Book Review: A Barn Full of Angels: The Spiritual World and Pioneer Journey of Zerah Pulsipher, by Chad L. Nielsen

This book is a great example of what I consider to be the high-quality scholarship that Greg Kofford Books encourages. The author marshals many great sources in putting it together. He summarizes a lot of modern scholarship well, deftly incorporating it as context to Zerah Pulsipher's story. He briefly covers a lot of controversies that touched on Pulsipher's life without getting bogged down by them, and only making judgments where warranted. Overall, the narrative stays well-focused, well-paced, and extremely interesting.

One of the pleasures of this book comes from the richness of its sources -- we not only hear from Zerah, but from several family members as we live through his experiences. Each chapter starts out with a short, picturesque summary of its content, and then fills out its story of Zerah Pulsipher's life with a satisfying level of detail for the lay-reader, and with a bibliography that will help anyone seeking further knowledge.

I think the author did a great job hitting his goals of writing a book that would be simultaneously meaningful to the scholarly community, the Pulsipher family descendants, and modern LDS. I would heartily recommend it to anyone who wants a better understanding of what lived Mormonism was like in the 19th century.

I asked for a digital copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, but did not receive any cash or discounts or other incentives to influence my opinions stated here.

Additional notes:

errata and corrigenda: (note that I use the Google Book page numbers, which are about 16 pages ahead of the physical book pages due to preface material, and book footnotes have become digital book endnotes)

- chapter 1, page 21, under "First Marriage and Visitation" section. "The Latter Day Glory" -- this is completely wrong so far as I can see! I don't know how such a mistake happened. The earliest record of the hymn I can find is 1790, "Mlllennium", in the book "Society hymns, original and selected on evangelical and experimental subjects" (https://hymnary.org/hymn/SHOS1790/XXXVII), over a decade before it gets attributed to John Leland. The source quoted in footnote 20 -- see https://hymnary.org/hymn/LCBS1811/166 -- actually calls the hymn "On the Millenium". Don't know how this mistake got in here

- page 98, chapter 7, middle of "Duties" section, "Smith'sf" should read "Smith's"

- page 101, chapter 7, footnote 18, there is an access date here and not elsewhere

 - page 108, "Succession Crisis" section, "associate President" is used of Hyrum. See the term "associate president" here --> https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/back/ecclesiastical-officers-and-church-appointees-1839-1844. Using the term in this context is ahistorical since it never applied to Hyrum during his life

- page 110, chapter 8, footnote 21 should be merged with 20

- page 114, text for footnote 37 -- this is quoted again, but for footnote 38. Text should have been consolidated

- page 122, "$84,000 in 2025" -- this kind of figure should be footnoted with a note about the strengths and limitations of dollar comparisons, and a more multidimensional chart exhibiting the nuances of what such money could buy would be even better

- page 136, chapter 9, footnote 37, "1846" should be "1845"

- page 136, chapter 9, footnote 38, "1846" should be "1845"

 - page 143, chapter 10, "Zion" section: not sure Nielsen should claim Zerah had a "deeply held belief" that the Saints "had to gather together" to perform priesthood ordinances. He sites a single, late address by BY to stake this claim. This explanation smacks of the presentism the author is usually good at avoiding and misses the more immediate reasons that are given elsewhere

- page 172, chapter 12, right before "The Utah War" section, "1837-1858" should read "1857-1858"

- page 183, chapter 12, "The Move South" section, "Nova Sccotia" should read "Nova Scotia" (checked original source)

- page 183, chapter 12, "The Move South" section, "then to" should read "than to" (checked quoted and original source -- https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/8f5e1442-8018-4470-aaaa-cd16c715c401/0/22)

- page 207, chapter 14, near the end, "sent...as a local manager to preside". Actually, as documented here, his family chose him to preside, not the top leadership

- page 208, chapter 14, footnote 4, "which the mature" should read "which to mature" (checked original source -- https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p16003coll15/id/780)

- page 208, chapter 14, footnote 8, "1871" pretty sure it should be 1861

- page 213, chapter 15 intro, "January 31" -- 1870. would be nice to know up front maybe instead of just at the end of the chapter

- there are some minor discrepencies in some footnote citations, such as chapter 9, footnote 32, Will Bagley is cited as the author of "The Whites Want Every Thing", but chapter 10, footnote 31, Will Bagley is cited as the editor of the book. Also, sources like the Historian's Office, general church minutes seem inconsistent in how they're referenced throughout the footnotes. See chapter 8, footnote 30, vs chapter 11, footnote 4, vs chapter 15, footnote 34, for instance

