larger and more beautiful than the first, soon reared its spires
in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. This structure was destroyed by
fire, but the temple-building spirit was not to be quenched, and
in the vales of Utah today are four magnificent temple edifices.
The last completed, which was the first begun, is situated in
Salt Lake City, and is one of the wonders and beauties of that
city by the great salt sea.[2]

[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