Heber C Kimball Mission to England
In 1836 President Andrew Jackson abolished the National Bank, which he believed controlled the nation’s money market too tightly. It then became both necessary and possible for state and private banks to provide money and credit. The Mormons understandably believed that if they had their own bank they could build up Kirtland faster, so they organized one that same year.
The bank had difficulties from the beginning. The State of Ohio refused the Mormons a charter, and the bank was poorly underwritten. Heber, for example, subscribed to $50,000 worth of shares for only $15 in cash. In all, 200 church members subscribed to 79,420 shares, worth at face value approximately $3,954,000 at $50 par value, which was backed up with only $20,725 in cash. The bank, furthermore, was weakened by speculation, mismanagement, and dishonesty. The insecurity of the venture was obvious. Joseph Smith warned all concerned, but his warnings went unheeded. The society slipped toward failure and was caught in the Panic of 1837--an inflationary spiral brought on by too much paper money and credit. Hundreds of banks across the country, including the Kirtland Safety Society, suspended payment.
The failure of the bank caused much bitterness in Kirtland. Joseph Smith received the blame and was called a fallen prophet by many, including five of the Twelve Apostles. According to Heber, scarcely twenty people still considered him a prophet of God. The strength of the six-year-old church was at nadir. It was facing dissolution.
For Joseph to have marked time would have been fatal. If ever the young Prophet needed providential guidance, it was then. In answer to prayer, Joseph received inspiration to send Heber to open a mission in England--more than 5,000 miles away. While this must have seemed a puzzling response to financial disaster, England was socially and economically ready for a new religion, especially one for the common people. Several days later, early in June, Joseph found Heber in the temple precincts and whispered to him, “Brother Heber, the Spirit of the Lord has whispered to me, ‘Let my servant Heber go to England and proclaim my Gospel and open the door of salvation to that nation.’”
Heber was overwhelmed. To him, England was a land “famed throughout Christendom for light, knowledge and piety, and as the nursery of religion” and the English a “people whose intelligence is proverbial,” and he was well aware that others in the church were more educated and cultured than he and consequently better suited to work in England. Although he was unaware of it then, his natural simplicity was to be far more effective in England than any amount of polish.
Heber wanted Brigham Young to be his companion. Joseph Smith, however, needed the dynamic Young to help with matters in troubled Kirtland and gave Heber six other companions: Orson Hyde, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; Willard Richards, a church member for only six months; Joseph Fielding, a native of Bedfordshire, England, who had emigrated to Canada in 1832; and three other Canadians, John Goodson, Isaac Russell, and John Snyder. Fielding’s brother, an Independent (formerly Methodist) minister in Preston, England, to whom they had written about Mormonism, had invited Joseph Fielding to come and preach this new religion in his chapel.
Heber made his preparations and in less than ten days was ready to go. The men sailed from New York aboard the Garrick--a large sailing packet ship. The Garrick berthed 927 tons, about 100 tons larger than most packets and merchantmen, had the long, flat floor of the New Orleans packets, and was very fast. They each paid $18 to sail aboard her to England.
Heber capitalized on his natural talents. He was simple, sincere, and personal. Although he often preached publicly, he sought individuals in their private homes, and most of his converts were made in more intimate gatherings rather than in open meetings. While no copy of his early sermons survives, Brigham Young did record that he would say to someone, “Come my friend, sit down; do not be in a hurry.” Then he would begin to preach the Gospel in a plain, familiar manner, and “make his hearers believe everything he said, and make them testify of its truth, whether they believed it or not, asking them ‘Now you believe this? You see how plain the Gospel is? Come along, now,’” and he would lead them into the waters of baptism. He was popular. Sometimes people would stay with him all day and were often converted after one sermon. At the right moment, “he would put his arm around their necks, and say, ‘Come let us go down to the water.’” When his own sons became missionaries, he urged them to preach short and simple sermons, directed by the spirit, and told them, “I said but little, but what I did say went straight to the hearts of the honest.”
Their message spread quickly and within the week they were preparing to baptize nine converts on Sunday, July 30. Before conducting this first baptism, however, Heber experienced what he considered to be the hostility of Satan:
One Saturday evening, I was appointed by the brethren to baptize a number the next morning in the River Ribble, which runs through that place. By this time, the adversary of souls began to rage, and he felt a determination to destroy us before we had fully established the gospel in that land; and the next morning I witnessed such a scene of satanic power and influence as I shall never forget while memory lasts... I was struck with great force by some invisible power and fell senseless on the floor as If I had been shot, and the first thing that I recollected was, that I was supported by Brothers Hyde and Russell, who were beseeching the throne of grace in my behalf. They then laid me on the bed, but my agony was so great, that I could not endure, and I was obliged to get out, and fell on my knees and began to pray. I then sat on the bed and could distinctly see the evil spirits, who foamed and gnashed their teeth upon us. We gazed upon them about an hour and a half, and I shall never forget the horror and malignity depicted on the countenance of these foul spirits, and any attempt to paint the scene which then presented itself, or portray the malice and enmity depicted in their countenances would be vain.”
In spite of the terrors of the night, the baptism occurred in the morning, at ebb tide, in the River Ribble, which at Preston is estuarial. Thousands watched the event, which took place on the south side of present-day Avenham Park--tradition says near the Old Tram Bridge. George D Watt, racing to the river, had the honor of being the first into the water, where Heber baptized him by immersion. George’s mother, Mary Ann, was the first female baptized a Mormon in England. These first baptisms opened a floodgate of converts. By 1851, in spite of heavy emigration (over 7800), there were more than 42,000 Saints and 642 congregations in England.
Heber’s two missions to England, in 1837-38 and 1839-41, were his greatest contributions to the growth of the early church. The success of the British mission counterbalanced the Ohio apostasy and the Missouri persecution. The 4,700 converts who immigrated from England to Nauvoo by 1846 strengthened the church during the Illinois period, and the more than 19,000 British converts who went to Utah between 1847 and 1856 proved a necessary force in taming the desert and establishing a viable Kingdom in the Great Basin. Ironically during its formative years, the church drew most of its converts not from its native soil, but from England and Europe, where, initially at least, the missionaries met less opposition and were accorded more respect.