- page 248, "Pulsipher Family Book" (cited 7 times throughout book), at least in the later editions, is called "Pulsipher Family History Book"

other notes:

Introduction: Excellent overview of author’s scholarly yet sympathetic approach to the history, and good explanation of the broader historical value of the focused subject

Chapter 1: Off to a good start with a solid sketch of his early life and family

Chapter 2: A great recounting not only of Pulsipher’s conversion, but that of a large portion of the Spafford community’s Freewill Baptists and the aftermath

 - footnote 24: A welcome occasion where Nielsen corrects overly eager authors for "playing fast and loose with the primary sources"

Chapter 3: Takes us from 1832 to 1835, tracking Zerah Pulsipher’s early days as an Elder in the church and what we know of his movements and role. It deeply contextualizes not only these early days of church history but also how their beliefs and behaviors fit into their wider American context. Readers will also be interested in the narration of Wilford Woodruff’s conversion and an early church exorcism saga

Chapter 4: Covers 1835- early 1838, but is a little sparse on biographical detail, and instead focuses on more general facts. We know Pulsipher moved to Kirtland spring 1835, took part in the 1836 endowments and was made a seventy, then started his Canada mission in the fall of 1837, with virtually no details in between

 - "Kirtland" section (page 54), text before footnote 5: Another welcome occasion where Nielsen warns the reader against presentist misconceptions of his topic, skillfully summarizing contemporary scholarship for the lay reader while also not getting bogged down in detail

 - "Endowment" section (page 58), end: "each person had a glass of wine" and a big hunk of bread, after fasting. I've always been curious about the accusations of drunkenness associated with the Kirtland temple / School of the Prophets. Fasting and then having a large glass of wine on a nearly empty stomach will do it

Chapter 5: Covers the tumultuous events that led to the desertion of Kirtland somewhat succinctly and without much speculation. Focuses on Pulsipher’s role in the Kirtland Camp migration toward Missouri in 1838

 - "Conflict" section (page 66): the Fanny Alger affair "may have been an early, unannounced form of plural marriage". Don Bradley notwithstanding, I think there's a:

Research opportunity: How did Joseph Smith's way of tying "revelation" to his own impressions and feelings intersect with his experiences of sexual attraction? I think some of the legwork has been done in showing how he tended to frame his "proposals" to women, including Emma, in terms of "this is what God wants and needs to carry out His work", so that rejecting Joseph always meant rejecting God. But I'm not sure I've seen everything come together quite right

 - "Conflict" section (page 67), end: Nielsen rightly notes that the KSS bank was out of capital after being open for only 22 days. He doesn't mention how they continued printing and signing notes for half a year after this, nor how the nationwide banking panic happened months AFTER the KSS bank technically failed. So many modern narratives still get this wrong, but that's not the focus of this book. At least the breadcrumb is there

 - "Kirtland Camp" section (page 75), end: reasonable possibility that the Kirtland camp was outfitted with the help of passing bogus KSS notes, but ends with "it is unclear what happened":

Research opportunity: to what extent did the Kirtland camp pass off bad KSS notes to enable them to buy teams and provisions for their journey? It would be neat to find more substance behind the rumor of Kirtland camp use of bogus notes — especially given the continuity of rumors surrounding mormons and counterfeiting that follow them through the Nauvoo era

 - "The Destroyer" section (page 79), end: Zerah "saw sickness not as a random misfortune, but as a spiritual battle". This tendency to see everything with only a single lens, and to be blinded to alternate possibilities, seems like a good theme to apply more broadly both within and outside of Mormonism. In the words of Abraham Maslow, "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail"

Chapter 6: Covers Zerah Pulsipher's brief winter in Missouri, 1838-9, and some of the evidence of long-term traumatic impact it had on him, and the church as a whole. The beginning summary is very similar to the main chapter text after footnote 24, so it would sound better rewritten

 - "Hawn's Mill and the Fall of Far West" section (page 88): rightly calls out the victim blaming that seems to be a Pulsipher family pattern. See the above quote about hammers and nails

Chapter 7: Covers a couple years in Lima / Nauvoo, with some reference to tensions surrounding the role of the Seventies envisioned by JS versus the Twelve

 - "Duties" section (page 100), tail end: Nielsen directly includes his perspective, with an interesting insight about the quoted text

