The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spencer's Letters, by Orson Spencer
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Title: Spencer's Letters
Letters Exhibiting the Most Prominent Doctrines of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Author: Orson Spencer
Release Date: May 31, 2014 [EBook #45846]
Language: English
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BY ORSON SPENCER, A.B.,
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of L.D.S., in Europe.
IN REPLY
TO THE REV. WILLIAM CROWELL, A.M.,
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
"THE WISE SHALL UNDERSTAND."—Daniel.
LIVERPOOL: PUBLISHED BY ORSON SPENCER,
39, TORBOCK STREET.
1848.
LIVERPOOL: PRINTED BY R. JAMES, SOUTH CASTLE STREET.
LETTER FROM THE REV. W. CROWEL A. M.
GENERAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
IMMEDIATE REVELATION
ON FAITH
ON WATER BAPTISM
THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST
APOSTACY FROM THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH
THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH
THE TRUE AND LIVING GOD
THE PRIESTHOOD
ON GATHERING
THE LATTER-DAY JUDGMENTS
ON THE RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS
MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS ON RESTITUTION
SUMMARY AND FINAL APPEAL
LINES, ON READING THE AUTHOR'S FIRST LETTER IN THE SERIES, BY MISS E. R. SNOW
The Author has, for some time, felt desirous to see the most prominent subjects of the faith of Latter-day Saints brought before the public in continuous order, in one volume.
This series of Letters was called forth by the letter of inquiry prefixed, from the pen of the Rev. William Crowel. This gentleman was at the time, and still is (for ought I know) Editor of "The Christian Watchman," Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.—a leading paper of the Baptist denomination in the United States.
The Editor was also a clergyman of high repute for learning and piety in that denomination of people, and missionary elect to a foreign land. From the elevated standing of this gentleman, and the nature of his inquiries being such as have come from many other distinguished acquaintance, relative to the author's change of views, it seemed wisdom, after consultation with the Prophet and Patriarch (since martyred), to publish a brief reply to his minute and interesting inquiries.
The author was extensively known in the New England and Middle States, as a Preacher of the Baptist denomination. Reference for his character is given to his Excellency George N. Briggs, Governor of the State of Massachusetts, by whom he was once invited to take the pastoral charge of the church where his Excellency resided, and of which he was a member; also to G. Read, Esq., Connecticut, and Eliphalet Nott, D.D., L.L.D., President of Union College, New York, under whose Presidency he graduated in 1824; and also to N. Kendrick D.D., President of Hamilton Literary and Theological College, from whence the author graduated in 1829. The records of both these institutions will show that the author held the FIRST grade of honourable distinction at the time he left them.
These references are not given from vanity, but from the fact that almost every man's character is traduced and villified, the moment he embraces the faith once delivered to the Saints.
The present volume constitutes the third re-print, several thousand copies having been exhausted in a tract form, the present edition, in book form, was repeatedly inquired after.
The edition has been got out in the midst of multiplied engagements. Truth in studied brevity has been aimed at, without seeking the least embellishment of diction.
If there has, in part of the volume, been the appearance of severity towards the religions of modern Christianity, it has been prompted solely by the impulse of truth, in order to demolish error, before the Destroyer of the Gentiles should expose iniquity with irretrievable loss to its victims.
Scripture references have been studiously omitted, believing that honest minds would readily find ample support from the scriptures for all that is contained in this little volume. It is, therefore, commended to the faith and cordial reception of all who desire the salvation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in sincerity and truth.
ORSON SPENCER.
Liverpool, January 1, 1848.
Boston, October 21, 1842.
MY DEAR SIR,—On the confidence of an old acquaintance and kindly intercourse, I have long wished to address a friendly line to you; for, I am sure, you have not forgotten the pleasant, though brief, interviews which we enjoyed at Middlefield. Since I saw you there, a great change has taken place, as I have been led to believe, in your religious views, and a corresponding one in your relations and circumstances; still, I trust, that you have not forgotten the claims of friendship and acquaintance.
I need not tell you how much I became interested in your family—so young and so full of promise—nor of the strong confidence which I reposed in your piety and conscientious regard for the will of God. I would not allow myself to believe that you would profess what you did not sincerely believe, nor that you would believe without good reasons; still the change in your views excited in me no little surprise. I have, therefore, been desirous to receive from yourself an account of your views, and the reasons of your change. I am also desirous to obtain from one in whom I can confide—one who is acquainted with the facts—and one who is not prejudiced against it at the outset, some account of the faith which you have embraced; of the personal character, doctrines, claims, and influence of him who is called the leader—I mean Joseph Smith.
Does he claim to be inspired? Is he a man of prayer? a man of pure life? a man of peace? Where is he now? Does he appear at the head of his troops as a military commander? What is the nature of the worship among you, and wherein does it differ from that of religious people with whom you have been acquainted elsewhere?
How many inhabitants has the city of Nauvoo? What is their condition, occupations, and general character? What are the dimensions of the Temple, now in course of erection? Do the Mormons suffer much persecution? if so, from whom? Are the children instructed in learning and religion? It would give me great pleasure to learn, also, how you are employed? whether your family are with you? and also your present views of truth and duty, and in what respects they differ from the views which you formerly entertained.
Excuse the number and minuteness of these inquiries. I take an interest in all that affects the welfare of my fellow-men, and especially in what is so important as their religious views and hopes. I am aware that the people, and the views which you have adopted as your own, are peculiarly liable to misrepresentation; but from you I may expect something more impartial. Now, if you do not find the task too great a tax upon your time, I should be much gratified in receiving as full and as speedy an answer to the queries above proposed, with any other information in your possession, as may be convenient to yourself.
It may be gratifying to you, to learn that a powerful revival of religion has been enjoyed in Middlefield, within a few weeks past,—an account of which, Mr. Bestor, the present pastor, has sent to me for publication in The Christian Watchman, a copy of which I send you. I visited the town in the summer, and found your old friends well. I also attended a minister's meeting at Brother Bestor's, and enjoyed a very pleasant interview. Several of the brethren spoke of you in terms of kindness.
My best wishes attend you. Present my regards to Mrs. Spencer, and
Believe me,
Very truly yours,
WILLIAM CROWELL.
P. S.—You will understand that I ask for information for my private benefit and satisfaction. I do not ask for anything to be published, unless you see fit to give it for that purpose. I wish you to write as an old friend.
W. C.
GENERAL INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Nauvoo November 17, 1842.
My Dear Sir,—I received yours of the 21st ult. about a week since, but many engagements have prevented a more early reply.
Your inquiries were interesting and important, and I only regret that I have not more time and room to answer them as their importance and minuteness demand.
I am not at all surprised that my old friends should wonder at my change of views; even to this day it is marvellous in my own eyes, how I should be separated from my brethren to this (Mormon) faith. I greatly desire to see my Baptist brethren face to face, that I may tell them all things pertaining to my views and this work; but, at present, the care of my wife and six children, with the labours of a civil office, forbids this privilege.
A sheet of paper is a poor conductor of a marvellous and controverted system of theology; but receive this sheet as containing only some broken hints upon which I hope to amplify in some better manner hereafter. You have expressed confidence in my former conscientious regard for the will of God. I thank you for this, because the virtues of many good men have been disallowed upon some supposed forfeiture of public esteem. I thank God that you, and many of the churches where I once laboured, are more liberal.
You, more than common men, know that it is in accordance with all past history, that men's true characters suffer imprisonment, scourging, and death, as soon as they become innovators or seceders from long-established and venerated systems. Many have suffered martyrdom for literary and also religious improvements, to whom after ages have done better justice. "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted, and slain them which told before of the coming of the Just One?"
It was the misfortune of many of the former prophets, that they were raised up at a period of the world when apostacy and corruption rendered their efforts indispensable, although such efforts proved unacceptable to those who were in fault. Ancient prophets, you know, did not merely reiterate what their predecessors had taught, but spoke hidden wisdom, even things that had been kept secret for many generations; because the spirit by which they were moved had knowledge of all truth, and could disclose and reveal as it seemed wisdom in God.
The spirits that were disobedient, while once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, doubtless despised the prophet that taught a universal deluge. But Noah had a special revelation of a deluge, although the religious people of his day counted him an enthusiast. The revelation given to Moses to gather an opprest people to a particular place, was equally one side of, and out of the usual course of former revelations. John came to the literal followers of Abraham and Moses; but he escaped not persecution and death, because he breathed an uncharitable and exclusive spirit towards the existing sects of the day. Still he was a revelator and seer approved of God.
And is it a thing incredible with you, brother, that before the great sabbatic era, world's rest, or millennium, God should raise up a prophet to prepare the people for that event, and the second coming of Jesus Christ? Would it be disagreeable to those who love the unity of Saints, or improbable or unscriptural to expect such a prophet to be possessed with the key of knowledge, or endowed, like Peter, with the stone of revelation? If the many hundred religious sects of this age should hereafter harmonize into one faith and brotherhood, without the aid of special revelations, it would constitute an unparalleled phenomenon. Should they become a bride fit to receive Jesus Christ at his coming, it could not be according to Paul's gospel. For six thousand years, apostles and prophets have constituted an essential part of the spiritual edifice in which God dwells. Paul says it is by them the church is perfected and brought to unity of faith.
I know that you and I have been taught from our childhood, that the church can be perfected without prophets; but where, I ask, is the first scripture to support this view?
As you kindly say, I have always been accustomed to offer a reason for my faith; but be assured I was confounded and made dumb, when asked why I taught another gospel than what Paul did—why I taught that revelation was ended, when Paul did not—or why I taught that prophets were not needed, when no inspired teacher ever taught such a doctrine. Error may become venerable by age, and respectable from the number of its votaries, but neither age nor popularity can ever make it truth.
You give me credit for a conscientious regard for the will of God. It was this that gave me the victory where many others, I fear, are vanquished. The spirit of God wrought mightily in me, commending the ancient gospel to my conscience. I contemplated it with peaceful serenity and joy in believing. Visions and dreams began to illuminate, occasionally, my slumbering moments; but when I allowed my selfish propensities to speak, I cursed Mormonism in my heart, and regretted being in possession of as much light and knowledge as had flowed into my mind from that source. When I preached or conversed according to my best convictions, peace reigned in my heart, and truth enlarged my understanding. Conviction and reverence for the truth, at such times seemed to reign in the hearts of those that heard me; at times, however, some were ready to gnash their teeth, for the truth that they would not receive and could not resist.
I counted the cost, to myself and family, of embracing such views, until I could read it like the child his alphabet, either upward or downward. The expense I viewed through unavoidable tears, both in public and private, by night and by day; I said, however, the Lord He is God, I can, I will embrace the truth.
When I considered the weakness of the human mind, and its liability to be deceived, I re-examined and held converse with the most able opposers to Mormonism, in a meek and teachable spirit; but the ease with which many, wearing a high profession of piety, turned aside the force of palpable truth, or leaned on tradition or inextricable difficulties, that they could not solve into harmony with their professions, was very far from dissuading me from my new views. What could I do? Truth had taken possession of my mind—plain, simple, Bible truth. It might be asked if I could not expel it from my door; yes, I could do it; but how would that harmonize with a sincere profession to preach and practice the truth, by way of example to others? It was a crisis I never shall—I never can forget. I remember it as an exodus from parents, kindred, denomination, and temporal support. Has any one ever passed such a crisis, they will say, at least, be careful of Brother Spencer's character and feelings.
Little as I supposed that I cared about popularity, competence, or the fellowship of those who were sincerely in error, when I came to be stretched upon the altar of sacrifice, and the unsheathed blade that was to exscind from all these hung over me with perpendicular exactness; then, then, brother, I cried unto the Lord to strengthen me to pass through the scene with his approbation.
While I was inquiring to know what the Lord would have me to do, many brethren of different denominations warned and exhorted me faithfully; but their warnings consisted very much in a lively exhibition of evils to be endured, if I persisted; or, in other words, they appealed to my selfish nature. But I knew too well that truth should not be abandoned through the force of such appeals, however eloquently urged. Some with whom I conversed, gave glowing descriptions of the obnoxious character of Joseph Smith, and of the contradictory and unscriptural jargon of the Book of Mormon, but it was their misfortune usually to be deplorably ignorant of the true character of either.
Of the truth of this statement many instances might be furnished, if the limits of my sheet would allow. My own solicitude to know the character of Mr. Smith, in order to judge of the doctrines propagated by him, was not so great as that of some others. My aversion to the worship of man, is both educational and religious; but I said boldly, concerning Mr. Smith, that whoever had arranged and harmonized such a system of irresistible truth, has borne good fruit. Some suggested that it would be wisdom to make a personal acquaintance with Mr. Smith, previous to embracing his doctrines; but to me the obligation to receive the truths of heaven seemed absolute, whatever might be the character of Mr. Smith.
I read diligently the Book of Mormon from beginning to end, in close connexion with the comments of Origen Bachelor, Laroy Sunderland, and Dr. Hulburt, together with newspapers and some private letters obtained from the surviving friends of Mr. Spaulding, the supposed author of that book. I arose from its perusal with a strong conviction on my mind, that its pages were graced with the pen of inspiration. I was surprised that so little fault could be found with a book of such magnitude, treating, as it did, of such diversified subjects, through a period of so many generations. It appeared to me, that no enemy to truth or godliness would ever take the least interest in publishing the contents of such a book; such appeared to me to be its godly bearing, sound morality, and harmony with ancient scriptures, that the enemy of all righteousness might as well proclaim the dissolution of his own kingdom, as to spread the contents of such a volume among men; and from that time to this, every effort made by its enemies to demolish, has only shown how invincible a fortress defends it. If no greater breach can be made upon it, than has hitherto been made by those who have attacked it with the greatest animosity and diligence, its overthrow may be considered a forlorn hope. On this subject I only ask the friends of pure religion to read the Book of Mormon with the same unprejudiced, prayerful, and teachable spirit that they would recommend unbelievers in the ancient scriptures to read those sacred records. I have not spoken of the external evidence of the truth of the Book of Mormon, which is now worthy of much consideration; but the internal evidence, I think, will satisfy every honest mind. As you enquire after the reasons that operated to change my mind to the present faith, I only remark that "Steven's Travels" had some influence, as an external evidence of the truth of the Book of Mormon.
My present view, after which you also enquire, is, that the evidence, both internal and external, have been multiplied. It may have caused surprise and wonder to many of my respected and distinguished friends in New England, how I could ever renounce a respectable standing in the churches and in the ministry, to adhere to a people so odious in every one's mouth, and so revolting to every one's natural liking; the answer in part is this:—As soon as I discovered an identity in the doctrines of the Latter-day Saints and the Ancient Saints, I enquired whether the treatment bestowed upon each was also similar. I immediately began to dig deep to find the foundation and corner-stone of the true church; I looked at the demeanour and character of those who surrounded the Ancient Saints. The result of my observation seemed to be, that even Jesus Christ had many objectionable points of character to those who observed him. Those who were reputedly most conversant with Abraham, Moses, and other prophets of the Lord, pronounced him unfit for the respect and confidence of a pious community; and why did such men find so many objectionable points in the character and conduct of Jesus Christ? for substantially the same reasons that men of high intelligence and devotion find fault with Joseph Smith and his doctrines. Those who bore down with heavy opposition to Jesus Christ were honourable men, whose genealogy took in the worthiest ancestry; they were the orthodox expositors of revealed truth. Those who now oppose Joseph Smith (a person ordained and sent forth by Jesus Christ), occupy the same high and respectable standing, and manifest a similar bearing towards the reputed impostor of the present day. The ancient worthies were the repositories of learning, and so are the modern worthies. The ancients taught many things according to truth and godliness, and verily believed they were substantially right in faith and practice; this is also true of modern religious teachers.
But, in reply to my own question, why the ancient religionists opposed Jesus Christ? I answer; in the first place, they mistook his true character and conduct; in the second place, they were palpably ignorant of the wisdom and godliness of many things in the character and conduct of Jesus Christ; they considered that there was absolutely a wide difference in the views and conduct of Jesus Christ and themselves. The same is true of many distinguished opposers to Joseph Smith; they consider that there is an irreconcilable difference between themselves and Mr. Smith; and Mr. Smith, of course, is in the wrong, and they are in the right.
Now let us consider, first, wherein the ancients mistook the character of Jesus Christ, and modern opposers to Mr. Smith do the same of him. The true character of Jesus Christ was very imperfectly known to those who opposed him in his own time. Many impostors that had preceded, had guarded the public mind against a repetition of further abuse. He was eyed with dark suspicion wherever he went. It may well be supposed, that sage precaution against him was vehemently urged, lest through his great subtlety he might mislead even some that were respectable. And what could he do to disabuse the public mind? Prejudice and calumny outrun and prepared a thorny reception for him in all places; and so thick and dark was the fog and cloud of misapprehension and falsehood that followed him, that dark suspicions and foul inferences would obtrude upon the minds even of the honest, to weaken their convictions in his behalf, and shake their conclusions. The tale of calumny never lost in sharpness and effect by time or distance.
Those who had not the privilege of a personal acquaintance with Jesus, might be supposed to have no interest in favouring a personage whose pretensions, if countenanced, would disturb their quietude, and impugn their motives, and threaten the prosperity of a system that they supposed as old as the days of Abraham, and teachings as orthodox as the sayings of Moses. But whatever was said or done by Jesus that could possibly be construed by prejudiced minds to his disadvantage, these things were heeded with readiness, and published in the social circle, and riveted by the butt of ridicule upon every mind; and those who loved to laugh at the expense of the innocent, could furnish stock for the purpose, by retailing tales about the supposed impostor, that had their origin in misapprehension and falsehood; but they were well received and cheered by those who affected grave reverence for the Supreme Deity, while they could trample with scorn (unconsciously) upon the brightness of His glory in the person of His Son.
Now let me ask if the character and conduct of Mr. Smith is not equally misunderstood by modern religionists. Mr. Smith only claims to be a prophet, raised up to usher in the last dispensation, while Jesus Christ was more obnoxious in proportion to the superior magnitude of his claims as the Son of God. How difficult it is for persons, in the present age, to form a correct estimate of the true character and views of Mr. Smith. The public mind is always forestalled concerning him. It is taken to be sound orthodoxy that there is no more need of prophets or revelations; the canon of scripture is full; consequently the man that will claim to be a prophet, or revelator, and seer, must be a base impostor and knave. With this educational prejudice, sanctioned by the best men for a thousand years past, and riveted by solemn vows to abide in orthodoxy, they see as though they saw not, and hear as though they heard not.
If excellent things are taught by Mr. Smith, it is considered by prejudiced minds as a good bait employed to cover a well-barbed hook; by many he is considered more detestable and dangerous, because, say they, if he did not mix so much good with his system, he would not be so dangerous and so likely to deceive.
Again, can the people of this country obtain a correct knowledge of the prophet through the religious prints? I apprehend they never will. Those who control the religious prints, conceive they know in the premises, that God has not raised up such a prophet, therefore they will not tarnish the columns of their periodicals by publishing any thing favourable to him. While they feel bound to withhold whatever might commend the prophet to the favourable regards of impartial men, they feel solemnly constrained to advertise the public of all rising heresies. Thus while our supposed heresies are published from very questionable data, our real virtues are buried in oblivion. We do not murmur; if Jesus, the master, could not be known in his true character, but said with mingled pity and forgiveness, they know not what they do, we cannot expect better treatment from those who know but little of us, while they say much to our disadvantage.
Paul did the Ancient Saints much harm, and wasted them greatly, being ignorant of their true character, and unbelieving as to their doctrines. It is certain that Latter-day Saints have received much harm from those who are ignorant of their character, and unbelieving as to their doctrines. Religious editors, generally, know very little of us, except what they have learned from our enemies. Jesus Christ was entirely stript of his reputation by his enemies, and was put to death by learned, yet ignorant, zealots, who were too self-wise to be taught by one whom they knew to be an impostor in the start; but those men were mistaken in the character of our Lord; and so are our enemies mistaken in the character and views of the modern prophet.
My own personal observation teaches that it is a very difficult matter to instil into the minds of sectarian churches, a true knowledge of the faith and practice of Latter-day Saints. Though one should go among them that was once highly esteemed by them, they are alarmed at his approach, and his virtues are conceived to render him more deserving of a repulse. His influence, say they, may be formidable; we must not bid him God speed, consequently he is not asked to pray in the family or public meeting. If he can, by great effort, get an opportunity to preach, it is not thought advisable for any body to go and hear him, lest they should be led away by his errors.
Thus you see, brother, how difficult in former and latter days to bring the true faith to the knowledge of men, through prejudice. They have prejudged a matter of which they are almost wholly ignorant. This same notion of treating new matters has veiled the sun in darkness, and hung the Prince of Life in agonies. How long shall this treatment of the Saints be persisted in? How long shall prophets be persecuted and slain, without being fully known, and the servants of God be excluded from an impartial hearing, when they seek to publish good tidings—even salvation to the inhabitants of the earth?
Now let me ask my former friends in the eastern churches, with whom I once held sweet intercourse, how it is possible for the Latter-day Saints to introduce their views among the sectarian churches and the world, with any more favourable reception than the Ancient Saints had in introducing theirs? Prejudice and persecution faced them down always, and so it is in these days. It is certainly a mistaken idea to suppose that people are much better now than they were anciently, when the true gospel was misunderstood, and its promoters sincerely accounted disturbers, and heretics worthy of exemplary punishment. But, say the wise and great men among the sectarian churches, "we do understand the true gospel, and have already embraced it, and it is only error and heresy we oppose; and the weight of our contempt and ridicule is hurled at impostors and knaves, who palm off gross deceptions upon the public, and lead captive ignorant zealots by pretended revelations and spurious miracles." But do they not know that substantially the same charge was brought against Jesus Christ and the primitive disciples. Let it be proved that we are what our enemies call us; let us file our respective pleas and come to a speedy and impartial trial. To this our opposers will not consent; they intend to employ all the advantage of education and prejudice to exclude us from a hearing—so did the opposers of the Ancient Saints: but I solemnly ask whether it has ever been necessary, in any moral enterprise, for those who have the truth on their side, especially gospel truth, to defend that truth by foreclosing discussion, and shunning public investigation, and then carry on their depredations by the use of such small arms as ridicule and preconceived objections, that need only be brought to light to be dissipated like fog in the meridian sun?
Do temperance lecturers, bible and education agents, and other moral reformers find it necessary to carry on their enterprises by such means? Do they seek to avoid an open and frank discussion with the intemperate portions of the community? Do they avoid a manly investigation because the intemperate portions of the community combine, in their life and conduct, beastly sottishness, unprovoked abuse to wives and children, a prodigal waste of competence and ample fortunes, and the overthrow of intellect, and the dissolution of all moral ties? No, by no means! They seek the broad day light of public discussion, because they know the truth and power of that side of the cause which they have espoused. They know that intemperance cannot survive the impartial observation of good men. All we ask is that the word of God may have free course. We wish that it may come distinctly to the knowledge of men, that they may sit in impartial judgment upon it.
By the word of God, we mean not only what was revealed for the ancients especially, but also what is now revealed for this generation. Oh! says the objector, he wants the word of Joseph Smith to have a free circulation, and this we oppose, because it is blasphemous and preposterous. Yes, we want the word of God by Joseph Smith, to be known and read of all men, because it is written not with ink, but by the spirit of the living God. What were Peter, Elijah, or Moses, but earthen vessels, by whom God communicated his own knowledge, power, and glory? Does not the word by Joseph commend itself to every man's conscience where it is heard with due candour? I have never seen that person who had read the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants entirely through, with an earnest desire to know whether it was of God or not, who could raise any worthy objection against them. A few isolated portions of these books are often selected out and made to speak some other besides their true meaning, and thereby a dislike for these books is created; consequently, some refuse to read them at all, while some others read only to confirm their prepossessions and prejudices; and superficial inquirers hear with credulity that such a minister, editor, or professor of some College, has published an exposè or refutation of Mormonism, that will inflict a fatal wound upon this glaring and blasphemous heresy.
Now it is well known that the novelties of this age are so many and so various, that no man has time to examine into them all; and many consider that a hint from a pious editor, or distinguished reviewer against Mormonism, is sufficient apology for them not to examine it. Now under these considerations, it is easy to divine that the doctrines of the Latter-day Saints must travel through obstacles and difficulties of the greatest magnitude; and I am ready, dear brother, to mourn over the prospect, because many bad men, and some good men, will fight against the faith, not knowing what they do. My bosom heaves with the deeper concern, because I know this to be the true gospel, and that it will prevail, even though the foe should be so great and powerful as the Lord's enemies were in the days of Noah. Pardon my assurance when I say that those beautiful systems, called benevolent operations, must come to nought; not because they are not honestly designed for some good effect, but because they are a mixture of human device with the wisdom of God, or the gospel perverted. I know, too, that these beautiful systems, together with the various orders of sectarianism, cannot well be vanquished without a desperate struggle ensue. Sectarianism is old and venerable, and having undergone many costly repairs, without much substantial improvement, it never can be demolished without violent resistance. There is an air of sacredness around it that will stimulate its votaries insensibly; and when they are assailed by the strong hand of Bible truth, rather than see their fortress taken by the illiterate followers of the despised prophet, will summon to their aid the worst passions, and push matters to the greatest extremities. These remarks are amply supported by the history of the past, both in respect to Former and Latter-day Saints.
See the ancient Jew of our Lord's day—his piety was scrupulously exact—he knew the worth of his religion by the pains and expense it had cost him. Every thing had with great trouble been fashioned into a system of sacredness. They had been striving hard for a beautiful system of perfection that would commend them to God, and mourned that any of Abraham's children should teach that there was no resurrection, &c., and not harmonize with them in bearing heavy burdens in order to save men's souls. And when an obscure personage sprung up, and broke over their rules of piety, and mingled with the profane without ceremonious washing, and was seen to drink wine, probably, and eat with the boisterous and odious classes, without pretending to wash away the contagion that accrued, and to travel on the Sabbath day, and to pluck ears of corn without any signs of confession, and to heap harsh sounding and heavy anathemas upon the most intelligent and devoted men of the age, and claim to be a prophet, while he ignorantly conversed with an adulterous woman. All this, the scrupulous Jew could not, and would not, bear; and his anger was heightened to madness when he found that many adhered to the new teacher, and occasionally a person of wealth and standing was won over to the impostor by his artifice and jugglery. And as the influence of this odious personage spread, especially among the common people, who had not sufficient sagacity to detect his fraudulent tricks; and as the orthodoxy and piety of the children of Abraham and Moses began to be suspected, and suspicion even preached in synagogues that were too holy for such pollution, the devoted children of Abraham became exasperated. If we let him alone, say they, all men will believe on him. Fearful to use the rod and power, by reason of the Romans, to the utmost rigour, they, at first, sought to render him obnoxious to Caesar; but as measures successively failed, they thirsted for his blood until their pious malice was glutted in his expiring agonies. Then thought they, every body may know that his miracles are all a humbug, because he could not save himself.
Now, brother, I ask you to stop and make a full pause by way of reflection. How do devoted sectarians entertain the Latter-day Saints? Not surely by a candid exposure of our errors, coupled with a patient effort to reclaim us. "By no means," said a highly respectable deaconess, "Brother Spencer, I would rather have heard that you were dead." She knew in the general that I had embraced Mormonism; but of the true character of Mormonism she was grossly ignorant; and she was actually driven into fits when she found I defended the doctrines of Latter-day Saints. Look at the conduct of devoted sectarians towards the Latter-day Saints, and mark the resemblance to that of ancient Jews to former Saints. The same proscriptive spirit reigns now as then,— the same spirit that dictated expulsion from the synagogue then, now closes the doors of meetinghouses against us,—the same spirit that closed men's ears against the burning eloquence of Stephen then, counsels men not to hear or go nigh Mormon preachers now.
You ask "If the Latter-day Saints are persecuted; if so, by whom are they persecuted?" The answer is a painful one, because it inculpates those who were bound to us by many tender ties. As a people we have been truly persecuted from the beginning.
From the moment we embrace this doctrine, in most cases we are virtually banished from friends, and rank, and station, and business. Says the venerated father, "if you have embraced that doctrine, my son, I never want to see your face any more." Says the partner in trade, "if you are a Mormon, we must dissolve partnership forthwith." If such an one occupying an important office of profit and honour does not give up his Mormonism, we will sue him at the law, and calumniate him, and embarrass him until he is ousted and broken up, and obliged to leave our village. We are separated from men's company, while the licentious, and profane, and intemperate are suffered to dwell in peace; while our opposers cherish to their bosom the rankest infidels, they repulse us with disdain; though none can point out ought wherein we differ from the ancient apostles and prophets. Almost daily my eyes behold those who have suffered too much to mention; but I would rather refer you to printed documents, than to attempt a description of the sufferings of our people in Missouri. From forty to sixty of our brethren suffered death, by violent hands, in Missouri, and as many more, in consequence of the abuse and privations to which they were exposed by an infuriated and bloodthirsty mob; and the disappointment, privation, and homeless condition of survivors was very great. Many widows and orphans knew not what to do, having just begun to live in a comfortable and thriving manner. They had almost forgotten their first sorrow of parting from early friends and possessions, when lo! the hideous mob came upon them; at one blow their homes were made desolate; in some instances father and son were no more; their sufferings in planting themselves anew in this State, without means or friends, though I have often heard them told, I will not attempt to rehearse.
Perhaps some will say, we understand the Mormons were in fault in that matter, and brought merited sufferings upon themselves by their misconduct. The same has always been understood to be true of all persecuted Saints. The greater part of people probably thought Stephen deserved the punishment that terminated his life. The same might be said of John the Baptist, who meddled with the matrimonial concerns of those who did not acknowledge his ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The prophet Elijah was designated to death because he troubled Israel. Daniel refused lawful obedience to the established governor of the realm. In short, persecutors in every age, have always had a plausible pretext for their doings, in the popular estimation of their own day and age.
You ask, "By whom we are persecuted?" In reply I could mention as instigators of mobs, the names of a Baptist missionary, a Methodist and Presbyterian minister. You may also be apprised that ex-Governor Boggs, of Missouri, made affidavit that Joseph Smith was accessory to an attempt to murder him; and that Governor Carlin, of Illinois, in the face of superabundant testimony and law, gave a warrant to arrest him (Joseph Smith) on that affidavit. A heavy reward has been offered for his apprehension, and bold menaces are occasionally hung over our heads, that we, as a people, shall be driven from the State. These things have a tendency to check our prosperity. In one instance some of our brethren were kidnapped by Missourians from this State, and put to shame and scourging. The malignant and vexatious lawsuits to which our people have been subject, are exceedingly numerous; and owing to our impoverished condition, rendered sometimes distressing. But none of these things move us, because we know that if they have hated the master, they will also hate the disciples. Such as are born of the bond woman, will persecute them that are born of the free woman. But it seems like a discouraging effort, to attempt to convince our opposers that we are persecuted, because editors and other philanthropic men are reluctant to tell to the public our side of the matter. They themselves would thereby become suspected of espousing our cause. Men are so sensitive on the subject of our religion, that whoever speaks peaceably of it, perils his influence and reputation; but hireling editors and priests will speak and publish against us.
You ask me to give an account of the faith which I have embraced. I believe that Jesus Christ is God, co-eternal with God the Father; and that such as have the knowledge of the gospel and believe upon him, will be saved; and such as believe not, will be damned. I believe the Old and New Testaments to be the word of God. I believe that every person should be born, not only of the spirit, but also of the water, in order to enter into the kingdom of God. There are three that bear witness on earth, as there are three that bear record in heaven—the spirit, the water, and the blood, bear concurrent testimony to our obedience on earth; for the want of any one, or all of these witnesses on earth, in our favour, there will be no registry of our perfect acceptance in heaven. Hence the baptism for the dead. The righteous dead have a merciful provision made for them in the testimony of the three witnesses on earth, which secures a record of their perfect acceptance in heaven, without which they cannot attain to the highest glory. I believe in the resurrection of the dead, the righteous to life eternal, and the wicked to shame and everlasting contempt. I believe that repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, are among the elementary and cardinal truths of the gospel.
In some, and, indeed, many respects do we differ from sectarian denominations. We believe that God is a being that has both body and parts, and also passions; also in the existence of the gifts in the true church spoken of in St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians.
I believe that every church, in gospel order, has a priesthood, consisting of prophets, apostles, elders, &c., and that the knowledge and power of a priesthood, ordained of God, as the ancient priesthood was, is indispensably necessary to the prosperity of the church. I do not believe that the canon of sacred scripture was closed with the revelation of John, but believe that wherever God has a true church, there he makes frequent revelations of his will: and as God takes cognizance of all things, both temporal and spiritual, his revelations will pertain to all things whereby his glory may be promoted, and the temporal and spiritual well-being of his people advanced. Any people that are destitute of the teachings of prophets and apostles, which come by immediate revelation, will soon fall into divisions and strifes, and depart from the truth as it is in Jesus.
You wish to know, "What is the personal character and influence, doctrines and claims of him who is called the leader, Joseph Smith?" Joseph Smith, when the great designs of heaven were first made known to him, was not far from the age of seventeen; from that time to this he has had much said about him, both of a favourable and unfavourable nature. I shall only speak of his character as I believe it to be from an intimate acquaintance of more than one year, and from an intimate acquaintance with those who have been with him many years. No man is more narrowly watched by friends and enemies than Mr. Joseph Smith; consequently, if he were as good a man as any prophet that has preceded him, he would have as violent enemies as others have had. But I hasten to give my own opinion.
