for many "would be offended and turn back if the whole truth"—polygamy, for instance—"were dashed down in a mass before them." Of prophetic times it may be observed that the habitat of God the Father is the planet Kolob, whose revolutions—one of which is the beginning and the end of a day equal to 1000 terrestrial years—are the measure of heavenly time. The Deity, being finite, employs agents and auxiliaries, e.g., light, sound, electricity, inspiration, to communicate knowledge to his world of worlds. An angel commissioned as a messenger to earth is taken either from the chief or from a minor planet, and it naturally measures time by the days and weeks, the months and years, of its own home—a style of computation which must not a little confuse our poor human chronology.
"Tongues" does not signify, as at the date of the first Pentecost, an ability to address heteroglottists in their several languages, which would render the gift somewhat too precise and Mezzofantian for these days. It means that man moved by the Spirit shall utter any set of sounds unintelligible even to himself, but which, being known to the Lord, may, by special permission to exercise the "gift of interpretation of tongues," be explained by another to those addressed. The man gravid with "tongues" must "rise on his feet, lean in faith on Christ, and open his lips, utter a song in such cadence as he chooses, and the Spirit of the Lord will give an interpreter, and make it a language." The linguistic feat has of late years been well known in England, where it was, of course, set down to imposture. It may more charitably be explained by an abnormal affection of the organ of language on the part of the speaker of "tongues," and in the interpreter by the effect of a fervent and fooling faith.
VIII. "We believe the word of God recorded in the Bible; we also believe the word of God recorded in the Book of Mormon, and in all other good books."—Some Christians have contended that the Biblia of the Jews have been altered; that the last chapter (verse 5) of Deuteronomy, for instance, recording the death and burial of Moses, was not written by Moses. The Moslems assert that the Scripture of both Hebrew and Christian has not only been misunderstood, but has designedly been corrupted by Baulús (St. Paul) and other Greekish Jews; that the Gospel of Infancy, and the similar compositions now banished into the apocryphal New Testament, are mere excrescences upon the pure commands of Jesus. The Mormons hold with the latter. They believe, however, that the infinite errors and interpretations have been removed by "Joseph the Seer," to whom was given the "key of all languages"—he has quoted in his writings only 15 out of 3500—and the following specimen of his ultra-Bentleian emendations, borrowed from the "Last Sermon," may suffice:
