Читать книгу The Women of Mormondom - Edward W. Tullidge - Страница 12

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WAR OF THE INVISIBLE POWERS—THEIR MASTER—JEHOVAH'S MEDIUM.

"You have prayed me here! Now what do you want of me?"

The Master had come!

But who was he?

Whence came he?

Good or evil?

Whose prayers had been answered?

—

There was in Kirtland a controversy between the powers of good and evil, for the mastery. Powers good and evil it would seem to an ordinary discernment. Certainly powers representing two sources.

This was the prime manifestation of the new dispensation. This contention of the invisibles for a foothold among mortals.

A Mormon iliad! for such it is! It is the epic of two worlds, in which the invisibles, with mortals, take their respective parts.

And now it is the dispensation of the fullness of times! Now all the powers visible and invisible contend for the mastery of the earth in the stupendous drama of the last days. This is what Mormonism means.

It is a war of the powers above and below to decide who shall give the next civilization to earth; which power shall incarnate that supreme civilization with its spirit and genius.

Similar how exactly this has been repeated since Moses and the magicians of Egypt, and Daniel and the magicians of Babylon, contended.

One had risen up in the august name of Jehovah. Mormonism represents the powers invisible of the Hebrew God.

Shall Jehovah reign in the coming time? Shall he be the Lord God omnipotent? This, in its entirety, is the Mormon problem.

Joseph is the prophet of that stupendous question, to be decided in this grand controversy of the two worlds—this controversy of mortals and immortals!

There are lords many and gods many, but to the prophet and his people there is but one God—Jehovah is his name.

A Mormon iliad, nothing else; and a war of the invisibles—a war of spiritual empires.

That war was once in Kirtland, when the first temple of a new civilization rose, to proclaim the supreme name of the God of Israel.

No sooner had the Church of Latter-day Saints been established in the West than remarkable spiritual manifestations appeared. This was exactly in accordance with the faith and expectations of the disciples; for the promise to them was that these signs should follow the believer.

But there was a power that the saints could not understand. That it was a power from the invisible world all readily discerned.

An influence both strange and potent! The power which was not comprehended was greater, for the time, in its manifestations, than the spirit which the disciples better understood.

These spiritual manifestations occurred remarkably at the house of Elder Whitney, where the saints met often to speak one to the other, and to pray for the power.

The power had come!

It was in the house which had been overshadowed by the magic cloud at midnight, out of which the angel had prophesied of the coming of the word of the Lord.

The Lord had come!

His word was given. But which Lord? and whose word? That was the question in that hour of spiritual controversy.

Similar manifestations were also had in other branches of the church; and they were given at those meetings called "testimony meetings." At these the saints testified one to the other of the "great work of God in the last days," and magnified the gifts of the spirit. But there were two kinds of gifts and two kinds of spirits.

Some of these manifestations were very similar to those of "modern spiritualism." Especially was this the case with what are styled physical manifestations.

Others read revelations from their hands; holding them up as a book before them. From this book they read passages of new scriptures. Books of new revelations had been unsealed.

In letters of light and letters of gold, writing appeared to their vision, on the hands of these "mediums."

What was singular and confounding to the elders was that many, who could neither read nor write, while under "the influence," uttered beautiful language extemporaneously. At this these "mediums" of the Mormon Church (twenty years before our "modern mediums" were known), would exclaim concerning the "power of God" manifested through them; challenging the elders, after the spirit had gone out of them, with their own natural inability to utter such wonderful sayings, and do such marvelous things.

As might be expected the majority of these "mediums" were among the sisters. In modern spiritual parlance, they were more "inspirational." Indeed for the manifestation of both powers the sisters have always been the "best mediums" (adopting the descriptive epithet now so popular and suggestive).

And this manifestation of the "two powers" in the church followed the preaching of the Mormon gospel all over the world, especially in America and Great Britain. It was God's spell and the spell of some other spiritual genius.

Where the one power was most manifested, there it was always found that the power from the "other source" was about equally displayed.

So abounding and counterbalancing were these two powers in nearly all the branches of the church in the early rise of Mormonism, in America and Great Britain, that spiritual manifestations became regarded very generally as fire that could burn as well as bless and build up the work of God.

An early hymn of the dispensation told that "the great prince of darkness was mustering his forces;" that a battle was coming "between the two kingdoms;" that the armies were "gathering round," and that they would "soon in close battle be found."

To this is to be attributed the decline of spiritual gifts in a later period in the Mormon Church, for the "spirits" were poured out so abundantly that the saints began to fear visions, and angels, and prophesy, and the "speaking in tongues."

Thus the sisters, who ever are the "best mediums" of spiritual gifts in the church, have, in latter years, been shorn of their glory. But the gifts still remain with them; and the prophesy is that some day, when there is sufficient wisdom combined with faith, more than the primitive power will be displayed, and the angels will daily walk and talk with the people of God.

But in Kirtland in that day there was the controversy of the invisibles.

