JOSEPH SMITH'S DARING ANSWER TO THE LORD--WOMAN, THROUGH MORMONISM,
RESTORED TO HER TRUE POSITION--THE THEMES OF MORMONISM.
What potent faith had come into the world that a people should thus
live and die by it?
Show us this new temple of theology in which the sisters had worshipped.
Open the book of themes which constitute the grand system of Mormonism.
--
The disciples of the prophet believed in the Book of Mormon; but
nearly all their themes, and that vast system of theology which Joseph
conceived, as the crowning religion for a world, were derived from the
Hebrew Bible, the New Testament of Christ, and modern revelation.
New revelation is the signature of Mormonism.
The themes begin with Abraham, rather than with Christ; but they go
back to Adam, and to the long "eternities" ere this world was.
_Before Adam, was Mormonism!_
There are _generations of worlds_. The Genesis of the Gods was before
the Genesis of Man.
The Genesis of the Gods is the first book of the Mormon iliad.
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 'Who is
this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now
thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
"'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare
if thou hast understanding.
"'Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath
stretched the line upon it?
"'Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the
corner-stone thereof:
"'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy?'"
Brother Job, where wast thou? Joseph answered the Lord when the Masonic
question of the Gods was put to him:
"Father, I was with _thee_; one of the 'morning stars' then; one of the
archangels of thy presence."
'Twas a divinely bold answer. But Joseph _was_ divinely daring.
The genius of Mormonism had come down from the empyrean; it hesitated
not to assert its origin among the Gods.
This is no fanciful treatment--no mere flight to the realm of ideals.
The Mormons have literally answered the Lord, their Father, the
question which he put to their brother, Job, and have made that answer
a part of their theology.
But where was woman "when the morning stars sang together, and the sons
of God shouted for joy?"
Where was Zion? Where the bride? Where was woman?
"Not yet created; taken afterwards from the rib of Adam; of the earth,
not of heaven; created for Adam's glory, that he might rule over her."
So said not Joseph.
It was the young East who thus declared. The aged West had kept the
book of remembrance.
Joseph was gifted with wonderful memories of the "eternities past."
He had not forgotten woman. He knew Eve, and he remembered Zion. He
restored woman to her place among the Gods, where her primeval Genesis
is written.
Woman was among the morning stars, when they sang together for joy, at
the laying of the foundations of the earth.
When the sons of God thrice gave their Masonic shouts of hosanna, the
daughters of God lifted up their voices with their brothers; and the
hallelujahs to the Lord God Omnipotent, were rendered sweeter and
diviner by woman leading the theme.
In the temples, both of the heavens and the earth, woman is found. She
is there in her character of Eve, and in her character of Zion. The
one is the type of earth, the other the type of heaven; the one the
mystical name of the mortal, the other of the celestial, woman.
The Mormon prophet rectified the divine drama. Man is nowhere where
woman is not. Mormonism has restored woman to her pinnacle.
Presently woman herself shall sing of her divine origin. A high
priestess of the faith shall interpret the themes of herself and of her
Father-and-Mother God!
At the very moment when the learned divines of Christendom were
glorying that this little earth was the "be-all and the end-all" of
creation, the prophet of Mormondom was teaching the sisters in the
temple at Kirtland that there has been an eternal chain of creations
coming down from the generations of the Gods--worlds and systems and
universes. At the time these lights of the Gentiles were pointing to
the star-fretted vault of immensity as so many illuminations--lamps
hung out by the Creator, six thousand years ago, to light this little
earth through her probation--the prophet of Israel was teaching his
people that the starry hosts were worlds and suns and universes, some
of which had being millions of ages before this earth had physical form.
Moreover, so vast is the divine scheme, and stupendous the works
of creations, that the prophet introduced the expressive word
_eternities_. The eternities are the times of creations.
This earth is but an atom in the immensities of creations. Innumerable
worlds have been peopled with "living souls" of the order of mankind;
innumerable worlds have passed through their probations; innumerable
worlds have been redeemed, resurrected, and celestialized.
Hell-loving apostles of the sects were sending ninety-nine hundredths
of this poor, young, forlorn earth to the bottomless pit. The Mormon
prophet was finding out grand old universes, in exaltation with
scarcely the necessity of losing a soul.