I firmly avow, in the presence of God, that I believe Mr. Joseph Smith to be an upright man, that seeks the glory of God in such a manner as is well pleasing to the Most High God. Naturally he is kind and obliging; pitiful and courteous; as far from dissimulation as any man; frank and loquacious to all men, friends or foes. He seems to employ no studied effort to guard himself against misrepresentation, but often leaves himself exposed to misconstructions by those who watch for faults. He is remarkably cheerful for one who has seen well-tried friends martyred around him, and felt the inflictions of calumny—the vexation of lawsuits—the treachery of intimates—and multiplied violent attempts upon his person and life, together with the cares of much business. His influence, after which you inquire, is very great. His friends are as ardently attached to him as his enemies are violently opposed. Free toleration is given to all opposing religions, but wherever he is accredited as a prophet of the living God, there you will perceive his influence must be great. That lurking fear and suspicion that he may become a dictator or despot, gradually gives place to confidence and fondness, as believers become acquainted with him.
In doctrine, Mr. Smith is eminently scriptural. I have never known him to deny or depreciate a single truth of the Old and New Testaments, but I have always known him to explain and defend them in a masterly manner. Being anointed of God, for the purpose of teaching and perfecting the church, it is needful that he should know how to set in order the things that are wanting, and to bring forth things new and old, as a scribe well instructed. This office and apostleship he appears to magnify; at his touch the ancient prophets spring into life, and the beauty and power of their revelations are made to commend themselves with thrilling interest to all that hear.
You inquire, "Does he claim to be inspired?" Certainly he does claim to be inspired. He often speaks in the name of the Lord, which would be rank hypocrisy and mockery, if he were not inspired to do it. It seems very difficult for those who stand at the distance of many generations from the true prophets, to realize what prophets are, and what ought to be expected from them. I do not chide them for their ignorance and folly, however, because I have nothing to boast of, previous to embracing the faith of the Latter-day Saints. I understand that prophets may speak as they are moved by the Holy Ghost at one time, while they may be very far from being moved by the Holy Ghost as they speak at another. They may be endowed with power to perform miracles and mighty deeds at one time, while they have no authority, and there is no suitableness in doing the same at another time.
You ask, "Is he a man of prayer, of a pure life, of peace? Does he appear at the head of his troops as a military commander?" These questions I answer, according to the best knowledge I have, in the affirmative. As a people, we perform military duty as the laws of the State of Illinois enjoin and require. The legion answers the purpose to keep the lawless and mobocratic at a respectful distance; and the more "earthquake and storm" our enemies raise about the Nauvoo Legion, and a military chieftain like the ancient Mahomet, the greater fear and dread of us will be conveyed to the minds of the lawless, who watch for prey, and spoil, and booty. I can assure you, that neither Mr. Smith, nor any other intelligent Latter-day Saint, ever intends to make one convert by the sword; neither are we such tee-total peacemakers, that any savage banditti of lawless depredators could waste our property, violate virtue, and shed innocent blood, without experiencing from us a firm defence of law, of right, and innocence. We are to this day very sensitive to a repetition of past wrongs that we still smart under. The Lord our God, who was once called (by a man after his own heart) "a man of war," we trust will be our defence and strong tower in the day of battle, if our country should ever call us to scenes of carnage and blood.
You ask, "What is the nature of the worship among you, and wherein does it differ from that of religious people with whom you have been acquainted elsewhere?" On the sabbath some person usually preaches a sermon after prayer and singing, and, perhaps, reading some scripture. We have, also, frequent prayer meetings, in which all that are so disposed may join. The gifts are variously exercised, sometimes in the way of prophecy, or in tongues; sometimes in discerning of spirits, or interpretation of tongues. The ordinance of baptism, together with the imposition of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, is administered as occasion may require. Thus you will perceive that our worship differs from what we both have been accustomed to in times that are past.—Anxious seats and inquiry meetings, &c., are not in use at all with us; although converts to our faith have swelled our numbers greatly in every year that is past, yet we are very far from employing any blustering effort to convert men. The spirit of God attends the truth with sufficient power to save the upright; while those that hold the truth in unrighteousness, and contend with it, are beyond the legitimate exercise of divine power to save, and are led captive by the devil at his will.
Our worship differs from that of other religious people, inasmuch as we have the knowledge of God, and the true doctrine and order of his kingdom, beyond all perplexing doubt and diversity of opinion. It is utterly impossible for intelligent and devoted sectarian clergy to lead their hearers into any considerable knowledge of God, for this very potent reason, that they neither know much of him themselves, nor, indeed, have they the means of knowing him. For this they are not at all culpable; but the fact is, nevertheless, incontrovertible.
I do not now speak to please men, nor to mortify them, but I know it to be true, my brother, and therefore speak it boldly. Are you offended? Will you stop here and throw down my letter with contempt, as though an ignorant upstart had abused you? If I write plainly, it is with deep and painful emotions. While writing I can hardly suppress a flood of tears. I know the dilemma in which many of my religious brethren are placed, and the extreme difficulty of approaching them; but whether they hear or forbear, I must tell them that it is out of their power to attain to any considerable knowledge of the true and living God. But, say they, have we not got the good old Bible, which makes men wise unto salvation? You have, indeed, those venerable truths which have many ages since made men wise unto salvation; and those truths will teach you, if you take heed to them, that the Gentiles have been broken off from the covenant favour of God as the Jews were. But these scriptures cannot impart to you the gifts of the Holy Ghost; they cannot ordain and qualify you to teach and preach the gospel, and administer the ordinances; they cannot give you promises and revelations that are expressly for you.
When the apostle Paul was in danger of being shipwrecked with his crew (see Acts of Apostles), it would have been poor consolation to him to read the ancient history of Jonah's shipwreck, and pray over the subject in order to know how the voyage would result to him; but how much greater his consolation, and how much more certain his knowledge, when God ministers to him by visions and angels, and promises both him and the crew preservation. Philip wanted no better assurance of his duty to go to Gaza, than for an angel of God to tell him to go; but if he had pored over ancient revelations, with prayerful anxiety, in order to know the same, it would have been a poor guide. The New Testament Saints did not lean upon Old Testament revelations for the knowledge of present duties, or for aid in their present contingencies; they looked directly to God for present fresh instruction and aid—they obtained what they looked for.
The ancient Jews (contemporary with Christ), that leaned on the venerated sayings of Abraham and Moses, and other old prophets, abode in darkness, and became the prey of foul spirits, while the advocates of present revelations were mighty through God, in signs and wonders, and marvellous deeds.
Now, let the religious people of this day depend exclusively upon the ancient scriptures, rejecting present revelations, and they will be filled with ignorance, and the spirit of unrighteousness will possess them; and they cannot act with that certainty and power that those can, who know for themselves by immediate revelation. But I have said it is impossible for them to know much of the true God: the careful observer knows, that what one sect or denomination teaches for doctrine, another will controvert and deny. There is not that power in the doctrine of any one sect that gives them much ascendancy over any other sect. The doctrines of all sects, though adverse to each other, are about equally weighty and plausible; no one gets any considerable ascendancy; if there appears to be light in one sect over another sect, it shows an equal amount of an opposite character.
It is an acknowledged duty of parents, in this church, to teach their children the elementary principles of religion, training them up in the way they should go. You ask if they are instructed in learning. As a people we aim most diligently to give our children learning. Our persecutions, oppressions, and poverty have operated greatly to the disadvantage of our children; still we have a chartered University, that promises much benefit to us; and common schools are extensively multiplying throughout the city.
The present population of the city is from ten to twelve thousand. You ask, "What is their condition, occupation, and general character?" The condition of the people is as prosperous as circumstances will permit. Many of them, like Jacob of old, have left a good patrimony at home that they are not benefitted from, by reason of their being every where spoken against; but though they had nothing but their staff in hand, and a little bundle upon their back when they came, they have now in many instances a comfortable cottage, a flourishing garden, and a good cow. There are many instances of families being subject to privations, beyond what they were accustomed to in early days; and there are some instances of deep penury, through sickness, persecution, and other uncontrollable causes; and there are also instances of wealth; but be assured, sir, there is not a more contented and cheerful people to be found. Families will consent to let father and brother go out preaching, when their daily bread is barely supplied for a few months.
Believing as we do, that these are the last days, and that signal matters await this generation; and that the harvest must be gathered soon, if at all, you must not marvel if we do not all at once become rich, and build large houses, and enclose productive farms. If riches were our object, we might readily gratify the most ambitious grasp. We possess every facility for being rich, but we long to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his holy temple. The place of his sanctuary, which we greatly desire to beautify, is a site of surpassing natural beauty. Upon it stands the incomplete structure of a temple; in dimensions, a little over one hundred and twenty-eight feet long, by eighty-eight feet wide, to be elevated in height a little under sixty feet; the walls are made of a well-wrought handsome stone. The inhabitants are very industrious, being occupied in agriculture and the various mechanical arts.
Our people are mostly the working class of the community, from the United States, and Great Britain and her Provinces. They are a very intelligent people, especially so far as common sense and a general knowledge of men and things are concerned.
Our Elders are versed in religious polemics, from discussions in the pulpit, stage, bar-room, canal, and steam-boat, of the fireside and highway side: and, perhaps, you are not aware that many, very many, are from the most enlightened portion of New England; men that have been rocked in the cradle of orthodoxy and liberty; accustomed to fatigue, privation, and opposition; and knowing that their religion has more light and truth, and the power of the Holy Ghost to support it, than any other that has existed since the days of the apostles, they are prepared to endure all things with the assurance that their reward is great in heaven.
You wish to know the general character of the people. There is probably less profanity, drunkenness, lewdness, theft, fighting, gambling, and tavern-haunting, than in any other city of the same magnitude.
But I must close my answer to your many and minute inquiries, having already protracted them beyond my original design. Your letter contains many important inquiries, similar indeed to what I have received from other distinguished friends from different parts of the Union. You will accept my apology for not answering at an earlier date; and though I design this epistle to be a general answer to all similar inquiries, yet shall hereafter readily reciprocate all private communications in the usual method of friendship and affection.
Most sincerely and truly yours,
ORSON SPENCER.
IMMEDIATE REVELATION.
Liverpool, May 15, 1847.
Reverend Sir,—Agreeable to promise made in my first answer to your letter, I now resume my pen to inform you, in a series of letters, of the distinguishing tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the faith which I myself do entertain, with all sobriety and integrity of heart, before God and all good men. I had hoped, however, that more leisure would have favoured me, not only that I might more minutely and perspicuously maintain the primitive faith, but also do it in such conciseness and embellishment of diction, as both to please and enlighten.
The first subject to which I will invite your attention will be that of IMMEDIATE REVELATION. It shall be my direct aim to show in this letter, that no person ever did partake of the gospel of salvation, or ever will partake of it, without the spirit of revelation dwelling in his breast. This is the first and also the last round in the ladder that leads to the perfect knowledge of God. Without the same spirit of revelation that dwelt in the breasts of prophets, patriarchs, and apostles in ancient time, no man can begin to know God, neither can any man or set of men make any progress in the knowledge of God, when that spirit is withdrawn from him.
A word from the mouth of the Great Arbitrator of all controversy ought to suffice. HE, THE GREAT GOD AND JUDGE OF ALL, has said that "no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and no man knoweth the Son but he to whom the Son revealeth him." Words cannot bear a plainer import. If any man knows Jesus Christ, it is by revelation, and in no other way can he be known. Will you say that apostles and prophets know him in this way; while others may know him without themselves being gifted with the spirit of revelation? Absurd! Others must know him by revelation as much as apostles and prophets. If they have not the spirit of revelation, they cannot judge what is a genuine and infallible revelation when it proceeds from the pen of apostles, or even the lips of angels, or of God himself; for the things of the Spirit are correctly judged only by those who have the same spirit; hence all men must not only be born of the spirit, but likewise be baptized into one and the same spirit.
This spirit is the Spirit of God, and nothing less; and the Spirit of God is the spirit of revelation, because it is expressly declared that the spirit takes of the things of God, and shows them unto men: even the deep things of God are searched out and dispensed to men for their comfort and the illumination of their minds. Hence Jesus declared that he would send them another "comforter," even the spirit of truth; and the office of this spirit of truth was to "lead into all truth." By this means we perceive that the universal store-house of all truth is thrown open and rendered available to such as have been properly baptized into the spirit, as their occasion may demand. Even the apostles were forbid to go out and preach until they were endowed with the gift of the Holy Ghost. After they should receive this gift, it would then become their duty to impart it unto all others freely, by the imposition of hands, who should obey the gospel. Males and females were to partake of it, and see in vision things to come, and have their remembrance of things past quickened into vivid and unambiguous recollection.
It was this spirit of revelation that gave to the primitive church the power of godliness; for it was simply the Holy Spirit of God that rendered the gospel the power of God unto salvation to them that believed; for therein was the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. The gospel never took any effect upon men's hearts, unless the Spirit of God attended it. Whenever God takes away from the church the spirit of revelation, he thereby takes away the light of the church—the good spirit of the church, and the truth and integrity of the church, and the comfort of the church, and also the power of it. It becomes like the branch without sap, or the pale mortal corpse without the living spirit.
A church that is built upon the principle of revelation by the Holy Spirit can never be prevailed against while that spirit continues with it. It then becomes the power of God personified. Mere men and women—servants and handmaidens—attended by the Holy Spirit of God, know about men and things, and matters and events, even as God knows; because they have precisely the same spirit that God has. Things that never entered the heart of man to conceive, and things that the tongue could never utter, are revealed by the Spirit of God. As bodily eyes are to the corporal organization (causing all that wide difference that exists between him that sees and one that is wholly blind) so are the eyes of intelligence which the Spirit imparts to a believer, whereby he comprehends the different spirits of men from time to time, and sees events in the future as though they were actually and presently at hand. The daughters of Philip can speak prophetically, with as much unerring certainty as God himself, according to the measure of the spirit given them, because they have His Spirit, and consequently a given measure of intelligence. And the scope of this increase of intelligence is expanded or diminished as God pleases to suit the occasion.
When there is occasion to prophecy, or speak with new tongues, or interpret, or rebuke diseases and cast out evil spirits—His Spirit is given. And it could be given as well to a beast as to a man for the same purpose, and the same effect would follow. The beast of Balaam, when inspired of God, rose immediately above his legitimate sphere of action, and spoke with a man's voice, forbidding the madness of the prophet. The same spirit by which he spoke, would have enabled the dumb ass to rebuke disease, cast out devils, or speak a variety of tongues. But God might withdraw that spirit, and he would then be only a dumb ass, fit only to bear burdens, &c. Men are but little more competent to heal the sick, cast out devils, and discern spirits, or know the things of God or eternity, and make preparations for the future, than the beasts, without the Spirit of God. When God wants to punish a generation or generations, he does it effectually by withholding His Spirit. The world travels in pain, and groans in bondage, and oppression, and cruelty, and strife, and bloodshed, and in ignorance, superstition, and zeal without knowledge, when God shuts out the light of revelation. The revelations given to the primitive age, bear about the same relation of benefit to the people of this age, that the gift of food and manna, to those starving in former ages, bears towards the supply of such as are in want now. Jesus Christ winds up his sermon on the mount, by calling him a WISE man that hears and obeys the voice of revelation, and he shall never "fall." At the same time he calls him that hears and obeys not the voice of revelation a FOOL, and such a man will fall, and his fall will be great.
We cannot be in any doubt what is meant by the expression "hearing" Christ, or "these sayings of mine." Jesus says to such servants as he sends out to preach, (and none but such as are sent by revelation can preach), he that heareth YOU heareth ME. But while they cannot hear without a preacher, neither can they hear with a preacher, except the Father draw them; or, in other words, except they have the Spirit of God, which is a spirit of revelation. How could Peter know Jesus, when he heard his conversation and preaching? Jesus testifies that, by the wisdom of flesh and blood, Peter did not know him, but by the spirit of revelation from God out of heaven; and in order to end all controversy throughout all ages, he declares that not only Peter, but NO OTHER MAN, ever did or ever can know God, only as he is revealed to him from heaven; and that man is "blessed" that has the spirit of revelation to know the only true God and Jesus Christ. That man is accounted as a thief and a robber that would know God or Jesus without the spirit of revelation.
The Spirit of God was sent into the world for the express purpose of acquainting men with Jesus Christ. By this spirit it was an easy matter for men to know Jesus Christ, though he was everywhere spoken against, and the whole country teemed with lies, and the great mass of people, reputedly good as well as bad, thought that he ought to be stoned, mobbed, and crucified: still it was easy to know him by the spirit of revelation, and it was impossible to know him without that spirit. Thus, dear sir, it is easy for you, and all my former associates in the sectarian ministry, to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, sent to prune the Lord's vineyard for the last time.
Says the scripture, "no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, can call Jesus accursed," although he "hung upon a tree." And I add, sir, with perfect assurance, that no man can call Joseph Smith "accursed," or an "impostor," while speaking by the Spirit of God; for the Spirit of God will never dictate any one to speak against the servant of God; but the spirit of the world and of Satan, will stir up men to speak against prophets and saints, and persecute and assassinate them. The scripture also says, that no man can call Jesus Lord, but by the HOLY GHOST. Thus, reverend sir, you perceive that NO MAN, in former ages or latter ages, can call Jesus Lord, but by revelation from the HOLY GHOST. It is by the person and agency of the HOLY GHOST only, that Jesus promises to be with his preachers always unto the end of the world, in order to reveal the truth unto honest hearers, and show them who are prophets and true ministers of Christ, and also what is true doctrine. The HOLY GHOST will always attend a true minister of God, and reveal to his humble honest hearers, his mission and authority beyond all reasonable doubt.
Now, sir, let me say, distinctly, that the testimony of any number of men, or of all men together, is no proof either for or against the authority, doctrine, or mission of a prophet or true minister of God. For if no one man can know a minister of God without revelation, then no large body of men can know him; and surely they cannot testify of what they do not KNOW. No matter what is said against Joseph Smith, or who, or how many, say it, or however credible the witnesses, they are not competent to testify, because they have not the gift of revelation. This position, sir, is invincible, because it is fortified by the voice of eternal truth, even the word of God, which you profess publicly to believe, and preach, and print. Flesh and blood cannot reveal spiritual things, but our Father in heaven. The things of the spirit require the same spirit to discern them. He that is spiritual can judge all things, while he that has not the spirit of revelation cannot judge any spiritual matters correctly, of any name or nature.
Now, my dear friend, I close this second epistle, praying that God will give you the spirit of understanding, which I assure you He will do, inasmuch as you are humble and contrite, and seek it with all your heart.
Your obedient servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
ON FAITH.
Liverpool, June 1, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—The next subject to which I will invite your careful consideration, is that of FAITH.
Do not be surprised that I should attempt the investigation of a subject so common-place, with the view of imparting any new or useful instruction. The numerous elaborate treatises that have heretofore been bestowed upon this subject, have, I boldly aver, been like Goliath's armour against David—massive and imposing, but, at the same time, alike inapplicable and ineffectual to the case at issue.
In order that you may be apprised of my position, without needless circumlocution, I here distinctly observe, that there neither is, nor ever was, any gospel or saving faith, in former or latter days, but the faith of miracles, or the faith of immediate revelation. Can any man know God without faith? Certainly not. The gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. To whom? To the unbelieving? No! but to them that have faith. The gospel of Christ is, then, brought only to such as have faith. But what faith are they to have in order to receive it? The answer, is the faith of immediate revelation, or of the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit.
Now, sir, I ask you to listen a moment, and hear what the voice of God says to you and me on this subject. The righteousness of God is revealed from FAITH to FAITH. Here, it is conceived, my position is invincibly fortified beyond the power of rational conquest. God's righteous will is revealed to FAITH. It is written, "The just shall live by faith." By what faith shall the just live? Surely, nothing less than the faith of immediate revelation. The fact that God's will was revealed to the faith of the Saints anciently, does not supersede the necessity of his will being revealed to your faith and to my faith now.
The ancients could not believe for us; or, in other words, their faith could not be a substitute for our faith. "He that believeth not," for himself, "shall be damned." Neither could a revelation to them be necessarily a revelation to us. A revelation to Noah to build an ark, is not suited to Abraham, or Peter, or Francis Wayland, or Dr. Chalmers. No man, in this day, can know that God ever revealed himself to Noah, or Abraham, unless it is now revealed to him from heaven; and he cannot know that it is revealed from heaven to him now, unless he has faith unto himself before God; and this faith which he must exercise for himself, is the faith of revelation, or the faith of miracles.
What ailed the Judaic churches in Christ's day? They certainly believed on Moses and Abraham, and made habitual sacrifices in support of their faith. Paul was a bright example of sincerity and fidelity in support of the Judaic faith. He verily thought that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. But was the faith of Paul, and of the Judaic church generally, the faith of immediate revelation or the faith of miracles? By no means. Paul originally, and his associates in the ministry, believed the Mosaic scriptures from tradition and education, and not from immediate revelation. They, indeed, believed that Abraham, and Moses, and Samuel, and Noah, had the faith of miracles, and enjoyed immediate revelation, and the spirit of prophecy, &c. They believed that such an high order of faith as prevailed in the Mosaic and prophetic days was no longer necessary. (But, afterwards, Paul concedes that one in his own state was one in ignorance and unbelief.)
Hence the spirit of prophecy, spoken of by Joel, as poured out in the apostolic day, was, in their estimation uncalled for. They supposed the canon of scripture was sufficiently full, when the prophet Malachi finished his testimony, and closed up the age of miracles! Men may sincerely believe the Bible, as many of the sects do believe it, without having it revealed from heaven that the Bible is true, and it will never save them. They may believe the Bible even without knowing God; for the simple reason, that no man can know God without God reveals himself to him. This was the condition of the Judaic church. Many of them sincerely believed the Mosaic writings, but detested and rejected the principle of immediate revelation, by which alone they could know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he had sent. If they had believed heartily in the doctrine of immediate revelation to all believers, in all ages, they would have known Jesus Christ to be the Messiah, as well as Moses, or Abraham, who saw his day, and was glad. On the same principle, dear sir. Christian denominations, in this day, believe the apostolic scriptures sincerely, and do many things accordingly; but rejecting the principle of immediate revelation to them-ward, they neither know Jesus Christ nor his prophet Joseph, nor the power of God, as it is revealed from faith to faith in our day.
We, sir, contend for the faith of miracles in our own day; but you and your associates contend against it. The disciples of Jesus contended for it, in their day; but the professed followers of Moses and Abraham contended against it. Now, sir, to which of these sides do you belong? Can you find that any people, who ever contended against the faith of immediate revelation and miracles, such as was maintained by Samuel, Abraham, Barak, Daniel, and Noah, ever prospered. Is there a single instance in scripture, from Genesis to Revelations, where God manifests any fellowship for any faith short of a faith of miracles and immediate revelation? If an inferior kind of faith has been got up since the New Testament age, is it not well to inquire from whence it has sprung, and what is the scriptural basis of its support? If such an inferior faith is not revealed from heaven, it must certainly be from beneath, and, consequently earthly, and sensual, and devilish. If it springs from the precepts of men, and not from the direct and positive revelation of God, it ought surely to be abandoned and forsaken at once. When men believe the Old and New Testament scriptures from tradition, and the lips of a ministry that is not sent out and called by immediate revelation from heaven, their faith is dead; and all such as float in this broad stream of traditionary faith, are not and cannot be built up as lively stones to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God.
Hence, sir, the concession of Mr. C. G. Finney, and Nettleton, and of your own Mr. Knapp, all great Revivalists, and talented and devout men, that the "sectarian churches need to be converted over again." And I am constrained to add, without any inviduous feelings, that such teachers themselves need to be converted from a traditionary faith into the same faith with the ancient worthies spoken of in the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews. They themselves cannot know God without that same ancient faith that secured to its possessors revelation from God, and the power of working miracles, &c. God has never called men to testify to the truth of the Old and New Testament, unless the truth has been revealed to them personally from the heavens. When it is thus revealed, they will obey like the ancient saints, and the power of godliness will follow their faith, "even healing the sick, casting out devils, and speaking with new tongues."
You, sir, will surely admit, that the faith of the ancients was far superior to modern traditionary faith, and was attended with a power which this latter faith cannot, in its very nature, ever attain to. By the ancient faith, or faith of immediate revelation, men wrought righteousness, subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, and quenched the violence of fire—stayed the sun in the firmament—sealed up the heavens as brass for the space of three years and a half, or opened the windows thereof for the rain to descend in showers or torrents, even to a universal deluge. Surely it will be no disparagement to such exalted names as yours, and that of my old acquaintance President Barnas Sears, and my former instructor President E. Knott, to turn, like Paul, to the banner and standard of such a faith. By such a faith they are prepared to work the works of God; and either in time or eternity, to work even far greater works than Jesus ever wrought on the earth, as his own word declares; for, sir, this kind of faith shall abide beyond the veil; for God himself made the world by faith, and the spirits of the just work by faith, and obtain revelation from God, and minister the same to militant believers on earth, from the faith of the sanctified in light, to the faith of the militant here below. "The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith." Surely we may count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord; for he that gets the knowledge of Christ by revelation to himself, and keeps it, shall never fall.
Do you not preach, sir, the ancient faith spoken of in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, for modern believers to imitate? Or is the miraculous faith of the ancients to be pourtrayed to men in this day, only as a beautiful picture to be admired by spectators, and not copied and imitated as a doctrine of modern practice? If there is such a thing as common faith, in distinction from the supernatural and miraculous faith, named in the eleventh of Hebrews, what part of the scriptures teach it? Please to name the chapter and verse; and when you have pointed out to me the specific scriptures that teach a faith inferior to that of prophecying or working miracles, &c., please to tell me wherein lies the power of such a faith? If it cannot reveal any thing to the children of men, how can it increase the sum of knowledge with any reasonable prospect of filling the earth with knowledge, as the waters cover the bed of the great deep? If it cannot forecast events beyond the mere common prescience of human minds, how can the wise man foresee the evil in time to hide himself? Is it not passing strange, sir, that from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, and from Abraham to David, and from David to Malachi, and from John the Baptist to John the Revelator, the miraculous faith should be tenaciously and rigorously contended for; while since that day, men, professing godliness, not only contend for an inferior faith, but contend against the antiquated faith that was sustained for more than four thousand years, giving to God a great and glorious name for all his wonderful works and mighty deeds.
Why do the modern clergy commend the faith that put to flight the armies of the aliens—quenched the violence of fire—and staggered not at promises that required supernatural agency to fulfil, if we are not to imitate and practice such faith? Why so much time and labour exhausted in order to define and extol a faith that belonged exclusively to past ages; and if the scriptures speak of no other faith that is pleasing to God, would it not be better that mankind be informed more explicitly what is the nature and effect of that common and inferior faith of which the Bible illustrations are so inapplicable? Seeing that the Bible illustrations of faith pertain to examples of a supernatural order, will you please to give us those that are of a natural and common order, suited to our age, that is, and, of a right, ought to be free from supernatural and miraculous deeds, signs, wonders, and prophecyings? In so doing, and publishing the same through your widely-circulated paper, you may rest assured that it shall have prompt insertion in the STAR, and greatly oblige.
Your humble and obedient servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
ON WATER BAPTISM.
Liverpool, June 14, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—You, sir, need no argument to convince you that WATER BAPTISM is the first ordinance, after faith and repentance, that initiates the believer into the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is to be established upon the earth, according to the pattern of the heavenly order, which is the first principle taught in the memorable prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, which prayer will be pertinent to all believers on earth, until the object of the prayer is fully achieved and the kingdoms of this world have universally become the kingdom of God. And if we were to search the kingdom of God from one end to the other, and from side to side, we should not find a single adult believer in the whole heaven, who had not been baptized with water.
Do you ask why I make such a bold declaration, and how I know this seemingly exclusive and uncharitable truth? I know it, sir, by the voice of God from the heavens, and this voice is to you as well as me, if you will receive it. Do not you believe the scripture that saith, "except a man be born of the WATER and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God?" I know that you believe this scripture, and am persuaded that your ingenuous mind will not seek to pervert it from its plain and obvious import.
Whatever an over-jealous mind may fear concerning the state of the penitent thief on the cross, and of devout and upright men that have lived and died in every age of the world, still let God's word be accounted true, and every man that gainsays it be esteemed a liar! No man ever puts on the uniform of Christ's followers, such as is worn by subjects of the kingdom of Christ, until he is "baptized into Christ" for "remission of sins." Hereby he "puts on Christ," When an ambassador of Christ finds a man or woman that heartily repents of his or her rebellion against the laws of Christ, he baptizes him unto repentance for "remission of sins." By the ordinance of baptism, the rebellious subject virtually says, I hereby signify to all men my repentance; and the lawful administrator as virtually says, on the part of Jesus Christ, whose Ambassador I am, (being called by revelation, and being authorized to act in his name and for him), I pronounce this person's sins remitted, according to his genuine repentance and faith in Christ.
Now, sir, what objection can there be for a man sent from God to remit sins by baptism, in the name and by the authority of the King of heaven? If Christ has power on earth to forgive and remit sins, may He not send forgiveness and remission by another, even by whom he will? And will not such a remission and forgiveness of sins be as valid as though He administered the ordinance of baptism himself? Undoubtedly it will be indisputably valid. And what ordinance is so beautifully significant as that which expresses both the penitence of the subject and the cordial acceptance of the Ruler and Lord?
Has not Jesus Christ a right to remit sins by baptism unto repentance? Who shall say that the penitent believer's sins are not remitted by baptism? Who shall lay any sins to his charge? Is it not God that justifies? Has not Christ died? Has he not a right to say who are fit subjects for baptism? Has he not a right to say by what ordinance sins shall be remitted? He has never said that repentance and faith shall secure remission of sins to any one without baptism. It is not in the power of any man or angel to find a license in the Bible to receive a person into the kingdom of God without baptism. Jesus Christ has never given any license, but, on the other hand. He has explicitly said, in the most unequivocal language possible, that NO MAN can "enter the kingdom" without water baptism, or being "born of the water."
Do you ask, if I call baptism a saving ordinance? I reply, that repentance and faith will not save any body in the kingdom of God without baptism. Some men, whose crimes are unpardonable in this world, may, and doubtless do, repent and believe; but they cannot be baptized for the remission of sins, nor forgiven "until the times of refreshing come from the presence of the Lord in the restitution of all things." Righteous Noah was "saved by water;" and the apostle Peter, rehearsing the fact, says that baptism saved believers in his day in like manner.
You, sir, must be perfectly aware that Jesus Christ has said, by the mouth of his servant John, that BAPTISM constitutes no less importance of character than one of the THREE GREAT WITNESESS of adoption and citizenship into the kingdom of God on the earth—the SPIRIT, the WATER, and the BLOOD. These three bear witness on the earth and agree in one. One of these THREE performs the double office of bearing witness on the earth, and also of bearing record in heaven. Three witnesses appear to be requisite in order to prove our title good to a place in the kingdom of God; and the testimony of these THREE, and nothing less, is recorded in heaven by the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Who will dare to say that the THREE in heaven will accept of the testimony of the two witnesses on earth, when God has explicitly said that he requires the testimony of THREE, and nothing less?
Do we forget that all men are to be judged out of the books? And if the books show the absence of one WITNESS, and the consequent disagreement of the three before named, can that person that is thus deficient of testimony, stand acquitted from the books out of which he is judged? By no means! The THREE witnesses will agree in one; and when they agree, the Spirit will bear the testimony of the Water and the Blood to the recording angel, and these united with his own seal, will be placed on record until the books are brought forward for judging the nations of the earth.
Furthermore, no man can ever be born of the Spirit until he has first been born of the water. The Holy Ghost will never condescend to become the covenant-guide and instructor, and holy comforter of any one, until he has been baptized or born of water. Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye were baptized? Peter told penitent believers that they might receive the Holy Ghost after they were baptized; so said John the Baptist to those he baptized. If, in a single instance, the Holy Ghost was given before baptism, still it was no part of Christ's instructions to his apostles ever to confer the Holy Ghost until after baptism—and then it was to be done by the laying on of hands.
Men may receive a measure of the Spirit of God before baptism (even as a child has in embryo the germ of life before parturition); but no one has a large measure of the Spirit, nor has any covenant claim to the Spirit, or, in other words, can be born of the Spirit, until he has been baptized in water. "Jesus came by water," and was baptized in water for the remission of the original sin of the world. He knew that baptism for remission of sin was necessary as an example, and also that by his "obedience many might be made righteous" even as by the "offence of one, many were made sinners." Jesus needed not only the testimony of water-baptism, but also, after baptism, the testimony of the other witness—the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost was a personage inferior in office to himself, but still the Holy Ghost was conferred upon him, while coming out of the water, in "the form of a dove."