Chapter 8: Covers the death of JS to the leaving of Nauvoo, including the expansion of the quorums of Seventy from 3.5 to 35

 - "Divisions and Persecutions Renewed" section (page 105): the author claims "many ideas...exist in revelations from the early 1830s". No footnote for this notion. Whereas I would note that JS actually cites some of his 1842 BoA work as the source for some of his innovations along these lines -- see Thomas Bullock, 16 June 1844, "I learned it by translating the papyrus now in my house"..."intelligences exist one above ano^{r.} that there is no end to it"..."J. C had a fa^{r.} you may suppose that he had a Fa^{r.} also" (https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-16-june-1844-a-as-reported-by-thomas-bullock/3)

 - "Succession Crisis" section (page 110): no mention that Brigham Young also used “first apostles, THEN prophets” reasoning from Ephesians to convince the crowd. Also, Young and the twelve were central to the missionary efforts that brought many members to the church in the first place, which Alex Baugh has indicated in his classes as a probable factor for the sequence of events that day

 - too much space was probably spent on the mantle story in the main text. However:

Research opportunity: scholarship on the BY mantle story seems super out of date and in need of a refresh. Somebody, line up accounts by date, by detail, and so far as possible by geographic settlement pattern of the originator, to allow for careful re-examination of the witnesses

Chapter 9: Covers the travails (indian relations, privations, horrible weather), ironies (Missouri as a vital lifeline, Mormon battalion, Zerah's leadership style) and highlights (BY's sense of humor, Pulsipher's 'adoption' to Wilford Woodruff, American bison) of the 1.5 year journey from Nauvoo to Utah

 - "Leaving Nauvoo" section (page 119): "falsely charged with counterfeiting currency". Well, the KSS fiasco certainly didn't help

- "garden grove" (page 122): I think this is roughly the halfway point to Winter Quarters

Chapter 10: Covers the early days of settling the Salt Lake Valley roughly up to the Mormon Reformation, and Zerah's participation in the industry and commerce that enabled their survival. It also covers some of the conflicts with the peoples that were already there and whom the Mormon settlers were displacing

Chapter 11: Details a lot of Zerah Pulsipher's teachings and views concerning the church and righteous living. It repeats a lot of quotes from other chapters but includes a lot more than they do. It also covers the rise of polygamy as a central concern for the Pulsipher household in the mid 1850s, including Zerah's marriage at age 67 to a 13 year old (likely due to intense, negative pressure from leadership during the “Mormon Reformation”), and her pregnancy the following year

 - "Family Meetings and Sermons" section (page 154): good quote: "We have had many revelations. Let us improve upon them"

 - "Plural Marriage" section (page 160): bad quote: "A man will love his wives just in proportion to their acts of kindness & good works"

 - "The Mormon Reformation" section (page 162): scary quote: "there is hardly a girl 14 years old in Utah but what is married or just going to be". Also, "only thirteen years old when she married Zerah Pulsipher"

Chapter 12: Takes us through the Mormon Reformation to the aftermath of the Utah War, and the perspectives and roles played by the Pulsiphers. Although Nielsen deals with Pulsipher relations with Native Americans elsewhere, he does not broach the broader topic of Brigham Young's behaviors relating to them much here

 - "Conflict with the United States" section (page 171): "The tactless memorandum" -- colorful paragraph, puts blame on both sides. I would note that Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom, page 130 shows that Brigham Young anticipated and began preparing for armed conflict with the US as early as December 1856

 - "The Utah War" section (page 172): "There had been hints that this turn of events was coming". Again, Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom, page 125 -- Young would have known the news for at least a month before the Big Cottonwood Canyon celebration. The event was staged to make it more dramatic and "fulfill" the 10 year prophecy to the day

 - "Zerah Pulsipher's Recollections of the War" section (page 186): "nerve for confronting southern secession". Nielsen doesn't really make it clear here that the threat of Southern secession was one reason why Buchanan felt he had no choice BUT to respond to the LDS provocations with force

Chapter 13: Covers plural marriage in considerable detail, including how the process evolved over time. It plausibly casts Pulsipher's reprimand for performing a couple unauthorized sealings and rebaptism and ordination to High Priest as more a "convenient opportunity" the brethren took advantage of to shift his calling than an ecclesiastical punishment per se. He rightly notes that rebaptism had different connotations in the 19th century than it had later on

