1901-06-24—Jersey City News—Mormon Baptism
Mormon Baptism
- Jersey City NJ News, June 24, 1901, p. 1
Mormon Baptism
Three Women Immersed in New York Bay on Saturday.
Morman elders baptized three women Saturday at Greenville. Wreathed in flowers, and robed in clinging white the converts waded waist deep into the waters of New York Bay.
Two of them are women already married and one is a maid. Two are converts from the ranks of the Protestant Episcopal Church, while the third professed no previous religious affiliation. Two are residents of Brooklyn, from which borough have come many of the recent Mormon recruits. The third is a resident of Manhattan.
Mount Zion is the bay shore resort of the faith healers. It is at the foot of Chapel avenue. Before it is New York Bay. Next to Mount Zion reservation stands a venerable stone cottage, 125 years old—a relic of early Revolutionary days, older, much older, than the Book of Mormon.
There were about thirty Mormon enthusiasts gathered in the venerable house at three o'clock Saturday afternoon for the "cottage meeting" that preceded the administering of the ordinance of baptism. Elder John S. McQuarrie, president of the Eastern States Mission, was not present, but he sent his greeting and his personal representative, Elder Baird, in his stead. Others who did attend were Elders C. W. Thomas, William J. Snow of Brooklyn; James B. Burrow, Samuel B. Neff, George A. Goff, C. Fletcher, T. W. Forsyth, John R. Porter of Newark, T. A. Thurman, D. C. Coulon and E. H. Eastmond. The last named, though an ordained elder in the Mormon Church, is a very young man, and is still a student in the Pratt Institute.
Brief addresses were delivered by Elders Thomas, Neff, Snow and Baird, who expounded the Mormon doctrines and explained the symbolism of the baptismal rite. All bore testimony to the divinity of the work in which they are engaged, and to the valid claims of Joseph Smith to rank as a true prophet of the living God. All professed to be teaching the same Gospel as that taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles.
Elder Baird, in his peroration, exclaimed:—"When this world can overcome the testimony of men and women ready to toil and sacrifice their time, their energies and their means for what they know to be right and true, and, if necessary, to die for it, then and not until then can Mormonism be stamped out."
At the conclusion of the cottage service the three candidates made their simple preparations for immersion. Over her clothing each "sister," assisted by the older converts of her sex, adjusted a long, flowing gown of white, loosely girdled at the waist, much after the manner of a tea gown, of unpretentious material and cut.
Elders Snow and Thomas, the former a long, angular man, much more than six feet tall, had meantime prepared to enter the water. They donned no priestly robes or even waterproof garments. Simplicity, like that of the early church, is one of the foremost of their tenets. Arrayed in the ordinary clothing of a clergyman—long, black, high collared coat and black trousers, with a standing collar and black strip tie at the throat—they stepped down to the narrow landing stage in front of Young's boat house. Though they had evidently devoted somewhat warn clothing to the sacrifice, their appearance was neat and thoroughly professional.
From the end of the frame landing stage projected a small float, which at the four o'clock status of the ebb tide was rocking gently in about three feet of water. The elders, before entering the water, stood with their associates and the proselytes in an effective group of black and white, and their voices rising in unison as they stood on the sloping green shore, rose in the anthem, "Oh, My Father!"
After the singing of the anthem Elders Snow and Thomas, with as much dignity as was consistent with the necessary flop and splash, stepped off the end of the float into three feet of water, and the first convert, a Mrs. Ayen, with an expression of exaltation on her broad, honest features, was led down the landing stage toward them by the attending elders. The officiating elders assisted her into the water, and then without further ceremony Elder Snow, his tall, lean form towering above the plump figure of the novitiate, led her gently into deeper water. Raising one hand above her head, while the other rested lightly upon her back, Elder Snow said:—
"Sister, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!"
With a slight backward movement the Elder dipped the convert until the waters closed momentarily above her face, and then, raising her easily in his strong arms he mopped her face and hair with a handkerchief and returned her to her friends, who waited at the foot of the landing stage.
Of the two who followed, Elder Thomas immersed one and Elder Snow the other. The same ritual was employed as in the case of Mrs. Ayen.
