentieth.

  They were sitting around the small but comfort
able parlor of the house Parley Pratt had procured in New York. Supper was done and they were enjoying a few minutes of each other’s company before retiring. Derek sat between Theodore Turley and John Taylor. Like John and Derek, Turley was also an English immigrant, making three of them going back to their native land to proclaim the gospel. Matthew sat on a stool beside the sofa. Wilford and Parley were across from them. Orson Pratt was on the floor beside Parley’s chair. As usual, the conversation turned immediately to the question of when to sail for England. And as usual, Wilford firmly rejected any suggestion for further delay.

  “I already canceled plans to sail once. It could be weeks before Brigham and Heber arrive. The Oxford sails on the twentieth,” he said bluntly. “I plan to be on it.”

  “I agree, Brother Wilford,” Parley said. “Orson and I can wait for the others. There is still much to do here in New York. I would like to get A Voice of Warning and some other tracts published so we can use them in the work.”

  “Well spoken,” Wilford said quickly. “I think you should stay.” He turned to John Taylor. “But you could come with me, John. Book passage with me on the Oxford and we’ll be gone from here in four days.”

  John Taylor nodded thoughtfully. “If you think it best that I go with you, Derek and I are willing, aren’t we, Derek?”

  “Absolutely.” Like Wilford, Derek had been through enough delays.

  “I should like to go too,” Theodore Turley said.

  Wilford turned to Matthew with a quizzical look. Matthew shook his head immediately. “I promised Brother Brigham I would wait for him here.”

  “And I think you should,” John Taylor said. “Joseph called you to be a companion to him and Heber.” He turned to Woodruff. “But I think the three of us can leave with you, Wilford.”

  “Wonderful!” He was greatly relieved.

  “Book us passage, then,” John said, “and we shall make our preparations.”

  Parley leaned forward. “What about the money for your tickets?”

  Taylor smiled enigmatically. “There shall be no difficulty with that. Go ahead and book passage for the three of us.”

  Parley was ecstatic. “Then it’s true? I have heard you say to several people that you have plenty of money.”

  “Aye, that I do,” John responded easily.

  Derek gaped at him. As far as he knew, it had taken every farthing they had to get to New York.

  Parley clapped his hands. “Then could I borrow two or three hundred dollars from you to see to the printing of my tracts?”

  “You are welcome to whatever I have,” John answered gravely, reaching in his pocket. He withdrew a coin purse, stood, and walked over to Parley. Parley stretched out his hands as John tipped the purse upside down. One copper penny fell out. “There you are,” John said with a smile.

  Parley was dumbfounded. “But . . . but you said you had plenty of money.”

  “Aye, and that I do. I am well clothed, you are feeding us plenty of good food here, we have a warm roof over our heads, and I owe no man anything. With all of that, I have a penny extra. Is not that plenty?”

  Wilford laughed heartily at the crestfallen expression on Parley’s face. Then he turned to John. “So you have no money for the passage?”

  “Book our passage,” John Taylor said confidently, “and if it is the Lord’s will that we accompany you, we shall have the funds.”

  “Perhaps it might have been better if we had died in Germantown.”

  John Taylor rose up in the bunk across from Derek. In the faint light of the one lantern, which swayed and danced with the movement of the ship, his face looked as gray as chalk. “What was that you said?” he called.

  The ship pitched sharply downward again, the timbers shrieking in protest at the punishment they were taking. Barrels and boxes, trunks and suitcases slammed about the compartment, making a horrendous din.

  Derek was too weak to shout over the noise, and he simply waved it away and fell back. Theodore Turley, squeezed in beside him in the narrow berth, turned his head. His color was more green than gray, and he looked like he had aged twenty years in the ten days since they had set sail. “What happened in Germantown?”

  “That’s where Brother Taylor and I were so sick. I thought for sure one of us was going to die.” He forced a weak grin. “Had I known this was coming, I might have been tempted to pray less vigorously for our recovery.”

  Turley nodded grimly. “Was it this bad when you came over?”

  “No,” Derek grunted. “Nothing like this.”

  When he and Peter had sailed from Liverpool to America two years before, there had been only two or three days of rough weather, but it was nothing compared to the violent storm that raged around them now. He thought he had been seasick then. Now he realized he had barely understood the word. Conditions were bad enough without the weather turning on them too. Steerage was the least expensive way to travel on the packet ships, and therefore offered the least amount of comfort and convenience. The steerage compartment—so named because this area of ships sometimes contained the steering apparatus—was below deck. It was overcrowded, offered no privacy, was poorly lit, and because it had virtually no ventilation it reeked with the stench of sweat, rotting food, vomit, and human waste.