 - "The Punishment" section (page 203): interesting quote: 'the Presidents of the Seventy had "met with a seers stones to see what they could see"'

Chapter 14: Covers the Pulsipher clan's calling to move to southern Utah and initial settlement of Shoal Creek

Chapter 15: Summarizes details of the penultimate stage of Zerah Pulsipher's life in southern Utah

Chapter 16: Concludes with Zerah's death and the final trajectories of his wives' lives

Book Review: Unlocking the Chinese Realm: Apostle David O. McKay and Latter-day Saint Encounters in East Asia, 1852-1921, by Reid L. Neilson

This book is not really aptly named, since Mormons didn't really "unlock" anything related to China in the major period covered by the book until they established a mission presence in Hong Kong in the 1950's. Nevertheless, the author is an excellent historian and establishes and contextualizes the cross section of Mormon history and east Asia very well. Because the history is rather sparse, the author is able to flesh out what history there is with plenty of detail and historical perspective, including sociological reasons why the Mormons were so successful in the islands of the Pacific and not elsewhere in east Asia.

The writing is easy to follow and the book is well-footnoted (including some notes I wish were in the main text) and references a valuable collection of sources one may go to for further research into the topics it covers. It also contains transcriptions of many of the central events and documents the book covers in its several appendices.

The only major place I would say the author stumbles is where he veers into devotional, rather than scholarly, territory. This, unfortunately, includes the "highlight", or main focus of the book -- dedicatory prayers. The author tries to turn the practice into an "ordinance" with a recognizable and unchanging core. Fortunately, this problem is mostly isolated to chapters 4 and 5, and also in spite of his rhetoric, he marshals enough sources to basically make the opposite point he is trying to make.

It can be frustrating when misguided religiosity turns otherwise sound scholarship into slop. However, given that a big part of the audience is going to be active Mormons, this is probably a selling point rather than the opposite for a lot of folks.

I asked for a digital copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, but did not receive any cash or discounts or other incentives to influence my opinions stated here.

Additional notes:

errata / corrigenda:

  - page 16, "A decade ago" is referring to 15 Mar 2013. See https://web.archive.org/web/20130318012517/https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/china-website-mormons

  - page 16, www.mormonsandchina.org -- this is no longer active. It redirects to https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/China?lang=eng, which is also wrong and the capitalization of "China" will give a 404 error at the moment. The correct url to visit is https://china.churchofjesuschrist.org/ which will redirect to https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/china?lang=eng. The content has mostly not changed since 2013

  - page 16, "sixty" should have been "fifty"

  - page 22, footnote 5, "1901" should be "1921"

  - page 28, "traveled in Utah" should read "traveled to Utah"

  - page 51, footnote 13, "See" has a weird superscripted "S"

  - page 51, footnote 26, "Foreign Kingdom" should actually read "A Foreign Kingdom"

  - page 51, footnote 47, spurious comma in ",."

  - page 57, "true claims" should read "truth claims"

  - page 79, footnote 5, "Stepehn" should read "Stephen"

  - page 79, footnote 10, "Neil" should read "Niel"

  - page 79, footnote 51. "The Wilford Woodruff Papers" needs consistent formatting

  - page 99, "China were the scenery" should read "China where the scenery"

  - page 110, "three priesthood quorums". the author fails to contextualize what Seventies were and how many quorums there are and which quorum presides

  - page 123, "Granted noted" should read "Grant noted"

  - page 152, footnote 24, "on page that" -- page number is missing

  - page 225, "Gunson, Neil" should read "Gunson, Niel"

other notes:

Chapter 1 details the first mission to China, which took about 15 months to fully conclude although only two months were actually spent (fruitlessly) in Hong Kong. It highlights the sociological reasons the Mormons were completely out of their depth in spite of the successes of other Christians, and in contrast to the success of the Mormons in the Pacific islands.

Research opportunity: He identifies a meaningful hole in the scholarly record -- who wrote what, and plagiarized what, in the periodicals of the era?

Chapter 2 continues the author's contextualization and summary of scholarship related to the east asian presence and the scant attention paid to it by the Mormon church in Hawaii, California and Utah in the nineteenth century.

Research opportunity: He identifies a meaningful hole in our understanding of the Japanese presence in Utah between circa 1890 and 1920.