—

It was in the beginning of the year 1831 that a sleigh drove into the little town of Kirtland. There were in it a man and his wife with her girl, and a man servant driving.

They seemed to be travelers, and to have come a long distance rather than from a neighboring village; indeed they had come from another State; hundreds of miles from home now; far away in those days for a man to be thus traveling in midwinter with his wife.

But they were not emigrants; at least seemingly not such; certainly not emigrants of an ordinary kind.

No caravan followed in their wake with merchandise for the western market, nor a train of goods and servants to make a home in a neighboring State.

A solitary sleigh; a man with his wife and two servants; a solitary sleigh, and far from home.

That they were not fugitives was apparent in the manly boldness of the chief personage and the somewhat imperial presence of the woman by his side. This personal air of confidence, and a certain conscious importance, were quite marked in both, especially in the man.

They were two decided personages come West. Some event was in their coming. This much the observer might at once have concluded.

There was thus something of mystery about the solitary sleigh and its occupants.

A chariot with a destiny in it—a very primitive chariot of peace, but a chariot with a charm about it. The driver might have felt akin to the boatman who embarked with the imperial Roman: "Fear not—Caesar is in thy boat!"

The sleigh wended its course through the streets of Kirtland until it came to the store of Messrs. Gilbert & Whitney, merchants. There it stopped.

Leaping from the primitive vehicle the personage shook himself lightly, as a young lion rising from his restful attitude; for the man possessed a royal strength and a magnificent physique. In age he was scarcely more than twenty-five; young, but with the stamp of one born to command.

Leaving his wife in the sleigh, he walked, with a royal bearing and a wonderfully firm step, straight into the store of Gilbert & Whitney. His bearing could not be other. He planted his foot as one who never turned back—as one destined to make a mark in the great world at his every footfall. He had come to Kirtland as though to possess it.

Going up to the counter where stood the merchant Whitney, he tapped him with hearty affection on the shoulder as he would have done to a long separated brother or a companion of by-gone years. There was the magnetism of love in his very touch. Love was the wondrous charm that the man carried about him.

"Well, Brother Whitney, how do you do?" was his greeting.

"You have the advantage of me," replied Whitney, wondering who his visitor could be. "I could not call you by name."

"I am Joseph, the prophet!"

It was like one of old making himself known to his brethren—"I am Joseph, your brother!"

"Well, what do you want of me?" Joseph asked with a smile; and then with grave solicitude added:

"You have prayed me here, now what do you want of me? The Lord would not let me sleep at nights; but said, up and take your wife to Kirtland!"

An archangel's coming would not have been a greater event to the saints than the coming of Joseph the prophet.

Leaving his store and running across the road to his house, Elder Whitney exclaimed:

"Who do you think was in that sleigh at the store?"

"Well, I don't know," replied Sister Whitney.

"Why, it is Joseph and his wife. Where shall we put them?"

Then came to the mind of Sister Whitney the vision of the cloud that had overshadowed her house at midnight, and the words of the angel who had spoken from the pavilion of his hidden glory. The vision had now to them a meaning and fulfillment indeed. The sister and her husband who had heard the "voice" felt that "the word of the Lord" was to be given to Kirtland in their own dwelling and under the very roof thus hallowed.

One-half of the house was immediately set apart for the prophet and his wife. The sleigh drove up to the door and Joseph entered with Emma—the "elect lady" of the church—and they took up their home in the little city which, with his presence, was now Zion.

It was the controversy of these two powers in the churches in the West which had called Joseph to Kirtland in the opening of the year 1831. The church in the State of New York—its birthplace—had been commanded by revelation to move West, but Joseph hastened ahead with his wife, as we have seen.

He had been troubled at nights in his visions. He had seen Elder Whitney and his wife and the good saints praying for his help. This is how he had known "Brother Whitney" at sight; for Joseph on such occasions saw all things before him as by a map unfolded to his view.

"Up and take your wife to Kirtland," "the Lord" had commanded. And he had come. The church, from the State of New York, followed him the ensuing May.

The master spirit was in Kirtland now. All spirits were subject to him. That was one ruling feature of his apostleship. He held the keys of the dispensation. He commanded and the very invisibles obeyed. They also recognized the master spirit. He was only subject to the God of Israel.

"Peace, be still!" the master commanded, and the troubled waters of Kirtland were at peace.

There in the chamber which Sister Whitney consecrated to the prophet the great revelation was given concerning the tests of spirits. There also many of the revelations were given, some of which form part of the book of doctrine and covenants. The chamber was thereafter called the translating room.

Perchance the mystic cloud often overshadowed that house, but the angel of the new covenant could now enter and speak face to face with mortal; for Jehovah's prophet dwelt there. To him the heavens unveiled, and the archangels of celestial spheres appeared in their glory and administered to him.

Wonderful, indeed, if this be true, of which there is a cloud of witnesses; and more wonderful still if hosts of angels, good and bad, have come to earth since that day, converting millions to an age of revelation, unless one like unto Joseph has indeed unlocked the new dispensation with an Elijah's keys of power!