As found in The Utah Magazine, October 23rd, 1869
Note: gendered terms have been modified in this transcription to be gender-neutral
The social redemption of humanity is that which commands the special mission of nearly all modern reformers. A mere mission of doctrinal theology and fierce religious controversy possesses no charm for the broad-minded person of the present age, who are inspired more by the motives of practical good for society than the conscienceless spirit of religious fanaticism. Without caring largely to enter into the interminable controversies of Christian sects, to trace which particular one of the ten thousand is on the right road to Heaven, and which nine hundred and ninety-nine are on the road to hell, thoughtful people come at once to certain very practical conclusions.
In the first place, they very generally realize that, if there are only a few thousand of the one particular sect on the right road to Heaven, out of the twelve hundred millions of human beings constituting the balance, it is scarcely worth while to attempt to find out who they are. The affair in such a case would be too insignificant for our modern conceptions of the grand intentions of a God, touching human redemption. And, coming down from Deity to humanity’s own benevolent policies, we readily perceive how practically pernicious it is for any particular one of the sects to determine for itself that it alone is on the right toad to Heaven, and that all others are on the broad road to destruction. Moreover, giving this all important subject of humanity’s salvation a scientific exactness, it is practically perceived that every large sect is divided into a hundred fractions of the particular faith, according to the intellectual and spiritual development of its disciples. Therefore, whether Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist, Methodist, or any other creed, there are scarcely two out of an average hundred disciples of any faith, who are in the same exact saved condition and who can see the same truths in the same light. Of course when a common social interest, or the associations of community or fraternity , throw a common salvation around us, the whole of the faithful members of any given church may be said to be on the same road to Heaven. But human experience shows that a corresponding class of minds hold very similar views, and are very similarly affected by truth, or perchance spiritual impressions, irrespective of these distinctions of communities. Hence there has been observed a remarkable resemblance between the religious and moral teachings of such men as Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus, and Plato, and also between the Grecian and modern philosophy. This is so striking, that crude infidels have charged Jesus with stealing his wisdom from Confucius and other sages, claiming it as the special outshootings of his own superabundant divinity, while the old Christian orthodox has its side of the case, equally crude.
The foregoing is about a summary of our modern appreciations. And in connection with these there is another great fact of human experience which fills truly Christian minds of the present age with sentiments of charity towards all humanity. That fact is that the religious strifes and fierce hatreds of ages past, have grown up, not between evil and malicious people, but between those most devoted to God in their intentions, and who have manifested the most earnestness in their lives, under the direction of potent, contending Priesthoods. Good people have cursed each other in their religious zeal and assumptions – siblings of a Christian faith have sent each other to the block or to the stake, believing in all solemnity of conscience they were doing God’s service. Hence people have at length been brought to a broad sentiment of charity, and our modern Christian philosophy may be tersely defined thus: “In every nation those that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted by God.” (Acts 10:35) without reference to sectarian names or religious creeds.
Out of these advanced appreciations of modern times, there has grown up a new school of divinity, and a new order of Apostles. They are the Apostles of the social redemption of the human race. At the head of these may be ranked the great social Apostle, the late Robert Owen. They commenced in infidelity, or more correctly speaking, heterodoxy, because priests and crude religions had left the most important work of humanity, up to the present time, undone, namely humanity’s social relations. These Apostles, however, v’ere more deeply earnest in their lives, and full of a truly Christian faith. Indeed their work was the fundamental work of Jesus himself, who sought to elevate humanity, first on earth that they may be afterwards lifted to a greater exaltation in the heavens. So much has this been the case with these modern social Apostles, that Robert Owen made Jesus Christ his example, and in his great human work went hand-in-hand with the Divine Master. He and his class were at first infidel in appearance, because faith was so grossly in darkness upon earth, but not in darkness in Heaven. At length they changed their phase, or the world changed its phase, and they appear now in the light of people of faith. Robert Own himself, though nearly all his days a skeptic to such truths as the immortality of the soul, died a modern prophet of the life hereafter, having in solemn manifestoes declared to the enlightened minds of all nations, that in this opening age, Zion or the New Jerusalem should be established over all the earth, resulting in the social and spiritual redemption of all humanity. This, he said, should be brought about by the direct administrations of the Heavens.
