THE GENTILES TO HAVE AN INHERITANCE IN AMERICA.
While there are especial blessings for the tribes of Joseph on the land of Zion, let us not lose sight of the fact that others, too, have rights and promises in relation to it. Let not the seed of Joseph cultivate any spirit of exclusiveness in respect of the land of Zion. He especially is in the world for the world's good. He must endure contact with the world, with the Gentile world as well as with Israel. He, in some way, seems to be the link between the Gentiles and Israel. When the Lord made known unto Lehi that this land of America should be his, as an inheritance, it being the land that had been promised by Jacob and Moses unto Joseph and his seed, the Lord, after describing how he would make of the Gentiles nursing fathers and mothers unto Israel, and how the Gentiles would bless Israel upon this land, then he says (referring to North and South America):
"This land, saith God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land. And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land who shall rise up unto the Gentiles; and I will fortify this land against all other nations, and he that fighteth against Zion [this whole land of America] shall perish, saith God; and he that raiseth up a king against me shall perish. Wherefore I will consecrate this land unto thy [Lehi's] seed and they [the Gentiles] who shall be numbered among thy seed forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God, unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all men that dwell thereon, that they shall worship me, saith God."
The foregoing are the promises of the Lord unto the descendants of Joseph and unto the Gentiles who shall be united with them in the possession of the land of America.
Jesus also, during his ministry among the Nephites, after his resurrection, made some remarkable promises and predictions respecting the prosperity and freedom and power of the Gentiles in the land of America on condition of their righteousness, and their obedience to the "God of the land," who is declared to be Jesus Christ. They equally with the house of Joseph on the conditions named, are promised an inheritance in the goodly land; and lot and part in the building of an holy city upon it, to be called Zion, a new Jerusalem, where the righteousness of God shall abound, and from which light and truth shall emanate to bless the world. These things are testified of at length in the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of the Third Nephi; also in the writings of Moroni in the Book of Ether, where a rather solemn warning is given to the Gentiles respecting the decrees of God concerning this land of Joseph—this land of promise unto the Gentiles as well as unto the descendants of Joseph. Moroni, in speaking of America, says:
"This is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that possesses it shall serve God, or he shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept off. . . Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it, shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ. . . . And this cometh unto you O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God, that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness comes, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you, as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done."
WEBSTER'S CONCEPTION OF AMERICA.
Did our own great Webster catch something of this old Nephite inspiration when, speaking something like twenty-two years after the first publication of the Book of Mormon (Feb. 22, 1852, to be precise—and before the New York Historical Society)—he said, in his own matchless eloquence:
"Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul, the realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of Almighty God; but, under his divine blessing, it will be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and of our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue to be, the concomitant of free institutions, and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another Herodotus, another Thucydides, and another Livy!
"And let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion—if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments—if we and they shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life—we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one thing—that, while our country furnishing materials for a thousand masters of the historic art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper.
"But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history! Let the horrible narrative never be written! Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall ever read; or the missing pleiad, of which no man can ever know more than that it is lost, and lost forever!"
And now, I invite your attention to the remarks I made in the commencement of this discourse—to the prosperity of the land, embracing both North and South America, to the extent and grandeur of it, and I ask you, does it not fulfil better than any other part of the earth, better than any other continent or continents—does it not better answer the description of Moses and of Jacob, when they described the land that should be the inheritance of the great Patriarch Joseph, than any other land does? Most assuredly.