The spirit of Mormonism is universal salvation.
Those who are not saved in one glory, may be saved in another.
There are the "glory of the sun," and the "glory of the moon," and the
"glory of the stars."
The children of Israel belong to the glory of the sun. They kept their
first estate. They are nobly trying to keep their second estate on
probation. Let the devotion, the faith, the divine heroism of the
Mormon sisters, witness this.
"Adam is our Father and God. He is the God of the earth."
So says Brigham Young.
Adam is the great archangel of this creation. He is Michael. He is
the Ancient of Days. He is the father of our elder brother, Jesus
Christ--the father of him who shall also come as Messiah to reign. He
is the father of the spirits as well as the tabernacles of the sons and
daughters of man. Adam!
Michael is one of the grand mystical names in the works of creations,
redemptions, and resurrections. Jehovah is the second and the higher
name. Eloheim--signifying the Gods--is the first name of the celestial
trinity.
Michael was a celestial, resurrected being, of another world.
"In the beginning" the Gods created the heavens and the earths.
In their councils they said, let us make man in our own image. So, in
the likeness of the Fathers, and the Mothers--the Gods--created they
man--male and female.
When this earth was prepared for mankind, Michael, as Adam, came down.
He brought with him one of his wives, and he called her name Eve.
Adam and Eve are the names of the fathers and mothers of worlds.
Adam was not made out of a lump of clay, as we make a brick, nor was
Eve taken as a rib--a bone--from his side. They came by generation. But
woman, as the wife or mate of man, was a rib of man. She was taken from
his side, in their glorified world, and brought by him to earth to be
the mother of a race.
These were father and mother of a world of spirits who had been born to
them in heaven. These spirits had been waiting for the grand period of
their probation, when they should have bodies or tabernacles, so that
they might become, in the resurrection, like Gods.
When this earth had become an abode for mankind, with its Garden of
Eden, then it was that the morning stars sang together, and the sons
and daughters of God shouted for joy. They were coming down to earth.
The children of the sun, at least, knew what the grand scheme of the
everlasting Fathers and the everlasting Mothers meant, and they, both
sons and daughters, shouted for joy. The temple of the eternities shook
with their hosannas, and trembled with divine emotions.
The father and mother were at length in their Garden of Eden. They came
on purpose to fall. They fell "that man might be; and man is, that he
might have joy." They ate of the tree of mortal life, partook of the
elements of this earth that they might again become mortal for their
children's sake. They fell that another world might have a probation,
redemption and resurrection.
The grand patriarchal economy, with Adam, as a resurrected being,
who brought his wife Eve from another world, has been very finely
elaborated, by Brigham, from the patriarchal genesis which Joseph
conceived.
Perchance the scientist might hesitate to accept the Mormon ideals
of the genesis of mortals and immortals, but Joseph and Brigham have
very much improved on the Mosaic genesis of man. It is certainly
not scientific to make Adam as a model adobe; the race has come by
generation. The genesis of a hundred worlds of his family, since his
day, does not suggest brickyards of mortality. The patriarchal economy
of Mormonism is at least an improvement, and is decidedly epic in all
its constructions and ideals.
A grand patriarchal line, then, down from the "eternities;" generations
of worlds and generations of Gods; all one universal family.
The Gods are the fathers and the mothers, and the brothers and the
sisters, of the saints.
Divine ambitions here; a daring genius to thus conceive; a lifting up
of man and woman to the very plane of the celestials, while yet on
earth.
Now for the father and the children of the covenant.
With Abraham begins the covenant of Israel. The Mormons are a
Latter-day Israel.
God made a covenant with Abraham, for Abraham was worthy to be
the grand patriarch of a world, under Adam. Like Jesus, he had a
pre-existence.
He was "in the beginning" with God; an archangel in the Father's
presence; one not less noble than his elder brother and captain of
salvation; the patriarch, through whose line Messiah was ordained to
come into the world.
Abraham was the elect of God before the foundation of this earth. In
him and his seed were all the promises--all the covenants--and all the
divine empires. In them was the kingdom of Messiah to consummate the
object and vast purposes of earth's creation.
