Life of Heber C. Kimball, an Apostle. Orson F. Whitney

humility, no less than his kingly stature, consisted his dignity, and no small share of his greatness. It was his intelligence, earnestness, simplicity, sublime faith and unwavering integrity to principle that made him great, not the apparel he wore, nor the mortal clay in which his spirit was clothed. Nevertheless, nature had given him a noble presence in the flesh, worthy the godlike stature of his spirit.

      "A combination and a form, indeed,

       Where every God did seem to set his seal

       To give the world assurance of a man."

      The son and grandson of a soldier, he had early enrolled in an independent horse company of the New York State militia. Under Captain Sawyer, of East Bloomfield, and his successor in command, he trained fourteen years; one year more would have exempted him from further military service. He remarks, with honest pride, that he was never brought before a court martial or found delinquent in his duty.

      Heber was also a Free Mason. In 1823 he received the first three degrees of masonry in the lodge at Victor. The year following, himself and five others petitioned the chapter at Canandaigua, the county seat of Ontario County, for the degrees up to the Royal Arch. The petition was favorably considered, but before it could be acted upon the Morgan anti-mason riot broke out, and the Masonic Hall, where the chapter met, was burned by the mob and all the records consumed.

      Says Heber, "There are thousands of Masons who lived in those days, who are well aware of the persecution and unjust proceedings which were heaped upon them by the anti-Masons; not as many as three of us could meet together, unless in secret, without being mobbed.

      "I have been as true as an angel from the heavens to the covenants I made in the lodge at Victor.

      "No man was admitted into a lodge in those days except he bore a good moral character, and was a man of steady habits; and a man would be suspected for getting drunk, or any other immoral conduct. I wish that all men were masons and would live up to their profession; then the world would be in a much better state than it is now."

      Commenting on the degeneracy of the Ancient Order—the old, old story of the persecuted becoming persecutors—he continues:

      "I have been driven from my houses and possessions, with many of my brethren belonging to that fraternity, five times, by mobs led by some of their leading men. Hyrum Smith received the first three degrees of masonry in Ontario County, New York. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were Master Masons, yet they were massacred through the instrumentality of some of the leading men of that fraternity, and not one soul of them has ever stepped forth to administer help to me or my brethren belonging to the Masonic Institution, or to render us assistance, although bound under the strongest obligations to be true and faithful to each other in every case and under every circumstance, the commission of crime excepted."

      Yes, Masons, it is said, were even among the mob that murdered Joseph and Hyrum in Carthage Jail. Joseph, leaping the fatal window, gave the masonic signal of distress. The answer was the roar of his murderers' muskets and the deadly balls that pierced his heart.

      Heber continued to prosper in business, working in his pottery in summer, and at his forge in winter. He purchased land, built houses, planted orchards, and otherwise "situated himself to live comfortably."

      In the spring of 1825, he gave his father a home with him in Mendon. The old gentleman was now a widower, his wife, Heber's mother, having died in February, 1824, at West Bloomfield, of consumption. Her husband survived her a little over a twelve-month, when he, too, fell a victim to the same malady.

      It is a coincidence worthy of note that the deaths of Heber and Vilate were also about one year apart, she passing away first, and he, like his father, following soon the footsteps of his beloved partner to the spirit land.

      We have traced his life's record through its initial stages. He was now fairly on the threshold of his remarkable career.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      HEBER'S POETIC NATURE—A ROUGH DIAMOND—EARLY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—JOINS THE BAPTIST CHURCH—"SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS ABOVE"—HEBER C. KIMBALL AND BRIGHAM YOUNG—THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL.

      Heber's temperament was religious and poetical. Sociable as he was, and even bubbling over with mirth, at times, his soul was essentially of a solemn cast. He loved solitude, not with the selfish spirit of the misanthrope, but for the opportunities it gave of communing with his own thoughts—a pleasure that only poet minds truly feel—and of listening to the voice of God and nature, expressed in all the countless and varied forms of life.

      He was capable of sensing fully—though probably he had never seen or heard—those sublime words of the poet:

      "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

       There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

       There is society, where none intrudes,

       By the deep sea, and music in its roar.

       I love not man the less, but nature more,

       From these our interviews; in which I steal

       From all I may be, or have been before,

       To mingle with the universe and feel

       What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

      True, he was a diamond in the rough, but a diamond, nevertheless, for all of its incrustations. Unlettered and untaught, save in nature's school, the university of experience, where he was an apt and profound scholar, he was possessed of marvelous intuition, a genius God-given, which needed no kindling at a college shrine to prepare it for the work which providence had designed.

      Not but that education would have polished the gem, causing it to shine with what the natural eye would deem a brighter lustre; but the fact remains that Heber C. Kimball, as he was, not as he might have been, was best adapted for the divine purpose, the career marked out for him by the finger of Deity.

      It is not strange that a nature of this kind, solemn, thoughtful and inspirational, should have been led early to seek "an anchor for the soul," a knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. But his search for many years was in vain; he found not among the sects of Christendom the precious pearl which an honest soul will sell all that it hath to obtain.

      "From the time I was twelve years old," says he, "I had many serious thoughts and strong desires to obtain a knowledge of salvation, but not finding anyone who could teach me the things of God, I did not embrace any principles of doctrine, but endeavored to live a moral life. The priests would tell me to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but never would tell me what to do to be saved, and thus left me almost in despair.

      "During the time I lived in Mendon, I mostly attended the meetings of the Baptist church, and was often invited to unite myself with them. I received many pressing invitations to unite with different sects, but did not see fit to comply with their desires, until a revival took place in our neighborhood. I had passed through several of their protracted meetings and had been many times upon the anxious bench to seek relief from the 'bands of sin and death.' But no relief could I find until the meetings were passed by.

      "At this time I concluded to put myself under the watch-care of the Baptist church and unite myself to them; as soon as I had concluded to do this, the Lord administered peace to my mind, and accordingly, the next day I went, in company with my wife, and we were baptized by Elder Elijah Weaver; and we partook of the sacrament on that day for the first and also the last time with them."

      Such was his initiation into religion, as pertaining to a Christian sectarian church. Though not in accord with the Baptist faith in all its teachings, it seemed to him to be nearest right according to the Bible; probably from the stress laid upon baptism by immersion, manifestly the Bible mode, and the only true way of being "born of the water." Besides, he deemed it wise to put a "guard" upon himself, to "keep him from running into evils."

      The