We now appeal to the honesty, good sense and learning of all good
moral men, to testify their convictions in regard to the insufficiency
of their rules of faith. Is there a man among you who has candidly
examined the present confused, divided, distracted state of all
Christendom, who is not thoroughly convinced that something is
radically wrong? Many of you, no doubt, have in your serious reflecting
moments, looked upon the bewildered, blind, cold, formal, powerless
systems with which you were surrounded with feelings of sorrow and
disgust. You have wished to know the truth, but, alas, wherever you
have turned your investigations, darkness and uncertainty have stared
you in the face. The voices of several hundred jarring, contending,
soul-sickening sects were constantly sounding in your ears; each one
professing to be built upon the Bible, and yet each one differing
from all the rest. Under this confused state of things you have,
peradventure, involuntarily exclaimed: can the Bible be the word
of God! Would God reveal a system of religion expressed in such
_indefinite terms_ that a thousand different religions should grow out
of it? Has God revealed the great system of salvation in such vague,
uncertain language on purpose to delight Himself with the quarrels and
contentions of His creatures in relation to it? Would God think so
much of fallen men, that He would give His only Begotten Son to die
for them, and then reveal His doctrine to them in language altogether
ambiguous and uncertain? Such questions, doubtless, have passed through
the mind of many a religiously-inclined person. Millions have been
sensible of the midnight darkness, but have not known the true cause;
they have acknowledged that they could not understand a very great
proportion of the Bible, yet they have believed it to be the word of
God; they have wondered that the Bible should be their only rule of
faith, and yet so few be able to understand it alike. Many seeing the
contradiction, and vagueness, and the uncertainty {534} of all modern
religions, professing to have emanated from the same God, have been
so disgusted that they have renounced the Bible as a fable invented
by priestcraft; others fearing to do this, have poured over the whole
libraries of uninspired commentaries, seeking after the true meaning
of that which they believe God has revealed; and at last, finding the
learned commentators as widely disagreed as the sects themselves, they
have concluded that the Bible is a great mystery and that God did not
intend to have it understood when He revealed it. Others, still, have
a little more perseverance, and believing that God would not send a
revelation which He did not wish the people to understand, have with
great diligence collected vast numbers of the most ancient Greek and
Hebrew manuscripts of the sacred books, but here they find themselves
utterly confounded; these ancient manuscripts, which they had hoped
would reveal the truth, are perverted and corrupted in almost every
text, so that they find "an incredible number of different readings" on
every page and almost every sentence. From this heterogeneous mass of
contradictory manuscripts they give an English translation, and call
it the Bible; thus leaving millions to guess out the true meaning, and
quarrel and contend with each other because they do not guess alike.
The true cause of all the divisions which distract modern Christendom
is the want of inspired apostles and prophets: they, through wickedness
and apostasy, lost the key of revelation some seventeen centuries ago,
since which time they have been altogether unable to open the _door of
knowledge_. Satan has taken the advantage of their dark and benighted
condition, and robbed the world of a great number of sacred books,
corrupting those few that remained to such a degree that he has got the
whole of Christendom quarreling about their true meaning. This pleases
him: he cares not how much they contend and fight about religion, as
long as he knows that their religion is false; neither does he care
how much they are united about religion, as long as he knows that
it is not of the right kind. He can tolerate, and, indeed, help his
reverend ministers to promulgate all kinds of religion, except that
which has true revelators and prophets in it: no other kind of religion
displeases him. But for a prophet or revelator to establish a religion
on the earth, is more than he can quietly put up with; it strikes a
death blow to all that he has been doing since the great apostasy.
He is exceedingly frightened, lest some of the old lost books of the
ancient prophets {535} and apostles should be again revealed. He is
also raving mad, lest the books of the Old and New Testaments should be
revealed again anew in their purity as at first--lest every point of
Christ's doctrine should be again revealed in such plain, definite and
positive language, that no two persons could possibly disagree upon it.
This would be exceedingly dangerous to his kingdom; no wonder, then,
that he should be full of wrath. But the sincere, honest, humble seeker
after truth must have the privilege of finding it, and that, too, in
the greatest of plainness, before the overthrow of all nations, that
they, by embracing it, may escape the judgments of great Babylon. Yes!
the day is come and the time is at hand when all nations are to hear
the word of the Lord by the mouth of His chosen apostles and prophets
to whom He hath restored the key of revelation for the last time, and
for the dispensation of the fullness of times, that all things may be
prepared and sealed unto the end of all things, against the day of rest
for the meek of the earth.
_"Nothing but a sterling desire to do the will of God will cause
men to endure the contumely and reproach of their fellowmen and
associate themselves with the people denominated Latter-day Saints
or 'Mormons.'"_
--_John Taylor._
_"The Lord never did and never will send an angel to anybody merely
to gratify the desire of that individual to see an angel."_
--_Wilford Woodruff_.
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