The accepted candidates were announced by name several
weeks previously, and friends and enemies everywhere were called
upon to testify all that they knew about them. On the first Sunday
in July, 1838, 1705 persons, formerly heathens, were baptised. They
were seated close together on the earth-floor in rows, with just
space between for one to walk, and Mr. Lyman and Mr. Coan passing
through them, sprinkled every bowed head, after which Mr. C.
admitted the weeping hundreds into the fellowship of the Universal
Church by pronouncing the words, "I baptise you all in the Name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." After this,
2400 converts received the Holy Communion. I give Mr. C.'s own
words concerning those who partook of it, "who truly and earnestly
repented of their sins, and steadfastly purposed to lead new lives."
"The old and decrepit, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the
withered, the paralytic, and those afflicted with divers diseases
and torments; those with eyes, noses, lips, and limbs consumed; with
features distorted, and figures depraved and loathsome: these came
hobbling upon their staves, or led and borne by others to the table
of the Lord. Among the throng you would have seen the hoary priest
of idolatry, with hands but recently washed from the blood of human
victims, together with thieves, adulterers, highway robbers,
murderers, and mothers whose hands reeked with the blood of their
own children.
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