The third witness to adoption is the "Cup of Blessing, or Sacramental Cup of Wine," which, if men "drink not, they have no life in them." Now, sir, let us abide strictly by the "law and the testimony," even as Jesus our pattern has done, and consider nothing unessential which our lawgiver has both enjoined and exemplified for obedience and salvation. Who is prepared to say that the faithful will not take the cup of blessing, even in the heavens, and drink wine in our heavenly Father's kingdom? Who can say that the river of life that proceeds from the throne of God in the celestial city, shall not be employed to perpetuate the remembrance of baptismal water of adoption, and even perpetuate sinless purity, like the leaves of healing that grow on the banks of the crystal stream?
Is it a thing incredible with you, sir, that God should remit sins through baptism? It is with difficulty that I can persuade myself that you are so distrustful of the power or wisdom of God! You read and expound the scriptures from Sabbath to Sabbath. You certainly believe that Naaman's leprosy was washed away by water-baptism in Jordan; you also must believe that men were healed of mortal diseases, by simply looking at a brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness. Do you not believe that the walls of Jericho fell down under the simple blast of the rams' horns? and that the simple touch of the hem of a garment, or of handkerchiefs, was attended with healing virtue to them that believed?
Why were the learned and devout Judaic churches surprised that Peter should proclaim to thousands—"be baptized for the remission of your sins?" and, on another occasion, even command Cornelius, as pious and devout a believer as yourself, to be baptized in order that he might be "saved"—telling the churches in a general circular epistle, that baptism would save them as much as water saved Noah? Why should those same churches withdraw fellowship from Paul because he believed Annanias, saying to him, "arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins," even as your church have disfellowshipped me, because I believe as Paul did, and obey the same gospel which he preached, with all its miraculous gifts, blessings, and priesthood? The secret and solution of the whole surprise of the Judaic and modern churches are, that both overlook the efficacious simplicity of Christ's ordinances, and know not the "power of God," by which a mere look, touch, baptismal rite, or the imposition of a hand, may secure blessings rich as heaven—power as great as Gabriel's—knowledge as high as the throne of God—and life and felicity as endless as eternity!
Greatly blessed, sir, is that man commissioned immediately from the heavens to administer baptism unto repentance for remission of sins; and blessed are they who receive remission of sins from the hands of those who act in "Christ's stead." Hence the grateful acknowledgements of David, repeated by Paul—"Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered." Men who obey the gospel are as well satisfied that their sins are forgiven through baptism, as you, sir, would be satisfied of the validity and legality of a deed, signed and sealed by his excellency the chief magistrate of your State. They rejoice in the same, without ambiguity or fear of being deceived. The spirit of bondage and fear (which is in sectarian churches) does no longer wither up their hope, and blight the joy of their acceptance with God.
The heavens, that before seem clouded with dismal forebodings and doubtful omens, that kept the excellent Dr. Payson even, on a tumultuous sea of mental storms and calms, is now clear and tranquil all the day and all the year. They rejoice in the Lord ever more; and they know of a truth, that by keeping the commandments of God, their peace is like the gentle and ever-onward current of a river. Driven from "city to city, and from one nation to another people;" and "every where spoken against," belied, robbed, and arraigned before "magistrates" for thefts, treason, blasphemy, &c., they are distressed indeed, but not with mental doubts and fears. No; far from it; they are borne down with expulsion from place to place—burning their houses—despoiling their goods under shadow of legal prosecution—whippings—priestly and editorial calumnies! These things, sir, distress their bodies, and cause cold, and nakedness, and hunger, and an uncertain dwelling place; but do not by any means impair their peace in believing, or their joy in the Holy Ghost. None of these things move them.
Yours,
ORSON SPENCER.
THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST.
Liverpool, June 29, 1842.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—The subject of my fifth letter is one of surpassing importance. It is, sir, the "GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST," by the laying on of hands.
The magnitude of the subject warrants me to say, in few words, what belongs to it, without those copious scripture references which you can look after at your leisure. If you will honestly listen to my description of the office-work of the Holy Ghost, you will clearly perceive, that, since the time Jesus left the earth, it is more extensive and important than even the work of the other personages of the Godhead.
The Holy Ghost performs the double office of a WITNESS on earth and a RECORDER in heaven. Being an unembodied personage, he can move among men without the danger of being mobbed and killed, as was not the case with Jesus Christ. He takes up the work of man's redemption, just where Jesus Christ left it, and has a distinct part to act until the second coming of Christ, that in due time He also may obtain glory with the Father, even as Jesus does—yea, a fulness of the Godhead by himself.
According to promise he came on the day of Pentecost, either with a retinue of sanctified spirits, or in the simple unity and grandeur of his own potent agency, and filled the house. He then disbursed among the disciples a variety of tongues—gifts for men which the Conqueror had promised. With the keys of revelation, peculiar to his office, he unlocked their understanding (with perfect impunity to himself) and bore witness that Jesus was Christ. His testimony not only confirmed the disciples, who had been previously baptized, beyond the shadow of all further doubt, but convinced some thousands of the sin of unbelief.
He immediately informed Peter, to whom Christ had promised to send the keys of the presidency over the church by the Holy Ghost (for he could do nothing till the Holy Ghost should bring them), that He, the Holy Ghost, would ever be an attendant upon penitent believers that should be "baptized for remission of sins," whenever his minister should lay on hands. He authorized him to make a solemn standing PROMISE to this effect, viz.: that the Holy Ghost's presence as a WITNESS to truth, should invariably follow the imposition of hands. But he also gave him to understand, that none should lay on hands or preach but such as should be called by revelation, even as was Aaron. He assured him that he would henceforth abide with the church, and enable obedient believers to work certain miraculous signs, such as healing the sick, casting out devils, nullifying the properties of poison wickedly administered, and speaking with new tongues—and these and other confirmations of the truth should invariably attend the true church to the end of the world, or as long as true believers continued on the earth; and if these miraculous signs did not follow believers, they might know that they were rejected of God, as reprobate silver is rejected of men.
The Holy Ghost further informed him, that He was the LIVING WITNESS on earth, in connexion with the WATER and the BLOOD, and sealed up the testimony of all the witnesses concerning all believers on earth, and then took them to heaven and recorded them in the BOOKS, by the mutual agreement of the Father and the Son, against a time of awards and punishments. He also informed him that he always obtained a perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ's mind touching all church transactions on earth, and faithfully communicated the same to chosen men and believers, according to their capacity to receive and use such knowledge; and should continue to act in this Office of enlightening and comforting the church, "until they all come to the unity of the faith and the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," which he possessed before he left the earth. And he would also communicate Christ's mind concerning the destinies of nations, and the judgments, famines, and pestilences, &c., with which Jesus Christ would visit the earth.
The Holy Ghost would also reveal the deep purposes of God, not only concerning the future glory of the Church, but also concerning individuals that lived before the foundations of the world, and what would be their state in worlds that are future. And even all things that Jesus Christ knew concerning the interest, salvation, and endless felicity and glory of the church—and the misery and final undoing of such as obey not God, the Holy Ghost would communicate in visions, dreams, and revelations. Thus the earth would be filled with knowledge, and Christ would again return here with all the departed saints, and literally bring down a celestial city of splendid mansions—even the New Jerusalem—and God would once more dwell with men in peace.
Let it be understood, that not only apostles, but all obedient believers in the primitive age had the gift of the Holy Ghost, and, consequently, the "spirit of prophecy." "He that hath the testimony of Jesus hath the spirit of prophecy." How do men have the testimony of Jesus? I answer, through the agency of the Holy Ghost. Let it be understood, and marked with INDELIBLE EMPHASIS, that the HOLY SPIRIT is the GREAT WITNESS on earth—that He, the spirit of truth, has transmitted the mind of Jesus to believers in visions, dreams, prophecyings, &c. For this purpose Jesus sent the SPIRIT into the world, that he might reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
The Spirit, though unimbodied, now acts in all the authority, influence, and power that Jesus himself would do if He were on the earth in very person. But He acts upon and through the body of Christ, which is the church; through the Spirit's possession of the church, it displays the "MANIFOLD WISDOM OF GOD." Whatever varied and abundant wisdom Jesus himself possessed, the true Church ever has in a measure, and is destined to have, even to perfect fulness—"the fulness of his stature."
But how is the true Church to show forth all the omniscience and potency of Jesus? I answer, sir, by the Spirit of God that is in the Church, by "the laying on of hands." By this spirit it is signified to Paul what shall befall him at Jerusalem; and also that the true Church shall cease from off the earth, with all its miraculous gifts and blessings, before the second coming of Christ. By the same spirit, John saw that an angel would again come in the midst of heaven to restore the original primitive gospel to the earth. By the same spirit Zachariah heard and saw the angel that should bring it, speak to a "young man." Isaiah saw the young man take a "sealed book from the earth," that should be a "marvellous work and wonder," confounding the "wisdom of the wise." By this spirit the camp of Israel saw and heard seventy elders prophecy the very hour and moment that hands were laid upon them. Paul saw and heard more than twelve disciples speak "with tongues and prophecy," as soon as the "Holy Ghost" was conferred by "laying on of hands."
No sooner had Annanias laid his hands on Saul, than the Holy Ghost, ever faithful to his "promise," filled the person of Saul, and opened his eyes. The same spirit signified to Philip a mission to Gaza, and after he had baptized the Ethiopian, caught him away with power. By it also, Sampson stretched forth an arm of omnipotence and slew a thousand men; and at another time overthrew a large and capacious building, being filled with people, besides containing three thousand men and women upon the roof. And by the same spirit, in this day, the blind have been made to see, the lame to walk, and the deaf to hear, and hundreds of persecuted famishing Saints, on the banks of the Mississippi, have been miraculously fed by quails, as ancient Israel were fed in the wilderness.
Now, sir, can you tell me why sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit constituted a more heinous and unpardonable offence than sin against the "Son of Man?" Surely there is an importance attached to the office-work of this DIVINE AND MARVELLOUS WITNESS on the earth that deserves attention. If there is no forgiveness of such an offence, it becomes all men, not only to hear before they judge, but also to judge "righteous judgment." Jesus Christ has told us that He placed in His Church apostles and prophets, with gifts of miracles, tongues, &c. These gifts were the gifts of the spirit; and you will not deny that the Spirit of God, so far as the New Testament speaks of Him, was a spirit of almighty power, as displayed in numerous gifts and ways.
Now, sir, what has become of this miraculous and almighty spirit? Has he ceased wholly from the earth? If so, then the WATER and the BLOOD are the only witnesses now left on the earth. But perhaps you will say that the same spirit still remains, without exercising his miraculous gifts and powers, (seeing they are not now necessary.) Shall we then understand that this Almighty Spirit is still on the earth, and in the diversified and conflicting churches, and comparatively silent and inefficient, withholding from these churches (which are by supposition the BODY of Christ), his majestic displays of supernatural power in prophecies, healings, tongues; causing the dumb ass to speak with man's voice, causing powerful armies to flee before the pursuit of one man; and yet the world is perishing for lack of knowledge, and christianity losing ground every day? Might we not as soon think the spirit has grown old to dotage, or lost his first love, or been beguiled into other pursuits of less importance? Surely He never wrought so lazily, or in such imbecility and indifference in any other age, when true believers or prophets were on the earth? Strange, indeed, sir, that he should drop off so suddenly his royal robes of prophetic, miraculous grandeur and power, to become the silent and inefficient inmate of more than six hundred clashing, contentious churches, that are yearly subdividing into minute fragments, to the confusion of all common sense throughout boasting christendom! What a falling off of the spirit's power, and of the spirit's light and unity! Will the Holy and Eternal Spirit of God endorse such a powerless distracted state of things, as being in any way connected with His presence on the earth, or in any way the result of His doings? No, sir, by no means. For the honour of this illustrious personage, let us never ascribe to HIM such a powerless distracted organization of heterogenous ignorance and imbecility, as modern christianity presents in contrast with ancient christianity. The heavens may well blush with shame at this modern picture, purporting to be the kingdom of God on the earth. If it is the kingdom of God, how shorn of its miraculous strength! How are the prophets and seers covered!! How dim that fine gold that once shown resplendent with the celestial lustre of prophetic visions!!! Then men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and the sick were healed, and he that lied to them was paralyzed in instantaneous death, at times.
Orators "boast," as it is written of them in these "perilous times," of the spread of christianity. Christianity spreading! Where is the evidence of its increase of power or knowledge? Where the least signs of approximation to "unity of faith," and the "full stature measure of Christ" in "manifold wisdom and power?" Where the ornamental beauty and symmetry of the Bride that is preparing for the marriage feast of the Lamb? How many ten thousand years must elapse before it can be said of christianity, "the Bride hath made herself ready!" "clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners." Surely, since her prophets have lost their power "to quench the violence of fire, and subdue kingdoms, and stop the mouths of lions," and her servants and handmaids to see visions, &c., the beauty of the Bride has failed—her breasts have diminished—her face is wrinkled—her eyes are dim and cannot see afar off; she is no longer a chaste virgin espoused to one husband—but she has as many husbands as sects, and yet none of those with whom she is now living can be called her husband.
Now, sir, will the Spirit join with such a Bride, and say to Jesus the Great Bridegroom, "come!" the Bride hath made herself ready! No, sir, the Spirit of God will say, I never knew you; depart from me, you pusillanimous, benighted, powerless, contentious christianity. "Thou Aholibah and Aholibamah, thy lewdness is in all high places;" "thou hast played the harlot with many lovers—yea, thou hast even hired lovers" (with human inventions), instead of commanding admiration by the grace of thy "seers," and the "visions of thy handmaids," and the "healing power of thine elders." Thou shalt be burned with fire.
In humble assurance of your willingness to see the unsheathed glittering sword of truth, I have the pleasure to subscribe myself.
Your humble servant,
For Christ's sake,
ORSON SPENCER.
APOSTACY FROM THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.
Liverpool, July 12, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—The subject of my sixth letter is APOSTACY FROM THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.
If modern christianity is only an enlargement of the system of early apostacy from the true Apostolic Church of Christ, it certainly deserves the most serious consideration. It shall be my direct object in this epistle to show, that modern christianity possesses such a faint resemblance to that system of faith established by Jesus Christ and his apostles, that it cannot be called a likeness, or a copy, or even an imitation.
Startle not, reverend sir, if I unhesitatingly declare that a counterfeit bill of currency, that should have no more resemblance to a true emission from the bank, than modern christianity does to the ancient religion, would never be likely to do much harm. Modern christianity is the very opposite extreme and counterpart of the ancient order of "apostles and prophets." If you will read patiently, I will show clearly the proof of my position.
In the Primitive Church, the Holy Ghost, after Jesus left the earth, came and took possession, and constituted the grand main-spring, life, light, and power of it. And the apostle Peter (of indisputable authority) declares, in the Second of Acts, that the promised gift of the Holy Ghost SHOULD CONTINUE even to "all the Lord our God should call."
But this wonderful agent is not known in modern christianity. His powerful agency, as foretold by Joel in prophecy, in tongues and interpretation, in discerning of spirits and in healing, is not now recognised as being any part of the present christianity. That Spirit that was to make amends for the departure and absence of Jesus, by acquainting believers with all truth—past, present, and future—that they might be comforted with knowledge and light, such as could not be obtained from books, whether inspired or uninspired, was the great sine qua non or essential thing in ancient christianity; but in modern christianity, the fruits of such a spirit would be sneered at, even by divines! What! exclaims one, prophecy in these days! speak in tongues now! heal the sick now! have visions of future things, and even heavenly things like unto the ancients! The exclaimant stands aghast with astonishment, as a perfect stranger to the most obvious and conspicuous principles of ancient christianity.
Modern christianity professes to derive all its light, and its various clashing creeds, from the Old and New Testament. If modern christianity is, indeed, the offspring of the Bible, it is a prodigy with many hundred heads; but ancient christianity drew its light from the ROCK of immediate revelation, and previous scriptures were only confirmatory of the Spirit's testimony. Illiterate fishermen, like Peter, traditionated by a corrupt priesthood, could know next to nothing of the written manuscripts of the Bible. What he learnt was not from flesh and blood, but from the spirit of revelation; and let it be always in your mind, sir, that Christ has said, that on "THIS ROCK" of immediate revelation "He will build His church."
A christianity contained exclusively in a small volume like the Bible, is an insult to the capacious revelations of the Eternal Spirit of God, that even searches the deep things of God—a mere drop compared with the mighty ocean! The full biography of Jesus Christ contained in the New Testament? Nonsense! Preposterous mockery! You certainly are not ignorant of the last verse in John's gospel—"The world itself could not contain the account, if written, of the acts and doings of Jesus Christ." But shall the knowledge of Christ be buried in oblivion because his acts and sayings cannot be written? No, by no means; God forbid! What saith the scriptures? the all-wise "Spirit shall bring all things to your remembrance, even the deep things of God—things that the tongue cannot utter nor the heart conceive."
Without the Holy Spirit of revelation, to take of the things of Jesus and convey them to the knowledge of men, I boldly aver that NO man can harmonize a consistent system from the Old and New Testament, or find eternal life. Every man must be born of that spirit which gives revelation and knowledge of Christ, or he can never see the kingdom of God. But a prominent feature in the creed of modern christianity is, that there is no further need of revelation, consequently the distinct office-work of the Spirit, to bring to mind unwritten acts and doctrines of Christ, and harmonize those which are written and scattered promiscuously through the Bible, is abrogated and deemed superfluous by modern christianity!
O thou benighted advocate of modern christianity, how long shall thy eye be veiled in reading the New Testament, and thine heart be too gross to perceive the beauty, and comfort, and power of that blessed Spirit that gave life and salvation to ancient christianity? Hast thou lost all admiration for the Spirit's miraculous gifts, power, and blessing? settled down under reconciliation to a load of doubts and fears, hoping that death will remove thy tormenting burden? Vain hope! No longer then do despite to that Eternal Spirit of revelation that is freely promised to all that will honestly receive it. If Gentile christians are ashamed of the Jew, because a veil was before their eyes in reading the Old Testament, has not the Jew equal cause to be ashamed of the Gentile, that has so soon turned away from the primitive path of the Spirit's gifts of visions, prophecies, healings, &c., and thereby been "cut off for not continuing in His goodness," according to the warning threat of Jehovah against Gentiles.
Where, sir, are the splendid gifts of apostles and prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, that Christ gave to men and set in his church, forever to continue in the ministry, edifying "the BODY of Christ till we all come to the unity of faith," and to such a knowledge of God, and fulness of power and wisdom as dwelt even in Jesus? They are nowhere to be found in modern christianity! Modern christianity has the effrontery and shamelessness even to say that she does not need them; consequently she says that she does not need "to come to unity of faith," and to that full and potent knowledge of God that Jesus in the flesh possessed, and had decreed that all Saints should possess and be like their "elder brother."
Not one of these great and precious gifts are retained. The bare name of evangelists and pastors is retained in modern christianity, without the shadow of the power and prophetic knowledge of the Holy Ghost, with which these officers were obliged to be endued in the primitive church. She admits, indeed, the form of the office, "denying the power." She says, indeed, that she can come to "unity of faith," &c., without apostles, and without the help of the good old-fashioned Almighty Holy Ghost.
But how long a time does she want to run for this prize of "unity of faith, &c.?" She has been running for the stakes nearly EIGHTEEN HUNDRED YEARS, and is further from the goal than when we started. When she started, "false apostles and deceitful workers" were her champions. In order to win the prize, these shed the blood of true apostles, and the blood of saints was found in their garments. And when her followers found that she had only the form or name of apostles and prophets without the power, she said, we have no further need of apostles, they have done their work and miracles have ceased. Oh, thou blood-guilty, "lying," Gentile christianity! thy lineage takes hold of the mother of abominations, clothed in scarlet! How great will be the severity of God's judgments upon all that are accessory to modern christianity, except they repent and obey the gospel!
She has also changed the ordinances. Where is now the ordinance of anointing with oil? Where the ordinance of imposition of hands? The healing of the sick is given up to medical men, whose reliance is on anything but the power and established ordinance of God. Is it not written for the benefit of the sick, that they should call for the elders of the church, whose duty it is to "anoint the sick with oil and lay on hands and they shall recover?" Now the consequence of changing this one ordinance of the Bible to the medical nostrums of men, is the literal death of thousands, who change the ordinance and contribute to make this whole earth the burying ground of nations.
Sir, may I not significantly ask, will the priests of the day return unto the Lord and teach his "law and his testimony," or will they with hearts of stone see the inhabitants of the earth perish under the curse of "trusting in medical man and making flesh an arm?"
The prophet Isaiah says, the consequence of changing the ordinances is, to make the earth empty and desolate! But this is not the only ordinance that is changed. By laying on hands for the gift of the Holy Spirit, the authority to prophecy, speak with new tongues, and cast out devils, is conferred. Now, unless boasting christianity has secured peace and fellowship with the devil, it is of much importance to know how to cast him out. Unless they have wisdom and power, and the spirit of prophecy, to supersede the need of the Holy Spirit, it is very essential to observe the ordinances by which, alone, it is conferred.
But it is certain, that if the Holy Spirit, in all its supernatural office-work of miraculous omnipotence and wisdom, does not come and reign on the earth, then the kingdom of God will never come on the earth as it exists in heaven. But the scriptures assure us that the kingdom of God will break in pieces all other kingdoms, and be established on earth, even as it is in heaven, and the palace of God (tabernacle) be in the midst of the human family.
The Holy Ghost is the grand agent by which the different orders of priesthood, have all their authority, wisdom, and power, to teach and administer the laws and ordinances of heaven to men on earth. The "MANIFOLD WISDOM OF GOD" flows through these orders of priesthood from heaven to earth. But modern christianity has abolished these orders of priesthood, as no longer necessary; consequently, the communications from heaven to earth have been stopped for nearly eighteen hundred years; and from this cause, our race has witnessed the most appalling picture of the progress of crime and wretchedness, that has ever pervaded the earth since the dawn of creation. No man has sufficient knowledge of figures to enumerate THE MILLIONS that have been slain in war, since the Gentiles were cut off for unbelief. The pestilence has never slumbered since man rejected the healing ordinance of God, for the aid of physicians that are of no value. Famine has locked hands with pestilence, causing rot, and blast, and mildew to lead many to fear that God had repented himself of the "promised seed time and harvest."
The social virtues that ought to be and ever would be, under the reign of God, like salubrious breezes of heaven, have become like the antagonistic and forked teeth of a picking cylinder, that turned ever so much, will still be picking either in the offensive or defensive. The number of the oppressed is becoming so fearfully great and vast, that the captors know not where to find either room or keepers for their prisoners. The yoke of intolerance must have fresh iron fastenings of unheard of tenacity and rigour. The oppressor feels the danger of an awful outbreak from desperation that can be smothered no longer. The elements of revolution and self-destruction, are sown deep in every government, and in every religious and social system that has not for its basis truth, immediately and continually revealed from heaven!
Now, all this direful state of things is because that men have "forsaken God, the fountain of living waters, and hewn them out cisterns that can hold no water." "From the crown of the head to the soles of the feet," modern christianity, whether Protestant or Catholic, "is full of wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores."
The prophets and apostles foresaw the Gentile apostacy that would spread over the earth, under the plausible name of christianity, obliterating the knowledge of God, and "denying the power of God, and changing his laws and ordinances," till "gross darkness should cover the people." They saw the "mystery of iniquity" working, and boldly foretold the "falling away"—the exaltation of the man of sin,—the removal of the priesthood and light of truth from the seven churches of Asia,—the refusal to "teach all things that Jesus commanded,"—the irresistible fact, that men would not "endure sound doctrines," but would multiply discrepant teachers to suit "itching ears,"—the introduction of "damnable heresies," and the "doctrines of devils," and the church becoming like a blood-guilty "harlot," that had exterminated the whole order of apostles, and prophets, and spiritual gifts, and even denied the need of any such order of gifts and ministry as existed in the primitive church!
The first doctrine of the devil in the garden was that it was not necessary to obey God concerning a particular tree of the garden; and the same doctrine of devils has, by inches and by piece-meal removed and broken every command of Christ, and put bishops and doctors in the seats of apostles and prophets, and the ordinance of sprinkling infants, in place of baptism; virtually saying, "that God doth know," that without the aid of apostles and the gift of the Spirit by laying on of hands, you can know truth enough; and without baptism "for remission of sins," you can be forgiven through prayer at the altar.
Permit me, sir, in the conclusion to remind you of the reproof given by an inspired wise man. "Say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." The true and only rational revealed cause why modern christianity is so weak, contentious, discrepant, and so unlike the majestic, almighty christianity of apostolic days, is, because apostate uninspired men "HAVE TRANSGRESSED the LAWS, CHANGED the ORDINANCES, and BROKEN the EVERLASTING COVENANT." Therefore, the "earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof." "Gentile" christianity will yet be compelled to come from the "ends of the earth and say, surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit."
And God has said, sir, because "your (Gentile) fathers have forsaken him and have not kept his law," "therefore," says God, "behold, I will this once cause them to know mine hand and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord." The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word, the earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate; therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left."
In view of these things, dear sir, my fervent prayer is, that you and all my brethren in the sectarian ministry will, from this day forth, stay their hand and voice from upholding modern boasting christianity—that is a "stink" in the nose of Jehovah—that is depopulating the earth and abrogating the laws, and ordinances of God, and sin no more, and thereby follow the humble example of
Your obedient servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
Liverpool, August 28, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—The next subject in the order of my promise, contained in my first letter to you, is, THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH, after the similitude and power of the primitive church. Such an occurrence as this, truly demands proof of a palpable and satisfactory order, which, by the help of God, I will proceed to give you.
The beloved apostle John, who survived many of his fellow-labourers in the gospel, and saw many damnable heresies coming into the church, and making havoc of all the faithful, and even the seven most faithful churches in all the earth probably, right under his own faithful supervision, yielding to APOSTACY, and going over to Satan. This apostle, dear sir, in his solitary grief, was shewn, by revelation from God, the RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TRUE CHURCH, with such wrath and vengeance following its wake, as should make an utter end of wickedness, give the righteous a thousand years rest, cleanse the earth by blood and burning, and bind the devil until the "little season."
Now mark, sir, the emphatic words of this apostle before he left the earth, concerning what he saw would come in the last days. Hear now with a fixed ear, and an unbiassed determined purpose to believe, and abide the declaration of your own apostle John. Now to the momentous words that cheered the few banished persecuted Saints, that survived the bloody hand of Gentile apostacy. Says he:—"I saw another angel flying through the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people; saying, Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come."
There is no obscurity about this language. It is quite as intelligible and free from ambiguity as the language that predicted the marvellous manner of the coming of Christ, which, however, men would not understand, through prejudice. "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son," &c.
Now, sir, is it at all incredible that an angel should come to men? Or is it incredible that he should come soaring, or "flying in the midst of heaven to earth?" You certainly believe, that Jesus Christ and Elijah soared from the earth up through the air, or visible heavens. Is it not also credible, that God should employ an angel to carry a message to the nations? And as God ministered the law by angels to one man, Moses, for a whole nation, even so the angel that John saw, would minister his gospel message to some particular man, and that man should bear it to the nations of the earth.
Now, to what man might we expect an angel would bring such a message of vast importance? A great and wise man, or obscure and ignorant, or an old or young man? If we look at the past, we shall find that John was a boisterous fellow, from the wilderness, that had no fellowship for any existing religion whatever. He struck the axe deep at the root of every religious organization, notwithstanding there were, probably, some good men in every sect, but they were in error. This man, sir, was first and chief pioneer to the Lord of life.
And who comes next to receive a message for all nations, and hold the keys of revelation for all nations? Now, reverend sir, fix the eye of your mind steadily upon him. And who is he? An honest, hardy, illiterate, bold, rough fisherman, that perhaps never saw the inside of a gentleman's drawing-room. Here, sir, is the wisdom of God and confusion for man. But to return. Who is the man, to whom the angel shall give the gospel message of all nations, in the last days, according to the vision of John, the revelator? Let God, the Holy One of all the earth, speak in this matter, and let all the ends of the earth believe HIS holy word.
The Lord God of all flesh, sir, by the mouth of his servant Zechariah, tells us precisely what kind of man this angel would speak to, and give the gospel, in the last dispensation. Speaking of the two great events (the building of Zion and Jerusalem, in the last days), Zechariah, with his ear open to the revelation of the same great event as John's was, says he heard the mandate of the Almighty to the angel, saying, "Go and speak to that young man."
Here we have it, sir, in the language and testimony of God himself, by the mouths of his two servants, John, the revelator, and Zechariah. John saw, after much inquiry before God about the restoration of the gospel to the earth, in clear vision, the angel in his downward flight through the heavens to earth, and also heard him proclaim his errand, and the message of joy and wo to the nations of the last days. The other servant of God, Zechariah, like John, equally intent to know whether the true gospel ever would triumph in all the earth, and wickedness come to an end, had the happiness to see the angel, at the end of his downward flight, place his feet upon the earth, and witness the finger of God raised, and pointing the angel to a young man, saying, "Go speak to that young man."
Now, sir, that you may be convinced beyond controversy, I will beg your attention to the marvellous coincidence between the matter of fact, as related by a guileless young man, and the declaration of John and Zechariah; but first, you must readily admit, that according to the testimony of two prophets of God, an angel must come down through the midst of heaven to earth, in some period of the last days, subsequent to the lifetime of John, with such a gospel as was not on the earth; and that angel must communicate his gospel message to some certain young man which the finger of God should point out to the angel.
Now, was the young man Joseph the man, or look we for another? His testimony concerning the angel that he saw, and the message that he received, if you will read it, coincides perfectly with what the two prophets had long since declared should take place. He was, indeed, an illiterate and obscure youth of seventeen, of humble parentage, from the mountains of Vermont; but was he any less fit to receive such a message than any other youth, because he was illiterate or poor, or obscure, or rough and vulgar? This simple country youth told a tale of what he had seen and heard, in the face of all the broad blazing science and christianity of the nineteenth century; but was he any less likely to be the youth that the prophets saw and spoke of on that account? Was it a marvellous tale that he told? so likewise was the tale that the Virgin Mary told about her offspring as begotten of God the Father. Did the message that Joseph received, lead him to disfellowship all the religious systems of the day, as incompatible with the primitive pattern? so did Jesus, with the religions of his day. But lest some lingering doubt should remain upon your mind, whether the young man Joseph was the identical youth spoken of by the prophets just named, you shall have other proofs until reason is satisfied.
The prophet Daniel being greatly beloved of God, and of great faith, saw this scene of the visitation of the angel to the young man, and the laying of the corner-stone of a millennial kingdom, and the time of its organization, and calculated the same, to a day, as will be developed in due time. Job wished that his words, or revelations and history, were written with a pen of iron (the engraver's tool) and laid in a rock. Now many of the prophets that lived and suffered on the American continent, and settled that continent about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, also wished their words written and laid in rock or stone. By great faith they obtained permission to have their records and prophecies laid up in stone, being neatly engraved with a pen of iron, on plates of the most enduring metal. Daniel saw this stone that contained the records, and spoke of it. Now this stone, containing the words of these prophets of that "other fold" spoken of by Christ, had been buried about fourteen hundred years previous to its discovery, probably to a considerable depth in the earth, in what was then called the mountain of Cumorah. Daniel's language is very remarkable in regard to the manner in which this stone, with its contents, and connexion with the angelic message, should come forth "out of the mountain without hands." The stone probably, in consequence of the wear of the elements upon the earth under the guidance of God, was gradually resurrected from the depths of its burial, until it was literally out of the mountain, and visible without the aid of hands.
Oh! how marvellous, literal, and exact the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy! THE MOUNTAIN! THE VISIBILITY OF THE LONG BURIED STONE WITHOUT HANDS! The contents of this stone, long harped upon by commentators, joined with the whole of the angelic message foreseen by John and Zechariah, were to lay the foundation of a kingdom that should extend over the whole earth, and break in pieces all others, and never be thrown down. Daniel not only saw the stone, and mountain, and young man, and the whole beginning of this latter-day work, and calculated the precise year and day of the month when the kingdom (not the coming of Christ) should be set up; but he describes the small and weak governments into which the four great universal governments should be divided and subdivided. The governments that should exist on the earth when this stone should be brought to light, would be, in comparison with the four universal and potent governments of previous ages, as the numerously divided toes of a man's feet in magnitude to his body.
When Jesus Christ came to organize the kingdom, the Romish government was universal, and all the world were required to be taxed for its support; consequently Daniel did not speak of his organization, which all the apostles saw and declared would be overcome. But he saw that the kingdom which Christ would never take from the earth would be set up, when the image of great kingdoms would be reduced to the simile of mere toes, or petty kingdoms, just such as exist all over the earth now—weak and small, and huddled together as thick as some of the supernumerary toes of the feet of some ancient prodigies.
The kingdoms of this world, just precisely like the religions of this world, are small, very numerous and contentious—all the present governments of the earth being based on mixed, heterogenous, and discordant principles, will readily crumble, like dry clay, before the march of truth, until the dust thereof is carried away, and these kingdoms and diversified religions are known only in the past. You, sir, know very well whether the signs of the times fully indicate the tottering state, and general disruption of all the governments of the earth. But before I close this part of my subject, I will still multiply the testimony of the prophets even further upon it.
