Chapter XXVI: Foreword (2)

Allow me to call your attention to a singular circumstance. We believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored in our day, and is being preached in all the world; for its message is not confined to America. It is said in the scripture that predicts its restoration by an angel, in the hour of God's judgment--that it is to be preached to every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people (Revelation xiv:6, 7); to Gentile and Jew, to bond and free--all are to have this gospel proclaimed to them in the due time of the Lord; but the dispensation of the fulness of times is a period when the blessings of God shall especially turn upon the house of Israel. So that while there is a message in the restored gospel for all mankind, there is something special in it for the house of Israel. It is the gathering dispensation of the gospel, in which "all things will be gathered together in one," even in Christ. This gospel, then, is proclaimed to all the nations of the earth, and what happens? Its message fell upon the ears of our fathers and mothers; some were in this nation, some in that. It was the case of taking one of a city and two of a family out of which to form a people. They were not convinced of the truth by eloquence or argument, or logic, but there was something in the very sound of the gospel congenial to the souls of our fathers as soon as they heard it, and they responded to its message; they laid hold of its principles by a spiritual power, and they loved them better than they loved the honors and applause of the world. When they heard the gospel proclaimed it had in it a familiar sound like the refrain of some only half-forgotten song. It was congenial to their souls. Was it not an unconscious awakening of spirit-recollections; the recurrence to the soul of principles familiar to it in the pre-existent estate, when the spirit dwelt with the heavenly Father in the mansions of the blessed? The thought may be illustrated by an incident that occurred in one of the early frontier wars between the Indians and the British settlers of our country. In 1764, after several years of intermittent border warfare, Colonel Boquet was sent from Fort Pitt, against the Indian tribes located in the Ohio valley, with instructions to bring them to terms. The British commander pitilessly pursued the Indians to their very homes, refusing to listen to parleys until the spirit of the native tribes was subdued and they were ready to accept such terms as he chose to dictate. One of these terms was that all the whites held captive by the Indians should be brought in and surrendered. This was acceded to, and some three hundred captives were brought to the British encampment. It was a pathetic scene which attended this event. Some of the captives had been held for years by the Indians, some of them as long as nine years. Those who had been captured in their childhood had forgotten the very language of their race. One instance is related of a mother who recognized her child among the captives surrendered to Colonel Boquet, but the child gave no sign of recognizing the mother, and in tears she complained to the colonel that the daughter she had so often sung to sleep in her arms had forgotten her. "Sing the song to her that you used to sing when she was a child," said the commander. She did so, and "with a passionate flood of tears" the daughter rushed to the mother's arms. So it was with the proclamation of the gospel to our fathers. God was merely having sung to them again the songs of the home in heaven, in the preaching of the gospel. It stirred in their souls half recollections of by-gone ages, and with tears of joy at those awakened soul-recollections they sought again their Father's house, the Church of Christ. Our fathers loved the gospel, I say, more than their station in society, or the approval of their kindred; and hence they cast in their lot with a despised people. For the most part they remained true to that awakening which came to their souls through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They gathered out from the nations of the earth, and came to the land of Zion. And now something peculiar happens. The patriarchs of the Church place their hands upon the heads of these people, and under the inspiration of God, earnestly sought, these men--in the exercise of their holy office--pronounce those who are thus gathered to be, not only of the house of Israel, but, in the main, as belonging to the tribe of Ephraim. There is something beautifully fitting in this circumstance; something that goes a long way towards establishing its truth. Certainly the tribe to whom is given the right of the first born should be gathered first. To the first born is given the work of gathering the people from the nations of the earth; he holds the keys of authority and power in the ordinances of the gospel, especially as pertaining to the patriarchal order, and hence he is gathered first. Where? To the land of Joseph, to the promised inheritance of that patriarch and his seed, to the land of Zion, here to raise the standard of Israel, the ensign of peace to the world, through the proclamation of the gospel of peace. Here in this chosen land Joseph, through Ephraim, erects the temples of his God, and calls all Israel to come and participate in the blessings that are being restored to his father's house.

