CHAPTER LXVI.

The Last Day--Ford's Action at Nauvoo--Conspiracy Between the Guards and Murderous Mob Militia--The Prisoners Left to their Fate--"A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief"--The Assault and the Murder--The End

Anecdotes and Sayings of the Prophet

Appendix

THE HOUR

The Ripened Time.

* * *

_Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird_.

_For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies_.

* * * _Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues_.

_For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities_.

THE PROPHECY OF JOHN THE REVELATOR.

THE APOSTASY AND THE RESTORATION.

In the reign of Tiberius of Rome, the Lord Jesus was crucified. At the hour of the atonement, His Gospel was to the dominant earthly power only "a deadly superstition," [1] "a strange and pestilent superstition," [2] sought to be crushed at any cost by the ruthless power of the pagan empire. Thus came the persecutions of the early Christians, lasting until after Christianity, with irresistible power, had "sprung up, even in Rome, the common reservoir for all the streams of wickedness and infamy." [1]

In the midst of these early tribulations, the plain and simple Gospel was becoming involved and mystified by the many opposing sects which professed to believe in Jesus; and yet it retained so much of divinity as enabled it to resist persecution and idolatry, and made it, in the fourth century, the established religion of Rome.

This elevation was not achieved without some sacrifice of identity. And in the commingling with error, truth yielded much. [3]

The Roman emperor, Constantine I., was led to show favor to the unpopular people; but his friendliness to Christianity demanded and received its price. He sought as much the welfare of the state as the progress of the religion to which he had been only in part converted; and when he exacted concessions of creed and principle, the Fathers felt forced to comply. It was Constantine who called the first Council of Nice. He presided over its opening session, and dictated its policy in accordance with his own imperial ambitions. [4]

From that time on, for twelve hundred years, the Church of Rome grew in lustful power. The first great check was when the German monk, Martin Luther, with bared feet, fled in disappointment from the debauched court of Pope Leo X. Luther's courage partly stripped the idol of its awe-invoking cloak of mystery and dread threats; and never more did the whole civilized world crouch in terror at the feet of Rome.

The freedom of thought heralded by the Reformation, at last found its abuse in the Age of Reason and the blasphemy of the French Revolution. At first rejecting Christianity for a dream of paganism restored, the infidels, in turn, exchanged pagan mythology, with its gods many, for their own new mythology, with its gods none.

This tempest of profane unbelief was too violent to be enduring. A re-awakening to religious fervor was manifest in Christendom. Men gladly blotted from their memories the dread of the _auto-da-fe_; the inquisition dungeons and racks of Spain and Italy, the funeral fires of England, the witch-hanging and Quaker-driving of the New World, and all the atrocities sacrilegiously practiced as ceremonies of worship. Mankind turned back by thousands to find satisfaction for their inherent necessity--belief in a Higher Power.

But that Higher Power was itself an unfathomable mystery. God had been misunderstood for centuries. Much of the world had known nothing of Him --His nature or His purposes--from the death of Christ's Apostles. The men who had known Him walked no more in the midst of mankind. Prophets and apostles, while they lived, taught their fellow-men that he was a distinct personality--a glorious Being in whose likeness man was created. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was declared "to be made like unto his brethren"--"made in the likeness of men"--and "in the likeness of sinful flesh;" yet inspired men claimed Him as being "in the form of God"--"the express image of His person"--"the image of the invisible God." But, as generations and centuries passed, true knowledge concerning the Creator faded away. A spiritual meaning concerning His personage and attributes was given to the testimony of those who had known Him. Modern sectarianism taught the world that God, the Father, of whose person Jesus was the "express image," was an all-pervading God of spirit--a Being who, without any tangible existence, is everywhere in the material world--a Being "without body, parts or passions," "whose center was nowhere and whose circumference was everywhere." Professing to have an understanding of the Deity, they differed but little from the Pantheists, who, rejecting a personal God, made bold avowal of an all-existing God of nature--the combined forces and laws which are manifested in the existing universe.

Thus blinded, how could mankind offer true worship to the Lord of heaven and earth?