Omitting Ezekiel, I will next introduce the testimony of Isaiah. This prophet has probably said more on the re-establishment of the church in the last days, and the surpassing glory of it than any other, and deserves rather to be read as a whole than suffer mutilation from a single extract or two. How any man can read Isaiah's testimony and not see that an extraordinary scene, just like the one I have been describing, was in full vision before him, it is difficult to explain, except their hearts are waxed gross and dull to perceive, and the veil remains untaken away in reading the Old Testament prophecies.
Instead of citing passages of scripture verbatim, I will here name topics, which Isaiah distinctly exhibited, bearing directly upon the subject at issue. First, he speaks unequivocally of an extraordinary BOOK, and says it would be a "sealed book," that neither the learned or unlearned could read. Second, in the context, he gives a cutting rebuke, because there is no prophet or seer to read it; and administers a most withering reproof to the religious world, that draw near to Him with their lips, and honour Him with their mouths only; and for lack of the spirit of revelation and prophecy, resort to their own ingenuity of teaching the fear of the Lord by human precepts. Third, he says, the "vision" of all is become as a BOOK that is sealed which cannot be read. How is this, sir, that the prophecies and revelations of all are locked up in a book, that neither learned nor unlearned can read, and the men that uttered them, prophets and seers, are covered—shut out from the knowledge of mankind?
The visions of the Old and New Testament are so plainly legible in many books, that he who runs may read. Those who had these latter visions, instead of being covered or unknown, are well known, and preached every Sabbath day. Don't shrink from this issue, sir, but meet it like one who feels his destiny to be suspended on a correct faith in revealed truth. What mysterious collection of visions, arranged into the form of a BOOK, that no uninspired man can read, IS THIS? It must be the visions of some prophets and seers, that have lived and prophesied to some people, that have now faded from the knowledge of men. Mankind is ignorant of them. And when the BOOK, that contains their records is found (taken out of the earth, as I shall show by Isaiah's testimony), no man can read it or is the wiser for it (unless God reveals it).
Now, sir, as you are a teacher, professing to be sent from God, I again ask, whose visions are all these, so curiously wrapped up in a BOOK, and sealed too, and kept hid from the knowledge of mankind? You will not deny that the prophet saw a book, containing important records of some certain unknown prophets and seers. But if you believe the prophet, as I know you do, and humbly acknowledge, that you cannot tell what this mysterious BOOK of RECORDS means; then, by the spirit and blessing of God, I will further endeavour to show that it is the same that the angel announced to the young man Joseph.
This mysterious BOOK of records was found in that identical stone, spoken of by Daniel the prophet. The prophets and seers, whose records constitute that book, lived among a mighty nation on the American continent, whose history is as important as that of other continents in its place.
Another topic dwelt upon by Isaiah is, that "truth" (plainly alluding to this book of inspired records) should "speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust."
Is it a marvellous thing that this wonderful book of the visions of all the American seers should be so skilfully entombed in stone, and then buried in the earth? Where should they have deposited it, so that it could have answered the purpose intended, so well as in the ground? How could the STONE, containing it, ever have been CUT OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN WITHOUT HANDS, if it had never been put into the mountain? Isaiah says, the people should be besieged and brought low (nearly all were slain), but by the records of their seers should, after a long time, speak out of the ground, and their records should be as the voice of a familiar spirit. Who, sir, that has read them does not clearly perceive that they speak familiarly of things past, present, and to come? So truly do these records speak of what shall transpire, after the BOOK has been shewn to them, that many have slanderously said, that it was written by an eye witness of the things spoken of. It speaks also of the ruins of cities—of antiquities since discovered on the American continent, by travellers and antiquarians, that have excited the curiosity and wonder of the world.
This Book of Mormon, is one of the most unexceptionable and God-honouring books that was ever published to the world. An uninspired man might as well attempt to originally compose the Old and New Testament, as it. Its language (the best butt of cavaliers) is said not to harmonize with the philological rules of the nineteenth century. One word in reply. Peter and John were illiterate men, who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and their language was accredited to unlearned men by their hearers. Now, if redundant and ungrammatical language may be the medium through which the Holy Ghost communicates by men in speaking, may it not with equal propriety be employed in writing, by a similar class of men? It is not denied, that there is something wonderful about all this matter. The prophet Isaiah considered it wonderful, when he calls it a "marvellous work: a marvellous work and a wonder." "The wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent shall be hid." All the learned commentaries of divines, as this gospel advances, shall be buried in oblivion, as so much rubbish.
God declares, by the same prophet, that he has seen the wickedness of the wicked, and the oppression of the poor and upright, until he rises up to "do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act." He warns men against making a mock of this strange and marvellous work, lest their "bands be made strong," for he has "decreed a consumption upon the whole earth." This is what John also says;—"The hour of His judgment" is measurably simultaneous with the proclamation of the gospel. Habakkuk, the prophet, told men to wait for this same vision of American prophets, written on tables (tabular plates), which would be a long time before it made its appearance; but it would "surely come," because God had promised these seers that a remnant of their seed, on that continent, should be saved. No pen can describe the joy and exultation that they must have felt in obtaining such a promise, or the bliss now experienced by them in the fulfilment of it. But for the fulfilment of this promise, none of them or their righteous contemporaries would ever have been made perfect.
Oh! how great the goodness and mercy of God to every nation, without respect of persons! How great, too, the indebtedness of this generation to Almighty God for that most precious "stone" of prophetic records, that reveals at once the history of the American continent—a continent of otherwise unfathomable antiquities and wonders—a land that embowels the bones of a numerous and mighty race of people, with all their implements of husbandry and of art! Where, also, are the ruins of splendid cities, the former glory of which might surpass even gigantic London! Within that stone, too, was written with a pen of iron, as infallibly as the marks on Belshazzar's palace, the future destiny of the American people.
In conclusion, do you ask if the Apostolic Church is again re-established, where is it? I reply, it is in the mountains where the Lord's House is to be built in the last days. Driven by the cruel hand of persecution to the very place where the Lord has declared He will "hide them till the indignation be overpast." Do you also ask what kind of organization this Church has? The answer is, the same as that of the Apostolic Church in the days of Peter, consisting of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, &c.; with the gifts of healing, tongues, interpretation, casting out devils, prophesyings, &c. Do you ask who has seen any of these miraculous fruits of this Church? I answer a hundred thousand living witnesses are ready to testify that the "signs" which Christ said "shall follow them that believe," do, in very deed, follow believers in this Church. Do you say, are they credible witnesses? They were generally accounted credible persons, until they believed and obeyed this gospel. Do their lives show that they do sincerely believe and love the apostolic gospel which they profess? Nothing as yet, has been able to separate them from it; neither home nor country, nor the inheritances of their fathers, nor penury or reproach, or evil report, or cold, or nakedness, and no certain dwelling-place for years!
I now close this simple and unembellished statement of truth, being written in a state of convalescence from severe sickness, hoping a portion of your inquiries will have been satisfactorily answered,
Your friend and servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
THE TRUE AND LIVING GOD.
Liverpool, September 13, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—In this epistle I shall endeavour to set before you a description of the person, abode, and character of THE TRUE AND LIVING GOD. In so doing I trust it will not be imputed to arrogance if I borrow my apology from the language of St. Paul:—"As I passed by I beheld an altar with this inscription, 'To the Unknown God.' Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."
The people of Paul's day had for several generations been unaccustomed to receive revelations from the true God, believing, generally, that revelations from God had ceased with Malachi. They supposed that the canon of scripture was complete long before their time, and they considered that the great law-giver, Moses, had established an immutable code of laws and government, suited to the condition of people of all ages and circumstances whatever, to the end of time; and the Jews, to this very day, entertain the same opinion.
Labouring under this most blighting and soul-darkening opinion for several centuries, without the light of any new revelation, and without the aid of that immediate inspiration which attended Moses and the prophets, their foolish hearts became darkened as a necessary consequence. Inflated with pride, and a false but sincere reverence for the scriptures of a previous age, they became a conspicuous and warning example to this generation of ignorance, not only of the scriptures, which they carefully memorized, but also of all the essential attributes of the person, character, and doctrine of God.
Now, sir, during the long period of sixteen or eighteen hundred years, in which the light of immediate revelation has not shone, the religious world have fallen into similar and even far greater darkness. The true and living God is not known as I shall proceed to show.
The religious world have an abundance of zeal for God, and diligence in spreading the scriptures and their missionaries over the face of the earth; but, alas! the God they profess to worship is an unknown God, and this ignorance of God is the legitimate consequence of not having immediate revelation from him, during a long period of near eighteen hundred years; and unaided by the spirit of inspiration, the ancient scriptures have become a dark and obscure book—their import has been warmly debated by a thousand learned disputants, without any prospect of approximation to unity.
A very general conviction concerning the character of God now is, that He is a Being without body, or parts, or passions. A greater absurdity cannot be furnished in all the annals of heathenism. Even images of wood, and brass, and stone, are scarcely more remote from the picture of the true God, than the theory of a passionless, matterless God—an inconceivable sort of chaotic being, that is without form, or void, or dwelling place! a being whose circumference is everywhere, and his centre nowhere!
Another theory concerning God, that is entertained by Jewish Rabbies, though of an opposite character, is not much more extravagant than the common orthodox theory, viz, the Rabbies suppose that God is a Being of some "millions of miles in length."
Again, the popular notion of modern Jews, as expressed in a recent number of the Jewish Chronicle, is, that the Almighty God is a Being of such infinite dimension, that He cannot condense himself sufficiently to speak to men, or be tangible or visible by mortals. Accordingly, when he gives revelation to men, He creates a fictitious or imaginary messenger, through whom he communicates his will, and this messenger has no real existence in the eye of God, and only in the momentary perception of the person addressed.—(See Millennial Star No. 15, also Jewish Chronicle.)
From the foregoing it may be seen how grossly ignorant both Jews and Christians are of the person of God, the Creator and Saviour of the world! All this, too, in an age of the world boasting of blazing light! of a millennial dawn! of the unparalleled march of improvement! but, alas! the very God and Father of us all, who ought to be truly known in order to be rightly worshipped, is regarded as the most insensible (a God without "passion" must be insensible), and irrational, and unattractive as to form, of all beings that can be conceived of; and the most surprising feature in all modern theology in an age of sanity is, that this notion concerning the person of God, is deducible from the scriptures of the Old and New Testament.
The New Testament tells us most unequivocally what kind of person God has, and whether he is a Being having both passion and physical form. It tells whether he can be so "condensed" as to speak to men, and be seen of them, and talk to them face to face, as a man talks to his fellow man. The New Testament declares that in Jesus Christ dwelt the "FULNESS OF THE GODHEAD, BODILY."
Now, if the Godhead dwelt in the body of Christ, then it is certain that God is not without a body. But He has a body; and what is His body like unto? The New Testament tells us what His body is like. It is so nearly and exactly like unto the body of Christ, that there is no difference. Paul says, that Christ was the "express image of his person." It is then beyond all dispute that the body and person of Jesus Christ and the Father are alike. Language cannot express the similitude of the Father and the Son in plainer or stronger terms. Then, if we can show from the New Testament what kind of body or person Jesus Christ had, we can also tell what kind of body the Father has, because they are alike. One is the express image of the other. If one has a fleshy material body, the other has the same. If one resembles in stature the seed of the woman, the other also wears the same resemblance. If one can be so "condensed" as to speak and walk, and feel and act like a man, the other can do the same. If one wearing a body of flesh and bones, in all points like unto his brethren, is capable of holding all power in heaven and earth, and also of displaying the brightness of celestial glory, the other can do the same in a similar body of flesh and bones.
Well, now, what kind of body or person had Jesus Christ, which looked so much like the Father's person? Was it an airy, invisible, evanescent, mystical nothing, which some would denominate spirit? No, by no means; very much otherwise. Hearken now, my dear sir, and all ye readers, that have an honest desire to know the living and true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, in order that men might know from the person of the Son what is the personal appearance of the Father. He, "the Word, was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth." Jesus had a fleshly form like the seed of Abraham, and being begotten of the Father he partook of his likeness. Men beheld his glory in human form, and Paul says that his glory was the glory of the Father.
It appears from the conduct of some of his disciples, that they, like sectarian churches now, were tinctured with the idea that Christ, after his death and resurrection, was purely and exclusively a Spirit; but he tells them to handle him and see that "a Spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me have." And he eat and drank with them as aforetime with his resurrected body, and afterwards ascended up from their midst with the same bloodless body into heaven; and in like manner will he come again.
Thus, sir, the notion of a God that is exclusively Spirit without bodily form, was banished from the minds of the disciples that saw the bodily image of the Father in the person of the Son after his resurrection. From heaven he will come again in like manner, and every eye shall see him, and they that have pierced him. But the popular God of modern times, that has no body or parts, cannot be seen. But, sir, this popular God that has sprung into fashion, since the age of revelation, has no resemblance to Jesus Christ, who has both body and parts, and is the exact image of his Father. Jesus Christ declared that he could exercise all power in heaven and earth while he was in the body. His Father could do the same, because they were alike. It required no extraordinary condensation of the infinity of Jesus in order to reveal himself to men, or in order that men should behold his glory.
But we have other proofs that the person of God the Father is like the bodily form of Christ's resurrected person. God has declared that man is in his image. Man was created in the image of God, and in the likeness of God; and the bodies of holy men are destined to be like unto Christ's own most glorious body; that is as much as to say that they are like the body of Christ in the heavenly state.
If the foregoing, and many other similar passages of scripture, do not go to show that the Supreme Being bears a personal appearance like unto the person of his Son, and consequently like unto any other resurrected body of a righteous man, then we are in a labyrinth of doubt how to interpret the most plain and unequivocal language. If the language of scripture does not bear me out in the conclusion that man is in the form of God, then there are no infallible way-marks or criteria by which I can safely interpret scriptures. And the votaries of Vishnoo have as good scriptural reason to believe in their theory of deific annihilation, as others have to believe in a God without body, or parts, or passions.
The scriptures plainly deny both theories, as they do that God is a person some millions of miles in the height of his stature. Common sense cannot grasp the idea of any being or thing whatever, that is without body or parts. Even the most subtle and refined spirit conceivable, is a material existence as far removed from immateriality as the east is from the west.
Now, sir, suffer me to entreat you to abandon all such crude theories concerning God, which are as baseless and unscriptural as the most extravagant vagaries of the heathen, and confine your faith to the simple obvious testimony of Jesus and the prophets. And remember that this is not a subject of little importance; for it is written, that, to know God and Jesus Christ is eternal life. No man can understand the import of eternal life, nor how it is secured to believers, that does not know God and Jesus Christ. In God and Christ is eternal life. This life is not barely the perpetuity of existence, for even the wicked exist for ever, but it is called in scripture the "power of endless life." This power of multiplying or creating life emanated in that Melchizedek priesthood of which Jesus is the head and High Priest. This is the gift of God to men who keep his commandments, and the greatest of all gifts. Unsearchable riches accompany this gift. When God created man, he created him in his own image (male and female), in order that he too might have the power of multiplying life after the order of Melchizedek, through obedience.
Now, sir, should it not be a matter of delight to you, that man is created in the image of God, and crowned with glory and honour through faith in Christ. Will not Peter and his fellow-desciples rejoice to recognise that same Jesus who ascended to heaven with a body like their own, and if Jesus bears the image of the Father, they will be equally familiar with the Highest. What is there, sir, that contributes more to the glory of God than his creative power, by which he brings myriads of living intelligences into being, through whom a chaotic universe is organized into works of beauty, taste, grandeur, and glory? All these creations are for the righteous pleasure of Him who created them.
We all are the offspring of God, and the loyal offspring of God are the greatest delight and concern of God. For them he is ever ready to make the greatest sacrifice possible. Not only is filial reverence displayed from them to Him, the fountain of life, but by them is shown forth the manifold wisdom and power of God. And when men, by humble obedience, become worthy of eternal life, the Almighty bestows upon them the like precious creative gift. But this gift of life is in his Son, and He never bestows it upon unworthy subjects. Thus by the law of adoption men become the sons and daughters of the Almighty, and receive the priestly "power of endless life," which is after the order of the Son of God. Hence the marvellous language of scripture, "I said ye are God's to whom the word of God came." Jesus virtually said on one occasion, "If holy men are the sons of God, and consequently heirs to His throne, privileges, and glory, then marvel not that I (Jesus) should claim to be a God or the Son of God!" For Paul says, "there be in heaven Gods many, and Lords many, yet to us there is but one God. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge."
In conclusion, I will drop a passing remark or two concerning the abode or dwelling place of God, with a brief hint of his moral attributes. As Jesus is our light and example, we can learn of the Father's abode from his Son. The Son ascended up into heaven and to his God and our God. The scriptures abundantly declare that a place called heaven is the peculiar dwelling place of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if heaven is not a literal, bona fide place, but only an imaginary phantom, then it follows that Jesus went to no place, but continued to ascend up, till, in his glorious flight, He reached— shall I call it Nichban—an imaginary phantom—or annihilation!
Be not displeased, dear sir, I am not trifling with your religion, but am bound by truth and the love of God, to unfold its naked absurdity, in order that you, my beloved friend, and all good men may recoil from such gross Gentile vagaries, and exclaim, in the language of scripture, "Our Fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit." If you will read carefully the scripture accounts of the visions of holy men, that have been permitted to look in upon the heavenly residence of God, where Jesus and all the resurrected bodies of the righteous abide, and eat and drink, you will be constrained to acknowledge every appearance of a splendid local abode. Mansions—streets—rivers—trees—precious metals —thrones—persons—apparel—animals—ministering personages in all the courtly livery of unspeakable celestial glory! The heaven of all the holy prophets!
God's holy dwelling place, is literal, local, real, and to its occupants, it is visible and tangible. It is by no means a matterless, passionless, mystical region of extatic and endless songs from the lips of immaterial spirits, offered in praise to some Great Spirit, equally passionless and immaterially chaotic, spreading infinitely through all space without centre or circumference. If such is the God that men expect to adore in heaven, mankind would present but a faint image of him, yea, even Jesus, who partook of man's likeness, could not have been the brightness of the Father's glory, and express image of his person. He declares that He has given us an image and likeness of himself in the person of man. But who would ever recognise their Father and Jesus in the person of a boundless, centreless being, of no body or parts, infinitely expanded.
But it is sometimes urged that man only resembles God in his moral attributes. Morally, says the divine and doctor, man bears the image of God. Aye, indeed! The absurdity of such a supposition is still greater. By moral, I must then understand, that the resemblance between God and man, consists in their being of like social, civil, and religious temperament and affection. Other things being equal, a holy man as Adam originally was, would cherish the same propensities with God—have a similar sense of justice and truth according to the measure of knowledge belonging to each. But the absurdity and query are here: an immaterial, infinitely expanded God, without physical form and locality, is as unlike to man as light to darkness, or as the most diverse animals can be supposed to be, and cannot in the nature of things have those sympathies and moral sensibilities that man has. Material sensibilities must differ from those which are immaterial, as much as the elements of land and water differ.
My sheet being full, allow me to subscribe myself
Your friend and servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
THE PRIESTHOOD.
Liverpool, September 30, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—In close connexion with an account of the character of God, I will proceed to give you a brief and succint description of THE PRIESTHOOD. It is feared, however, that the present subject will not be more congenial to your views than the foregoing. Still it shall be treated according to the spirit of the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, which you ardently profess to believe.
You will admit that God is the righteous Ruler over all the moral and intelligent creatures of the universe. His government is both temporal and spiritual. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice. He clothes the lilies of the field; much more doth He watch over all the varied interests of intelligent beings both in heaven and upon earth.
I shall then define priesthood to be that order of authoritative intelligences by which God regulates, controls, enlightens, blesses or curses, saves or condemns all beings. To it, under God, all things are subservient in righteousness, whether in heaven, earth, or hell. God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is at the head of all genuine priesthood. But as it is His will that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father, Jesus now stands accredited as the Apostle and High Priest of our profession. Subordinate priests in the same apostolic order of the Son of God, are such as he has put in his church. These are called apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, &c.
Now, sir, by means of this order, extending from Jesus the High Priest, to the lowest grade of priesthood in conjunction with the Holy Ghost, God teaches and governs all things. Out of the line of this order, there is no power whatever that is acknowledged and approved of God. Magistrates, rulers, kings, potentates and principalities, if not legitimately ordained and clothed with the authority of this priestly order of the Son of God, are usurpers and not of God—for the scriptures declare that there is no power that is not of God. Even the angelic order is in the line of subordination to Jesus Christ, and in the same chain of priesthood with apostles and prophets upon the earth.
The priesthood exhibits a regular gradation of knowledge and authority from Jesus the great High Priest in heaven, to the lowest description of ordination in the church below. Jesus said that "all power was given him in heaven and upon earth." But how did he propose to exercise all that power which was given him both among the nations of the earth and in heaven? My answer is, that he proposed to do it through a delegation of power to the different orders of his priesthood. We are told distinctly what the priesthood consists of, which is established on the earth, viz., apostles, prophets, evangelists, &c. The heavenly order, minister to the authorities of the earthly order. The ruling object to be accomplished by the latter is, the work of the ministry, the perfecting of the Saints, the edifying of the body of Christ.
The first object of this priestly order is to teach all nations to become loyal and good citizens of the kingdom of God, observing all the commandments of God. One universal commandment of God is, for all men every where to repent and be baptized, and keep all other laws of God, as they shall be dispensed from the great High Priest through the delegated authorities. Now if all men do not obey these commands, they are liable to be dealt with as transgressors, and punished as evil doers. The command to obey is imperative upon all men. Hence whatever orders of civil government—or order of domestic compact—or order of business transaction—or order of religious worship—or rule of commercial transaction may contravene the established order of priesthood, the same must bow to the requisition of the inspired priesthood of God; and God acknowledges no other power with approbation.
Now, dear sir, it is this imperative attitude of authority and power, which the Almighty boldly claims, and fearlessly attempts to exercise, through a chosen priesthood over all mankind, Jews and Gentiles, that greatly displeases the rebellious portion of our race. They cannot bear that this "man should reign over them." False notions of independence and liberty rise against an order of delegated authorities claiming inspiration and officiality from God. The rebellious profess that they are ready to obey the Almighty God, but as for these men claiming priesthood, we will not have them, to reign over us.
The abuses practised by an apostate and uncalled priesthood for the last seventeen hundred years, has wrought an honest but wofully misguided prejudice against the true priesthood; and a large portion of mankind demand also, that God shall communicate with themselves directly, without the intervention of agencies chosen from mere men like themselves. And this captious spirit of dictation, as to the manner in which God shall teach and govern them, has been fostered in their minds by the erroneous notion that God is such a centreless, boundless spirit of ubiquity, that he can teach and govern all worlds without the aid of other agencies. We might as well suppose that he can see without eyes, or hear without ears. But God's being like man, though infinitely exalted above him, and unspeakably perfected in every faculty and power, puts to shame these dark vagaries about the inutility of delegated powers.
During the whole period of the world, God has ever and invariably attempted to teach and govern mankind by means of an established priesthood consisting of men; and this priesthood has been as invariably resisted from the days of righteous Abel till now. By this priesthood, it is the design of God to establish a Divine government upon the earth, even as it is established in the heavens. All other forms of government have proved a complete failure in every nation and period, in which the experiment has been attempted.
But the most humiliating feature in the whole history of governments is, that many have sought to ape the Divine government with an uninspired priesthood. They have thereby made every species of religious government a stink and confusion in all the earth. Their uninspired systems have been like a fair woman without discretion, or like jewels in a swine's snout. Sometimes they have united church and state, and swayed a sceptre of oppression; at other times they have been passive and non-resistant, even to the utter extinction of thousands whose defenceless blood has crimsoned the earth. But the time for experimenting upon false forms of government, civil or religious, has nearly gone by never to return, "save for a little season."
A priesthood chosen not of men, but chosen first of God, and inspired with his wisdom, truth, and power, is now called and ordained to teach all nations, and fill the earth with the knowledge of God. By means of this order, and this order alone, the kingdoms of this world, whether temporal or spiritual, pagan or christian, are all to be merged in one universal kingdom. And this will be the best and greatest kingdom ever known this side of heaven. Its constitution, laws, and method of administration will be after the model of the heavenly order. It will embrace politics, arts, war, merchandize, science, and religion—- things temporal and things spiritual. And the energy and wisdom of Omnipotence will, like the little leaven in meal, increase and magnify in the priesthood, till the whole world is brought into happy subordination to this plan of government. The nations of the earth will then become one family and brotherhood. Kings and rulers, of all grades, will then be chosen of God through the priesthood, of which priesthood rulers will be a part and portion; and without being ordained to the priesthood, no man ever can rule in this great kingdom.
Thus, dear sir, you perceive that I attach great importance to the priesthood, and consider it the grand instrumentality of revolutionizing, and saving, and governing the whole earth. But what harm in all this? Do you think there is too much power invested in this chosen order of men? Why, certainly not! They have not chosen themselves; neither have they come to office by the votes of the unthinking mass; nor by blind hereditary lineage, nor by violence and the usurper's arts. They have been chosen of God, who knew their spirits before the foundation of the world. They are a royal priesthood and holy nation, for God will have no other in his priesthood. Says Jesus to his apostles, "Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you." Whom God approves men should not refuse.
Moses was a priest and lawgiver, and had to do with the temporal and spiritual affairs of his subjects. Moses sought to unite church and state, in obedience to the command of God. Joshua was also a priest and ruler, and united both temporal and spiritual interests in his government. David was a priest and king, and likewise Solomon, his son. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were as much directed, by God, in their temporal concerns or movements as they were in their spiritual devotions. Jesus Christ came to establish a temporal kingdom fully as much as a spiritual kingdom. Both Jews and Romans suspected his designs, and charged him with the crime of treason. They said that he called himself a King. Some will say that he explicitly declared that His kingdom was not of this world. True: He did make this declaration; but what does it prove? It proves simply, that this world was not the father, author, or origin of His kingdom. His kingdom was from heaven, and He had come here for the very important purpose of establishing it on the earth. He called it kingdom of heaven, in distinction from kingdoms that were of earthly origin.
It is strange, indeed, that the sectarian clergy should borrow the idea that His kingdom was not a temporal kingdom as well as spiritual. It was the prayer of His heart, and the prayer that He taught His disciples, that God would establish His kingdom on earth, and cause His will to be done here as it is done in heaven. Consequently, he organized the kingdom here after the pattern of heaven, with all proper officers, and laws suited to every temporal and spiritual occasion, and then gave commandment that all nations should yield allegiance to the laws and authorities established, and also submit themselves to the ordinances of His Kingdom. And being in possession of living teachers, even the word of inspired men, they (all mankind, if they would obey) would be thoroughly furnished to "every good word and work." In other words, they would know how to act in every calling and sphere of business, whether temporal or spiritual.
Jesus Christ did not design that his servants should fight one another, or fight and conquer mankind into allegiance to Him. The world would act on these principles through disobedience, but his disciples would not, because they were shown a better way to universal dominion and government.
The priesthood being an office of great responsibility, is guarded rigidly against intruders. Man may lawfully desire this office, but he has no right to take it of himself, but he must first be called and appointed to it as Aaron was, by God, through a prophetic voice. Neither is man required to study, and artificially qualify himself for receiving it. God takes men as they are, and with the gift of priestly office He bestows the requisite qualifications. The ordination of heaven put upon the head of any man, however ignorant, is a voucher for requisite qualification and blessing. Every man is thereby thoroughly furnished for the discharge of all the duties of his respective calling. They are not all apostles, however, neither are all prophets or pastors. But every one has his calling of God, and in the legitimate sphere of that calling he acts as God, and in the authority of God.
Some have authority only to baptize unto repentance for remission of sins, as John the Baptist. Such can confer no more authority than they possess in themselves. Others have authority to bless, and whom they bless are blessed in very deed. They have similar authority to curse, and whom they curse are cursed in very deed. Jacob blessed his sons, and the heavens sealed and confirmed the same upon their heads. Paul cursed Elymas, the sorcerer, with blindness, and the same curse was sealed and confirmed upon him immediately. Elisha cursed Gehazi, his servant, and leprosy cleaved to him from that time. Elijah shut up the windows of heaven that it rained not for the space of three years and six months, by the same delegated power, and again they were opened at his voice. He was a man of like passions with ourselves. All men are not ordained to this power, and when they are not, they are wholly incapable of exercising it. It is office that gives recognition and legality to a deed of conveyance and ownership. It is divine appointment and official calling that gives efficacy to the priesthood. But many generations have contented themselves to preach and support preachers who have no divine appointment.
The consequence is, that men have been self-appointed to the ministry and spread dissention and confusion abroad. The knowledge of the true and living God has gradually receded from the earth, and darkness, even gross darkness, covered the people. The ordinances that impart healing virtue and the power and light of truth, have either been changed or abolished. The apostolic office has been counted as a thing out of date, and the spiritual gifts as being done away. The religious world has been too much like King Saul. After he had been forsaken of God, and the power and Spirit of his anointing given to David, this unhappy monarch resorted to every miserable device, (even to the aid of witches), in order to obtain knowledge and influence. But the curse of disobedience followed him to the day of his death.
The religious sects, in like manner, have resorted to seminaries and the polish of schools—also to the theological comments of time-honoured fathers, (who were as ignorant as themselves) ever learning, yet never coming to the knowledge of truth. Bibles have been translated again and again; learned volumes have been written in explanation, and even wars have been instigated by the supposed defenders of the faith, and the earth crimsoned by human gore. All these evils and curses have arisen from a spurious priesthood.
In view of these things, is it not time, sir, to let God resume the reins of government and once more establish a holy priesthood, which shall be after the calling of Aaron, and after the order and power of endless life. That this may be the unfeigned choice of all who seek after God, is the continued prayer of
Your old friend and servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
ON GATHERING.
Liverpool, October 13, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—You have doubtless been ready to ask, time and again, why this GATHERING together of such large bodies of Saints? Why can they not stay in their former residences, like other christians? And may they not do more good to their fellow-men by scattering about amongst the people promiscuously? Why, go away off to some distant part of the earth? is not the Almighty God to be found as much in one place as another? Furthermore, says one, it is exceedingly dangerous to community at large to allow any large body of people, of the same faith and doctrine, to assemble themselves in any one place, their influence being rendered formidable by reason of concentration and union.
My dear sir, have not cogitations like these passed through your mind, and been reiterated in your hearing more than once, concerning Latter-day Saints? Delusion! delusion! is reiterated on many sides. What can these Latter-day Saints mean—selling out their possessions at so great a sacrifice, and leaving a comfortable and pleasant home for a far distant land, even crossing the wide Atlantic! Has there been the like fanaticism since the time of the crusades? On the land, hundreds of wagons, yea thousands in all, are seen rolling their whitened canvas over the wide prairies, accompanied by their flocks and herds; and on the ocean a multitude of ships are wafting the inhabitants of distant islands and continents to the same destination!
Now, I propose to meet these inquiries and reflections promptly and fairly. In the first place, if the church is guided by the spirit of revelation, God, the author of all true revelation, knows what is good for his people, and He will not require them to gather without good and sufficient reasons. For the church that is not guided by the spirit of sacred inspiration, is guided by mammon or the devil; for every church will serve God or mammon. Well, says one, I don't believe that God ever did, or ever will, require people to gather together and leave their country and kindred. Aye, indeed; but you believe the Bible, I trust, which informs you not only how God has gathered his people in different periods of the world, but also, that He will gather them together in the dispensation of the fulness of times.
Do I need to remind you, sir, that God required Abraham to rise up and leave his country and kindred, and go in search of a country that he should afterwards show him. He was obedient, and went from one country to another, the Lord being his counsellor and guide. The ancient saints and prophets generally were "strangers" in consequence of being called to leave their home and country. Their obedience to such a call, through faith, constituted them heirs of an inheritance. Abraham became an heir of the country which he was not permitted to possess in time, but he will hold the same in eternity, with a city built upon it according to the counsel of God.
In the dispensation given to Moses, he was required to gather the people out of all the land of Egypt, and take them to the land of Canaan; and what was very remarkable, he was required to slay and destroy the inhabitants, in order to make room for the great gathering of the Hebrews. The children of God and the people of this world cannot dwell together; they are always contrary one to the other.
What fellowship hath Christ with Belial, or believers with unbelievers? The Egyptians could have no fellowship with the Hebrews after they were told that a prophet had sprung up among them. The Hebrews told a marvellous tale about the Lord appearing to Moses in the "burning bush." They pretended to have revelation and work miracles as in the early days of Potipher and Joseph; but this pretension to angels, prophets, and miracles, speedily sundered all ties of harmony and fellowship, and it was necessary for the Hebrews to leave the country. God required it of them, and even ordered them into an unpromising wilderness, to be subject to hunger, and thirst, and many hardships.
The same spirit of opposition to miracles, prophets, and angels exists now; and the righteous can no more keep the ordinances and commandments of God now, without persecution even to death from the world, than the Hebrews could do it. For the same reason Lot gathered out of Sodom —even angels could not stop a night in Sodom without being mobbed; accordingly, the Lord commanded him to gather up so many as would go with him and flee to the mountain. His reason for the gathering in this case was, that He could not properly punish the Sodomites, unless the righteous were gathered out of the city in the first place. Likewise, when Jerusalem was about to be destroyed, Jesus instructed his disciples to flee to the mountain.
