The Hosanna Shout

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He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 
—Luke 8:8 

When the Mormons asked sculptor Cyrus Dallin
for a statue of their Angel Moroni to top the 
Salt Lake Temple, initially he refused by saying 
he didn’t believe in angels. 

Dallin was a Utahn, born in Springville—but he 
wasn’t Mormon. His parents were converted 
from Mormonism to Presbyterianism by 
missionaries from the east. 

Dallin’s mother, however, urged him to take the 
commission, which he later said brought him 
“closer to God” than anything he ever did. 
The face on his angel was hers. 

At noon, on April 6, 1892, when the capstone of
the temple was placed, over 50,000 Mormons 
shouted, “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna,” 
three times at the top of their lungs. 

The effect, according to witnesses, was 
deafening, electrifying, astounding—the ground 
shook. A protestant missionary in the crowd 
wrote this to her friends in the east: 

“It made one realize, very strongly, that 
Mormonism is yet a great force, that it is by 
no means ‘dying out.’” Dallin’s twelve-foot, 
gold-leafed Moroni was set later in the 

day—but he died a Unitarian, one of America’s 
greatest sculptors. (Google him; then 
re-read this poem, thoughtfully—prayerfully, 
if you can. Imagine those shouts.)