Page 71, the author says "the US government sent 2,500 troops to Utah to take control of the territory by force" and uses the words "federal assault". It's unfortunate the author didn't contextualize this more -- the 1856-7 "Reformation" and the apocalyptic attitudes that were a precursor to the tension and violence. David Bigler's "Forgotten Kingdom" makes it clear that Brigham Young cast the first stone, as it were, by interfering with the federal mail long before the US contemplated sending troops in to restore order.

Chapter 3 details the opening of missionary efforts in Japan in the early 20th century. It again contextualizes the various sociological reasons why Mormon missionaries met with much less success than their Protestant counterparts. The words rigid, inflexible, uneducated, racist and nonadaptive come to mind. Furthermore, the author points out that the opening decades of the century were a "golden age" for Christian missionary work in China, and it was almost entirely overlooked and missed by the LDS. The book uses Alma O. Taylor's journal entries to narrate his trip into Korea and China in 1910 to prospect for future missionary opportunities, and while detailed and enjoyable, for some reason it focuses mainly on a two week period in the interior of china, despite Taylor's 9 weeks total spent traveling. It highlights his negative assessment of China and the lack of church resources to build necessary mission infrastructure as major factors behind the church's failure to do anything about China in this period.

Footnote 6 is disappointing in that the author calls the authors of religiously motivated speculative books "researchers" and affords them the same credibility and space as the much more legitimate research and researchers that fill most of the footnotes and part of this one.

Footnote 35, noting that the grain the church sent to China in 1907 came too late to be useful, totally should've been in the main text. Kind of sad but funny.

Research opportunity: So far as I know, Alma O. Taylor's japanese language efforts haven't been evaluated by any modern expert, so while his accomplishments are listed here, their evaluation is not and this is another opportunity for future research. The author does mention that the Japanese mission only had 35 converts after roughly a decade of labor.

Chapter 4 veers into a ridiculous devotional tone as it covers the topic of dedicatory prayers (frequently devotionally referred to here as a "dedicatory ordinance"). The author not only fails to separate the devotional from the scholarly in his words and choice of sources, but the quality of his work degrades. Page 112, "by inspiration", and page 114, "most profound", are not scholarly words. Footnote 20, the author notes that he will be ignoring at least 5 occasions of 'dedicatory prayers' that don't follow the pattern that he claims (1850 hawaii, 1853 south africa, 1854 australia, 1886 canada, 1905 greece). "Evangelism began to move steadily forward in Mexico" (page 121) following a dedicatory prayer -- the author gives no footnotes or numerical evidence to make this case. This is, quite unfortunately, a common problem when active mormons touch on sensitive topics such as priesthood organization and authority. Assertions about priesthood function have taken the place of historical rigor.

Another instance is that the author claims some very specific, priesthoody things about the general structure of the dedicatory prayer -- in spite of this structure not existing for the many early prayers that he proceeds to quote and outline. It seems (see work on similar processes by Jonathan Stapley and Kristine Wright, for instance) that the formalization and institutionalization of the meaning and purpose of dedicatory prayers and their association with the concept of ordinances, has a long and stuttered developmental history. The author interpolates and inserts his framework into his descriptions of the primary sources he works with, in spite of much of the framework not being found in the primary sources he quotes. His best example of a dedicatory prayer following the pattern of Orson Hyde's first 1841 prayer is Heber Grant's 1901 prayer, which was given shortly after Grant explicitly read a copy of Hyde's 1841 prayer. Grant also explicitly stated that he had never read Hyde's prayer before, so clearly there wasn't a pattern to these prayers in the 19th century. This is also the only real hint we get about the extent of membership-wide and apostolic-wide awareness of a dedicatory prayer tradition. The author's documentation of Francis Lyman's frequent dedicatory prayers in 1902-3 (alongside footnote 46) seems to make it clear that Lyman's approach was innovative and inspired by a bit of wanderlust, rather than necessarily following previously established patterns (he seemed to make the process of "turning the key" and opening gospel doors more aspirational than effort-based compared to his predecessors).