It was persecution that scattered the primitive Saints abroad in the days of Jesus. Jesus had taught Paul and Peter, that the Saints could not be preserved on the earth, and the kingdom built up, without the Saints were gathered together in one. He told them, absolutely and unequivocally, that he should gather the disciples in the day of restitution. Such was their sense of the immediateness of gathering, and of the second coming of Christ, that they were troubled when the disciples were gathered, lest the day of the Lord was at hand; but Paul disabused them, and told them that there must be a "falling away" before the notable day of the Lord should come.
Paul informed his brethren, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, God would gather together in one, all things both in heaven and upon earth and under the earth. John speaks of the same, probably as the day of the great battle of God Almighty, Jesus signified that He would gather his people, the elect, even if he had to send his angels to the four corners of the earth to bring them, after the manner in which he sent to Sodom to bring Lot out of it to a place of safety. He declared he would gather the wheat into the garner, and the tares into bundles to be burned. The prophets, too, long before the meridian of time, saw with enrapturing vision, the sons coming from afar, and the daughters from the ends of the earth.
Isaiah says, "the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see, all they gather themselves together, they come to thee; thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then shalt thou see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged, because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows? Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the corners of the earth."
The gathering of Saints to one place is necessary in order to preserve their genealogies, and to secure to them those inheritances, the title to which must be substantiated by legitimate records, kept in the archives of the house of God. Whenever God has had a people. He has been careful to instruct them to keep an accurate record of marriages and the issues of marriage; from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, and thence to David down to Jesus Christ, the genealogy must necessarily be preserved. Says David, "God setteth people in families as a flock." "He arrangeth them in families." But if these families intermarry with those who do not keep the laws of God, nor conform to his ordinances, the records of genealogy are soon obliterated from the knowledge of men, and the proof of a legitimate title to inheritance is thereby extinct; and unless Saints are gathered out from the midst of unbelievers, they are more liable to intermarry and become alienated from the ordinances and covenants of the Lord. If Isaac and Ishmael have no records of parentage, how can one claim rights of lineage above another? God will assign rewards to men according to the records of their deserts, and one great pre-requisite to the final restitution of all things, is the reviving and establishing of proper records of genealogy, and covenants, and promises, and patriarchal blessings.
In one instance God had to rescind the marriages of a numerous people, because such marriages, by their issue, would tend to frustrate the grace of God to the righteous, and entail blessings upon a strange people that God designed to curse. The ordinances of the church and institutions of God's house cannot be carried into execution in a land belonging to "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;" because aliens from God will not have the Lord to rule over them. They consider that the laws of God set two against three, and three against two, the father-in-law against the son-in-law, &c.; and so do they have this effect, and always will have it, until the Saints are separated from their adversaries. Before there can be anything like a true, godlike, peaceful millennium, a separation must take place between the righteous and disobedient; even as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, even so must God's will be done with friends and foes on earth, like as in heaven.
Had the Jews received Jesus Christ, He would have set up just such a kingdom on earth as in heaven, and the honest from all nations would have been gathered to his standard. But seeing they would pierce the Shepherd, and scatter the sheep through a long cloudy day, as it had been prophesied of Him and his followers; He, nevertheless, assured his disciples that his people should be gathered, in the latter days, as wheat into the garner. John says to the Saints in the last days, that are scattered among the confused nations of the whole earth:—"Come out of her my people, and be not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues." Here the reason why Saints should come out of other nations is distinctly avowed—"to escape her plagues." The same reason that was assigned why Lot should go out of Sodom.
The idea prevalent that God would inflict all his judgments in one great tremendous DAY, is as absurd as the notion is universal. The famine and dearth were at the command of Elijah. The earthquake that swallowed up Dathan and the company of Abiram, was at the command of Moses. Moses also stretched out his hand as a signal to the accumulated seas to overwhelm the Egyptians, and they obeyed his mandate. But I will not multiply proofs. God will pour out his vials of wrath, and distress the nations till they will learn and practice righteousness; and his people must flee to their appointed hiding place till the indignation is overpast, otherwise they have no guaranty for their safety. The Hebrews were obliged to mark their houses, lest the destroying angel should slay both them and the Egyptians. The Lord God has decreed a consumption upon the whole earth, therefore let the righteous flee to the strongholds of Zion, that are preparing in that land that was promised to the Patriarch Joseph, while it is an accepted time, and the evil days come not.
Jesus cautioned Jerusalem saints to beware of imitating the silly and dilatory part of Lot's wife. The righteous are no more secure from approaching judgments than the wicked, except they obey the commands of God. Even a prophet was once slain by a lion, because he dared to disobey the Lord. No man should neglect any means by which he can be removed, and help to remove others, from those nations that are as inevitably doomed to destruction for rebellion, as the Canaanites of former times.
Sir, we feel the very same extraordinary interest in depositing our very bones in the land of Zion, that the patriarchs formerly felt when they commanded that their bones should be removed, to the country and burying place which God had designated. If there is enthusiasm in this sentiment, sir, it is the enthusiasm of patriarchs and prophets that kept the divine mandates, and knew well the order of the resurrection, and the necessity of having their bones laid on the identical land that should afterwards be their possession and inheritance for ever and ever. Did not the Lord apportion off the land of Canaan to the twelve tribes to be their inheritance for ever? and shall not the one hundred and forty-four thousand in the latter days be equally tenacious to possess the very inheritance that was promised them to be a perpetual possession in time and eternity? There, their bones, like the precious valley of dry bones, will be the guardian care of angels, and in the resurrection stand up like a consolidated army, while the disobedient and ungodly shall be scattered and driven as chaff before the wind.
The aged and infirm among us, fervently desire to carry their bones, while animated with life, to the land of Zion, as an expression of their faith in the promise of God, that he will resurrect them and plant them in that same "heavenly" country which they now seek. What Canaan was to ancient saints and prophets, the land of Joseph will be to the saints and prophets of the last days, and more abundantly. If men have not the spirit of gathering they are blind and cannot see afar off, and are nigh unto burning. The gathering is one great test of faith, by which you may know who is on the Lord's side. Kindred spirits long to congregate together.
The language of Ruth is expressive of the desires of God's people in all ages. "Thy people is my people, and their God is my God, and where thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge." Her sister Orpah could forego the society of saints and the ordinances of God sooner than part with her native country and kindred. A portion of Lot's family saw no wisdom in the gathering until it was too late. Sir, the gathering is the great universal national preacher of the last days. It speaks in trumpet tones out of every nation where it has been commenced. As birds retire before a storm, and fowls before the darkness of night, so the multitudes that go out by sea and land is a practical warning that cannot be mistaken by those that remain.
The nations wonder at the spectacle of such multitudes going out of their midst under the warning voice of Jehovah, and are ready to cry out, who are these that fly as clouds and as doves to their windows? Who are these Latter-day Saints? What is their doctrine, and whither are they fleeing? The sound of the gathering goeth into all the earth. The fear and dread of approaching calamities take possession of the nations. The righteous are being withdrawn apart, in order that the Almighty may stretch out his chastening hand, and inflict his sore judgment upon rebellious nations. There is no room to mistake the faith and sincerity of those whose gathering together is without a parallel for magnitude of enterprise. The Israelites performed a journey that might have been compassed in about forty days, but the Latter-day gathering brings sons and daughters from the ends of the earth.
The great design of Jesus in bringing the righteous to unity of faith and the knowledge of God, is wonderfully facilitated by bringing the righteous together in one place. The ancient Jews were taught of God to build up Jerusalem as a place of gathering; and those whose circumstances forbid them to locate there, either from political or agricultural interests, were required to visit Jerusalem at least three times a year, where they could interchange hospitalities and friendships, and contract matrimonial alliances, &c. Also, in addition to these facilities of union, their baptisms were to be performed in the national font; their marriage rites, and records of genealogy, were to be performed and deposited in the archives of the great Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem.
In this great city of gathering, their frequent and splendid national festivals were to be held from generation to generation. By these multiplied means, the union of Jews became proverbially strong; and their attachments to their nation and kindred, and national rights and usages, became as enduring as their existence. If, perchance, they should be scattered amongst the remote nations of the earth, still the recollection of their journeyings to Jerusalem in social groups—their splendid festivals at the national capitol—their royal affinity with the great and good of God's people—vibrated through their minds with resuscitating power. There it was that the Almighty condescended to reveal his acceptance of their sacrifices, and bless the people from the greatest to the least, and even speak to the people through their High Priest at least once a year.
Now, when God shall build up Zion and his Holy House in the tops of the mountains, and all nations flow into it, will He not appear in his glory? Such a measure of union, and strength of attachment to the Lord and his people, the last days will exhibit as was never before realized on the earth; then will Zion rise and shine, her light being come, and the glory of God being risen upon her—yea, be an eternal excellency and the praise and joy of the whole earth!
Who, sir, can contemplate the glory of Zion, when God shall have gathered his people from the four corners of the earth, and made of them a great nation, an "innumerable company," and blessed them with his own laws and ordinances, binding them together in a new and everlasting covenant, without the most thrilling emotions of love, gratitude, and joy in believing. Break out, O thou inhabitant of Zion, and sing for the glory that shall shortly be revealed; when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of Christ, and the stakes thereof shall no more be thrown down for ever!
Now, sir, in conclusion, may I not say, with all deference to the misguided teachers of modern christianity, that the Lord is performing a marvellous work and a wonder in the greatest of all gatherings since the foundation of the world. He is gathering his righteous hosts from the nations of the earth to one place, and setting his forces in battle array against the powers of darkness, and against all flesh that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And by truth, and by judgments, he will thoroughly cleanse the earth, and overthrow more wickedness in ten years to come, than blind, boasting, self-righteous modern christianity can in ten thousand years.
Please to accept my warmest desires for your present and everlasting peace and welfare.
Your humble servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
THE LATTER-DAY JUDGMENTS.
Liverpool, October 28, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—THE LATTER-DAY JUDGMENTS, the subject of my present letter, deserve a careful consideration among the topics peculiar to Latter-day Saints.
You must be already aware that it is a part of my faith that God designs to set up his kingdom on the earth, in order that the meek may inherit the earth as their celestial abode; and as He will not employ His enemies to administer even temporal affairs within the bounds of His kingdom, His kingdom will consequently be a temporal one, and wholly and exclusively conducted by His own loyal subjects, according to His righteous will. He will proceed from conquest to conquest, until all other kingdoms are overthrown and merged in one—even His own kingdom.
The means by which he will subdue and overcome the nations of the earth are two, viz.. TRUTH and JUDGMENT. He explicitly declares, that He will lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. His latter-day proclamation is, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come." The salvation that He offers is temporal, spiritual, and eternal; and the judgments which He will inflict are also similar. As a supreme lawgiver, He claims the submission of all the inhabitants of the earth. Nor is it necessary that His servants should be for ever preaching the gospel on the earth, in order to effect a universal reconciliation of all men to their God. All men will not obey the truth, therefore what the truth will not save through faith, God's judgments will destroy through their unbelief. And these judgments will be executed speedily, even as in the days of Noah and Lot. God formerly gave the inhabitants timely warning before the deluge came, and before the fire descended from heaven.
The gospel must first be preached, and then the judgments will follow in quick succession. Even as a chalk-line makes an impression for the saw and the chisel, so God's judgments will make an impression, sensible and summary. The day of vengeance has long been in His heart. A day when His jealousy and wrath shall burn like fire, even to the lowest hell. The wicked and diabolical spirits will be pursued, even to their dens of darkness, and there scourged and bound. The righteous veterans that have long since fought and bled, in order to establish a reign of righteousness and truth on the earth, and prayed with uplifted hands for this day of truth and judgment, their language is, "How long, O Lord, wilt thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" But God, who is long-suffering—not willing that any should perish, but rather that they should repent and be saved—has nevertheless reserved the worst spirits to the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. That day is even now dawned. God has commenced to reveal his wrath against all them that obey not the gospel. It is a day of revelation and prophecy.
The righteous are timely advised to gather out and separate themselves from those that will not obey the gospel. They are not disobedient to the great revelation of mercy to them that obey, and of wrath to them that are contentious and obey not the truth. The winds and waves are wafting thousands to the land of refuge. The prairies and wilderness reverberate with the songs of the outcast but chosen and elect ones of God. A more intelligent, enterprising, and bold race of Saints, perhaps, has never been summoned to the help of the Lord against the mighty, since the foundation of the world. Their fortitude, patience, and invincibility are indelibly written in their bloodstained pathway through Missouri and Illinois. The old arts of tormenting the sick by burning their houses, and of famishing the robust by plundering their crops, and forcing the sale of property by threats of murder and arson, are fruitless. Prison walls and tragic scenes of assassination and expatriation have spent their fury to no purpose. The daring sons of Pharaoh, Cain, and Judas are baffled and confounded at such godlike firmness. Occasionally a priest, goaded on by the loss of his flock, has dared to act as champion, and throw the gauntlet for public discussion, but the inevitable discomfiture that has followed, has taught him the superior policy of evading discussion. But, dear sir, no man can long be a neutral in this warfare. He must choose his side. If truth fails to bring down high looks, judgments will not fail. Those judgments which begun at the house of God, in Kirtland, Independence, and Nauvoo, have been seriously felt by the Saints of God. But if the righteous scarcely escape, where shall the sinner and ungodly appear? The latter-day judgments that shall befall their enemies will be far more insupportable and abiding.
There was no part of the United States ignorant of the murderous doings of their countrymen towards the Latter-day Saints. The news spread over the continent, and reached even the remote islands of the Pacific with almost telegraphic speed. Nobody that loved justice, or felt the bowels of humanity, had the least need to be ignorant of the distress, and famine, and sickness, and nakedness that were inflicted on the innocent worshippers of the only true God by their countrymen. Presidents and governors, judges and lawyers, priests, physicians, and common people, all were made acquainted with the diabolical outrages. They were not only warned but forewarned. What has been the consequence? For the last sixteen years the fluctuations of business have been like the troubled ocean. Panic and depression have been as successive as light and darkness, with the exception of incalculable irregularity and confusion. In the place of wealth there has followed bankruptcy; for peace, national war; and for the blood of one murdered servant of God, there has been tens, and even hundreds, laid weltering in their gore. Some of the best blood of the nation (so accounted) has been demanded by Him that said, touch not my prophets and do my anointed no harm. The word of the Lord to all Israel, on the eve of the Carthage tragedy, was, if they (the enemy) begin to shed blood, the sword shall waste the blood of the nation. And how are the sons of the mighty fallen? What wailing and lamentation are heard from high places over distinguished slaughtered Americans! And the end is not yet.
But what shall I say of time-honoured orthodoxy? Poor creature! Her glory is being fast turned into shame. Many of her lovers are forsaking her, and the balance are too sleepy to wake up. They refuse to be fascinated, notwithstanding all her meritricious arts. Education, tracts, missions, and moral reform, are a vain thing for strength. The Lord is a jealous God, and will not give His glory to another gospel; but he will curse all the systems of men that are built upon human precepts merely, without the authority of immediate revelation. The various systems of modern christianity are cursed already, wherever the true gospel is proclaimed. That sincerity, fidelity, and zeal, which your churches and your preachers once had, is taken away from them; and your preachers have no longer power to preach with effect. The reason and cause of all this is, the true light has come; consequently, they have no longer any apology for upholding systems of error and false religions. The Spirit of God will be withdrawn from your ministry and your churches, just in proportion as the true light shines and the true gospel is rejected.
When the devout Jews rejected the novel doctrines of Jesus and his apostles, the virtues which they previously possessed either withered up or were withdrawn from them, and communicated to Infidels or Gentiles. So it is now. While the devout priests and churches reject the gospel ministered by an angel to Joseph, and confirmed by the signs following, their former virtuous principles forsake them. They become filled with the spirit of envy, hatred, and malice towards the Saints. They retail groundless slanders, and often are foremost in instigating mobs, refusing common civilities and hospitality to the servants of the Most High; and so sanguine is their opposition, that they even believe it would be well for the cause of religion, if the Saints were exterminated and put to death. So believed the devout Jews, who persecuted the prophets and slew the Holy and Just One. Thus, by step after step, the professedly pious are brought to become accessory to blood-guiltiness, and bring upon themselves all the blood that has been shed from the days of righteous Abel till now.
Oh! my much-loved friend, will you not shudder at the sight of such a catastrophe before the modern churches? What an awful curse! Given up by God to believe Saints to be sinners, and then to war against them even to blood-guiltiness! Strange and deplorable infatuation! One would think that the snares and pitfalls into which God precipitated ancient persecutors, would prove an effectual warning to modern persecutors to beware how they plunged themselves into a worse destruction! Oh, how great the severity of God towards them that strive with their Maker, and spurn the faith once delivered to the Saints as no longer needed! The very religion of modern christianity is now about as great a curse as can be inflicted upon its possessors, without doing violence to their power of agency. It is the prolific cause of judicial blindness and hardness of heart. A false religion is worse than no religion, because it is a lure and a lullaby, that excludes true religion from taking effect.
Modern religion rejects immediate revelation; consequently, all that knowledge that flows from visions and dreams, and the ministry of angels, and the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Ghost. A greater curse cannot well be conceived. There never was a people that lived a hundred years, or even fifty years, without immediate revelation from God, but they fell into gross darkness and contention, and those hurtful lusts that drown men's souls in perdition. There never was a people that survived the gift and blessing of immediate revelation any considerable length of time, except they fell into idolatry and worshipped strange gods; and their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after strange gods. All Israel fell into the worship of Baal, and hundreds of them became prophets to Baal. They, indeed, were the descendants of the mightiest Saints that ever lived, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, &c. They had in their possession the writings and traditions of their fathers, but still they were cursed because they rejected the knowledge of God through immediate revelation. They became like blind men groping in the dark. They taught their children to rebel against prophets and miraculous gifts.
Modern christians, with the Bible in their hands, are in as gross darkness as the worshippers of Baal. The god they worship is no more like the person of Christ, or the person of a man, than Baal was. Their order of church authorities and church gifts, and ordinances of healing and anointing, are probably about as remote from the apostolic pattern, as the worship of Mahomet or Vishnu is. Do not believe, sir, for a moment, that I intend, by this humiliating remark, any disrespect to the supporters of modern christianity. No: God forbid. As good a man as Paul the apostle was once as vehemently opposed to immediate revelation and spiritual gifts as you are, or any other abettors of modern christianity; but, by timely repentance, he escaped that awful curse of aversion to the only means of knowing the only true and living God. But multitudes of his countrymen still adhered to the belief that the gift of revelation had ceased, and prophets and miracles were no longer necessary. And you firmly believe that the curse indescribable has followed them to this day. Oh! how astonishing it is that you, sir, and your high-minded associates in modern christendom, should plunge into the same doleful abyss—reject the same doctrines and ordinances, as no longer necessary, and entail the same curse upon your children for generations to come! In this you are fighting against Jehovah. Every year and every day while you persist, the darkness of your minds will become more gross, and you will bring the worst passions into the field of conflict against the Saints. God will withdraw his Spirit from you, and you will ultimately be forced, through weakness and multiplied divisions and contentions, to unite the scattered fragments of sectarianism on some common platform of anti-scriptural invention. On this platform, and with this consolidated power of anti-Christ, the great battle is destined to be fought that shall silence the spirit of anti-revelation for a thousand years!
Alas! the deplorable destiny of those that war against prophets and apostles, and the spirit and power of primitive godliness! Such, in all former ages of the world, have been cursed with wars, conflagration, famine, pestilence, and the vagaries of an oppressive superstition. But, in the latter days, God has decreed a consumption upon the whole earth. The religion that is not based on the immediate interposition of the wisdom and power of God, from day to day, and time to time, will not, cannot, and shall not stand, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and let all the inhabitants of the earth hear it. Yea, sir, such religions shall be as the chaff which the wind driveth away, even as the small dust of the threshing-floor. God despises the religion that professes to flourish without the aid of constant revelation from the heavens; and he will shoot out the hot arrows of his wrath against it, until there is not a vestige or semblance of it left on the face of the whole earth. The potsherds may strive with the potsherds of the earth, but wo unto him that striveth with his Maker!
Alas the day, when God shall withdraw his Spirit from all flesh! Then confidence between man and his fellow, will give place to distrust; and jealousy, evil surmising, hatred, robbery, and blood-guiltiness will spread their direful influence through all communities! The cords of domestic union will be severed! The weak will be compelled to bow to the yoke of the strong—might will become the strongest pretext for right! The carcases of the poor and infirm will bleach uncovered upon the earth! The stench of putrefaction will impregnate the atmosphere with poisonous pestilence; insects and noisome creatures will breed innumerably to the annoyance of man! "The sword shall devour from one end of the earth to the other,—the earth shall be soaked in blood,"—the rivers shall become bloody, and the fountains of water shall no longer be pure. Many that lie down at night shall not awake in the morning. The fruitful field shall become sterile and barren, because no man knoweth for whom his fruits are growing. "The earth becometh empty and desolate." The master and servant are brought to a level. The priest is as void of consolation as the people. Paleness and fear are depicted on every human face. Traffic in merchandize, as a business, is wholly abandoned. Men cease to sow and to plough, in hope. Never before did the Almighty commence such an awful warfare against the inhabitants of the earth; never before was there witnessed such a succession of plagues and dire calamities amongst men!
After peace is taken from the earth, an agent, by the name of Death (probably invisible except to spirits and such as have the spirit of revelation) will go forth on the face of the earth and destroy one-fourth part of mankind. In the midst of this destruction of one-fourth of mankind, martyred Saints will ask the Lord to hasten the work of human destruction. An earthquake, and the lapse of stars from heaven, then begin to destroy the frail tenure of human hope; and even the great men, and mighty and chief captains become desperate, like the most effeminate and pusillanimous. Every successive plague is increasingly awful and unendurable. The plagues that fell upon Egypt will sink into insignificance and fade out of memory before the plagues which were shown to the revelator John, and which shall usher in the final consummation of the "mystery of God." The opening of the "bottomless pit" is followed with three woes which are inflicted upon men, and which are suited to the incorrigible condition of such obdurate spirits as no inferior engines of torment and destruction could subdue. But neither the torment inflicted by the sting of the locusts, like unto scorpions; nor that which is inflicted by the horses of that great army of two millions, whose mouths emit fire, smoke, and brimstone, and whose tails, being like serpents having heads, destroy both before and behind wherever they go; yet none of these things will lead these latter-day enemies to new revelations, unto repentance.
Now, sir, in conclusion, I have endeavoured, briefly, to direct your mind to the vortex of indescribable calamities into which the sentiments of modern christianity are calculated to precipitate all who know not God (by immediate revelation), and obey not the gospel revealed from heaven in this our day—a day of mercy and judgment.
With fervent desires that you and your posterity may escape the day of wrath, and seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, I subscribe myself
Your old friend and servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
ON THE RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS.
Liverpool, November 14, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir.—THE RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS, is a subject deserving rather a volumious treatise than the contracted limits of a single letter; still some out-standing features of this very prominent part of scripture revelation shall be briefly touched upon. The apostle says that the heavens must receive (Jesus) until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
By the term restitution, the scriptures mean putting all things on a permanent and righteous basis. All things are not, and never have been on a righteous basis since the fall of Adam.
After the expulsion of Lucifer and his associates from heaven, order and harmony were restored, and the everlasting system of progressive intelligence and felicity again established on an immutable basis, so far as heaven was concerned. And even among the third part of heaven, drawn away by the apostacy of Lucifer, there might possibly have been some persons capable of ultimate restoration in the interminable ages of futurity. Of this, however, it may, perhaps, be said that no man knoweth. No man, surely can know unless it is revealed to him from heaven. The possibility, however, of redeeming all flesh from the transgression laid upon mankind in this mortal state, through obedience to the gospel, is abundantly revealed in the scriptures. However wrong may have been the conduct and opinions of the inhabitants of the earth, obedience to the gospel will reinstate them in the course of permanent felicity, intelligence, and righteousness.
There are particular and set times for the restitution of all those things which God has spoken of by the prophets. God hath spoken of the subject of restitution by all the prophets since the world began; indeed there never was a prophet on the earth whose business did not engage him more or less in the work of restitution. But long periods have elapsed on the earth in which no prophets have been known. During such periods the work of restitution has invariably ceased. Iniquity and misery have been made to abound, and gross darkness has spread over all people. But at particular periods God would raise up prophets, and then the work of restitution would commence and continue until the prophets were slain or otherwise removed from the earth. It is during such particular times of restitution in the latter days, that even Jesus himself may appear from the heavens, in order to give direction and mighty impulse to the work of restitution. Noah was raised up to stay the progress of wickedness and build up the waste places. Wickedness was swept off the earth according to his prophecyings and teachings, and a race of righteous men put in the place of the wicked to people the earth. It was also a time of restitution when Abraham was commissioned to reform mankind by truth and judgment, teaching them to walk in the old paths of revelation and immediate and constant intercourse with the heavens.
Again, in mercy God raised up Moses, and recommenced the same work of restitution which was subsequently undertaken by John the Baptist, under the immediate supervision of Jesus himself. But it was not competent for any one prophet, in the short period of his ministry on the earth, to set everything right that was wrong; but each did what he could, under existing circumstances, with the people with whom he had to do. The spirit of revelation rested upon each successive prophet to perform that work which was most fit and necessary to the age in which he lived. No one could attend to all things; and many things are yet to be revealed that have been kept secret since the foundation of the world. No man has ever understood all those measures and principles by which the human family can be brought to the highest degree of perfection. The angels probably do not know them, and even the Son himself did not know them, but the Father only.
The reign of a thousand years of righteousness will probably do much to correct, ennoble, and exalt mankind, and beautify the works of his hands, and felicitate all flesh. Whatever principles and measures can contribute to exalt and felicitate mankind in the sight of the heavens, is yet to be done. The profound philosophy and science of the highest intelligences, with all the embellishments which art, and taste, and genius can secure, are destined to become tributary to the righteous; and when these things shall take place in the times of the restitution of all things, God will be crowned with ineffable glory and honour, blessing and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen.
The spirit of apostacy has stripped and shorn true religion of all its luscious and beautiful fruit, and left nothing scarcely but the naked withered hulk of false spirituality. Religion has been taught, by protestant dissenters, as a science almost wholly abstracted from civil government—from political, social, and domestic institutions, and also from the useful and fine arts. It has been circumscribed to the most revoltingly contracted limits.
In the zeal of its advocates to put down an illegitimate and bastardly union of church and state, that had long darkened the moral atmosphere of the earth, and made nations groan under oppression, and sigh and mourn that religion was the wedded ally of the civil sceptre, they pushed off into the opposite extreme of imbecile, naked, and sterile spirituality; thereby proving, plainly, that any religion that is not based on constant and immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, can neither walk long with or without the crutches of governmental aid and support. It will not only become a stink in the nostrils of Jehovah, but soon cause great dissatisfaction and fall into merited contempt and ignominy.
The best biographies of such men as David Brainard and Edward Payson, is a fair exhibition of internal mental turmoil, and fitful commotion of spirit, and servile bondage to a law that neither they nor their fathers could keep. Poor misguided but honest men! How happy might they have been had they known the true primitive gospel that Paul preached, by the infallible light of inspiration! How joyful the intelligence to the honest but misguided, when the glad news of restitution shall reverberate in their prisons, and cause the captive exile to haste into light and liberty! Not only will the hopes and faith of men be set right in the times of restitution, but the earth itself will undergo an important change, and the heavenly bodies or planetary system. The islands shall flee, and continents be united, and the waters be restored to their proper bounds, no more to break over their proper barriers. The curse shall be clean removed from the earth, and the air shall become salubrious and delightful. The animal race shall cease from their animosity and virulence of temper. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together; and there shall nothing hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain. In short, all things that are now wrong shall be set right. Human life shall be prolonged: the infant shall die an hundred years old. The power and perpetuity of life will be secured to the ultimate extinction of death from off the earth. Death, the last enemy, will be conquered and swallowed up in victory. When every form and power of sin ceases, may we not expect that death will also cease? Death hath passed upon all men in that all have sinned. Sin is the sting of death and the cause of it. It is true that Jesus died, although he never sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; but he took upon him Adam's nature, and became sin for us, though he knew no sin. But it was not possible for him to be holden of death, or to see corruption, because he was holy.
When a holy seed shall be raised up from the loins of the righteous, which know no sin (which will be the case when the devil is bound), then their bodies will not see corruption. They shall not all sleep (or die), but they shall be changed. Those who partake of the curse of Adam will be changed in a moment, without knowing corruption; but the posterity of such as are changed will be the legitimate heirs of sanctified bodies, upon whom death has no conceivable claim. Death will not pass upon them because they have not sinned. Their bodies are generically spiritual and holy, like Christ's own most glorious body. Then will the seeds of death become extinguished from the human body, and man will stand as holy and pure as in his pristine creation, blooming with health, vigour, and immortality. Then he is prepared to hold intercourse with the heavens, and to reign with Christ on the earth.
You will perceive, sir, a difference in the liability of such persons as are born during the reign of righteousness, who do not sleep or die, and those who must die by reason of sin. The former know not the dominion or sting of sin, but are as trees of the Lord's planting—righteous. The latter must needs die and be resurrected. Jesus was the first fruits of them that slept. In the case of all others, corruption followed death; and a longer period must elapse before their bodies could be resurrected by reason of corruption. But Jesus was first and foremost to ripen into immortality. Corruptibility did not pertain to him, of course it was not necessarily pre-requisite to his resurrection and immortality; but with all others, down to the period when it is said that they should not sleep, corruption must precede the resurrection.—If the body of Jesus did not corrupt and moulder back to dust, then it is evident that he had substantially the same sort of corporal frame after his resurrection that he had before. The spirit resting upon him without measure, animated and resuscitated his body with no other material change than that of loss of blood. He shewed his disciples his body, and told them to handle him and see of what material it was: "a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." He shewed them, demonstratively, in his own person, a proper specimen of a living resurrected body. He shewed them that a spirit did not possess flesh and bones as a resurrected body did. He also proved another thing, viz.: that a resurrected body retains probably all the five senses common to a mortal body. He eat and drank with them, and shewed them that his person was identically the same as before his death.—Here there is a specimen of corporal immortality. In this person we may see what all resurrected bodies will be, for we shall be like him. Life and immortality are brought to light in the example of Christ's resurrected body. Such is the organization of a resurrected body, in consequence of the expulsion of the seeds of death, the last enemy, that decay and disease have no further power or influence.
The immediate resurrection of Jesus, after the lapse of only three days, was one of the greatest blessings and honours that could be conferred. In addition to all the faculties and powers which he possessed previous to his death, he also had those of an immortal being; instead of lingering a long time, with barely the circumscribed and limited powers and privileges of a disembodied spirit, he was blessed in body, soul, and spirit united. The key to innumerable lives and boundless dominions was given him on the third day after his death. It was his sole prerogative to say how long the dead should sleep before they should be resurrected. All the innumerable privileges of a resurrected body—privileges unspeakable and even unlawful to be uttered by reason of the hardness of men's hearts—were conferred upon him! He held the key of death and hell. No one could come forth from the tomb without his orders—none could felicitate his spirit by possessing his own body till Jesus should grant permission. His friends could all be called forth at his pleasure, and be reinstated on the earth as he had been, with all their friends and posterity after them, but no enemy could resuscitate the slumbering ashes of his tomb, till Jesus should speak the word and grant permission.
His attention would be especially directed to the speedy and early restitution of such as had been beheaded for his sake and the gospel's. They should be the very first to be raised, and others in their time and order; but the wicked enemies! alas, how long they must lie unnoticed! A thousand years, at least, must roll slowly away before their mouldering bodies could be allowed to have a living re-organization! Long and doleful banishment from the joys of life and immortality! In the meantime the righteous are restored to their own bodies, now immortalized for ever; they are reinstated on the earth in the company of kindred spirits, while their enemies are trodden down as so much dust under the soles of their feet.
How remarkable a contrast between the righteous and the wicked! They that sowed to the Spirit are reaping the fruits of the Spirit, which are life everlasting. They inherit the earth and multiply upon it, and build cities and temples, and their posterity are as numerous as the sands upon the sea shore. How glorious the rich reward of keeping the commands of God! but, alas! where are the wicked all this time? Where are those who have sown to the flesh during this long and glorious reign of the righteous on the earth? Poor wretched creatures! they are reaping corruption, just according to what they sowed. Once they scorned the righteous, and oppressed the hireling, and sneered at prophets, and said they needed no revelations in their day and age. But where are they now? Their bodies mingle with the dust of the streets and of the field, that men tread upon daily. Their memories are nearly faded from remembrance. Their posterity can no where be found on the earth. When the wicked return from their banishment (so many as do return, for they shall be visited after many days) they have become an inferior race of beings: the righteous have outstripped them in knowledge, and happiness, and power, and dominion, and glory, and honour.
