Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1891 — CRADLE OF MORMONISM. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CRADLE OF MORMONISM.

The Original “Zion" Where, the Foundation of the Saints Was Laid. The old Mormon temple, which has looked down from its commanding height for nearly sixty years upon Kirtland, one of the quaintest and most historical villages in Northern Ohio, will not be carted away to form one of the attractions at the World’s Fair, as has been proposed, if the people of the Buckeye town are not altogether powerless in the matter. It is a landmark they will not willingly part with, although but a few of them have anything in common with the strange people who built it. The temple is a great point of attraction. It stands on a high hill a little to the west of the liver, and is built of stone. It is about eighty feet long and sixty broad. The walls are fifty feet high and are of a yellowish tinge. On the front of the building one sees this inscription: “House of the Lord, Built by the Church of Christ in 1834.” The interior of the teiqple is unlike that of any ofher place of worship in the country, and probably its like has no existence outside of Mormon cities. Leading from the vestibule are two doors that open into separate aisles, one for the men and the other for the women. Two Latin inscriptions are still plainly visible, but these attract less attention than the odd arrangement of pews. At either end of the assembly room is a pulpit, built up in four tiers, where the twelve priests sat. On the front of the pulpit are letters denoting

the titles of the high priests. The second story is practically a repetition of the first, and above this is the old Morinan school loom. Here are to be seen the very blackboards upon which Prophet Smith is said to have traced letters for the children of new converts. It is proper to state, however, that no writing of the prophet’s is now visible. The teipple tower rises far above the massive walls, and is visible for miles around in all directions. From the shapely dome a magnificent view of a grand country is obtained. Farm bouses to the west, south and east appear in numbers, while to the north Lake Erie stretches in vast expanse to the hoiizon. It is yet early, spring in this section of the country, but already the white sails, some scarcely visible from the dome of the temple, show that lake commerce has begun. The Latter Day Saints are confident that Ivirtland will again become the Zion it was a half century ago. The ground upon which the temple stands is to them as holy as earth ever gets to be, even in the eyes of people of stranger belief. It is still in the hands of the Mormon church, or rather in the hands of a descendant of Joseph Smith.- It is emphatically a product of the “first Zion,” for the very stones in the walls, the timbers and the shingles, were obtained in Kirtland. Mormon converts quarried the rock from the ledge along the river, and Mormon hands hewed the timber and mixed the mortal' that went into the building.

THE FIRST MORMON TEMPLE.