Description

I Could See It In My Mind’s Eye

Charles was born February 4, 1832, in Camberwell, London, England. He grew up a remarkable child. “It is said that he learned to read the Bible by the age of four.”  He was so talented at reading that his father would take him to the local pubs, place him on the table and have him read the newspapers to the patrons. They were delighted. At age 18, in 1850, he was taught the Gospel and baptized. He was the only member of his family to do so and because of that decision his mother, a widow and a devout Baptist, refused to have anything more to do with him. Not long after his baptism, Charles was called as a missionary serving in his native land of England. 

One of Charles’ descendants later wrote: 

“After having been accustomed to the luxuries of life, it indeed took a brave heart and great faith to leave it all and go out as a missionary without purse or scrip to find shelter and food the best he could, depending entirely upon the Lord. During all this time, in fact throughout his life, he had in his heart the deep sorrow of leaving his mother, who was a widow, and his sisters.”

While serving as a missionary he met Lucetta Stratford in 1854. They asked permission from mission leaders to be married but that permission did not come until 1855. Charles and Lucetta were married and he continued his labors as a missionary. 

In 1856, while serving in Essex, England, 

“Elder Penrose began to have frequent dreams of emigrating to the Great Basin. He longed to live with the Saints and was completely converted to the doctrine of gathering. While walking along a dusty Essex road one day, he began to contemplate the Zion he had only read and heard about, a Zion with wide streets and clear streams of water on each side, shadowed by rows of shade trees and banked by majestic mountains. “I could,” he wrote, “see it in my mind’s eye, and I so composed a song as I walked along the road.” When he arrived in Mundon, he held a cottage meeting and sang his newly written song to the tune of ‘Oh, Minnie, Dear Minnie, Come over the Lea.’”

These are the words written of Zion by the young missionary who had never seen it. 

O ye mountains high, where the clear blue sky
Arches over the vales of the free,
Where the pure breezes blow and the clear streamlets flow,
How I’ve longed to your bosom to flee!
O Zion! dear Zion! land of the free,
Now my own mountain home, unto thee I have come;
All my fond hopes are centered in thee.

Tho the great and the wise all thy beauties despise,
To the humble and pure thou art dear;
Tho the haughty may smile and the wicked revile,
Yet we love thy glad tidings to hear.
O Zion! dear Zion! home of the free,
Tho thou wert forced to fly to thy chambers on high,
Yet we’ll share joy and sorrow with thee.

In thy mountain retreat, God will strengthen thy feet;
Without fear of thy foes thou shalt tread;
And their silver and gold, as the prophets have told,
Shall be brought to adorn thy fair head.
O Zion! dear Zion! home of the free,
Soon thy towers shall shine with a splendor divine,
And eternal thy glory shall be.

That missionary was Elder Charles W. Penrose. In 1861, after serving as a missionary longer and more successfully than anyone else to that point, Charles and Lucetta Penrose and their three children, emigrated to Zion where they saw with their own eyes those mountains high that would be their mountain home for the rest of their days.

Sources:

https://ldshymns.com/lds-hymns-26-50/34-0-ye-mountains-high

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43041271?read-now=1&seq=5 https://rsc.byu.edu/prophets-apostles-last-dispensation/charles-william-penrose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Penrose