The resurrection will bring about a great restitution both to the righteous and to the wicked. The righteous will receive the reward of righteousness, and the wicked will receive the wages of sin. When the wicked are swept off the earth, the books will be opened and examined in order to know whose names are recorded; and those "that are found written in the book shall be delivered;" and such shall be resurrected immediately, and shine as the brightness of the firmament on account of the illustrious part they had taken in Christ's service. But the wages of the wicked shall be paid off in a long night of death before they rise; and when they rise, it shall be to shame and everlasting contempt. If their long banishment and death is followed by a subdued and humbled spirit of loyalty to truth, still their late resurrection, with all its doleful accompaniments, will be an eternal stigma on their name. It will always be known that they were once banished and trod under foot a thousand years at least, in consequence of their disgraceful rebellion against the laws and ordinances of God's government. Neither they nor their posterity can ever wipe off the disgrace; they may repent and reform, and become truly loyal to God, still their former rebellion against immediate revelation and prophets, will stand on record eternally, and crimson their face with shame, and furnish occasion for contempt to their name at the retrospect. Many ancient Saints endured "tortures, not accepting deliverance, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection."
The domestic tie is the strongest bond of union, and the most prolific source of virtue and happiness that appertains to mankind on earth or in heaven. Hence the promise made to Abraham of an innumerable domestic confederation, and to all others also, who should be heirs of the same faith with faithful Abraham. But the wicked are disembodied spirits, without flesh and bones, and cannot partake of the blessings of domestic union, and that friendship and fellowship that the whole family of God in heaven and upon earth enjoy. Poor desolate spirits, that once despised prophecyings and forbid to speak in tongues, ye are now left without the sweet ties of parentage, and the endearing bonds of filial and conjugal affection! The social circle in which you move, and the government under which you are organized, have lost their most lovely and essential ligaments of union and strength. How gladly would wicked spirits accept the bodies of the inferior animals as their tabernacle, might they be permitted to do so; even the swine would be a desirable habitation rather than none at all.
The angels that kept not their first estate are reserved in chains (have not the liberty of embodied spirits) to the far distant period of final judgment, when death and hell shall be judged after the lapse of a thousand years and "little season;" even then death and hell, with all others whose reprieve is not found written in the book, must fall victims to the second death. Oh! dreadful consequence of sin! How oft would I have gathered you, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, but ye would not; but now, your house is left unto you desolate!
But, alas! sir, how many attach no more importance to the resurrection, than merely the fact of its being an evidence that we shall survive the dissolution of death? but blessed are those who understand and have part in the first resurrection, for on such the second death hath no power. Sir, my heart swells with deep concern that all men might obey the only true gospel, that entitles to a part in the first resurrection!
The limits of my letter forbid me to exhort; but suffer me to say, unless you have the same faith with Daniel and Elijah, and the same spirit of revelation with Peter, Abraham, and Moses, you can never associate with resurrected bodies, neither with holy angels, nor with God. In your flesh you never can see God. All former Saints were united with the spirits of the just, and angels, and Christ, and God the judge of all: and if you are not united to the same by supernatural faith, and the spirit of vision and revelation, you may bid farewell to every endearing social tie, and launch forth among the disembodied powers of the air; and there with bitter regret and wailing, lament over that fallen and lost bodily image of your Maker, laid low in corruptible ruins through your transgression and hatred of the ministry of the prophet of the last days. There, this spectacle of your rebellion against prophets (monument of your shame) must lie till your self-righteous spirit is subdued, or be raised only to encounter the mortal grasp of a second death.
Yes, sir, while the restitution will elevate the righteous to their proper level in the scale of being, where the wicked cannot molest, it will also depress the wicked to their humiliating level. It will separate them to their own place, and the want of bodies will prove an impassable gulf between them and happiness. In this state they may, indeed, contemplate what they have lost, without the power of recovering it. Oh, tantalizing state of keen despair! Dreadful chains! Cruel death holds that once noble image of thy Maker fast in mouldering ruins, as a monument of thy contempt of prophets! Now, thou needest supernatural power to restore to thee that lost image of thy Maker! Now, thou needest a new name and key to resurrecting power! but thou hast despised these things, and saidst thou hadst no need, therefore thy light is put out and clean gone! Now, angels offer to minister to thee, and prophets to become thy teachers, but thou wouldst have none of these; therefore they will withdraw from thee for a long and dreary night, in which thou wilt often cry out with bitter wailing, "Would God it were morning!"
Now, sir, may a consideration of these truths lead you to choose the good and refuse the evil, and stand on the immutable basis of every one that is taught of God, is the unceasing desire of
Your humble servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS ON RESTITUTION.
Liverpool, November 30, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—A question has sometimes been asked concerning infants—with what bodies will they come forth? Will they be raised in the stature of manhood or adult size? We believe not; but as they fall, so will they rise again—the size of their stature when they rise, will be the same as when they fell asleep in death. Little children are the subjects and residents of the kingdom of heaven. Their angels do always behold the presence of our Father in heaven.
It is not the size of a person's stature that constitutes any certain mark of the measure of one's capacity, either to exercise power or enjoy felicity. Jesus possessed all power in a mere stature of human size. Still, nothing is fully perfect till it has attained the measure of the grand Designer, and accomplished the end of its creation. Hence it may, with some probability, be inferred, that children will mature and come to their full stature after the resurrection; this, however, is more a matter of opinion than of any direct revelation that has come to my knowledge.
It will, of course, from what has been said, be discovered that the righteous will enjoy a happy recognition of each other in every endearing relation that is common to mankind in their present mortal state. Their familiarity will be that of perfect innocence and felicity. Children, in the millennium, or after the first resurrection, will need the same paternal care, tutorage, and guidance, which is required by them now. In the absence of their proper parents they will, doubtless, receive adopted parents, or an equivalent guardianship of the angels of God. Such is the established order of progressive intelligence, through the medium of living teachers, that all the redeemed of heaven and earth, are under the special guardianship of the ministering authorities of God.
Oh, how happy and blessed are those parents and children—husbands and wives—who shall meet in the palaces of the just, and recognize each other after so long an absence! Unspeakably joyful that day and hour when friends, that have been long separated, shall again strike hands together, and celebrate their re-union in the courts above. To die is gain, because the righteous are exalted and introduced to higher orders of intelligence. New fields of discovery and enjoyment are constantly opening, to intensify their interest and swell their bosoms with the liveliest emotions. They may and do remember their righteous friends that are left behind, for a little season, with kind desires, and cannot advance in knowledge and glory very advantageously without them; still it is the knowledge which they possess of superlative glories ahead, that principally occupy their minds. Truths and keys, explanatory of the boundless and skilful works of God, and facilitating their progress towards dominion and power, and blessing, and salvation, are continually warming up their hearts and inciting them to onward deeds. The valiant and faithful that have fought a good fight and kept the faith, are hailed with delight and thanksgivings on their reception to the heavenly courts, and most cordially welcomed to the embrace of the great and venerable progenitor of our race.
Thrice happy are those who keep their present estate, and secure an imperishable inheritance on this planetary portion of their interminable existence; and equally deplorable, on the other hand, the condition of those who, filled with the delusive spirit of anti-revelation, keep not their present estate, and prefer the darkness of no revelation, in their day; because they have changed the ordinances, and transgressed the laws, and broken the everlasting covenant.
Again, it may be asked, will not those who have died without the knowledge of the gospel, during many centuries past, perish for want of the gospel? And where is the justice of leaving persons to perish, for want of that which it is not in their power to obtain?
Were not many of our ancestors, that have died in past generations, good people, yet as the gospel was not revealed in their day, and they could not enter the kingdom by being born of the water and of the Spirit, have they perished? These, indeed, are interesting inquiries. To the first inquiry I respond—they have not perished, in the sense or manner in which those have perished who have rejected the offers of the gospel; not having known the gospel, they have never rejected it. They have not disobeyed laws and ordinances of which they have not heard, or which were never imposed upon them. They are neither rewarded or punished according to gospel laws; but such as have lived without law will be judged without law. Where there is no law there is no transgression—where there is nothing given, there is nothing required; but it is required according to what a man hath. Whatever light they have had, by that light will they be judged; and whatever privileges and blessings the law, under which they have lived, can confer, such will be awarded to them. Still our fathers, who have died without the gospel, are in a condition far inferior to those who have received and obeyed the gospel.
This condition of theirs is consequent upon the early transgression of their progenitors. The condition itself may not be blameworthy. Their conduct, in a pre-existent state, may have deserved for their bodies in this world to be without the privilege of the gospel; or withholding gospel privileges from them in this world, may be followed with future blessings compensatory for their loss, when they shall prove themselves worthy of a better condition. The gospel martyr sustains a great loss, but the magnitude of his reward is designed to overbalance his loss.
Our devout and worthy fathers that have died without the gospel, cannot, indeed, enter the celestial kingdom of Jesus Christ without conformity to the identical laws and ordinances of his kingdom. But provision is made for them, whereby they can conform to the requirements of the gospel, not altogether in their own persons alone, but through proxy, or the obedience of others, provided they voluntarily accept of that obedience rendered by others for their benefit.
Startle not, my dear sir, at this idea that is so repugnant to the prejudice of protestants. The principle of substitution is at the foundation of the great work of redemption, and forms a chain of gratitude and obligation of the purest and noblest metal. Jesus died for others, because they could not have saved themselves without his obedience for them. The preachers of righteousness pass through many tribulations, and sacrifice houses, lands, and country, in order that others may become rich both temporally and spiritually; without this order of suffering, the just for the unjust, no man could be saved.
Paul says, I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church. Every man that has the priesthood of Christ may suffer in his measure and degree a propitiatory sacrifice, according to the degree of priesthood with which he is clothed. He may become a subordinate saviour to his fellow-men, Christ being, however, the CAPTAIN of all men's salvation. Hence, the prophets plumply call men SAVIOURS who shall be raised to officiate in Mount Zion.
Paul also instructs Timothy how he can save men and himself. This distribution of saving gifts, instead of eclipsing Jesus of the glory of salvation, magnifies his glory, because He is the spring and source of all salvation. God the Father reigns over all, and Jesus under him, and men reign under Jesus as kings and priests. Kingdoms rise up within kingdoms, but Christ is the King of kings. Peter tells how the devout and honourable dead may be saved, who never heard the gospel on earth. He says, the living may be baptized for them, and then they can be judged according to men in the flesh. Says he, "else why are ye baptized for the dead?" Baptism for the dead was better understood in Peter's days than the doctrine of the resurrection. Doctrines are sooner obliterated from the mind than ordinances. But after the destruction of the Temple, and the baptismal font, baptisms for the dead must of course cease, because there was no longer an acceptable place for this ordinance to be ministered. Peter explicitly declares, that the gospel was preached to the dead, by which also he went and preached to the Spirits in prison. Now if the gospel was preached to the dead, then mercy, and deliverance, and salvation, were preached to the dead; but these could not be preached to them without the ordinances, because the ordinances of baptism, and gift of the Holy Ghost, are a part of the gospel; for except a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. But if a righteous man is baptized for his departed friend, the law requiring baptism is magnified, and God can justify the departed spirit that believes, and accepts the same.
Baptism for the dead, however, only takes away the disabilities under which they labour; unless this is done for them they cannot be redeemed, however penitent they may become. The blood of Christ took away the disabilities of all the human family, so that all mankind can now be saved through faith and obedience. But no man is saved by the blood of Christ, without faith and obedience; and if they count His blood an unholy thing, and sin against the Holy Ghost, there is no more sacrifice for sin, neither is there forgiveness for such in "this world, nor in the world to come." No person will be led by the Spirit to be baptized for any such description of persons; no person that is the friend of Christ will ever lend a helping hand towards redeeming such obdurate spirits. Many worlds must pass away before they can be fit subjects for the visitation of God's mercy. But there are those who will prove their lineage to be descended from those who slew the prophets, and "fill up the measure of their fathers," and some will even shed innocent blood—for whom there is no resurrection, only to be plunged into a lake of fire, and writhe under the gnawings of the worm that never dies. Among those in former ages who were of the lineage of the murderers of prophets, priests and high-minded divines are distinctly noticed by Jesus Christ, and their pedigree flatly exposed; and, sir, if you will allow me any credit for veracity, and attach any weight to the most palpable and irrefutable proof, you may assuredly know, that preachers of modern christianity have occupied a conspicuous part in the tragic scenes of Missouri and Illinois.—I will admit that many distinguished divines do eloquently extol the ancient prophets—speak in glowing diction of the faith of Daniel, Abraham, and Sampson, and of illustrious miracles, and beautifully portray the crucifixion, agony, and triumph of Jesus. But, alas! with the next breath, and while soaring aloft with the ardent sympathies of their hearers, they prove their pedigree to be that of the self-same murderers of the very prophets they affect to eulogize. Electrified and warmed up in the pseudo atmosphere of Calvary, and the story of redeeming love for a cloak of maliciousness, their words, though smoother than oil, are sharper than drawn swords. The innocent Saints feel their piercing thrusts from pulpits that bear the cognomen of St. Peter, and St. Paul, and St. Jude.
Lewd men of the baser sort catch the Lethean fire, and throughout the nation the righteous poor feel the Upean blast that sprung from the sacred desk. Thousands are thrown out of employment—writs, and every species of oppression are poured out like a storm of hail upon them. Property is sacrificed—the Saints flee, homeless and shelterless, to seek an asylum in the wilds of the everlasting hills.
Again, I will invite your attention to the union of the fathers and the children, and a faint outline of the innumerable kingdoms that are to rise up in the boundless dominions of the Supreme King. No king on earth or in heaven is so omnipotent or omnipresent as not to need subordinate ruling agencies, in order to control innumerable subjects. Hence the Lord God of all the earth has a host of holy angels that communicate his will, and minister his pleasure among the hosts of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. From the highest heaven, even his own peculiar dwelling-place, to the lowest heaven, and from thence to the earth, this order of delegated authorities is maintained. His dominions extend through all space, and the number of his constantly increasing subjects cannot be computed.
How, then, are these innumerable kingdoms governed? Every organization has its own president or ruler, from the orbit of countless millions to the smallest division that convenience may require—from the ruler of many cities to the ruler of the smallest ward of a city. A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him into the presence of great men.
Now, the strongest tie of government, of union, strength, and happiness in any confederation whatever, either in heaven or on earth, is that which springs from parentage, or the paternal tie. The first lesson of address which God teaches his subjects is to call him Father—our Father, &c. The father feels the strongest of all attachments to his children; for them he toils and provides, and to them he gives the fruit of his labours, and the wisdom and knowledge that flows from his lips. Every father is expected to look after his own progeny. If it were not that the hearts of the fathers were turned to the children, in the last days the earth would be smitten with such a sore and heavy curse that no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake, and for the sake of the fathers who have obtained promises concerning their posterity in the last days, the earth will be preserved as an inheritance for righteous men. From the dust of mother earth has arisen a sufficient number of righteous men to secure the endless perpetuity of its existence among the worlds that God has made. Glory and honour be to God for this unspeakable favour! Some worlds have passed away and are not, doubtless because they abode not in the law given them.
According to promise, God has sent Elijah just in the dawn of the great and notable day of sweeping the wicked with the besom of his wrath, to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers. The children are told of kindred ties between them and such as once held the true priesthood, and wrought righteousness on the earth, and of their consequent heirship to thrones and dominions through faith. Through the gift of the Spirit they respond to the same, as good tidings of great joy. The Spirit of God works in them mightily, that they may come to the knowledge of their ancestors, that were once in honourable remembrance before God for their faith and priesthood. By revelation, and by records and traditions, and by the spirit of adoption, they will learn their relationship to the heavens; and the vacant links of lineage between them and their forefathers in the priesthood, will be sought after on earth, and under the earth, and in the heavens, in the set times of restitution; for God will gather together in one in Christ, all things in heaven and upon the earth and under it, in the dispensation of the fulness of times.
The different federative unions of the whole family of heaven and earth, when organized according to the law of adoption, have their own respective patriarch or president to represent them in the grand council of the just, Jesus Christ being head over all things to the Church, in all ages, worlds without end. Every dispensation under Him has its own presidency and grand council, from whence emanate all the laws that spring from the Apostle and High Priest of our profession in the heavens.
By the federative laws of adoption, a representation may be had in the grand council of each dispensation, with more practical facility and order than otherwise. Jesus is an advocate for the whole human family before the Father; "and every High Priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins."
A mediatorial and intercessoral work pervades the priesthood according to the measure of the grace bestowed. The union of families, not according to the capricious and changeable institutions of men, but according to the laws of heaven, upon the basis of virtuous affection, and upon the confidence of permanent security in righteousness, will form a solid phalanx against the intrusion of discord and the spirit of alienation from God. The righteous will be bound together, by the ties of adoption and kindred, in the "bundle of eternal life." This united confederation of strength and affection will be peculiarly needed, in order to endure the shock which society must receive both in heaven and upon earth, and under the earth, in the last dispensation; for every tree that the Eternal Father hath not planted shall be hewn down, and the institutions of men shall come to nought. Every man's hand shall be against his fellow; and while distrust and discord shall insinuate their baneful influence into the secret chambers of the most familiar acquaintance, the Saints shall have peace like a river, and their union and joy shall abound. Then the nations that have sneered at prophets will be filled with disquietude and fear! Violence and rapine will stalk abroad with a bold front! Innocence, and integrity, and virtue will hide in confusion or be utterly banished! But the Church—"the pillar and ground of the truth"—will be quiet and undisturbed! Virtue and innocence, truth and wisdom, will abound within her gates! She will come up from her tribulations like sheep from the washing—fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners!
And when the victory of truth over error is won, all nations will fear the name of the Lord our God. "The law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." The Jews shall be gathered to Jerusalem, and the city shall have been built in troublesome times. The outcasts of Judah shall re-occupy their own land; and the gatherings of Israel shall be commemorated in everlasting songs and festivals, because the greatness of the work shall surpass any deliverance that Israel has ever experienced before from the hand of the Lord. Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. But the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them. And I will bring them again into their land, that I gave unto their fathers. Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks, for mine eyes are upon all their ways. I will cause them to know mine hand and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord. And Satan shall be bound on the face of the whole earth; and for the first time in the lapse of more than six thousand years, there shall be made a perfect demonstration of the majesty and glory of the kingdom of God on the earth; and the purity, efficiency, and wisdom of his laws.
Jesus Christ shall come in like manner as he went up. He shall set his feet upon Mount Olives, and the earth shall quake at his presence. His nation shall acknowledge their Lord and their God, whom their fathers had crucified. The city of the New Jerusalem shall come down out of heaven, even the city of the great King. In this city will be displayed the skill of the great architect of the world,—the builder and maker is God. The names of the twelve tribes, and of the twelve apostles of the Lamb will not be the least distinguishable in this most extraordinary city that was ever revealed to man.
This vision of the future residence of the apostles and patriarchs, appears to have been unfolded to the apostle John, in a kind of farewell visit, and must have ravished his heart with unspeakable delight and ecstacy. His soul was suffused with joy and rapture, and he fell prostrate with feelings of worship toward the messenger of such tidings. Jesus had, indeed, told the apostles that he would go away and prepare mansions for them. And that there were many mansions. But never before, probably, had he described the celestial state and residence so beautifully and minutely as now. The height, and length, and breadth of the city, and the names of some of the most distinguished personages who should occupy mansions therein, together with the gates of pearl, and the foundation walls of all manner of precious stones, were distinctly shown to him.
The future residence of the Saints, we perceive, is not an ideal thing without reality. They will need houses for their persons, and for their families, as much in their resurrected condition as in their present state; they will be as sensible of the works of art, taste, beauty and grandeur there as now, and far more so.
In this identical world, where they have been robbed of houses and lands, and wife and children, they shall have an hundred fold. The nations of the earth shall bring their glory into the city of their immortal residence. And the diversified wisdom of Solomon, displayed above all earthly kings, shall be but a miniature picture of the visible and tangible glories that will be exhibited to the eyes and ears of resurrected Saints on the very erarth where they once suffered. If ever an earthly sovereign sat upon a throne, and swayed a royal sceptre, and wore a glittering crown of surpassing richness and beauty, then shall men and women who have suffered loss and shame for the gospel's sake, be seated upon thrones in the city of the New Jerusalem, and their mandates shall be heard and obeyed to the ends of the earth; and the riches, and dominion, and power, and blessing, and glory, that shall encircle them, no tongue can describe. Oh! wonderful transition, from darkness to light, and from the degrading bondage of Satan into the liberty of the sons and daughters of God! Glorious emancipation! Who can contemplate the recompense of reward without ample satisfaction for all the withering scorn, and piercing sarcasm, and bloody hatred, that have been endured? Give me a name that shall never perish,—a habitation among heaven's kings,—a seat in the council of the just, where the fairest among the sons of men shall sometimes minister in his own person, and it shall suffice for having fought a good fight, and kept the faith once delivered to the Saints. Oh, enchanting prospect of rapturous delight!
The thought of such amazing bliss
Should constant joys create!
But grovelling unbelief will ask, how can such an immense city be let down to the earth, or suspended over it, and contiguous to it? I reply, How can the earth be suspended in vacant space? How could Jesus ascend up till the eye could see his person no longer? How could Elijah go up in the chariot of Israel? How could the angel fly through the midst of heaven, that the prophets Zechariah, John, and Daniel saw speaking to the young man Joseph? How can Christ come with his ten thousand Saints, and descend with a shout? How will Saints, by tens of thousands and millions, be caught up to meet him in the air? How do birds fly in the air, and vast planets hang on nothing? Oh! marvellous unbelief! shall not He who organized worlds out of their chaotic state, reorganize them at His pleasure, so as to suit the capacity and pleasure of immortalized bodies, that have kept their second estate, and have obtained right and title to enter the pearly gates of the royal city?
Isaiah says, that the Lord's work, in the last days, shall be a marvellous work and a wonder. The changes wrought in the condition of the earth will be very great. The face of its surface will be greatly changed. There are many islands and lofty barren mountains, and sunken pestiferous valleys, and sterile plains, that will be revolutionized. Indeed, far the greatest part of the earth stands covered with water. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunken man, and shake terribly before the coming of the Son of Man. It shall even be turned upside down; and the approach of Christ shall be indicated by a succession of great events and changes. But a most extraordinary appearance in the heavens shall be distinguished, and known as the sign of the coming of the Son of Man. Whether this sign of the Son of Man will be some planetary body of an imposing aspect, first making its appearance in the heavens and gradually approximating to the earth, or whether it shall be stationary, is not, and probably, will not, be fully revealed, except to the children of revelation, for that day shall come upon the nations as a snare.
But it is revealed that an extraordinary sign in the heavens shall make its appearance, announcing, with sublime and terrific grandeur, the near approach of the Son of Man. The calamitous state of the nations, convulsed with the sword, pestilence and famine, with which God will plead with all flesh before the Son of Man shall come; followed also with great convulsions of nature, will lead many to practise wild and visionary impositions, pretending that Christ has indeed come, and that he has been seen in the wilderness, or in the secret chamber, &c. But let it be understood distinctly, that even as a remarkable star escorted the Son of Man in his first advent, and became not only visible but stationary over the very point of earth where Jesus was born—marvellous indeed!—even so, and much more visible will be his second coming.
The brilliancy of the lightning, extending over the whole heaven, from east to west, will not be more manifest to the inhabitants of the earth than the approach of the Son of Man at his second coming. Still many will behold, wonder, and despise, and perish; because it is written, that whosoever shall reject that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. The false signs and wonders that shall be got up in opposition to the true, will deceive and harden the nations, and they will not discern between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.
Even the sign of the coming of the Son of Man may be contemplated by multitudes, barely as an unaccountable phenomenon; and familiarity with the sight of it will beget indifference, hardness of heart, and contempt for all such like things.
Your humble servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
SUMMARY AND FINAL APPEAL.
Liverpool, December 13, 1847.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—Having given you an epitomised view of the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a short series of Thirteen Letters, I now make this SUMMARY AND FINAL APPEAL to you, and to all persons to whom the foregoing Letters may come.
Before parting with you, I will endeavour to obviate some objections that might be supposed to arise, and give some further confirmatory proof of the truths that have been advanced.
You may be ready to inquire with great earnestness, can it possibly be that the religious world have been so grossly mistaken and actually deluded for so many centuries? can so many divines of celebrated learning and devotion have been all this time in error? Is it possible that that illiterate young man, Joseph Smith, should be the first, after the lapse of so many ages, to break the spell of darkness, and pierce the clouds of error, and let in the sunshine of eternal truth upon the whole world? Is it possible that he whom we have been accustomed to regard as the blackest impostor—about whose moral character there hang so many shades of suspicion? can he be, in very deed, a true prophet of God?
I do not wonder at your inquiries; but I do marvel that any good man should have a lingering doubt. Your inquiries and objections I will briefly answer.—Why should not the religious world be mistaken? do not the great mass of the human family profess to be religious? are not the millions of China and Asia religious? Here is nearly one half of the human family ardently devoted to their religion—they are sincerely devoted to their religion—the multitudes of their pagodas, and the great expense and sacrifice attending their worship, prove incontestibly their sincerity; and the long antiquity of their religion has rendered it venerable as yours.
You readily say, that the myriads of Asia are deceived and mistaken. But may they not retort upon you and say—how is it that we, whose religion is so ancient and so universally believed, should be (all of us) in such gross error? Now, may not the reply that would fit them be applicable to the advocates of modern christianity? They are all the children of Adam as much as you, and as much the offspring of our common parent. Their rulers and divines are as respectable among their own countrymen as yours are among your countrymen. It is no worse for modern christendom to be in error than for paganism. Paganism can boast of more learning and oratory, and of more universal, enduring, and mighty governments than modern christianity! Paganism can boast of more union and stability than modern christianity. But I am no advocate of either paganism or modern christianity. I believe that the whole world lieth in darkness, in consequence of transgressing the laws of God. Modern christianity has had a fair trial for success. Kings and potentates with vast and populous dominions, have been arrayed on its side. Eighteen hundred years have testified to its ragged and crippled march. The sovereigns of Europe and rulers of America are on its side. But what a haggard picture of union does the theatre of modern Christianity present! A garment of as many colours as the various religious creeds of modern christianity, would constitute a phenomenon fit to be carried about as a curiosity.
In Catholic countries there is the largest share of unity of creeds. In Protestant countries every city, town, and village presents the picture of religious collision and jargon. Now, these contending parts must necessarily be wrong, for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. And if the constituent parts are wrong, the aggregate must also be wrong. But whether the balance of wisdom and virtue lies with Christians or Pagans, one thing is certain, that no man, by searching, can find out God or know the Almighty unto perfection! The world by wisdom know not God. No man can ever know God unless God reveals himself to him. Those whom God selects to communicate revelations to men are not the wise and mighty, but rather such as are accounted weak, and foolish, and unholy. This is the description of men that God generally chooses to do his work on the earth. Again, it is said that the doctrines of the Latter-day Saints may be good enough, but their characters are too reprehensible. Testimony from many reliable sources is against them; and we have seen with our own eyes a want of that fervent piety that ought to distinguish a people entrusted with the ordinances and gifts of salvation.—This, I think, is the most weighty and popular objection that is urged by the opposers of the Latter-day Saints:—if they were a respectable people, their doctrines could better be endured. Now I propose to consider this objection, and canvass it thoroughly, in order that no man shall ever raise the same objection again, with any hope of success; but before I try their character, let us inquire what is the proper standard or rule by which character is to be tested.
Some people consider that no man can have a good character who is not religious,—this is a common opinion among religious people. An infidel, say they, is odious, and feels no responsibility; and no one is religious unless his faith harmonizes with their own religious creed. In some countries, what would be accounted moral and virtuous, would in others be stamped as immoral, unvirtuous, and sacrilegious. Another, more plausible, says, "let all men do as they would be done by," and then their characters will be good. This, however, is a very vague rule indeed; for instance, the Emperor Charles Fifth of Germany, says: "If I were as great a heretic as Martin Luther or John Calvin, I ought to be banished, or even put to death." Thus the Emperor conscientiously carries out the rule, and orders the famous Reformer (heretic) to be put to death. The above rule, unaccompanied by the spirit of revelation, is often defective and made the pretext for deeds of blood-guiltiness. What, then, is the true and infallible standard of character? I answer, it is revealed in the Gospel. God is the only good being and standard of goodness; such as comply with his revealed will are good, and do good, and there is no iniquity in them.
Compliance with the divine will is the only true standard of character. To this test, then, let us bring the character of the Latter-day Saints, and that of their opposers. What is the faith of each? Let us inquire. According to their faith, so will be their works or their character. Says James, I will show my faith by my works. You may not only know a man's faith by his works, but his works are also known by his faith. If his faith is bad, his works will be also bad; and if his works are bad, his character is bad.
It was the faith of Christ to receive the revelations of God his father unto obedience in all things. This faith led him to work the works of God, which were healing the sick, prophecying, casting out devils, speaking in tongues, and doing many miracles, and revealing the will of his Father. But the pious Jews, chief priests, &c., had another sort of faith: they believed in the God of Abraham and Moses, but believed that the age of miracles was past, and they forbid to prophecy and speak with tongues. Their faith was, that there was no further need of new revelation, and that the canon of Scripture was full. They believed that the Sanhedrim established by Moses was sufficient for the perfection and government of the Church, without apostles, and prophets, and various gifts. Their faith was not the faith of God, nor of immediate revelation (although they said they believed in old revelations); neither was it the faith of miracles, and prophecyings, and tongues, and healing.
What, then, was the faith of those pious men that sent their missionaries over sea and land, and preached eloquently, and wept copiously over the pathetic doctrines of Abraham and Moses? Why, to be plain, sir, it was the faith of devils; and their anti-revelation doctrines were the doctrines of devils. Their works were of the devil, because their faith was opposed to immediate revelation, and their character was like their works—bad and abominable in the eyes of God, and saints, and holy angels; and yet these same pious Jews claim that they were the only true Christians! What a pity (thought they) that this arch impostor should succeed in misleading and deluding so many followers. It was due to his wickedness that he got killed, and it was a pity that his doctrines did not die with him. Doubtless some Solomon Spaulding story was current to prove that he was born of a harlot, and her husband, like another Judge Hale, was ready to swear that he was not the father of the child.
Now, sir, from the foregoing thirteen Letters, you will see plainly what is the acknowledged faith of the Latter-day Saints. It is precisely the same with the faith of the ancient apostles and prophets. They have proved before the face of mankind, and in the sight of angels, that they believe the doctrines set forth in these Letters and in the Scriptures, by persecutions, banishment, loss of goods, houses, and lands; yea, even of life itself; for they are a spectacle unto all men, and their characters are good in the sight of God, and angels, and saints, because they keep the commandments and ordinances of God, even unto death—not counting their lives dear unto them, in order that they may be found in the same faith for which apostles and prophets have contended earnestly and bled freely.
Their character is that of compliance with the revealed will of God, the only true standard of character. They have preached the word to the nations of the earth, under privations, and abuses, and perils hitherto unknown, since the days of the apostles. It is no vanity to say, there is none like them in all the earth. They fear God and work righteousness.
If any class of people were ever entitled to a good character, it is the Latter-day Saints. They have earned a title to it by conformity to the only true rule and standard of character that was ever revealed to man, viz., compliance with the doctrines and ordinances of heaven. On this platform, sir, I am willing to try the character of Latter-day Saints before any tribunal of impartial justice; and it is on this platform alone that all men must be tried, who have ever heard the gospel of Christ. When the Saints and their opposers are brought before this tribunal of high heaven, think you not that our accusers will not be filled with shame at their groundless accusations? This people, during the last seventeen years (since 1830) have endured the fatigue and expense of emigrating from their former homes; built cities, and towns, and farms, and been robbed of them. Many of them have journeyed, making their own bridges and roads, traversing prairies and mountains, and some have emigrated by ships around the greater half of the globe. They have preached the gospel to many nations, and brought some hundreds of thousands into obedience to it. In doing this, they have been unaided by any missionary funds or salary—been compelled all the time to face an incessant and pitiless storm of scandal and vituperation. The pulpit, and the bar, and the medical faculty have poured out upon them their grape and canister shot, and caused their combustible shells to burst thick around their pathway; still they survive, and the truth floats over every ocean, and converts to their standard are multiplying beyond the aggregate increase of long venerated denominations. What but the power of God could have secured these great and blessed results in the very teeth of boasting christendom? Pure, eternal, and almighty truth has done it.
Why should you marvel at the success of this religion, seeing it is based on the same principles as the religion of all the prophets ever since the foundation of the world. The Bible recognises no other religion than that of prophets and supernatural faith, and miracles, and immediate revelation. It is not possible to point out a single pious man or woman, whose name or piety is recorded within the lids of the Bible, that did not profess the same religion—the same gifts of supernatural faith, prophecyings, healings, tongues, that Latter-day Saints profess. Ancient saints believed in a similar administration by angels—ancient saints knew nothing of any religion that did not embrace immediate intercourse with God and angels, or that did not communicate the gifts of healing, tongues, and prophecyings. They knew, indeed, what it was to smart under the lash of false religions; but the ancient saints regarded no man as pious or acceptable to God, who did not profess to believe in the ministration of angels, and the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost. John, and Jesus, and the apostles, laid the axe at the root of all religions but their own; and they believed fully and heartily in these and such like things. And the great bone of contention between them and their pious adversaries was mainly about the gifts and blessings of a supernatural order;—the latter making a mock of tongues, and despising prophecyings, and miracles, as being needless in that day and age of the world;—the former maintaining that the faith of Daniel, Sampson, and Noah, were as necessary to salvation as they ever had been in the early age of the world. Indeed, if you will look through the whole Bible, you will find that every man of Bible piety believed in prophets, and angels, and visions, and miracles; and any one who did not believe as they did were accounted rebels, or hypocrites, and excommunicated accordingly.