Without being identified with Robert Owen’s early infidelity or later spiritualistic views, yet somewhat in conformity with both, there is now leavening the nations a social divinity and everywhere at work these social apostles. They rank among the Catholics, Protestants, Calvinists, Free-grace-men, Infidels, Spiritualists, Jew, Gentile – people of all nations, tongues, color, and creed. Abraham Lincoln, when he emancipated the slaves of America, placed himself among them; Alexander of Russia did the same when he broke the state of serfdom; Joseph Smith when he and his Apostles proposed emigration to the serfs of Europe; but Congress is not true to the modern mission of social redemption, when it denies Utah its political rights. The latter fact, however, is one of the specialties of our subject concerning Utah, and its social redemption in many respects, to be considered hereafter. Return we again to the general subject.
The stinging reproach cannot be made that it is a herd of political schemers, of a class of utopian dreamers, who now maintain the modern gospel of social redemption. There was a time when its advocates could be stigmatized as Chartists and Socialists, who were aiming to dethrone the men in power, that they might themselves be seated in their place. But the later Apostles of social redemption have numbered among them such men as John Russell, Henry Peter Brougham, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Thomas Carlyle, and others of the most eminent statesmen and the best intellect of Europe. Some years ago they organized themselves into a grand “Social Science Congress”, the first presidents of which were Russell and Brougham, for the purpose of accomplishing the social elevation of the people, and the general education of the country. But America is the place wherein the problem can best be solved, for here the Almighty has realized, for God’s own purposes and humanity’s good, all the requirements for that solution. … Again we imagine the Divine command to have been promulgated, “Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth”. Here is then a vast field for human enterprise – here States of a matchless republic to be founded east and west. It is a work for a glorious national fraternity, in the labors of which humanity may forget the religious differences of their ancestors, and even their parents’ nationalities, in erecting not only a grand Republican Commonwealth, but also in spreading over the entire continent a platform for every human enterprise and every social good. On that platform already stands all the races and every creed in generous fellowship. Once of its latest planks was the Emancipation of the Slaves, for God in the practical manifestations of God’s Providence declares that this age shall not be retained in the dominion over serfdom of any kind, but the whole earth shall be redeemed from all its slaveries.
There shall be no more partitions erected between the branches of the human race; and if people, in their ambitious or sectional hatreds, lift them up, God will beat them down again. Have we not see this in God’s providence of the last years? God has baptized this continent in blood to redeem it from the distinction of races, for humanity had come up towards God and God’s own thoughts. The world has advanced to a state where it could receive human fraternity at least in their political and social relations. Indeed, God has immersed the age in God’s own policies by this baptism of blood, the same as in Cromwell’s time God shocked the world into the conceptions of modern republics by cutting off the heads of kings. Thank God, this has all gone by; the last martyr to human liberties and emancipation of races we hope has already been offered up – the faithful, the honest Lincoln. There is neither black nor white, bond nor free, Jew nor Gentile, North nor South recognized in God’s providence for the coming age. This consummation belongs to the broad Gospel of Social Redemption which shall be preached not only in America, but in all the world, in the power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost, for most surely does the Holy Ghost bear witness to this Gospel in every event of the times. Take, for example, the last three great events of this continent, namely: the Emancipation of the Blacks, uniting races; the Atlantic Telegraph, marrying the Old and the New Worlds; and lastly, the Pacific Railroad, which not only binds the two halves of this continent into an inseparable Union, but which will send our modern civilization ’round into Asia, to regenerate humanity in the very Cradle of Empires. There shall be no more social slaveries in institutional forms, no more partitions erected, either of Churches or States, in this “New World”, to separate humanity and perpetuate religious and national hates; this is the “thus saith the Lord” to the age, not through one person, but through the best intellects of all humanity and great transpiring events We may little longer retain these pernicious distinctions and these wicked hates, but God in the social redemption of this continent, will overrule us all.