In one of the revelations in our Doctrine and Covenants (sec. 123) we are assured that Israel in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord, "And their prophets shall hear his voice and shall no longer stay themselves. . . . And they shall bring forth their rich treasures unto the children of Ephraim my servants. And the boundaries of the everlasting hills shall tremble at their presence. And there shall they fall down and be crowned with glory, even in Zion, by the hands of the servants of the Lord, even the children of Ephraim; and they shall be filled with songs of everlasting joy. Behold, this is the blessing of the Everlasting God upon the tribes of Israel, and the richer blessings upon the head of Ephraim and his fellows."

Thus the tribe on which was bestowed the birthright in Israel, is being gathered to the land promised him of God, to the land, choice above all other lands in the earth, to the land of Joseph. And here stands Joseph in the midst of his temples in that promised land, waiting to bestow blessings upon the other tribes of Israel. Joseph's dreams of the sheaves of his brethren doing obeisance to his sheaf: and the sun and the moon and the eleven stars making obeisance to him shall have, here in his own promised land--in these two American continents--a larger fulfilment than they did in Egypt, when his brothers bowed before Joseph, ruler of Egypt. For here in the land of Joseph shall his tribe of Ephraim, holding the birthright in Israel, stand to receive the gathering tribes of his father's house, and they shall "fall down" before Joseph--do "obeisance to him," in the language of the dreams; but not that they may be humiliated, or oppressed, but that they may be "crowned with glory, by the hands of the servants of the Lord, even the children of Ephraim, and they shall be filled with songs of everlasting joy." God does not humiliate in order to oppress; such humility as he requires is that he may exalt. Joseph's brethren in their blind jealousy of him mistook the meaning of his dreams. Those dreams while they were a prophecy of Joseph's prominence in Israel, also were a prophecy of saving and blessing unto Israel, not of tyrannical domination or usurpation of the rights of the other brothers or tribes; and as Joseph's mission in Egypt resulted in preserving Israel "a posterity in the earth," and of saving the lives of his father's household, "by a great deliverance;" (Genesis xlv:5, 7), so his mission in the last days, in his own land of Zion, shall culminate in a much larger way in the salvation of Israel.

THE GENTILES TO HAVE AN INHERITANCE IN AMERICA.

While there are especial blessings for the tribes of Joseph on the land of Zion, let us not lose sight of the fact that others, too, have rights and promises in relation to it. Let not the seed of Joseph cultivate any spirit of exclusiveness in respect of the land of Zion. He especially is in the world for the world's good. He must endure contact with the world, with the Gentile world as well as with Israel. He, in some way, seems to be the link between the Gentiles and Israel. When the Lord made known unto Lehi that this land of America should be his, as an inheritance, it being the land that had been promised by Jacob and Moses unto Joseph and his seed, the Lord, after describing how he would make of the Gentiles nursing fathers and mothers unto Israel, and how the Gentiles would bless Israel upon this land, then he says (referring to North and South America):

"This land, saith God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and
the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be
a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings
upon the land who shall rise up unto the Gentiles; and I will
fortify this land against all other nations, and he that fighteth
against Zion [this whole land of America] shall perish, saith God;
and he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish. Wherefore
I will consecrate this land unto thy [Lehi's] seed and they [the
Gentiles] who shall be numbered among thy seed forever, for the
land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God, unto
me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all men that dwell
thereon, that they shall worship me, saith God."

The foregoing are the promises of the Lord unto the descendants of Joseph and unto the Gentiles who shall be united with them in the possession of the land of America.

Jesus also, during his ministry among the Nephites, after his resurrection, made some remarkable promises and predictions respecting the prosperity and freedom and power of the Gentiles in the land of America on condition of their righteousness, and their obedience to the "God of the land," who is declared to be Jesus Christ. They equally with the house of Joseph on the conditions named, are promised an inheritance in the goodly land; and lot and part in the building of an holy city upon it, to be called Zion, a new Jerusalem, where the righteousness of God shall abound, and from which light and truth shall emanate to bless the world. These things are testified of at length in the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of the Third Nephi; also in the writings of Moroni in the Book of Ether, where a rather solemn warning is given to the Gentiles respecting the decrees of God concerning this land of Joseph--this land of promise unto the Gentiles as well as unto the descendants of Joseph. Moroni, in speaking of America, says:

"This is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore
he that possesses it shall serve God, or he shall be swept off;
for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the
fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are
swept off. . . Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation
shall possess it, shall be free from bondage, and from captivity,
and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the
God of the land, who is Jesus Christ. . . . And this cometh unto
you O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God, that ye
may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness
comes, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God
upon you, as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done."

