THE LAND OF TEMPLES--AMERICA THE NEW JERUSALEM--DARING CONCEPTION OF
THE MORMON PROPHET--FULFILLMENT OF THE ABRAHAMIC PROGRAMME--WOMAN TO BE
AN ORACLE OF JEHOVAH.
Two thousand years had nearly passed since the destruction of the
temple of Solomon; three thousand years, nearly, since that temple of
the old Jerusalem was built.
Yet here in America in the nineteenth century, _among the Gentiles_, a
modern Israel began to rear temples to the name of the God of Israel!
Temples to be reared to his august name in every State on this vast
continent! Thus runs the Mormon prophesy.
All America, the New Jerusalem of the last days! All America for the
God of Israel! What a conception! Yet these daughters of Zion perfectly
understood it nearly fifty years ago.
Joseph was indeed a sublime and daring oracle. Such a conception
grasped even before he laid the foundation stone of a Zion--that all
America is to be the New Jerusalem of the world and of the future--was
worthy to make him the prophet of America.
Zion was not a county in Missouri, a city in Ohio or Illinois; nor is
she now a mere embryo State in the Rocky Mountains.
Kirtland was but a "stake of Zion" where the first temple rose. Jackson
county is the enchanted spot where the "centre stake" of Zion is to be
planted, and the grand temple reared, by-and-by. Nauvoo with its temple
was another stake. Utah also is but a stake. Here we have already the
temple of St. George, and in Salt Lake City a temple is being built
which will be a Masonic unique to this continent.
Perchance it will stand in the coming time scarcely less a monument
to the name of its builder--Brigham Young--than the temple of Old
Jerusalem has been to the name of Solomon.
But all America is the world's New Jerusalem!
With this cardinal conception crowding the soul of the Mormon prophet,
inspired by the very archangels of Israel, what a vast Abrahamic drama
opened to the view of the saints in Kirtland when the first temple
lifted its sacred tower to the skies!
The archangels of Israel had come down to fulfill on earth the
grand Abrahamic programme. The two worlds--the visible and the
invisible--were quickly engaging in the divine action, to consummate,
in this "dispensation of the fullness of times," the promises made unto
the fathers.
And all America for the God of Israel.
There is method in Mormonism--method infinite. Mormonism is Masonic.
The God of Israel is a covenant maker; the crown of the covenant is the
temple.
But woman must not be lost to view in our admiration of the prophet's
conceptions.
How stands woman in the grand temple economy, as she loomed up in her
mission, from the house of the Lord in Kirtland?
The apostles and elders laid the foundations, raised the arches, and
put on the cap stone; but it was woman that did the "inner work of the
temple."
George A. Smith hauled the first load of rock; Heber C. Kimball worked
as an operative mason, and Brigham Young as a painter and glazier in
the house; but the sisters wrought on the "veils of the temple."
Sister Polly Angel, wife of Truman O. Angel, the church architect,
relates that she and a band of sisters were working on the "veils," one
day, when the prophet and Sidney Rigdon came in.
"Well, sisters," observed Joseph, "you are always on hand. The sisters
are always first and foremost in all good works. Mary was first at the
resurrection; and the sisters now are the first to work on the inside
of the temple."
'Tis but a simple incident, but full of significance. It showed
Joseph's instinctive appreciation of woman and her mission. Her place
was _inside_ the temple, and he was about to put her there,--a high
priestess of Jehovah, to whose name he was building temples. And
wonderfully suggestive was his prompting, that woman was the first
witness of the resurrection.
Once again woman had become an oracle of a new dispensation and a new
civilization. She can only properly be this when a temple economy comes
round in the unfolding of the ages. She can only be a legitimate oracle
_in_ the temple.
When she dares to play the oracle, without her divine mission and
anointing, she is accounted in society as a witch, a fortune-teller, a
medium, who divines for hire and sells the gift of the invisibles for
money.
But in the temple woman is a sacred and sublime oracle. She is a
prophetess and a high priestess. Inside the temple she cannot but be
as near the invisibles as man--nearer indeed, from her finer nature,
inside the mystic veil, the emblems of which she has worked upon with
her own hands.
Of old the oracle had a priestly royalty. The story of Alexander the
Great and the oracle of Delphi is famous. The conqueror demanded speech
from the oracle concerning his destiny. The oracle was a woman; and
womanlike she refused to utter the voice of destiny at the imperious
bidding of a mortal. But Alexander knew that woman was inspired--that
he held in his grip the incarnated spirit of the temple, and he essayed
to drag her to the holy ground where speech was given.
"He is invincible!" exclaimed the oracle, in wrath.
"The oracle speaks!" cried Alexander, in exultation.
The prophetess was provoked to an utterance; woman forced to obey the
stronger will of man; but it was woman's inspired voice that sent
Alexander through the world a conquering destiny.
And the prophet of Mormondom knew that woman is, by the gifts of God
and nature, an inspired being. If she was this in the temples of Egypt
and Greece, more abundantly is she this in the temples of Israel. In
them woman is the medium of Jehovah. This is what the divine scheme of
the Mormon prophet has made her to this age; and she began her great
mission to the world in the temple at Kirtland.
But this temple-building of the Mormons has a vaster meaning than the
temples of Egypt, the oracles of Greece, or the cathedrals of the
Romish Church.
It is the vast Hebrew iliad, begun with Abraham and brought down
through the ages, in a race still preserved with more than its original
quality and fibre; and in a God who is raising up unto Abraham a
mystical seed of promise, a latter-day Israel.
Jehovah is a covenant-maker. "And I will make with Israel a new and
everlasting covenant," is the text that Joseph and Brigham have been
working upon. Hence this temple building in America, to fulfill and
glorify the new covenant of Israel.
The first covenant was made with Abraham and the patriarchs _in the
East_. The greater and the everlasting covenant will restore the
kingdom to Israel. That covenant has been made _in the West_, with
these veritable children of Abraham. God has raised up children unto
Abraham to fulfill the promises made to him. This is Mormonism.
The West is the future world. Yet how shall there be the new
civilization without its distinctive temples? Certainly there shall be
no Abrahamic dispensation and covenant unless symbolized by temples
raised to the name of the God of Israel!
All America, then, is Zion!
A hundred temples lifting their towers to the skies in the world's New
Jerusalem. Temples built to the name of the God of Israel.
Mark this august wonder of the age; the Mormons build not temples to
the name of Jesus, but to the name of Jehovah--not to the Son, but to
the Father.
The Hebrew symbol is not the cross, but the sceptre. The Hebrews know
nothing of the cross. It is the symbol of heathenism, whence Rome
received her signs and her worship. Rome adopted the cross and she has
borne it as her mark. She never reared her cathedrals to the name of
the God of Israel, nor has she taught the nations to fear his name. Nor
has she prophesied of the New Jerusalem of the last days, which must
supersede Rome and give the millennial civilization to the world.
The reign of Messiah! Temples to the Most High God! The sceptre, not
the cross!
There is a grand Masonic consistency in the divine scheme of the Mormon
prophet, and the sisters began to comprehend the infinite themes of
their religion when they worked in the temple at Kirtland, and beheld
in the service the glory of Israel's God.