The Eastern World had lost this knowledge of the Lord earlier than the Western Hemisphere. Upon the land of North America, four hundred years after the birth of our Savior and Master, there stood at least one man who knew the Lord God Almighty as a distinct personality, a Being capable of communicating Himself to man. That man was Moroni, the son of Mormon, whose testimony abides now and must abide through all the ages to come. [5]

It was upon this land that Jesus last appeared to His brethren who dwelt in mortality; and it was predestined that upon this land man was to first receive a renewal of divine revelation. After the discovery of the hemisphere which had been so long concealed from the knowledge of those who had dwelt upon the other parts of the earth, nearly three centuries elapsed before a nation with a charter of liberty divinely ordained was established. In God's providence it was necessary that those who had been led here by His hand should receive political emancipation to prepare the way for the restoration of the gospel in its purity and the Church of Christ in the plenitude of its power. Political salvation had first been declared, that men's bodies might be free and their souls be filled with high aspirations to prepare for the greater enfranchisement and redemption which were to appear.

The period succeeding the Revolution was filled with a veritable Babel of religious creeds. Every obsolete tradition was revived; every possible human fancy of doctrine was promulgated; and each found its upholding sect. Confusion and doubt waxed fat, feeding upon human fears. No earthly wisdom could bring peace to the sects or make harmony among the creeds.

It became the ripe hour for the Heavens to open and with their Celestial light show to man the way out of the abyss into which he had fallen. It became the hour for the re-establishment of heavenly truth --the Gospel of Christ and its direct communications between God and humanity: a religion which should cast off alike the skepticism of "reason" and the shackles of superstition; a religion which should be bold in righteous faith and convincing in its revealed philosophy. By Divine aid the way had been paved for this renewal.

For the greater part of eighteen hundred years humanity had been perverting the Gospel of Jesus, the Anointed.

Then the Eternal Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, revealed themselves from heaven. This glorious manifestation was followed by the angel flying in the midst of heaven, who proclaimed that the restoration of the Gospel had come.

Footnotes

1. Tacitus

2. Suetonius

3. Paganism, unable to oppose Christianity successfully, has done much to corrupt it, and in numberless ways had made inroads upon its purity. _Prof. T. M. Lindsay_, Glasgow.

4. The interest of the emperor [Constantine] was still (at the Council of Nice) primarily political and official, rather than personal. _W. Browning Smith_.

5. Behold, will ye believe in the day of your visitation, behold, when the Lord shall come; yea, even that great day when the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; yea, in that great day when ye shall be brought to stand before the Lamb of God, then will ye say there is no God?

Then will ye longer deny the Christ, or can ye behold the Lamb of God?

For behold, when ye shall be brought to see your nakedness before God and also, the glory of God, and the holiness of Jesus Christ, it will kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon you.

O then ye unbelieving, turn ye unto the Lord; cry mightily unto the Father in the name of Jesus, that perhaps ye may be found spotless, pure, fair, and white, having been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, at that great and last day.

And again I speak unto you who deny the revelations of God, and say that they are done away, that there are no revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor healing, nor speaking with tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.

Behold I say unto you, he that denieth these things, knoweth not the gospel of Christ.

For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever; and in Him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?

THE MAN

Joseph Smith at Nauvoo.

May 15, 1844.

_It is by no means improbable that some future text-book, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: JOSEPH SMITH, THE MORMON PROPHET. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants. History deals in surprises and paradoxes quite as startling as this. The man who established a religion in this age of free debate, who was and is today accepted by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High--such a rare human being is not to be disposed of by pelting his memory with unsavory epithets. * * * The most vital questions Americans are asking each other today have to do with this man and what he has left us. * * * Burning questions they are, which must give a prominent place in the history of the country to that sturdy self-asserter whom I visited at Nauvoo. Joseph Smith, claiming to be an inspired teacher, faced adversity such as few men have been called to meet, enjoyed a brief season of prosperity such as few men have ever attained, and, finally, forty-three days after I saw him, went cheerfully to a martyr's death. When he surrendered his person to Governor Ford, in order to prevent the shedding of blood, the Prophet had a presentiment of what was before him. "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter," he is reported to have said; "but I am as calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of offense and shall die innocent_."