The author presents, by his count, 19 "dedicatory prayers" as his bedrock evidence - 9 in europe and the near east, 1 in mexico, 1 in japan, and 7 in palestine. By my count from the book, we had 1 prayer in Palestine by Orson Hyde in 1841, 3 suspect prayers by Erastus Snow and John Taylor in 1850 (Denmark, France, Italy) and 1 in 1851 (Switzerland) that do NOT sound like dedicatory prayers as defined by the author, a 6th prayer in Mexico in 1881 that sounds like a dedicatory prayer but doesn't follow the wording pattern that might warrant calling it an "ordinance", and 4 additional not-specifically-documented-here prayers in Palestine. Then we get Heber Grant's 1901 (Japan) prayer modeled after Hyde, and Francis Lyman's rush of 8 dedicatory prayers in 1902-3 (Belgium, Palestine twice, Finland, Russia twice, Poland. maybe the author is also counting Norway?). The 1921 prayer by David McKay makes for the 20th such prayer. After all this the author jarringly asserts, "Offering prayers over different nations has long been an important part of the work of Latter-day Saint apostles" (page 129). Um, didn't the author just exhaustively demonstrate that it was often more an after-thought? Also, the only places they prayed over were non-anglophone mission fields (not including the 35% before 1922 that were over Palestine and not really mission-field dedications).

"live until the Second Coming, like John the Beloved according to the New Testament" (page 123). This assertion is a Mormon belief, not a common Christian one and not what the New Testament / John 21:23 actually says.

Chapter 5 describes David McKay's dedication of China. To me this represents the further solidification of patterns that were once much more fluid -- the "institutionalization" of earlier charismatic and more spontaneous behaviors described in chapter 4. Although the author's framing is unfortunate (including carryovers from the previous chapter -- eg, on page 152 the quoted text uses the phrase "dedication services" to describe the dedicatory prayers performed by Cannon and McKay, but the author again changed this to "dedicatory ordinance" when describing it himself), it nonetheless provides an excellent overview and contextualization of the experience.

Chapter 6 describes the rest of the McKay's tour around the world and some later events that reflect the theme of the book. It ends on a high note regarding Russell Nelson's aspirational announcement of a future temple in Shanghai.

The chapter opens with some questionable language -- the author describes the visit to Tahiti as brief but "profound" (page 153) -- without justifying his use of that word. The book also neglects to mention that the Tahitian mission president wasn't able to meet with them during their brief stay at that time. Sounds less, profound, and more, disappointing.

More suspect language appears on pages 161 and 163 where the author describes Matthew Cowley's dedication of China as rededication, even though the passages he quotes clearly suggest this is a dedication and opening of China "for missionary work" (page 163), not a rededication or reopening, in spite of their awareness of McKay’s 1921 dedication. Clearly some historical dedicatory prayers had a more aspirational function, but by this point in LDS church history they seem to largely have had a routine ecclesial function, as further demonstrated by the book's description of Joseph Fielding Smith's assignment to dedicate several lands for missionary work in 1955. It was only in 1959 that Mark Peterson dedicated Formosa and in his prayer used the words "rededicate" and "rededication" for apparently the first time (page 164). James Faust performed another aspirational rededication prayer in Beijing in 1979.

Appendix A is a delightful transcription (from Pitman shorthand) of Hosea Stout's Christmas 1853 tabernacle recitation of his experience going to China and back. It makes for a good addendum to chapter 1.

Appendix B contains about half of Alma Taylor's lengthy report of his 7 weeks in China. It makes for a good addendum to chapter 3.

Appendix C contains David McKay's 9 Jan 1921 prayer text (as reconstructed on 23 Feb that year from Hugh Cannon's notes).　It makes for a good addendum to chapter 5. Of note is his phrase that "the time has come" (page 198) for the gospel to come to the nation, and that "we implore thee" to "open the door for the preaching of thy Gospel from one end of this realm to the other" (page 199).

Appendix D contains Hugh Cannon's widely published account of the event in 1921. Another good addendum to chapter 5. Church members would have read of "The horde of ragged and revolting mendicants, grimy porters and insistent jinrikisha men" (page 200) and how "at no very distant day the light of the gospel may penetrate to present overwhelming darkness" (page 203).

Appendix E contains David McKay's Sept 1921 "Ah Ching" improvement era article, describing the Chinese-Samoan convert he met as described in chapter 6. Would've been nice if the author had included additional biographical information about "Tagaloa" Hiau Ah Ching. On family search (record KW8W-4F8) you can find that he was born 19 Jan 1854, married Fa'aoso around 1890, had son Afa / Arthur on 4 June 1896 (widowed around maybe that time -- 1-2 years before second marriage), baptised Sunday 3 April 1898 (already as local chief) after being "converted" the day previous, married Fa'atupu on 4 April 1898 (family search currently records this as 5 April, but a journal entry shows this is wrong), and died on 19 Jan 1923.

Appendix F contains a chronology that includes events from this book and whole bunch of events relating to the church in east Asia not really covered in the book.