He is the father of the faithful and the friend of God. In him and his
seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. He shall become the
father of many nations. His seed shall be as the sand on the sea-shore.
In Abraham many nations have already been blessed. He and his seed
have given Bible and civilization to Christendom. From his loins came
Jesus--from him will come Messiah.
Abraham and his seed have done much for the world, but they will do a
hundred fold more. Their genius, their prophets, and their covenants,
will leaven and circumscribe all civilization.
Jehovah is the God of Israel--the covenant people. There is none like
him in all the earth. There are Lords many, and Gods many, but unto
Israel there is but one God.
Between Jehovah and Abraham there are the everlasting covenants. The
divine epic is between Abraham and his God.
Mormonism is now that divine epic.
This grand patriarch may be sard to be a grand Mormon; or, better told,
the Mormons are a very proper Israel, whom the patriarch acknowledges
as his children, chosen to fulfill the covenants in connection with the
Jews.
Jehovah never made any covenants outside of Israel. The Gentiles are
made partakers, by adoption into the Abrahamic family.
All is of election and predestination. There is but very little
free-grace; just enough grace to give the Gentiles room to enter into
the family of Israel, that the promise may be fulfilled that in Israel
all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
In ancient times Jehovah made his people a nation, that his name might
be glorified. He established his throne in David, by an everlasting
covenant; but the throne and sceptre were taken from Israel, no more to
be, until he comes whose right it is to reign. Messiah is that one. He
is coming to restore the kingdom to Israel.
The earth and mankind were created that they might have a probation;
and a probation, that a millennial reign of peace and righteousness may
consummate the divine plan and purposes.
Righteousness and justice must be established upon the earth in the
last days, or nations must perish utterly.
In the last days God shall set up a kingdom upon the earth, which shall
never be destroyed. It will break into pieces all other kingdoms and
empires, and stand forever. It will be given to the saints of the Most
High, and they will possess it. The Mormons are the saints of the Most
High.
That kingdom has already been set up, by the administration of angels
to Joseph Smith. This is the burden of Mormonism. It was for that the
saints were driven from Missouri and Illinois; that for which they made
their exodus to the Rocky Mountains; that for which the sisters have
borne the cross for half a century.
Now also in the present age is to be fulfilled the vision of Daniel;
here it is:
"I beheld till thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days
(Adam) did sit, whose garments were white as snow, and the hair of
his head like the pure wool; his throne was like the fiery flame,
and his wheels as burning fire.
"A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; thousands
ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood
before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.
* * * * * *
"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man
came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days,
and they brought him near before him.
"And there was given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that
all people, nations and languages, should serve him; his dominion
is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his
kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
* * * * * *
"But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and
possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.
* * * *
"I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and
prevailed against them.
"Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the
saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints
possessed the kingdom.
* * * * * *
"And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom
under the whole heaven, shall be given to the saints of the Most
High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions
shall serve and obey him."
Here is the imperial drama of Mormonism which the saints have applied
most literally, and sought to work out in America; or, rather the God
of Israel has purposed to fulfill his wondrous scheme, in them, and
multiply them until they shall be an empire of God-fearing men and
women--ten thousand times ten thousand saints.
No wonder that Missouri drove the saints--no wonder that the sisters,
with such views, have risen to such sublime heroism and been inspired
with such exalted faith. Scarcely to be wondered at even that they have
been strong enough to bear their crosses throughout eventful lives,
which have no parallel in history. With a matchless might of spirit,
and divine ambitions, inspired by such a theology, literally applied in
the action of their lives, they have risen to the superhuman.
Comprehend this Hebraic religion of the sisters, and it can thus be
comprehended somewhat how they have borne the cross of polygamy, with
more than the courage of martyrs at the stake.
We are coming to polygamy, by-and-by, to let these braver than Spartan
women speak for themselves, upon their own special subject; but
polygamy was not established until years after the saints were driven
from Missouri.
We are but opening these views of Hebraic faith and religion. The
themes will return frequently in their proper places. But let the
sisters most reveal themselves in their expositions, episodes, and
testimonies.
Thus, here, the high priestess of Mormondom, with her beautiful themes
of our God-Father and our God-Mother!