JOSIAH QUINCY'S "FIGURES OF THE PAST."

THE "CHOICE SEER."

In the day of Jesus, every act and every circumstance of His life was ridiculed and belittled by his jealous enemies. But the record of His career, from which the present world of Christians makes up its judgment of Him, was not written until all insignificant or paltry things had been forgotten; and now His character, illuminated by the eternal sunshine of heaven, stands outlined against the blue vastness of the past in sublime simplicity. Let us view Joseph Smith in the same light--see him as he towered in the full radiance of his labors; see him the reconciler of divergent sects and doctrines, the oracle of the Almighty to all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples.

Joseph Smith had been a retiring youth--the Spirit made him bold to declare to rulers and potentates and all mankind, the Gospel again revealed. He had been a humble farmer lad--Divine authority sat so becomingly upon him that men looked at him with reverent awe. He had been unlearned in the great things of art and science--he walked with God until human knowledge was to his eye an open book, the Celestial light beamed through his mind.

His lofty soul comprehended the grandeur of his mission upon earth; and with divine fortitude he fulfilled the destiny which God had ordained for him before the world was.

When he had achieved the prime of his manhood, he seemed to combine all attractions and excellencies. His physical person was the fit habitation of his exalted spirit. He was more than six feet in height, with expansive chest and clean cut limbs--a staunch and graceful figure. His head, crowned with a mass of soft, wavy hair, was grandly poised. His face possessed a complexion of such clearness and transparency that the soul appeared to shine through. He wore no beard, and the full strength and beauty of his countenance impressed all beholders at a glance. He had eyes which seemed to read the hearts of men. His mouth was one of mingled power and sweetness. His majesty of air was natural, not studied. Though full of personal and prophetic dignity whenever occasion demanded, he could at other times unbend and be as happy and unconventional as a boy. This was one of his most striking characteristics; and it was sometimes held up to scorn by his traducers, that the chosen "man of God" should at times mingle as a man of earth with his earthly brethren. And yet it is a false ridicule; for Savior and prophets must, like other men, eat, drink and wear apparel. They have the physical necessities and the affections and enjoyments which are common to other men. And it is this petty human fact--that a divine apostle with an earthly body has hunger and thirst to appease, that he cannot always be prophesying, but has hours to smile with the gay and to weep with the saddened--which leaves him "without honor in his own country."

But whether engaging in manly sport, during hours of relaxation, or proclaiming words of wisdom in pulpit or grove, he was ever the leader. His magnetism was masterful, and his heroic qualities won universal admiration. Where he moved all classes were forced to recognize in him the man of power. Strangers journeying to see him from a distance, knew him the moment their eyes beheld his person. Men have crossed ocean and continent to meet him, and have selected him instantly from among a multitude. [1]

It was a part of Joseph Smith's great mission "to combat the errors of ages; to meet the violence of mobs; to cope with illegal proceedings from executive authority; to cut the Gordian knot of powers; to solve mathematical problems of universities with truth--diamond truth." He performed a work, "not pagan ire, nor tooth of time, nor sword, nor fire, shall bring to naught."

The Prophet's life was exalted and unselfish. His death was a sealing martyrdom, following after that which was completed upon Calvary for the redemption of a world.

Footnotes

1. It was the author's privilege to thus meet the Prophet for the first time. The occasion was the arrival of a large company of Latter-day Saints at the upper landing at Nauvoo. The General Conference of the Church was in session and large numbers crowded to the landing place to welcome the emigrants. Nearly every prominent man in the community was there. Familiar with the names of all and the persons of many of the prominent Elders, the author sought with a boy's curiosity and eagerness, to discover those whom he knew, and especially to get sight of the Prophet and his brother Hyrum, neither of whom he had ever met. When his eyes fell upon the Prophet, without a word from any one to point him out, or any reason to separate him from others who stood around, he knew him instantly. He would have known him among ten thousand. There was that about him, which to the author's eyes, distinguished him from all the men he had ever seen.

JOSEPH SMITH'S LIFE AND WORK

Joseph the Prophet.