WEBSTER'S CONCEPTION OF AMERICA.

Did our own great Webster catch something of this old Nephite inspiration when, speaking something like twenty-two years after the first publication of the Book of Mormon (Feb. 22, 1852, to be precise--and before the New York Historical Society)--he said, in his own matchless eloquence:

"Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul, the
realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good
pleasure of Almighty God; but, under his divine blessing, it will
be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and of
our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now,
and shall continue to be, the concomitant of free institutions, and
of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another
Herodotus, another Thucydides, and another Livy!

"And let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be
true to the Christian religion--if we and they shall live always
in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments--if we and
they shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious
convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life--we may
have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country;
and if we maintain those institutions of government and that
political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all
former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one
thing--that, while our country furnishing materials for a thousand
masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon.
It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to
prosper.

"But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and
authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the
injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political
constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden
a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in
profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no
history! Let the horrible narrative never be written! Let its fate
be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall
ever read; or the missing pleiad, of which no man can ever know
more than that it is lost, and lost forever!"

And now, I invite your attention to the remarks I made in the commencement of this discourse--to the prosperity of the land, embracing both North and South America, to the extent and grandeur of it, and I ask you, does it not fulfil better than any other part of the earth, better than any other continent or continents--does it not better answer the description of Moses and of Jacob, when they described the land that should be the inheritance of the great Patriarch Joseph, than any other land does? Most assuredly.

VIEWS OF THE PROPHET JOSEPH.

When the Book of Mormon was revealed and it became known that the Americas were precious lands of promise, and that God had such a high destiny for the two continents as is described in the Book of Mormon, that among other things America was the place where the Zion of God should be built in the last days, the brethren in those early days very naturally became anxious to know where the city of Zion would be located. After much striving for the knowledge, the place of Zion was at last revealed to them. The Lord indicated the place for the commencement of the building of Zion, and the place for the temple upon which the glory of God should rest by day and by night. This place was declared to be near Independence, Jackson county, Missouri. The site for the temple and the land around about was dedicated under the supervision of the prophet, and the Saints in the eastern states were commanded to gather to this place. They did so, and lived there some three years when their enemies rose up against them and expelled them from the land under circumstances of great cruelty and hardship. The Saints, who had been driven from their homes, accounted themselves exiles from Zion, and there was much disappointment in Israel because, apparently, the promises of God had failed them; for they looked forward to an unbroken possession of the land, notwithstanding the word of the Lord to the contrary. (See Introduction to Volume III of the History of the Church, pp. xxxii-xxxix.) Shortly after this, three years later, a still further removal was made into the counties of northern Missouri, and finally, as you know, the entire Church was expelled from the state of Missouri and had to take refuge in Illinois. The prophet with his usual activity began the establishment of stakes of Zion in Illinois, especially at Nauvoo and vicinity. Meantime the Saints were questioning much concerning Zion, and the privilege of dwelling therein. At the April conference, preceding his martyrdom, the prophet alluded to these disappointments, and he spoke of Zion at considerable length. I want to read to you his words on that occasion. The Saints had too narrow a conception of Zion, and of the purpose of God with reference to her; and hence the prophet, in the course of his remarks, said:

"You know there has been a great discussion in relation to Zion,
where it is, and where the gathering of the dispensation is, which
I am now going to tell you. The prophets have spoken and written
upon it, but I will make a proclamation that will cover a broader
ground. The whole of America is Zion itself, from north to south,
and is described by the prophets who declared that it is Zion,
where the mountain of the Lord shall be, and it shall be in the
center of the land. I have received instructions from the Lord
that from henceforth wherever the elders of Israel shall build up
churches and branches unto the Lord, throughout the states [having
reference to the United States, of course] there shall be a stake
of Zion. In the great cities, as Boston, New York, etc., there
shall be stakes. It is a glorious proclamation, and I reserved it
to the last, and designed it to be understood that this work shall
commence after the washings and anointings, and endowments have
been performed here [i. e., in Nauvoo]."

