OCR Text |
Show REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. While the Smoot investigation was going on it was established that there had been no direct revelations rev-elations to anyone in Utah for more than -ten years. Wo. suspect that it was even longer. When Apostle Penrose testified that he had been called in to put some former revelations in good English, it was a clear case that something was out of fix. Either the revelation did not come from above, br the one at this end of the wireless telegraph tele-graph must have been a foreigner who was not happy at transcribing the "madam JTsyptian" into English. But not many of us know when human reasoning rea-soning fails and the thought comes of inspiration. Through the realm of mind there run many avenues. ave-nues. The fairest of all are those of inspiration. We use that word because there is no other to express ex-press the idea for we know not where sublime thoughts have their birth. But they come to men sometimes, and those who are blessed with them are called great. Sometimes they are awakened by surrounding events. It required the mighty upheaval of our civil war to awaken the Battle Hymn of the Republic; it was Gettysburg, with the glories and sorrows that canopied it, that called up in the soul of Lincoln his Gettysburg speech. In the same way the situation in Utah today ought to supply an inspiration to Joseph F. Smith. If we wore in his confidence we would suggest that he devote a few hours to the contemplation of our country; to try to grasp Its present splendor; splen-dor; to contemplate how It was created and for what purpose; what it now is and what its future promises to be. We think if he will do that he will be convinced that if the, immortal few who created our Government, did not receive a direct revelation from God; they did receive an inspiration, inspira-tion, and that a Divine guidance controlled them. Wo think his next thought ought to be that if, indeed, it was a divine thought that consecrated this country to Freedom and that on this soil there was to be worked out and established that justice which gives equal rights to all men; that gives to every man in free America the right to be a part of the Government and to aspire to all its honors; then it must be a criminal organization that seeks to circumvent this destiny for our country, coun-try, and to place the minds of free Americans under a superstitious fear. When the President of the Mormon kingdom roaches that point in his reasoning, he is liable to receive a real revelation revela-tion and to feel that he is commanded to elimi- " T nate from this system over which he presides, everything ev-erything un-American In Its rules. We think he will see that when he dares to instruct men how to vote, he is directly opposing God's will aB manifested to the framers of our Republic; Re-public; that he will realize that a man high in the priesthood of this kingdom has no possible business to neglect his priestly duties, In order to mix in politics, and that it Is his own first duty and the first duty of all his people to at once become be-come a support, and to cease to be a menace to free institutions. We think, too, that we can truthfully inform him that could he see his way clear to declare, that whatever heretofore in the creed of Latter Day Saints has been opposed to the spirit of the free institutions of the United States, is henceforth to be absolutely eliminated, he would in return receive the heartfelt thanks and enthusiastic approval of 95 out of every 100 Of his followers, and that suddenly he would find that he stood higher in the estimation of his own people and of the whole people of the United States, than has any President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the church was founded. |