I know, indeed, that out of the lids of the Bible, you may find pious creeds, that set aside all further revelation, and the further ministration of angels, and prophets, and represent the supernatural faith of Moses and Elijah as no longer needed; but no such representation can be drawn from any part of the contents of the Bible. Men of supposed splendid piety can be found in modern churches, who know nothing of the gift of the Holy Ghost in prophecying and tongues, or healing, and who never dreamed of having the ministration of an angel; and would sneer at the whole system of prophets and angels, and present miracles. And what I ask of them is, that they will abandon all pretext of Bible authority for such piety. The Bible recognises no such piety, neither does it entertain any fellowship for it; but down to the day when the last revelation was uttered, it never breathed an intimation that the faith of miracles would cease, or the gifts of healing, except through transgression; but the ancient faith of Abraham and Moses was strenuously contended for, till the last man sealed his testimony with his blood.
The advocates of old revelations, and old prophets, and former day miracles, were very numerous in Paul's day; but they hated new revelation and the power of the Mosaic and Samsonic faith as they did poison.
The doctrine of constant revelation in the true Church, left them as barren of Bible piety as the fallen angels. Go back to whatever part of the history of Bible piety you will, you will never be able to glean up anything in the shape or likeness of modern piety; but you will pick up the hot indignation of apostles and prophets against all such pretended piety. The Bible wages an uncompromising war against modern piety that wears the mask of friendship for ancient revelations and miracles, while it resists the same faith and power in its own day. It is no new thing to have revelation and miracles cease: they were discontinued in consequence of transgression in several different periods of the world. Previous to the days of John the Baptist, and before the days of Moses and Abraham, revelation had ceased. These men were raised up as so many new revelators, in order to overthrow the false and discordant religions, and establish the knowledge of the true God on the earth. As soon as prophets have ceased to reveal the will of God, people have turned into jangling about creeds. The old revelations have been distorted and pulled all to tatters; manuscripts have been picked up; and uninspired men, with all pomposity and pedantry, have set themselves to adjudicate and determine what was genuine, and what was spurious revelation. You might as well set blind men without a telescope to examine the propriety of the local relationship of the starry bodies in the heavens. Alas! the eager folly of biblical researches! Send one, as well, in the darkness of midnight to search a hay-mow for a cambric needle! as though the Almighty could not hide himself from the gaze of transgressors, and withhold the key of knowledge from those that "despise prophecyings." But I turn from the vain and sickening labours of the erudite religionist. His pathway is a mazy labyrinth—the further he goes, the more inextricable his difficulties! The cost of his wearisome and fruitless labours overpowers the remnant of his veracity, and he seeks an inglorious reward for his labours in decoying others, as foolish as himself, into the same learned labyrinths of error. He tells what this man has said, and that man has written; but from God, the fountain of all truth, he has obtained no intelligence—he has heard nothing. Having felt a little of the mesh cords of this entanglement, in pity I turn away.
The faith of visions, miracles, angels, revelations, and prophets, is the only religion of the Bible. With what contempt would Abraham look upon the religion that immediately preceded the days of Moses? With what indignation would Moses and Elijah look upon the religion that immediately preceded John, and denied any further revelation!
How abhorrent to apostles must be the conduct of those who, having persecuted and slain the defenders of the faith of miracles, then turned round and said, "We need no more such faith,—miracles are done away." Their posterity approve their sayings, and teach the same theology. Blush, O, thou foul prince of darkness, at the consummate folly and credulity of thy followers! What would the revelator John say, to a grave assembly or synod of divines, that should meet together in solemn council to devise means how to check the doctrine of new revelation and miracles? After showing them that he was identified with the self same obnoxious advocates of such a doctrine, and that his banishment, and the martyrdom of his fellow apostles, had sprung from the same spirit of anti-revelation and anti-miracles, that now convenes this grave council of bishops; with mingled pity and indignation he concludes a most touching remonstrance against their unhallowed opposition to prophets, by pointing the assembly to the tragic scenes of Calvary, where anti-revelation had matured a full cup. When men come to the knowledge of God through the principles of immediate revelation, and the power of the Holy Ghost, nothing can separate them from the love of God but their own transgressions; neither sword, nor famine, nor peril, nor principalities, nor powers, can separate them from the gospel. They know in whom they believe. Who could convince Jacob of the fallacy of visions, after what he experienced at Bethel? Who could dissuade Peter from the faith of miracles, after witnessing the lame man healed at the gate of the temple? Would David or his mighty men doubt the power of God, after a single individual had lifted up his spear and slew eight hundred at one time? Would mobbing and imprisonment force Sampson to abandon his supposed delusion, after he had put to flight an army of thousands? No; vain hope of all the adversaries to miracles!
How long shall men wage a war of scandal, extermination, and massacre against the advocates of miracles? Yet the nineteenth century—blush to hear the undeniable charge!—yea, the christendom of the nineteenth century has espoused the old persecutor's warfare, as keenly as the persecutors of Stephen, Daniel, and Moses. Are they so forgetful of all sacred and profane history as not to know that they are fighting the battles of Cain, Esau, Jannes and Jambes, Judas and Herod, over again. The former persecutors fought against new revelations, and latter persecutors do the same—the former Saints were called lying, blasphemous impostors, and the Latter-day Saints are called the same. There always was an attempt to crush former saints by scandalizing their character, robbing and slaying them—the same luckless attempt is again renewed in the nineteenth century.
Almost anything can be tolerated sooner than the admission that the God of miracles and angels reigns again on the earth. Bible saints never lived in any other age than an age of miracles, visions, and angels. They knew that true saints never would live in any other age. They knew that the gospel could not be communicated to any people of any age without revelation; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. A gospel without revelation is no gospel. A gospel without the gifts and power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministry of angels, is no gospel. There cannot be found the first instance of a true minister of God, throughout the whole record of inspiration, who did not possess the gift of inspiration and the spirit of prophecy. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ, but by the Holy Ghost; and the Holy Ghost leads every man, who is loyal to his dictates, into all truth sooner or later. The deep things of God, and the keys of divine power, are available to him. By obedience he is sure to reach the measure of the power and wisdom attained by Christ himself—the manifold wisdom of GOD, even, is to be possessed and shown forth by the Church.
Bible saints were always familiar with the ministration of angels. And it is only such as are wholly unlike Bible saints who are not familiar with the ministration of angels. Those who are unlike Bible saints have always, in all ages, denied the ministry of angels, and gift of prophecy and healing, in their own day. And it is a certain test and evidence, that a man is not born of the spirit when he denies these things; for no man that has the Spirit of God can speak lightly of God; but he will extol his power for himself, and not for another. Men that have not the Spirit of God may tell what great things faith wrought in former ages, but can tell nothing from their own experience of the same power. It is, indeed, a marvellous thing, that men should affect to regard "Bible piety" as a standard or copy, which all are bound to imitate, and at the same time adopt an inferior rule of piety that discards and abrogates all the more conspicuous and powerful features of primitive piety! How they can have the temerity and effrontery to impose upon community a system of religion, that is the counterpart of Bible piety, I am at a loss to conceive. A gospel without immediate and accompanying revelation! Who ever heard such a thing, except from transgressors sitting in the region and shadow of death? No Bible saint ever saw such a thing in his day. Neither Abel or Enoch, Abraham or Moses, David or Peter, ever saw such a gospel in their day. The only gospel that these men ever knew of or fellowshipped, was a gospel distinguished by revelations, visions, and angels. Such a gospel rejoiced their hearts, because it was the power of God, and wisdom of God. It nerved the arm of Sampson, so that scores and hundreds of men could no more stand before his might than before a volcanic eruption, or an avalanche from the mountain. It gave elasticity to David, so that he could leap a wall, or rush through a troop. It struck with blindness the mobbers of Sodom; opened prison gates to Peter; cursed Elymas with blindness; enabled men to walk unsinged through the fiery burning of the furnace, heated sevenfold hotter than usual! This, sir, is the gospel, and the only gospel. It exhibits the power of God and the wisdom and might of God. Any other gospel is a curse to men, and a stink in the nose of God. Angels have once tried to preach another gospel; and what has been the result of their efforts? They have been hurled down and are even now reserved in chains under darkness, to the judgment of the great day; and those who first began to preach modern christianity have doubtless shared a doom scarcely less awful.
The first step stone to modern christianity was laid on the smoking ruins of primitive christianity. The christian enemies to new revelations and miracles, actually waded through the blood of apostles and prophets, in order to establish the system of anti-revelation. And did their descendants and abettors realise the bloody and accursed origin of that system that wars against new regulations and prophets, and angels, many of them would shudder at their blind zeal and self-righteousness! God winks at the conduct of the latter, because they know not what they do; but He commands all men every where to repent, else He will hold them guilty of all the blood that has been shed from the days of righteous Abel till now. God is my witness that I speak the truth in Christ Jesus and lie not.
The history of modern christianity, from the day when the first martyr fell under its bloody hatred, is a history of contention, persecution, and massacre, that causes all heaven to weep. Rivers of blood have flowed in its wake. Crimination and re-crimination from the pulpit and the press, have agitated the people, from the throne down to the otherwise peaceful cottage. The battle field has been soaked with the blood of its victims, and it is difficult to tell whether Catholic or Protestant domination can count the most victims, except as one may have held a longer and stronger ascendency than the other. The first two or three centuries were bloody beyond description. All denominations recoil at the history of their pedigree during this early and bloody period. The links in the chain of supposed apostolic succession are so bloody, that even the "dark ages" cannot conceal their crimson hue. The period when this famous chain of succession has not been coloured with human gore, is short. The records of the suffering Waldenses, in the valleys of Piedmont, will always tell a tale of wo, at which humanity must blush. The history of the protestant reformation in Germany and England, including the massacre of sixty thousand protestants in France, at one time, is a serious comment on the pseudo apostolic line of priesthood. But when protestantism came into power, under Henry and Elizabeth, it proved to a demonstration that the protestants had the same priesthood handed down through seas of human gore; excommunicating, torturing and killing catholic heretics in like manner as the catholics had previously done to others.[A]
[Footnote A 1. It was death to make a new Catholic priest within the kingdom. 2. It was death for a Catholic priest to come into the kingdom from abroad. 3. It was death to harbour a Catholic priest coming from abroad. 4. It was death to confess to such a priest. 5. It was death for any priest to say mass. 6. It was death for any one to hear mass. 7. It was death for any one to deny or not to swear, if called on, that this woman (Elizabeth) was the head of the church of Christ. 8. It was an offence punishable by heavy fine not to go to the Protestant church, £250, equal to £3,250 of present English money.—Penal Statutes passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.]
The United States of America were first settled by fugitives from the intolerance and bigoted persecution of the mother country; and it now becomes no wonder that after all this tragic drama of inhuman and brutal outrages for near eighteen hundred years, that the children of them that slew the prophets, should deny the need of any further revelation, and also of any more apostles and miracles! But, sir, the Heavens are more compassionate. The Heavens feel the need to give further revelation, lest the whole earth be speedily destroyed through the abomination of this mother of harlots and her numerous progeny.
There are thousands of honest hearted people that deserve a better destiny than to be made the deluded prey and spoil of such abominations, under the flattering name of christianity. It is to such these letters are designed to be a benefit. It is in vain for Protestants to charge the bloody axe of persecution against the Catholics, or for one sect of Protestants to charge and vilify another sect. Knox and Calvin were relentless, if not actually murderous enemies of the Catholics: and there is scarcely a consequential Protestant sect in England, or the United States of America, that has not proven out their shameful and bloody pedigree by acts of banishment, hanging, confiscation of property, or proscription of cast.
These charges against the christianity that has sprung up since the days of revelation, are capable of the most undeniable proof. It is no marvel that intelligent and high-minded men in every country have become so sceptical towards the prevailing religions of the day. The scepticism of France was a misnomer; it was not in reality a warfare against the true Bible, but against the horrid impositions supposed to be deducible from the Bible. If the Bible had been fairly represented by the true church, France would never have waged such a bloody war against it as it did in the days of its revolution. The illuminati of France had sense enough to detect the fooleries and impositions of priestcraft, and the nonsensical notion of a God without body or parts, and in their misguided rage they mistook the Bible to be the source of these false religions.
The foregoing is only a cursory hint of the bloody character of modern christianity, from the time when it slew the apostles who held the keys of revelation, and has ever since denied the need of any further revelation; for a hundred volumes of the size of the Bible, would not suffice to detail each instance where men and women have been whipped, hung, ripped open, or gibbeted, or burnt, or their ears bored, and their faces branded with hot irons. The massacres of France, half-murdered Ireland, Germany, and England, if written in detail, would make an imposing library. Fortunate for humanity's sake, that no one religious power has any greater predominance than it has; else the want of religious checks and balances would even now be as fatal to the minority as the exhalations of the Upas. Yet, after all this, christianity claims to be tolerant and catholic; and her bishops, enthroned in a salary of more than £27,000 sterling per annum, claim a regular succession from St. Peter. They might better have said from the murderers of St. Peter. Oh, shame on the cry of apostolic succession! What a transformation Peter must have undergone by this chain of succession! His gifts of discernment and healing gone! The spirit of prophecy and tongues have left him! The power to open prison doors, and of converse with angels, have left him impotent as other men! Marvellous falling off of every thing but salaries and pomp and persecution! Many suppose that Christ's Church must have been perpetuated on the earth, because it is said that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. Strange and fallacious argument for the continuance of the Church! Can it be supposed for a moment, that the Church is prevailed against, because it is removed from the earth? Jesus was removed from this life and gave up the ghost, but was he therefore prevailed against? Did he not triumph over death, and ascend up on high, and lead captivity captive? Did he not thereby acquire the possession of all things in heaven and upon earth?
It should not be supposed, that because all the saints were put to death, or became extinct from the earth, that they have any less dominion over wicked men and fallen angels; on the other hand, by removal they increase in power and glory, and have authority increased upon their heads. The generations of the wicked have been prevailed against, ever since the Church left the earth. The curses that have followed the Jewish and Gentile enemies of the Church, from the days of the primitive Church till now, are perfectly visible to any but such as have eyes and see not, and ears and hear not. The Jews and Gentiles are like two inebriates, each sees clearly how very drunk the other is, but discovers not his own intoxicated and besotted condition. The Gentiles say that the Jews, through transgression, have lost the Urim and Thummin, and Ephod and Teraphim, and been proscribed and banished, and thousands killed and scattered, as a bye word and proverb, among all nations. On the other hand, the Gentiles have lost the gifts and blessings of the Spirit, with all the holy order of apostles and prophets; and wiping the slush from their bloody hands, say they have no need of them.
Alas, sir, when shall the veil that covers all nations (both Jews and Gentiles) be removed, and self-righteous religionists confess that their sins have separated, between them and their God, and hid his face from them? When will the sectarian priesthood that now arrogantly say, we are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing, have humility enough to confess that they are blind, and naked, and destitute of all things, seeing that they are without the gifts of the Spirit, and the key of knowledge (revelation) and the authority of the priesthood.
I know it is very difficult to convince sectarians that they are not a pious people. Why, say they, do we not manifest much more fervency of spirit, and studied sacredness of deportment, and punctilious exactness, in observing the Sabbath than Latter-day Saints? Do we not show to all men great self-abasement in confessing our sins to be like crimson and scarlet, and our iniquities to be like mountains in magnitude. Are we not scrupulously guarded against all levity and trifling conversation? Are not our preachers very grave, and apparently devoted and holy in their bearing? Do not their frequent sighs and insuppressible groans, as their spirits are weighed down under the conviction of the worth of souls, and the vast responsibility of the Lord's watchmen, indicate profound piety? Do they not fast often and pray much? Are they not orthodox and evangelical, insisting much upon the new birth and a radical change of heart? How can it be that a people of this description are not pious and exceedingly holy? The preachers speak, and even walk in measured carefulness and peculiarity of manner, so that a preacher is generally known by his walk, and dialect, and sober, grave countenance.
Now, sir, when I have conceded most liberally to the above, what does it all prove? Why, sir, one act of obedience to God is better than the most rigid conformity to all the precepts of men. The more devoted and sincere people are in error, so much more agreeable to the prince of darkness. What a meagre atonement does a demure countenance, and sanctimonious sighs and groans, and self-loathings make, for transgressing the law of God, and changing an ordinance. Take, for instance, the ordinance of laying on of hands for healing the sick. Had this ordinance been perpetuated in the Church, millions upon millions of the human family might have been saved from premature death. Through this ordinance, Jesus Christ has said, "they shall recover." Through the sceptical abandonment of this ordinance countless millions have not lived out half of their days. How much compensation does it afford to the countless victims of disobedience, for men to assume a grave long face, and strive to elongate the name of God by gracious sounds, as though the name of God was too short without being stretched for such holy lips.
Take another ordinance, viz., the gift of the Holy Ghost, by laying on hands. What a flimsy and miserable equivalent for the absence of the Comforter, and spirit of prophecy and revelation, are seminaries of learning, and a multitude of oblations, and prayers, and frequent fasting! It is too much, sir, like the drunken boy, who, having broken his master's bottle, boastingly claimed credit for saving the cork!
Neglect of the weighty matters of laws and ordinances are to be atoned for, by pious breathings in private journals for posthumous publication; and by elaborate sermons and comments, they make plain things profoundly obscure; and every year increases the necessity of additional learning, in order to disentangle the profound knottiness of theological disquisitions and exegetical comments. The very religious opposers of Jesus Christ, whose hands were accessory to his death, had a most fervent and devout spirit, and were eminently pious; but the doctrine of new revelations, and the gifts of healing, tongues, and prophecyings, disturbed the equanimity of their devout hearts, and their rage rose to the pitch of desperation and blood-guiltiness.
No matter how much men confess, and pray, and sacrifice,—no matter how sincere and conscientious they are in error, if their religion does not lead them to keep the commands and ordinances of the true and living God, their worship is vain and their faith is vain. Except they hearken to the law of God and the testimony of God, there is no light in them. Sincerity is nothing without obedience; both wicked men and devils are sincere in many things which God abhors. A man coming to the forks of four roads might pray months and years to be guided in choice of the right road, but if he would not believe the testimony of the Lord's servant who should tell him the only true road, he would still remain in doubt and fear.
Well, says a very strenuous objector, now to end all controversy, just show us one real genuine miracle, and I will thereupon believe, and be baptized, and for ever after hold my peace. Aye, indeed! a very common sentiment, but a strange one coming from the lips of a professed believer in the Bible. He that is no hypocrite, but a true believer in the Bible, has the explicit promise of God's own word, that miraculous signs shall follow them that believe. Now, if they do not follow believers, then God is a liar, and no longer worthy of confidence; but if God is true, and the signs do not follow, then your faith is vain, and will not save from damnation. But, says the objector, miracles were anciently wrought to prove the divine mission of the servants of God. Now prove to me that you are a servant of God, by the attestation of an indisputable miracle, for in apostolic days, even wicked men said, a notable miracle hath been done, and we cannot deny it. Yes, very true, and other wicked men have testified to the same in these days, and sometimes they would deny it, and alternately confess it, according to the spirit that was upon them. Saul, the king, could tell the truth about David at one time, and at another deny it—at one time worship the youthful supplanter, and at another thirst for his blood. Miracles may sometimes have been the occasion of leading persons to believe the word of God, but their prominent design was never in any age of the world to introduce new revelation.
Moses was a believer before God spoke to him in the burning bush. John the Baptist, who introduced the christian dispensation, and was the harbinger of Christ, probably never saw any miracle, except at the descent of the dove, at the baptism of Jesus. "John wrought no miracle." Joseph Smith was a believer before the angel which John and the other prophets spoke of, ever visited him. Miracles may confirm the faith of such believers as have the Holy Ghost confirmed upon them, whereby they are able to distinguish between true and false miracles. To others they often prove a snare and a trap.
While miracles confirmed the Hebrews in the faith of God, miracles also confirmed the Egyptians in the faith of satan. Many who witnessed the miracles of Jesus were as keen for mobocracy and murder as the bloodiest. This parade about miracles, being designed to introduce christianity, and confirm and attest all genuine revelation, is a humbug that has always been started whenever a new revelation was given to man. The pious Jews insisted constantly that the disciples should prove their authority by miracles. It was about the first and last thing that they ever said to Jesus: WORK A MIRACLE! come down from the cross and we will believe. He told them, in language of the keenest rebuke, that they should not be seeking after "signs." He told them that it indicated a wicked and adulterous spirit to ask him to give them miraculous signs. The devil and devout Jews fairly made game of Christ and his disciples, because when they were asked to do miracles they refused. But still the devil, and many ministers and churches, continued to demand signs and miracles, and stormed and raged greatly because these men would never work miracles in a way to satisfy them.
These sagacious and pious adversaries of Jesus were always able to detect some flaw—some cunning artifice or trick of the devil—in whatever Christ or the apostles did (as they said). Now modern divines and churches, taking up this old cudgel against the saints, have even asked Latter-day Saints to drink a cup of poison. Drink it, says one—now drink it, or we will not believe you are sent of God. Aye, now we know you are not sent of God to preach! Forgetting that the first sign-seeker once said, if you are the Son of God, "cast thyself down from this pinnacle, for it is written, that he shall give his angels charge concerning thee."
Now, sir, if irony were admissible on a subject of this nature, I would tauntingly add—how satan did trap this impostor! He drove him into an extremity for pretending to work miracles; didn't he? But I forbear; let him that hath ears to hear, hear what the Spirit saith unto the sign-seekers!
It may seem marvellous to some if I should say that satan can work signs and wonders far surpassing the greatest knowledge of men. The power of satan has probably never been fully exhibited to men on the earth. The grand adversary of heaven and earth has not warred against even the throne of the Eternal God, without acquiring some acquaintance with those powers and keys of knowledge with which he has been baffled by the Almighty from the beginning. If believers had to contend only with flesh and blood, or mere men in mortal flesh, they might rejoice in the hope of a far more speedy victory; but, on the other hand, they have to contend against principalities and powers of a supernatural order. Spirits as much superior in power and cunning to the worst men in the flesh, as the full grown man is to the slender child. Men have acquired some knowledge of the laws that govern fire, air, and water; and some imperfect knowledge of the laws that govern minds, or the spirits of men; but the knowledge of fallen angels and outcast spirits, is sufficient to astonish and confound the wisest of men that are not inspired with the wisdom of God. The satanic powers have always excited the greatest wonders contemporaneous with the wonders wrought by the servants of God. In the days of Moses, and also of Jesus Christ, men were inspired by satan with more than mere human powers; and in this last dispensation, wicked men that yield themselves to become the willing instruments of unrighteousness to the devil, will again acquire skill in cunning and deceivable arts, whereby they will bring down fire from heaven, and confound all those who know not the laws and powers of spirits, and the extensive influence that the prince of the power of the air has over the natural elements. Men who do not need power from God to cast out devils, will find themselves made fast in his chains, beyond the power of extricating themselves. But while the saints have not power of themselves to detect the lying wonders of satan, and withstand them—yet, through faith, and the keys and gifts of revelation from God, they will be able to stand and overcome; and the power of God will be greater than the cunning of the devil. But sign-seekers and the enemy of new revelations will be arraigned under the banner of the father of lies, and believe a lie that they may be damned. Jesus found foul spirits and devils so thick, in his days, that he had occasion frequently to cast them out of persons, and also to empower others to cast out devils. Some instances are recorded where many of these fallen spirits took possession of a single person at one and the same time. No less than seven occupied one female. Now modern christianity must be highly favoured, if they are so much better than primitive saints, that they can escape the annoyance of these multiplied and troublesome spirits.
How is it, sir, that devils do not trouble modern churches, as they did the primitive saints? Are they done away too? Miracles and devils done away! The canon of the scriptures closed! miracles and devils ceased! Happy christianity; thy warfare has ceased,—thy troubles are ended! Blessed rest! Joyful reign of righteousness! As many ways to heaven now, as there are eyelets in a seive! Oh, brother, blush for thy theology, and for the doleful conclusions to which thy creeds have brought thee!
The reign of Satan, for near eighteen hundred years, has almost effaced every relic of Bible truth from the earth. Every thing that is valuable and powerful in the ancient system of prophets is done away, and the devil himself is supposed, by many, to be merely the evil passions of men. But, sir, the devil is not dead nor done away. But the gospel of apostles will rouse him up again; and knowing that his time is short, he will show his spite again on those bodies from which he shall be expelled by the apostolic priesthood, in choking, tearing, and casting them down to the ground. And who shall be able to stand, when deceptive miracles, and lying wonders far greater than have ever been known since the foundation of the world, shall be practised, and deceive many?
Now, sir, before I close this appeal, suffer me to allude to the intolerant and cruel persecution of the Saints, in Illinois. The nineteenth century, and the great republic of the United States of North America, must have the pages of its history blackened with the record of a persecution that classes with the bloody acts of Nero and Caligula. From fifteen to twenty thousand citizens of the United States were forced in an illegal, violent, and inhuman manner to forsake their homes and possessions in the state of Illinois, the greater part of them during the inclemency of the winter of 1846. A large and populous city of eleven thousand and thirty-five souls of men, women, and children, has been compulsorily evacuated, under the dread of inevitable massacre if they persisted to occupy their firesides and homes.
Continued acts of house-burning and mid-day assassinations, and midnight murder, and large gatherings of armed and lawless forces, with heavy pieces of artillery necessitated this numerous people to leave their flourishing city, merchandise, and farms, in the most inclement period of the year, for the purpose of self preservation.
This glaring act of expatriation, robbery, arson, and assassination, was not done in a corner. It did not occur among the barbarous and half civilized portions of the globe. It did not transpire in the dominions of the Ottoman, where the Coran and Islamism must father such inhuman deeds. It was not done in the jungles of Africa, where kidnapping and inhuman enslavement of men have called forth the repudiating censure of all nations. It was not done by clannish wandering Arabs, whose hands are proverbially against every man as a profession. Neither was it done in Papal dominions, or under the despotic sway of the sublime Porte or the autocrat of Russia.
Neither did the red men of the wilderness spring from their thicket with a warwhoop, and tomahook, and scalping knife, to perpetrate this bloody outrage! But hold still, modern christianity! The inquisitor of blood is in pursuit of thee, even to the gates of thy stronghold. Thou canst not cover thy hiding place with the screen of papacy, for she was not there. Thou canst not say that the autocrat of the Greek religion, with iron despotism cast these men into prison for teaching the Bible. Neither was it the sword of the Mussulman propogating his religion. There was no Mahometanism in Illinois. Neither canst thou charge it upon the Monarchical Institutions of Europe or established Episcopacy. "Thou art the man." Free Republican Christianity; you did it! In thy youthful beauty, the rising pride and envy of nations; thou didst it! Thy priests and laymen rose from their devout knees, and lighted the fagot and torch of the incendiary.—The sick man and (gravis) mother begged for God's sake, and for humanity's sake, you would spare their humble cottages which their brawny hands had reared in the midst of loneliness, want, and insalubrity of climate. Yet their cries were unheeded. Thev had but one alternative, either to be thrust out upon miasmatic ground, or remain and burn with their habitations. The man that persisted to watch his stack of grain against the incendiary, was shot dead in the act. Durfee's blood crimsons the skirts of republican christianity in Illinois. Where were the rulers and governors? Did they hear of it? Oh! it's nobody but Mormons! Where was the legislature of Illinois when the Smiths were shot in prison, in the sight of all Carthage, by hundreds in a painted gang? The governor threatening to destroy the city in person if they did not keep the peace, and deliver the Smiths for trial? What did the supreme legislature, delegates from more than four hundred thousand people of Illinois, in fresh review of these scenes of assassination, do? They repealed the city charter of Nauvoo. The mob made one gap in the law by assassination, and the state government following the example, threw down the whole enclosure that guarded the rights and privileges of thousands by repealing the charter. Where were the Illinois priests of modern christianity at that time? A distinguished clergyman of the city of Quincy, in their defence, said to the writer, we (the clergy) had nothing to do with those scenes in Hancock. Aye, indeed! neither had the pharisaic priests any thing to do with the robbed and wounded man, but the good Samaritan picked him up and carried him to an inn, and paid his bill. But Jesus Christ had to do with making an eternal record of the difference between the conduct of the good Samaritan, and the hypocrite of high priestly profession. Even a priest commanded the mob force in the final attack upon the city that expelled the remnant of Saints that were too poor to get away sooner. This remnant were left shelterless and sick, famishing upon the west bank of the Mississippi, where the quails of heaven actually fed them as they lay upon their couches, and in their wagons, in the sight of both friends and foes. Hear it! thou stronghold of modern christianity! Say not what great things you would do if you were not trammelled by the despotic shackles of monarchical government! A puritan christianity planted the tree of liberty on the solitary soil of America, from choice seed of her own selection. After being long nursed and watered by her numerous and learned priesthood. These are the full grown fruits of it; kidnapping, robbery, rapine, arson, and murder.—Systematic efforts were made, more than once, to prevent the influx of provisions into Nauvoo, in order that famine in a land of plenty, might coerce the inhabitants to flee their city, in building which they had sweat and toiled, and many had died. Time and again, steam boats were hailed and searched, in order to stop barrels of flour from going to Nauvoo, that had been purchased by our citizens in a time of scarcity at St. Louis. And provisions and other necessaries, had actually to be freighted for Madison and other river towns, in order to escape detection. Teams loaded with pork from inland counties were arrested, and turned to other markets, as though it were an acknowledged siege for the purpose of causing starvation. I know these things to be true, and my blood warms with mingled pity and indignation at the recollection of scenes of which I have been an eye witness.
At this time, and in this day of revivals, where were the ten thousands of priests that officiate at the altar? Where were the innumerable converts to modern christianity? What part did they all take towards regulating public opinion and preventing human slaughter? The sons and daughters of the puritans were there in affliction for the gospel's sake; and no less than two venerable pensioners, Hatch and Hinsdale, that fought in the revolutionary struggle for American Independence, were there, and were driven from their country for maintaining the right of conscience.
Now, who ever heard in all America of a priest pleading publically against these outrages, and importuning the throne of God in behalf of these suffering sons and daughters of God? Modern American christianity must redouble her gracious sanctimonious looks, in order to cover up this horrid indifference to lawless violence and suffering humanity.
The statesman that fears not God, nor regards man, may have some semblance of apology for his indifference; but American churches have none. But, where were the statesmen that make high professions of patriotism, and sensitive regard for the national honor of the United States? Could no disgrace accrue to the nation, when twenty thousand peaceable industrious citizens were violently robbed of millions of property without a shadow of requital? What security can foreign emigrants have for colonizing on the western lands, if whole cities and towns may be depopulated at a single blast of the popular caprice with impunity? What regard can American statesmen be supposed to entertain for the sacred and inalienable rights of the people, while no man ever opened his mouth either in the halls of Congress or of state legislatures against the most palpable and gross infractions of the constitution that ever transpired since the existence of the United States government.
The constitution guarantees to every man the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience, and without molestation. It promises the right of property and the defence and protection of peaceable and unoffending citizens; but millions of property have been illegally plundered, and thousands of patriotic and worthy citizens have been deprived of the liberty of common citizens, and forced into the wilds of the mountains in the most inhuman manner. Had any foreign nation committed a small part of this damage upon their commercial interests, would not the national executive have demanded redress for spoliations, even at the mouth of the canon?
But I would not have you think, sir, by these remarks, that I entertain any acrimonious feelings towards my country. No; far from it. I love my native land, though cruelly exiled from it, because it is in that land that liberty is destined to flourish above all lands. That land has been set apart in the councils of eternity, and dedicated as the nursery of virtue and religious liberty. That is emphatically a land of promise. Its very soil is hallowed above all others, for the literal production of truth. There the blessings promised to Joseph are to be first displayed and enjoyed. There the ensign is to be first lifted up to all nations; and all nations, or the upright of all nations, are to flow together there. Every description of product and variety of climate is there. Notwithstanding the degeneracy and corruption of the civilized portions of that land, there is more toleration in the government and constitution, and more facilities for the introduction and spread of gospel truth in that land, than any other under the whole heaven. It is the very place, and probably the only place on this planet, where the true and eternal kingdom of God could get a footing, and survive the blasts of persecution, and the rage of fallen and apostate spirits of men and devils. Hitherto the Saints of God have been slaughtered, or compelled, like the city of Enoch, to forsake the earth.
But the Book of Mormon, and the angelic message to the young man Joseph, have dug the grave of apostacy, and laid the axe at the root of false religions. The earth is destined to enjoy a reign of righteousness, and a happy period of rest. Truth must and will prevail, and the kingdom of our God will be established in the mountains of Israel, just where all the prophets that have spoken of it, have seen it rise and flourish, never more to be thrown down.
