| 34 The city council acted upon the provisions of the charter for the university, on the 3d of February, 1841, appointing certain men trustees, of whom, as regents, were Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Hyrum Smith, D. H. Wells, C. C. Rich; thereby showing that it was the opinion and earnest conviction of those men that education was of paramount importance.
In pursuit of the measures adopted by the leading men of the church, the citizens of Nauvoo were notified, in the Times and Seasons for March 1, 1841, that J. P. Greene, C. C. Rich, D. H. Wells, and Vinson Knight were appointed school wardens for common schools for their respective wards.
This charter for the university was received by the church, in conference, at Nauvoo, by a "unanimous vote."
This shows that the church then, together with its leading men, were a unit in favor of education.
On page 631, of Times and Seasons, there will be found the following significant language:
"While this city is lengthening her cords, and strengthening her stakes, and exhibiting such a spectacle of bustle and enterprise as was never before witnessed, it is to be hoped that mental culture will not be passed over as a little thing. Knowledge is power. A finished education always gives an influence in cultivated society, which neither wealth nor station can impart nor control."
An extract from the Evening and Morning Star, reprinted in the Times and Seasons for January 15, 1842, shows that "If children are to be brought up in the way they should go, to be good citizens here, and happy hereafter, they must be taught. It is idle to suppose that children will grow up good, while surrounded with wickedness, without cultivation. It is folly to suppose they can become teamed without education. . . . In order to do this as it should be, it is necessary that children should be taught in the rudiments of common learning out of the best books."
Here seems to be the key to the subsequent action of the church in fostering the cause of education.
One of the vantage grounds from which the elders used to hurl their arrows of truth, was that priestcraft always tried to keep the people in ignorance, to the end that there should be an unquestioning obedience to the commands of rulers, spiritual and temporal. Now, if the rulers at Utah, who have claimed that church rule was necessarily both temporal and spiritual, are of the opinion that to place the rudiments of education within the reach of all, thereby stimulating some to go further than that, is to destroy the loyalty of the mass to priestly sway, it savors strongly of the old-time idea that there is fear upon the part of the rulers that their acts as leaders will not bear the scrutiny of an inquiry, hence the necessity of keeping them in ignorance. This is changing front very rapidly, as compared with the condition of things as known to exist at
(page 34) |
