"The Spirit of God like a fire is burning!
The Latter-day glory begins to come forth;
The visions and blessings of old are returning,
The Angels are coming to visit the earth.
We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven
Hosannah, hosannah to God and the Lamb!
Let glory to them in the highest be given,
Henceforth and for ever: Amen and Amen!"[1]
Half a dozen such verses as these inspired with sentiments that ranged from Adam to the time when "Jesus descends with his chariots of fire," sung with Stentorian lungs, threw over their audiences an influence such as they had never before experienced. "The work was of God." The barren, speculative, carefully prepared sermons of fifty weeks in the year chilled in the presence of the energy and demonstration of the Mormon elders; the latter had no dead issues to deal with; their Prophet was a live subject. In this manner Mormonism was first announced. It was the feeling of the soul, and not the reasoning of the mind. It was robust believing, not calm, intellectual understanding; and thus by natural sequence "the number of the disciples grew and multiplied." It was an emotional faith in both speaker and hearer. They felt that God was with them, and feeling" at such moments sets all argument at rest.
The founder of Mormonism was naturally very impressible, and at an early age conceived the idea that he was preeminently the subject of ancient prediction.[2] He soon passed
- ↑ Hymn Book, p. 268. It is claimed that this effusion was given by "the gift of tongues," then translated by one of the elders, by the "gift of interpretation," into English.
- ↑ The student of Mormonism will be struck with the similarity of experience and claims of Joseph Smith and Mohammed. Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador, a Mohammedan writer, in a series of Essays recently published in London, treats of the prophecies concerning the Arabian Prophet, to be found in the Old and New Testaments, precisely as Orson Pratt applies them to the American Prophet.