When thousands that now compose the Church, and who have proved before the American people that the cords of their union cannot be sundered by the hottest thunderbolts of persecution, are assembled in the remote, extensive, and fertile valley of the almost unknown mountain, they will be for ever invincible. With their peaceable and inoffensive habits, which have characterised their movements from the beginning, no people will ever be likely to assail them again, till their numbers and strength will be too forbidding. The accessions to this people have never been so great as during the last six months. The certainty that this people will survive all opposition, and triumph over every obstacle, was never so palpably manifest as at this very moment. Famine and war, pestilence, bankruptcy, treachery, and distrust, are causing panic and fear among the nations. Those who love peace and retirement, and abhor contention, crime, and revolution, must seek an asylum among the Saints, for it cannot be found elsewhere on the earth. The Lord God himself will stir up the nations to anger and strife, and thrash them as with a flail, and sift them as with a sieve. And the honest in heart will flee to the Lord's hiding place, in ships and in companies, even as clouds and as doves to their windows.
While the unity of great and powerful nations is undergoing a rapid conversion into fractional weakness, the strength of Israel is accumulating and augmenting beyond all former precedent. The materials of which this body of people is composed are not like the heterogenous masses that constitute other nations; but they are select and chosen ones out of every nation whose views—religious, political, social, and pecuniary—are previously all cast in the mould of unity; like the materials of Solomon's temple, they are all fitted for their place and destination before they are brought together. The ten millions of Mexico could not stand even before the ten thousand of the United States; because the latter were united and subject to orderly discipline; while the former were distracted and divided. The hosts of Israel have never yet offered the first forcible resistance to the violent and lawless assaults of their enemies; yet the principles of self-defence are alike compatible with their feelings and their faith, and by no means obnoxious to the practice of Abraham, Joshua, or David, or even Jesus Christ.
When governments become too weak or perverse to protect their subjects, it then becomes the divine and inalienable right of all men to protect themselves by all lawful and just means. Whatever lessons of forbearance and non-resistance Jesus Christ might have left on record, suited to particular circumstances, there is a predominance of scriptural instructions in favour of self-defence, and innumerable examples to prove that the "Lord is a man of war." Time would fail to make mention of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Sampson, David, and Barek. The prayer of Sampson was, that he might destroy his enemies; and God not only heard his prayer, but gave him strength to fulfil his request: out of an opposing army, God even commissioned one of his angels (not so holy a personage as some modern Christians) to kill one hundred and eighty-five thousand in one night! Indeed! say you; could God do such a bloody deed? Surely; and he that causelessly strikes the second cheek will be repaid, for "the day of vengeance is in his (God's) heart;" but those who proudly say, that they have no further need of revelation, will find that day to come upon them unawares, even as a "thief in the night."
Sir, Zion is from henceforth and for ever invincible—she has run the gauntlet and is safe. After being submerged in a series of sufferings for seventeen years, she now stands purified, tried, and made white; "she has passed the baptismal ordeal of suffering, and power is given unto her to withstand and overcome;" she has put on her beautiful garments, and the mighty God of Jacob is her strength; the keys of power are given unto her, and the angels of God camp around about her; she is entrenched in the munition of rocks, even the everlasting hills; by her the ensign of truth and liberty is lifted up to all nations; the pure and wise of all nations may safely rally around her standard, and go up to the house of the God of Jacob and learn his ways. God called his Son out of Egypt after persecutors had shot out the arrows of their wrath in vain. If God's people have been able to stand under persecutions while in the midst of their enemies, much more may they expect to abide when separated by the distance of months' journeyings, and by lofty mountains covered with perpetual snow. The mightiest nations already heave with convulsive throes, and travail in great pain; they have enough to do without wasting their blood, and treasure, and unprovoked wrath upon the Saints; and God will soften the hearts of the nations for the good of his people, from time to time, until their palaces and towers will be the admiration and delight of all the ends of the earth. The nucleus of the mightiest nation that ever flourished on the earth is planted; the rapidly rising greatness of this people will constitute one of the greatest wonders of the age; all the elements of a great and mighty people have been clearly demonstrated to belong to this people. Union, it is said, is strength; this has already become proverbially a distinguishing feature of the Saints. Driven, and scattered, and robbed in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, they have readily re-assembled and re-united. Knowledge is said to be power; knowledge has been acquired in the practical school of experience; they are almost universally familiar with the undisguised operations of the hearts of their fellow men. No people ever had the same opportunity to learn the diversified motives that govern the minds of men and women; no people, as a body, ever had the acquaintance with the laws, government, and religion, and usages of civilized and barbarous nations, which has been enjoyed by the Latter-day Saints. No people of modern ages ever had their ingenuity and physical ability so extensively taxed in order for self-support, and the acquisition of knowledge, and propagation and defence of the truth. The moral virtues of forbearance, long-suffering, fortitude, love to enemies, and self-command under fiery temptations, have been stretched to their utmost tension; indeed, they are a tried people—the word of the Lord has tried them. They have kept the commandments of God, and are not found wanting.
This, sir, is Zion, the care of angels, and the delight of the Holy One of Israel! Those who love righteousness and retirement from the din of war, and from the plague, and assassin, and incendiary, will seek her peaceful gates, out of every nation under the whole heaven. None can injure this people or war against them with impunity, for the Lord is their shield and defence. When ancient Israel entered the land of Canaan, it is said that the Lord caused the fear of them and the dread of them, to rest upon all the nations round about. The same God now, will again cause all nations to dread the opposition of the people of the Saints of the Most High.
Sir, it need not be disguised that the armies of heaven are leagued with the Saints in the covenant of everlasting union. You are not ignorant of God's judgments at the Red Sea, or of the destruction of the companies of fifties, and of his interposition in behalf of Israel in the valley of Gibeon. Neither is his arm shortened now, that he cannot save; His wonders have been multiplied on every hand in this day, according to the observation of thousands who are ready to attest that the blind have been made to see, the deaf to hear, and the palsied have been made sound, and many blasphemous opposers have been visited with as swift and utter destruction as Ananias and Sapphira.
Now, sir, what more shall I say, in order to convince you and all honest men, that God has set up his kingdom against which no power can possibly prevail?
You kindly acknowledge that my testimony is credible; all my numerous acquaintance must concur with you in this acknowledgement. I have told you the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, and as I expect to meet it at the final bar of righteous retribution. My sufferings and expatriation for the gospel's sake, are the seal of my testimony in Christ. I have literally sacrificed wife, and houses, and lands, for the truths which I have inculcated in this volume. My motherless children are now in the wilderness in their solitary cabin, surrounded with savage tribes, and subject to privations that make a father's heart to bleed. Better men of whom the world is not worthy have suffered even more in the same cause. I know this to be the true gospel revealed from the heavens for the salvation of this generation; and all those whom it does not save through faith, it will damn through unbelief. If you have read these truths carefully, your final destiny will hang on the decision you may make—it is to you the voice of God, and the warning of the servant of God. Wait not for an angel of God to speak in your ear, or for one to come from the dead; if you hear not the servant of God, neither will you be persuaded though one rose from the dead. Not only your own salvation, but the interests of your family and your kindred will probably be seriously affected by the decision you now make.
When the devout Jews, with reckless obstinacy, said, his blood be upon us and upon our children, you know what afterward ensued down to this day. With the knowledge which this gospel communicates, you cannot be a neutral. The blood and sufferings not only of the Saints of the nineteenth century, but also of all others from the days of righteous Abel till now, will be chargeable to you if you obey not this gospel; if you reject this gospel, your children's children, to the latest generation, will for ever bewail the choice you may make. You stand in some measure as the representative of your posterity, therefore ponder well the decision you may make. I know that you are surrounded by a knot of priests, distinguished for the wisdom of schools and seminaries; and the obstinate creeds and usages of modern christianity hold over you a threatening rod of proscription and slaughter; but except you have courage to escape, and sufficient love of truth to induce you to peril even all things for the gospel, your die is cast, and your doom is with the lost and damned for ever.
I do not expect to coerce you by motives of fear, but I know that judgments will and do follow this gospel; and knowing the terror of the Lord, I persuade—I dare not say less; I would say more if the power of utterance were given me. All is not right with you; you acknowledge that you do not understand the prophets and the apocalypse; also that modern christianity is weak, divided, and contentious—not having the power and order of ancient prophets and apostles. Pause and consider well before you reject the only light that can save this generation! Your old friend and acquaintance asks you to pause. The deplorable prospect of your kindred for generations to come, who may be involved in the consequences of your rebellion, require you to pause; the interests of the denomination that look to you for spiritual guidance, require you to consider well the decision you may make. I know that you are in a strait place; Paul was once in a similar condition; but the sterling integrity of his heart saved him. He burst off the shackles of false religions, and overleaped the religious usages of ages, and received counsel and baptism at the hands of the most despised people that ever lived.
But enough, perhaps, has been said; what I say to you, I say unto all men—rulers and subjects, priests and people! I have set before you life and death. If you reject the gospel, I am innocent of your blood; if you receive it, glory, and honour, and immortality await you. The apostolic fathers and the angels of God watch to record your decision. With sentiments of high respect, I subscribe myself,
Your humble servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
Liverpool, December 20, 1847.
Americans and countrymen!—Farewell! I have been exiled from your soil for cherishing the inalienable rights of man. The principles of liberty and heaven-born truth have been the exclusive cause of the lawless banishment of thousands, of which number I am one. My wife and worthy brother have fallen victims to this cruel violation of constitutional rights. For nearly two years my six motherless children, between the tender ages of six and fifteen, have been inhumanly forced into the solitary wilderness—nine months of the time dwelling in a tent, and the remainder in a floorless log-cabin—often without flour, meal, or meat, and surrounded by savages of the fiercest tribes. From easy competence reduced to want, banishment, and the severest inclemencies of a northern climate! This is a faint outline of the picture of tens of thousands who have fallen victims to the unprovoked cruelty of an ungrateful country!
My honoured father, at the age of eighteen, mustered into his country's service, under the united command of Generals Washington and Lafayette, and was a youthful soldier at the siege of Yorktown, in the capture of Lord Cornwallis. My grandsire was bankrupted of thousands of dollars, held in promissory notes against the Continental government, which the great expense of the war of revolutionary freedom disqualified them ever to pay. My mother's sire was mustered among the superanuated veteran soldiers at the siege and capture of General Burgoyne.
Of myself: many of my early associates are in the highest legislatures of the nation, and among the roost distinguished citizens of the desk and bar. To them, and to my countrymen at large, I offer this farewell, and this monitory counsel. Americans! your sympathy for Greece, and your liberality to Ireland, and your response to the liberal efforts of the Pope, are relieved by a sad counter-check of cruel indifference and bigoted violence to your best, most peaceful, and industrious citizens at home. The shades of Washington, Henry, and Adams are ready to burst their tombs with burning indignation, at the contempt cast upon the sacred principles of liberty which they fought to establish. The lofty scorn manifested towards the outraged innocence of your suffering countrymen, cannot escape the pity and rebuke of all patriots and freemen. By such foul deeds of inhumanity your country is mortgaged and ready to be sold. The day of final redemption will soon be passed, except a vigorous and mighty effort is made to roll back the crimson tide of lawless misrule and popular outbreak.
Before our people experienced their sad disasters in the state of Illinois, they took the timely precaution, dictated by the force of alarming circumstances, to forewarn every governor of the several States, and many other distinguished citizens, of the necessity of timely succour from our countrymen and rulers. Our property, liberty, and lives were in danger from systematic organization of rapacious and blood-thirsty citizens of Illinois and Missouri. The stormy clouds, which we distinctly foresaw were ready to burst in desolating fury upon our innocent heads, were distinctly pointed out to the nation. We respectfully petitioned for an asylum, in any one of the States that would grant us this boon of protection and citizenship, for which our fathers had fought and bled in the war of independence. Our petitions were barely answered, and coolly slighted. We were accounted as a people too clannish, like the ancient Hebrews, and too peculiar and exclusive, like the apostles of Palestine.
We had no alternative but to commend ourselves to the God of the oppressed, and take precipitate refuge, in the dead of winter, in the wild valleys of the mountains. To the God of justice, and the great Arbiter of the destinies of nations, we look to avenge our wrongs, and chasten the nation that has been deaf to the voice of her suffering and loyal citizens. He will hear our cries and avenge our wrongs. The time has come to set judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. The last and noblest experiment of popular self-government, and uninspired worship, has been tried in the young and giant Republic of America! The eagle of liberty has fled to the mountains, and there perched aloft to behold the desolation of nations. Proud and enterprising nation! out-stripping all other nations in lofty bearing and onward progress, your foot has stumbled in a hand's breadth of the prize! Angels might weep at the spectacle of so sudden a fall; but God is just, and the nation that will not serve Him shall be brought low.
You are weighed in the balances, and from henceforth, until you break the rod of the oppressor and redress the wrongs of the injured, your councils will be distracted, and your greatest chieftains will be at variance. Hand to hand, and toe to toe, every one against his fellow—your struggles will be sanguinary and obstinate. The people whom you have trodden down in your pride, and banished by tumultuous acts of violence, though comparatively few and but partially known, happen to be the choice ones of all the earth and the favourites of heaven. Their cause is espoused in the courts of the Lord of Hosts, even the God of all the earth. Other people, in different ages, have suffered as much, or even more than this people, but the time of recompenses had not come. The time to end all controversy, and establish a government that all nations could safely confide in, had not come. It has now come. The land of Columbus, and the promised land of Joseph, must be cleared of the briars and thorns, in order to make room for the upright of all nations to assemble themselves together, and enjoy a government of peace for a thousand years.
To the mountains, oh ye who would escape the convulsive throes of a perplexed nation, and the indignant blasts of the Almighty, in these years of "recompenses!" "Come out of her my people!" Patriots of America—friends of peace—advocates of justice! all ye that fear God and tremble at his word, separate yourselves from the tents of wickedness, and flee to the strongholds of Zion. For the day of the Lord cometh that will burn as an oven. The Lord reigns in the heights of Zion. From thence his voice will go forth as in days of old, when Sinai quaked under his feet. He will plead with all flesh. He is risen up as a strong man to run a race, or as one that is full of wine. The seeming insignificance of the Saints may tend to conceal the Almighty arm that is about to be made bare, not merely to redress their wrongs, but to humble all flesh. The light of your priesthood thickens the darkness and gloom that overhang the nation, and their efforts minister a soporific that renders the necks of your countrymen passive to the executioner's axe.
Descendants of Washington and Franklin! is there no hope? Must the best constitution, ever given to any uninspired nation, be made the sport of traitors and demagogues? Must the loftiest efforts at freedom and splendid nationality he crushed by a perplexing concentration of every thing humiliating to national pride and human ambition? Must the sons of venerated puritans so soon be covered with the inglorious gore of assassinations and belligerent carnage? Must thy cities be laid waste, whose lofty spires rival the mountain-tops, in courting the earliest sunbeams of the morning? Must thy daughters, the fairest workmanship of their Maker, be given to rapine and violence, when the eye of pity is turned away, and the aegis of angelic guardianship is reluctantly withdrawn? Except you bind up the broken in heart, and make restitution for robbery and rapine, and unprovoked banishment of loyal citizens, who poured out their blood as water at the voice of your governors and the mandates of your laws,—the vials of wo are in store for your unhappy country! No intercessor can stay the blast of divine indignation when the Almighty rises up to make inquisition for blood. The Most High solemnly interdicted any man to show mercy to Canaan when the cup of her iniquity was full. Jerusalem, the queen of cities! whose Temple was the pride and admiration of nations, having rejected the Saints, was made a heap of ruins under the curse of heaven.
Yet there is hope for America: let her senators teach wisdom, and her officers exact righteousness, and undo the heavy burdens, and redress the wrongs of her banished. Then the fruitful field shall not become barren, nor every man's hand be turned against his fellow; and the voice of mirth shall supersede the voice of mourning.
Land of my birth, and home of my fathers! my earliest impressions were devoted to your praise and glory. In my riper years I have never infringed your laws or quenched the spirit of your philanthropy. You have robbed me of my houses, and my farms, and martyred my dearest friends, and stripped me of reputation, and expelled me from your borders, without the shadow of impeachment, or of trial by jury. Contrary to my strongest predilections and educational attachments, you have sought to eradicate every vestige of my patriotism, and render frigid my warmest love to everything that endeared me to the friends and citizens of the country that was ever my pride and boast! My heart still yearns fondly over the land that was marked out in the council of Heaven to be the nursery of freedom, enterprise, and genius. And now, as I recede from your borders, and from the scenes of my toils and fond attachments with my desolate family, through extensive wilds to the mountains for safety and a home, my heart overflows and bursts with the sentiment—"Oh, that thou hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace!" In the meridian of life I go from the tombs of my fathers to build and plant, where the eagle of liberty soars aloft in the sunbeams of truth! My associates are called, and tried, and chosen; they are the virtuous and honourable of all the earth; the refuse of all nations, but accepted of God and escorted by his angels. Their bosoms beat high with every noble impulse of philanthropy and virtue; they are a magnanimous people, fitted to foster and garner up the scattered virtues of the human family, and open up a safe asylum to the oppressed of all nations; they have stood in the Thermopylae, and passed the Rubicon. The Roman Mutius could deliberately burn his hand to cinders as a token of the courage of his companions; so this people have proved, indisputably, that they possess all the elements of endurance and triumph. Their most arduous and perilous conflict is passed; and millions comforted, enlightened, and redeemed will reap the reward, and enter into their labours. They are worthy. They have paid the last debt which the angel informed John must be liquidated in the blood of latter-day prophets, when the just could be avenged. Judgment is given unto them, and the richest benedictions of Heaven now await in Zion the upright and noble of all nations.
With sentiments of pure benevolence, I subscribe myself
Your exiled friend and humble servant,
ORSON SPENCER.
The following articles, on the Night of the Prophet's and Patriarch's Martyrdom, together with the suffering exit of the author's lamented wife, are inserted in this volume in order to perpetuate the memories of the "just," and render to the heavens a tribute of gratitude for their manifest interest in the tried condition of Saints on earth:
Twenty-seventh of June, 1844. Eventful period in the calendar of the 19th century! That awful night!! I remember it well—I shall never forget it! Thousands and tens of thousands will never forget it! A solemn thrill—a melancholy awe comes o'er my spirit! The memorable scene is fresh before me! It requires no art of the pencil, no retrospection of history to portray it. The impression of the Almighty Spirit on that occasion will run parallel with eternity! The scene was not portrayed by earthquake, or thunderings and lightnings, and tempest; but the majesty and sovereignty of Jehovah was felt far more impressively in the still small voice of that significant hour, than the roaring of many waters, or the artillery of many thunders, when the spirit of Joseph was driven back to the bosom of God, by an ungrateful and blood-guilty world. There was an unspeakable something, a portentous significancy in the firmament and among the inhabitants of the earth. Multitudes felt the whisperings of wo and grief, and the forebodings of tribulation and sorrow that they will never forget, though the tongue of man can never utter it. The Saints of God, whether near the scene of blood, or even a thousand miles distant, felt at the very moment the prophet lay in royal gore, that an awful deed was perpetrated. O, the repulsive chill! the melancholy vibrations of the very air, as the prince of darkness receded in hopeful triumph from the scene of slaughter! That night could not the Saints sleep, though uninformed by man of what had passed with the Seer and Patriarch, and far, far remote from the scene; yet to them sleep refused a visitation—the eyelids refused to close—the hearts of many sighed deeply in secret, and enquired why am I thus.
One of the Twelve Apostles, while travelling a hundred miles from the scene of assassination, and totally ignorant of what was done, was so unaccountably sad, and filled with such unspeakable anguish of heart, without knowing the cause, that he was constrained to turn aside from the road and give utterance to his feelings in tears and supplications to God. Another Apostle, twelve hundred miles distant, while standing in Fanuel Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, with many others, was similarly affected, and obliged to turn aside to hide the big tears that gushed thick and long from his eyes. Another, president of the high priests, while in the distant state of Kentucky, in the solitude of midnight, being marvellously disquieted, God condescended to show him, in a vision, the mangled bodies of the two murdered worthies, all dripping in purple gore, who said to him, we are murdered by a faithless state and cruel mob.
Shall I attempt to describe the scene at Nauvoo on that memorable evening? If I could, surely you would weep, whatever may be your faith or scepticism, if the feelings of humanity are lodged in your bosom; all prejudice and mirth would slumber, till the eye of pity had bedewed the bier, and the heart had found relief in lamentation. Before another day dawned, the messenger bore the tidings into the afflicted city; the picquet guards of the city heard the whisper of murder in silent amazement, as the messenger passed into the city. There the pale muslin signal for gathering the troops hung its drooping folds from the temple spire (as if partaking of nature's sadness), and made tremulous utterance to the humble soldiery to muster immediately. As the dawn made the signal visible, and the base tone of the great drum confirmed the call, fathers, husbands, and minor sons all seized the broken fragment of a dodger, or a scanty bone, for the service that might be long and arduous before their return, or swallowed some thickened milk (as might be the case) and fled to the muster ground; the suspicious mother and children followed to the door and window, anxious to see the gathering hosts emerge from their watch-posts and firesides, where rest and food were scanted to the utmost endurance. The troops continued to arrive, and stood in martial order, with a compressed lip and a quick ear. They waited with deathly but composed silence, to hear the intelligence that mournful spirits had saddened their hearts with during the night. The speaker stood up in the midst, not of an uniform soldiery of hirelings, for they had no wages; their clothing was the workmanship of the diligent domestic—the product of wife and daughters' arduous toil; their rations were drawn from the precarious supplies, earned in the intervals between preaching to the states and nations of the earth, and watching against the intrusions and violence of mobs. The speaker announced the martyrdom of the Prophet and Patriarch, and paused under the heavy burden of the intelligence.
But here I must pause; my pen shall touch lightly, as it must feebly, that hallowed—that solemn and ever memorable hour! The towering indignation; the holy and immutable principle of retribution for crime that dwells eternally in the bosom of God, insensibly impelled the right hand almost to draw the glittering sword, and feel the sharpness of the bayonet's point and its fixedness to the musket's mouth. But the well planted principle of self-command, and also of observing the order of heaven and the council of the priesthood, soon returned the deadly steel to the scabbard; and the victorious triumph of loyalty to God, in committing evil doers to Him that judgeth righteously, and who hath said, "vengeance is mine and I will repay," prevailed over the billows of passion; and in the transit of a fleeting moment the holy serenity of the soldiery, depicted by an occasional tear, showed to angels and men, that the tempest of passion was hushed, and wholly under the control of the spirit of wisdom and of God. It was the most unearthly and morally sublime scene that I ever witnessed. Contemplate a city and community of 20,000 people, whose love for their leader, the Prophet of the Lord, was warm and abiding as the love of David and Jonathan, in an evil moment betrayed by a sovereign State! Under his instructions they had been taught the ways of truth and salvation—they had been gathered from remote parts, even distant islands and continents, that they might hear the word of the Lord from his lips, and build up a city where gambling and lewdness, theft and drunkenness should have no admittance! And the life of Joseph was considered so necessary to the work of God and the welfare of the human family, that many thousands could readily have died in his stead, if that could have preserved his life. But the Governor of Illinois, the Commander-in-Chief of 80,000 organized militia, threatened the speedy demolition of the whole city of Nauvoo, if Joseph was not delivered up to him for trial on the antiquated charge of treason! He made the most solemn assurance, and pledged the sacred faith of the State, that he should be kept safe and unharmed until he could have a fair and impartial trial. But oh! the cruel perfidy of that modern Nero, the governor! and the bloody butchery of the soldiery (some of whom had been disbanded and others had not), that could deliberately murder innocent and helpless men, that had surrendered at discretion, after all the strongest assurances of protection! The soldiery in Nauvoo numbered near four thousand, while those in alliance with the bloody perpetrators in the country, were not more than one-half the number. They would have been an easy prey to the merited revenge of the outraged force at Nauvoo; but that force bore the outrages with coolness and wisdom that has never been equalled by uninspired men. They governed themselves under circumstances the most extraordinary, and hearkened calmly to the voice of wisdom, when their pain and grief were almost insupportable. The soldiery on the Temple square heard, but felt that there was no adequate victim for vengeance in the county, or even in the destruction of the whole State. Some, least tender in their hearts, found relief in tears. In the houses of the Saints, aside from the soldiery, females, less competent to bear the news than husbands and fathers, in some instances lost their sanity of mind for a season; but as the sun arose and the people congregated on the green, after being exhorted to give their enemies into the hands of Him that judgeth righteously, tranquillity and order ensued. But not so with the mob. During all the bloody night their houses were hastily deserted by men, women, and children. So great was the consternation and so precipitate the flight, that even females fled in their nightclothes, almost naked, and continued their flight amid imprecations and shrieks for the distance of even fifty miles, where, exhausted and frightened, they alarmed villages, and the city of Quincy to the ringing of bells, and the speedy gathering of every person that could bear arms for their defence; but no man pursued, though "the wicked fled."
Catherine Curtis Spencer died on the 12th of March, 1846, at Indian Creek, near Keosaqua, Iowa territory, at the age of thirty-five years, wanting nine days. In one month from the time of her departure from Illinois to the wilderness, she fell a victim to the cares and hardships of persecution. The youngest daughter of a numerous family, brought up in affluence and nurtured with fondness and peculiar care as the favourite of her father's house; her slender, though healthy frame, could not endure the privation of sleep and rest, and the inclemency of the winter season (the thermometer below Zero for ten days). The change from the warm rooms of brick and plaistered walls, to that of mere canvass ceiling and roof, floored with snow and icy earth, was too much for her fragile form to endure. When, through unforseen hindrances in travelling, there was no place where sleep could visit, or food suited to the demands of nature could be administered to her or her six little children (from the age of thirteen and under), she would cheer her little innocents with the songs of Zion. The melody of her rare voice, like the harmony and confluence of many virtues in her mind, contributed on that memorable epoch of the church, to render her the glory of her husband, and the solace and joy of her children. When asked if she would go to her distant friends that were not in the church, who had proffered comfort and abundance to her and her children, she replied, "no, if they will withhold from me the supplies they readily grant to my other sisters and brothers, because I adhere to the Saints, let them. I would rather abide with the church, in poverty, even in the wilderness, without their aid, than go to my unbelieving father's house, and have all that he possesses." Under the influence of a severe cold, she gradually wasted away, telling her children, from time to time, how she wanted them to live and conduct themselves, when they should become motherless, and pilgrims in a strange land. To her companions she would sometimes say, "I think you will have to give me up and let me go." As her little ones would often inquire at the door of the waggon, "how is ma'? is she any better?" she would turn to her husband, who sat by her side endeavouring to keep the severities of rain and cold from her: "oh, you dear little children, how I do hope you may fall into kind hands when I am gone!" A night or two before she died, she said to her husband, with unwonted animation, "A heavenly messenger has appeared to me to-night, and told me that I had done and suffered enough, and that he had now come to convey me to a mansion of gold." Soon after, she said she wished me to call the children and other friends to her bedside, that she might give them a parting kiss, which being done, she said to her companion, "I love you more than ever, but you must let me go. I only want to live for your sake, and that of our children." When asked if she had anything to say to her father's family, she replied emphatically, "Charge them to obey the gospel."
The rain continued so incessantly for many days and nights, that it was impossible to keep her bedding dry or comfortable; and, for the first time, she uttered the desire to be in a house. The request might have moved a heart of adamant. Immediately, a man of the name of Barnes, living not far from the camp, consented to have her brought to his house, where she died in peace, with a smile upon her countenance, and a cordial pressure of her husband's hand about an hour previous.
Many tributes to her memory, from the Twelve, and other distinguished friends, expressive of her worth and the amiableness of her life, have been communicated to the writer, which conjugal relationship forbids me to insert, but which are still a comfort to the bereaved in his pilgrimage through mortality. Though prepossessing in her manners, her confiding and generous mind always made permanent the friendship that she once obtained. Her unceasingly affectionate and dutiful bearing to her husband, and her matronly diligence in infusing the purest and loftiest virtues into the minds of her children, not only exemplified the beautiful order of heaven, but made the domestic circle the greatest paradise of earth. Said a member of the high council, after her death, who had often observed her in the temple of the Lord, where she loved to linger and feast on the joys of that holy place, "I never saw a countenance more inexpressibly serene and heavenly, than hers."
"'O! she was young who won my yielding heart,'
No power of genius nor the pencils' art
Could half the beauties of her mind portray,
E'en when inspired; and how can this my lay?
Two eyes that spoke what language ne'er can do,
Soft as twin violets moist with early dew.
In sylph-like symmetry her form combin'd,
To prove the fond endearments of the mind,
While on her brow benevolence and love
Sat meekly, like to emblems from above,
And every thought that had creation there,
But made her face still more divinely fair."
Her remains were conveyed to the city of Nauvoo, and there, after a few neighbours had wept, and sung, "Come to me; will ye come to the Saints that have died," and expressed their condolence to the deeply afflicted husband, buried, in the solitude of the night, by the side of her youngest child, that had died near six months before.
The writer does not mourn for his dead as those that die without hope, knowing they are taken from many evils to come. He desires to dedicate the above faint sketch to his children, now in the wilderness, for the testimony of Jesus, lest time should obliterate from their young and tender minds the recollection of her person and some of her virtues, and thereby perpetuate the memory of the just, while that of the wicked shall rot. He desires the prayers of all Saints for himself and his children; and may the blessing of Almighty God rest upon all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.
Suggested on reading the Author's first Letter in the Series.
BY MISS E. R. SNOW.
"My heart is fix'd"—I know in whom I trust.
'Twas not for wealth—'twas not to gather heaps
Of perishable things—'twas not to twine
Around my brow a transitory wreath,
A garland deck'd with gems of mortal praise,
That I forsook the home of childhood; that
I left the lap of ease—the halo rife
With smiling friendship's soft and mellow tones—
Affection's fond caresses, and the cup
O'erflowing with the sweets of social life,
Where high refinement's richest pearls were strew'd.
Ah no! a holier purpose fir'd my soul—
A nobler object prompted my pursuit:
Eternal prospects open'd to my view,
And hope's celestial torch within me burn'd.
God, who commanded Abraham to leave
His native country, and to offer up
On the lone alter, where no eye beheld
But His who never sleeps, an only son,
Is still the same; and thousands who have made
A covenant with him by sacrifice.
Are bearing witness to the sacred truth.
Jehovah speaking? Yes, as heretofore.
The proclamation sounded in my ear—
It touch'd my heart—I hearken'd to the sound.
Counted the cost, and laid my earthly all
Upon the altar; and with purpose fix'd
Unalterably, while the spirit of
Elijah's God within my bosom reigns,
Embrac'd the "Everlasting Covenant;"
To be a Saint among the faithful ones
Whose race is measur'd by their life—whose prize
Is everlasting, and whose happiness
Is God's approval, and to whom 'tis more
Than meat and drink to do his righteous will.
It is no trifling thing to be a Saint
In very deed. To stand upright, nor bow
Nor bend beneath the weighty burthen of
Oppressiveness.—To stand unscath'd amid
The bellowing thunders and the raging storm
Of persecution, when the hostile pow'rs
Of darkness stimulate the hearts of men
To warfare: to besiege, assault, and, with
The heavy thunderbolts of Satan, aim
To overthrow the kingdom God has rear'd
To stand unmov'd beneath the with'ring rock
Of vile apostacy, when men depart
From the pure principles of righteousness—
Those principles requiring man to live
By ev'ry word proceeding from the mouth
Of God.—To stand unwav'ring, undismay'd,
And unseduc'd, when the base hypocrite
Whose deeds take hold on hell, whose face is garb'd
With saintly looks, drawn out by sacrilege
From a profession, but assum'd and thrown
Around him for a mantle to enclose
The black corruption of a putrid heart.—
To stand on virtue's lofty pinnacle
Clad in the heav'nly robes of innocence,
Amid that worse than every other blast—
The blast that strikes at moral character,
With floods of falsehood foaming with abuse.—
To stand, with nerve and sinew firmly steel'd,
When in the trying scale of rapid change,
Thrown side by side and face to face with that
Foul hearted spirit, blacker than the soul
Of midnight's darkest shade, the traitor,
The vile wretch that feeds his sordid selfishness
Upon the peace and blood of innocence—
The faithless, rotten-hearted wretch, whose tongue
Speaks words of trust and fond fidelity,
While treach'ry, like a viper, coils behind
The smile that dances in his evil eye.
To pass the fiery ordeal, and to have
The heart laid open—all its contents prov'd
Before the bar of strictest scrutiny.
To have the finest heart-strings stretch'd unto
Their utmost length to try their texture. To
Abide, with principle unchang'd, the wreck
Of cruel, tott'ring circumstances, which
Ride forth on revolution's blust'ring gale.
But yet, altho' to be a Saint, requires
A noble sacrifice—an arduous toil—
A persevering aim; the great reward
Awaiting the grand consummation, will
Repay the price however costly; and
The pathway of the saint, the safest path
Will prove, tho' perilous: for 'tis foretold,
All things that can be shaken, God will shake:
Kingdoms, and Institutes, and Governments,
Both civil and religious must be tried—
Tried to the core and sounded to the depth.
Then let me be a Saint, and be prepar'd
For the approaching day, which like a snare
Will soon surprise the hypocrite—expose
The rottenness of human schemes—shake off
Oppressive fetters—break the gorgeous reins
Usurpers hold, and lay the pride of man,
And glory of the nations low in dust!
THE END.
Liverpool: Printed by R. James, 39, South Castle Street.
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