Literary Lorenzo Snow #1: Provo Sunday School

I love the first lesson in the Lorenzo Snow manual. It seems like Snow’s love of learning is second to none among latter-day Prophets. And his statements about learning are wonderful:

“Though we may now neglect to improve our time, to brighten up our intellectual faculties, we shall be obliged to improve them sometime. We have got so much ground to walk over, and if we fail to travel to-day, we shall have so much more to travel to-morrow.”

While learning is certainly not limited to what happens in a school, the following poem captures a part of what Lorenzo Snow is talking about. Its author, Henry Maiben (1819-1883) was an English convert of 1850 who emigrated to Utah in 1853. In Salt Lake Maiben was known as a painter, artist and decorator and was active in the theater there, appearing in the Salt Lake Theater’s opening performance in 1862. Sometime between 1868 and 1870, Maiben moved his family to Provo where he was part owner in a drug store called Pyne and Maiben Drug Company. He was later owner of Maiben Glass and Paint, and was hired to paint the steeple in the original Provo Tabernacle. By the early 1880s he moved back to Salt Lake, where he died unexpectedly in 1883.

In addition to several poems that appeared in Church magazines, Maiben wrote two hymns that were included in LDS hymnals; As children of Zion our voices we’ll raise, and Come, Mormons, All attention pay, but neither has appeared in a hymnal since before 1951.

Given the subject of the following song, it seems likely that Maiben was involved with the Sunday School in Provo, perhaps as its superintendent.

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Provo Sunday School

by Henry Maiben

Our Sunday School in Provo, is a splendid place for youth,

Likewise for those of riper years this might be said, forsooth,

For there we’re taught the Gospel, which embraces every truth;

Then come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

Chorus:

Then come! oh come! respond to this our call,

Then come! oh, come! our school is free to all,

No matter what your age or sex, or whether short or tall,

Oh! come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

We’ve classes for beginners, in their first attempt to read,

Then as the pupils, step by step, in learning’s path proceed

We’ve teachers Who are competent in every grade to lead;

Then come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

Chorus

The Bible, Book of Mormon, and good books of every kind

Wherein are found instructions lit to elevate the mind,

Are read, and then commented on, by those who feel inclined

To come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

Chorus

The principles of language and its grammar we are taught,

Including composition, or connecting word with thought,

That we may know how to express our feelings as we ought,

Then come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

Chorus

We sing the songs of Zion too, and praise the living God,

For He sustains the Priesthood, and controls the “Iron Rod.”

And by His Spirit we discern the path that should be trod,

Then come and join our Sunday School in Provo.

Chorus

Juvenile Instructor, v6 n21, 14 October 1871, p. 168

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Maiben’s ideas do fit with Lorenzo Snow’s teachings. He portrays personal progression when he says “We’ve classes for beginners, in their first attempt to read, / Then as the pupils, step by step, in learning’s path proceed.” He also points out the importance of language, saying:

The principles of language and its grammar we are taught,

Including composition, or connecting word with thought,

That we may know how to express our feelings as we ought,

This point is, I think, not made enough. Where at Mormon culture provides some opportunity for members to speak in public and “express our feelings as we ought,” somehow members aren’t normally very good at it. Opportunities are spread so think that only leaders get enough practice to get comfortable.

But Maiben’s final stanza is the most on message for this lesson, echoing in some ways what Snow says (often years after Maiben said them):

We sing the songs of Zion too, and praise the living God,

For He sustains the Priesthood, and controls the “Iron Rod.”

And by His Spirit we discern the path that should be trod,

Indeed, His Spirit is the necessary addition to learning for us to “discern the path that should be trod,” which seems to me a somewhat hard to find quality today, when it has become so easy to find reasons to doubt.