Читать книгу The Women of Mormondom - Edward W. Tullidge - Страница 15

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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.