OCR Text |
Show A NOISE LIKE AN APOSTLE. The next great annual foregathering of the house of Israel, otherwise the Mormon church, will be held in this stake of Zion during the first week in April, and it is presumed that at that time a successor will be chosen to fill the place left vacant in the apostolic quorum by tho demise of the late apostle Merrill. It will probably be deemed impertinent by the oracles of the Melchisedic priesthood for the hated gentile to Indulge in speculation regarding whose glorified form the new apostolic mantle is likely to enfold, particularly since the selection is supposed sup-posed to be made by one of those remarkable divine di-vine revelations such as the present president of the church confesses he has never received during his occupancy of the Mormon throne. Tho subject is of deep interest to those not of the immaculate priesthood for several reasons. In the first place the selection of Brother Merrill's Mer-rill's successor will indicate whether It is the ambition of the president to establish a Smith dynasty so firmly in the church that for all time this saintly family will control its destinies. Then it will show whether, as certain mutterings in holy places would lead one to suspect', all the other great regal families, such as the Youngs, the Kimballs and the Taylors, whom the present president pres-ident has always viewed as usurpers, are to be totally ignored when ecclesiastical honors are dispersed dis-persed during the present tyrannic Smith regime. Previous to the selection of the immortal Penrose Pen-rose to the apostleship, the present president selected se-lected a Smith for every vacancy, one of them a talkative son of Apostle John Henry Smith, and the other a" blaring son of the prophet' himself, him-self, who has apparently ever since his elevation taken the Heber J. Grant style of fanatic as his model. That sufficiently showed the real ambition ambi-tion of the prophet. His hope is to choke up the quorum with Smiths. At present the only question ques-tion is whether there is another one sufficiently mature for the place, or whether, even if there were another available Smithsonian candidate of voting age, the stern prophet would have the hardihood to cram him into tho quorum. As that might sit badly on the apostolic palate of the rest of the quorum, it is thought possible that as a compromise the revelationless prop' st may select se-lect a son-in-law, of whom he has two ornamental .and eligible specimens. One almost certain thing is that the new appointee ap-pointee will not be a Young, in saying which Issue Is-sue is taken with a certain contemporary. The present prophet always believed that when Brig-ham Brig-ham Young succeded the first' Smith as president of the church, he infringed upon the divine right of kings and robbed him of his birthright, a trick for which, centuries before, a certain man named Esau never forgave a man named Jacob. A person per-son of Joseph Smith's fanaticism is not likely to forgive the Youngs, even to the third or thirtieth generation, and it is natural to suppose that he feels no more amiability toward the Kimballs, the Taylors or tho Woodruffs, all of whom figured more or less directly in the deep damnation of usurping the throne. When a new apostle is selected, as in politics, geography is frequently taken into consideration, when nepotism is barred by a question of diplomacy. diplo-macy. So it is not unlikely that as the lat'e apostle apos-tle Merrill was from the north, the next recipient" of an apostolic halo may be from the same direction, direc-tion, possibly some such devoted saint as C. W. Nibley or President Budge of the Bear Lake stake. If the coronation comes nearer home, it may be Bishop Whitney, though he is of the lineage lin-eage of the Kimballs, or mayhap the golden harp will be laid in the lap of the self-effacing and faithful B. H. Roberts. In any event, it will be but a short time before be-fore the suspense will be over, 'l speculation up on what is looked upon by the faithful as an exclusive ex-clusive prerogative of the Lord and Joseph F. Smith will no longer be in order. |