At the same conference Hyrum Smith, brother of the prophet, said:

"The gathering will continue here [i. e., Nauvoo] until the temple
is so far finished that the elders can get their endowments; and
after that the gathering will be from the nations to North and
South America, which is the land of Zion. The gathering from the
old countries will always be to headquarters."

Shortly after this President Brigham Young, then of the Twelve Apostles, addressing himself to Reuben Headlock, president of the British mission, said:

"A word with you privately. Brother Joseph said last conference
that Zion included North and South America, and after the temple is
done (completed), and the elders endowed, they could spread abroad
and build up cities all over the United States, but at present we
are not to preach this doctrine; nay, hold your tongue."

The martyrdom of the prophet and the exodus to the mountains consequent upon that martyrdom made it impossible to carry out this policy of building up stakes of Zion in Boston, New York and other eastern cities. The Church, found that it had all it could do in establishing itself in these valleys of the Rocky mountains, where it might fulfil the predictions of the prophet of this dispensation, to the effect that the Saints would become a great and powerful people in the midst of the Rocky mountains. Sometimes, however, I have wondered if we have not too much set our hearts upon these valleys, upon this state of Utah and these surrounding states; and if--like the Saints in the earlier history of the Church, when inhabiting Jackson county, we have not limited our conceptions of Zion by lines that are altogether too narrow. Last fall, as I journeyed through the eastern states, through New England, and in the south, and realizing that in the southern states there are more than 10,000 of our people, and in the Eastern States mission more than 3,000, and in the Northern States mission a still-greater number than in the Eastern States, I wondered if it would not be possible to establish stakes of Zion in the eastern and southern states as well as in Canada, in Mexico, in Oregon, in Arizona, or Colorado. Would it not be just as legitimate to establish stakes of Zion in South Carolina, in Florida, in Vermont or New York, as it is to establish stakes of Zion in these other places I have named? The whole land of America, the two great continents, is Zion, the land of Joseph; and I believe that the elements are forming, that God is so tempering the minds of men, so making them receptive of the truth, that by a strong, intelligent proclamation of the gospel, that God has entrusted to His Church, it may become possible for stakes of Zion to be established all over this land. I feel the truth of that. I believe the time has come, not only for an industrial expansion in America, a mighty increase in material prosperity, but a corresponding increase in spiritual life. In other words an era has dawned upon us favorable to the establishment of Zion. Let us not, I pray you, confine our feelings and views respecting Zion to limits that are too narrow for the genius Of this great work of God. If anyone has supposed that the prosperity and success of this work called Mormonism depends upon the Latter-day Saints retaining political control of Salt Lake or any other city; of this state of Utah or any other state, or group of states, his views do not rise to meet the grandeur of God's great Latter-day work. Our work is to preach the gospel; and to so preach it that its principles will leaven the whole mass of modern religious and philosophical thought; to so preach it that it shall influence the lives of men in all the world. No petty, political scheme can be said to be any part of the great Later-day work which God has established in the earth. That work is broad as eternity; it is deep as the love of God, and concerns the salvation of all the children of men. Our religion is in the earth to benefit and bless and uplift mankind. Our Church is not the Church of Jesus Christ for the United States, or for American. It is truly the catholic (i. e., the universal) Church, the Church of the whole world; but, as I have already urged throughout this discourse, the Latter-day Saints hold a peculiar relationship to America, being mainly of the seed of Joseph, through the loins of Ephraim, and having a special mission as to this land, and to the other tribes of Israel. And now if the Saints would only lift their eyes from the ground, and look northward and southward and eastward and westward and realize that these two continents of America, by the promise of God, are the inheritance of Joseph, the sons of Joseph, the children of Ephraim, they would be, so imbued with the spirit of their great ancestor that they would take possession of their inheritance in the name of God, by the proclamation of their principles. They would make a conquest of the land of Zion. Amen.