  All of that would have been bad enough, but it wasn’t until the first night at sea that they discovered that the selling agents had severely overbooked the ship. Normally a ticket with a berth number was given to each passenger. The sellers had assured everyone there would be no more than two people per berth. In actuality, they had sold the same bunk to as many as five people, and several had no bed at all. Sixty-four people in a space meant to house little more than half that—it was a criminal disgrace. The crew rigged a few bunks in a storage compartment, but there were still some berths where four people slept in shifts, and some passengers had no choice but to sleep on the deck or on boxes.

  “No,” Derek said again, “it was nothing like this.”

  Wilford Woodruff must have heard him, for his head came up. He was wedged into the bunk beside John Taylor. “Brother Derek,” he called.

  Derek rose up as best he could. Wilford was sick, but was faring better than any of his three companions. He grinned and waved. “Do you know what day the day after tomorrow is?” he shouted.

  Derek thought for a moment, then shook his head. He wasn’t even sure what year it was anymore.

  “It’s New Year’s Day.”

  Derek ducked as the ship took a particularly hard roll and a small barrel came hurtling past him. It crashed against the bulkhead and shattered. “Bully!” Derek said through gritted teeth. “Happy New Year.”

  Wilford was still looking at him. “It will be a new year for us. A glorious year, Brother Derek. Keep that in mind. This storm cannot last forever, and we shall soon be in England.”

  Chapter Notes

  The idea, expressed in the novel by Josiah McBride, that Joseph Smith patterned the Book of Mormon after the Spalding manuscript was used by enemies of the Church to try and explain away a remarkable book translated by an unlearned young man. Because of his skills in speaking and writing, Sidney Rigdon was often credited by proponents of the “Spalding theory” as being the one who actually wrote the Book of Mormon, even though he did not meet Joseph for the first time until almost a year after the book was published. The manuscript for Spalding’s book was lost for many years, so that it could not be compared to the Book of Mormon. But a copy was discovered in the 1880s and shows that it bears no resemblance to the Book of Mormon. (See CHFT, p. 59.)

  The Twelve came into New York City on widely different dates. Wilford Woodruff arrived on 8 October, the first of the Twelve to do so. Parley arrived on 25 October with his wife and three children; his brother Orson came three weeks later. John Taylor and his companion came on 13 December. (See MWM, pp. 75–80.)

  John Taylor’s interchange with Parley over having “plenty of money” is told by John Taylor. Though he had no money at
all at that time, within a day or two, contributions sufficient for him and Theodore Turley to pay for their passage came in from the Saints. (See B. H. Roberts, Life of John Taylor, Collector’s Edition [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989], pp. 72–74.)

  Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, and Theodore Turley set sail on the Oxford five days before Christmas. Their decision not to wait for the others was a wise one, for Brigham, Heber, and George A. Smith did not arrive for another five or six weeks and did not embark for England until March. The miserable conditions of the passage—the storm, the overbooking of the ship—are accurately portrayed here as recorded in the missionaries’ journals. (See MWM, pp. 78–80.)

  Chapter Seventeen

  30 Dec. 1839 Nauvoo, Illinois

  Dearest Melissa,

  Your letter dated 22 November reached us yesterday afternoon. I need not tell you what a welcome surprise that turned out to be. We gathered the whole family around the fire last evening and read it over and over. After receiving the letters from you and Derek and Matthew a short time before that, another letter came as a surprise. By now you should have received the letter I wrote back to you at that time containing all the news of the family, so I will not repeat any of that here except to say we received another letter from Will. He had not yet reached China when he wrote, but it took two months to get to us, so he may be there by now. Caroline still misses him terribly, but hearing from him on a regular basis now has done much to make it easier for her.

  We are pleased to hear that Derek and Matthew have continued on their journey, though surely you will miss having them with you. We thank the Lord they were able to come by way of Kirtland and stay with you as long as they did. Jenny and Rebecca have written letters back to them. However, they wrote to New York, fearing they would be gone from Ohio before the letters got there. Your letter confirmed the wisdom of this choice.

  Most gratifying was your report about Carl. His attendance at the worship services is a major step forward, considering how he has felt about Mormonism before. Joshua was a little disgusted with our response. He assumes we are happy only because we think Carl may be on the way to conversion—a thought that Joshua thinks is ridiculous. He doesn’t understand that our joy lies in something else. It is not good when a man and a woman who share their lives together do not share at least a mutual understanding and tolerance for each other’s faith. I speak from personal experience in this regard. Those days when your father was so bitterly opposed to Joseph and all that the Church meant still burn painfully in my mind. How different is our marriage now that we share like beliefs! So in that regard, we were most pleased with Carl’s response. Even if he never joins the Church, the fact that he got to know Brigham Young and Heber Kimball and felt kindly disposed toward them will go a long way in helping you and him be more as one on the matter.