[Footnote 2:  For a detailed account of modern temples, with numerous pictorial views, see “The House of the Lord,” by the present author; Salt Lake City, Utah, 1912.]

To the fervent Latter-day Saint, a temple is not simply a church building, a house for religious assembly.  Indeed the “Mormon” temples are rarely used as places of general gatherings.  They are in one sense educational institutions, regular courses of lectures and instruction being maintained in some of them; but they are specifically for baptisms and ordinations, for sanctifying prayer, and for the most sacred ceremonies and rites of the Church, particularly in the vicarious work for the dead which is a characteristic of “Mormon” faith.  And who that has gazed upon these splendid shrines will say that the people who can do so much in poverty and tribulation are insincere?  Bigoted they may seem to those who believe not as they do; fanatics they may be to multitudes who like the proud Pharisee of old thank God they are not as these; but insincere they cannot be, even in the judgment of their bitterest opponent, if he be a creature of reason.

The clouds of persecution thickened in Ohio as the intolerant zeal of mobs found frequent expression; numerous charges, trivial and serious, were made against the leaders of the Church, and they were repeatedly brought before the courts, only to be liberated on the usual finding of no cause for action.  Meanwhile the march to the west was maintained.  Soon thousands of converts had rented or purchased homes in Missouri—­Independence, Jackson County, being their center; but from the first, they were unpopular among the Missourians.  Their system of equal rights with their marked disapproval of every species of aristocratic separation and self-aggrandizement was declared to be a species of communism, dangerous to the state.  An inoffensive journalistic organ, The Star, published for the purpose of properly presenting the religious tenets of the people, was made the particular object of the mob’s rage; the house of its publisher was razed to the ground, the press and type were confiscated, and the editor and his family maltreated.  An absurd story was circulated and took firm hold of the masses that the Book of Mormon promised the western lands to the people of the Church, and that they intended to take possession of these lands by force.  Throughout the book of revelations regarded by the people as law specially directed to them, they are told to save their riches that they may purchase the inheritance promised them of God.  Everywhere are they told to maintain peace; the sword is never offered as their symbol of conquest.  Their gathering is to be like that of the Jews at Jerusalem—­a pacific one, and in their taking possession of what they regard as a land of promise, no one previously located there shall be denied his rights.

A spirit of fierce persecution raged in Jackson and surrounding counties of Missouri.  An appeal was made to the executive of the state, but little encouragement was returned.  The lieutenant-governor, Lilburn W. Boggs, afterward governor, was a pronounced “Mormon"-hater, and throughout the period of the troubles, he manifested sympathy with the persecutors.