WHAT MORMONISM AFFIRMS.
I do not want to take all the time, however, in discussing this negative part of our message. I desire to say something affirmatively, something that will dispel the gloom that this first part of our message is likely to impress upon the minds of those who contemplate it. In the affirmative part of our message we come to you with these glad tidings: God has again spoken. He has renewed, so to speak, official relationships with the world. At that time when men supposed that God had spoken His last word in revelation; at that time, when it was supposed angels would no more visit the earth; at that time when men concluded that the volume of revelation was completed and forever closed—in the very darkest hour of these great errors, lo, the heavens open! angels visit the earth; the American volume of Scripture, the Book of Mormon, the Scripture, of the old inhabitants of America, before they fell into anarchy and barbarism, when they were learned and enlightened, when they had communion with God and Christ, and received the gospel—their record is brought forth to be a witness for God; a witness to His justice, to His mercy; it came as a protest against the dark and awful thought that God could possibly leave a hemisphere to perish in ignorance of his mind and of his will, and of the gospel of Jesus Christ! In the moment when these thoughts had crystallized into dogma, God brushed them aside, renewed revelation, gave a new dispensation of the gospel to the children of men, restored divine authority, re-established the Church of Christ, deposited with her his revealed truth, and gave her commission to make proclamation of it to all the inhabitants of the earth—"to every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people;" giving warning that the kingdom of God was at hand. Our message comes then with the announcement of these great truths; and Mormonism is this restored gospel of the Christ, this re-established Church of Christ, or nothing. It is not a new gospel, my friends, not a new religion. But the old gospel, the old religion and the Church of Christ coming forth under a new dispensation. We, equally with you of other Christian persuasions, believe there is no other name given under heaven whereby men may be saved except the name of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ. Therefore to us there can be but the one true gospel and one true Church. Not only this, but our message goes further. It comes to you with the glad tidings that God is still in the world, not apart from it, not standing aloof in unsympathetic observation of the creation of his hands—but he is in it. What men name divine immanence. His spirit permeates all the elements. "He is in the sun, the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was created. He is in the moon, and the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made." Also he is in the many blazing suns that we call fixed stars, and the power by which they were created. He is "the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things;" which is the law by which all things are governed—even the power of God." That is, to say, God through and by his Spirit is immanent in the world—in his world—the universe. The elements—the stuffs we call matter are eternal: and element united with spirit may attain to a fulness of joy; when separated they can not attain to a fulness of glory, nor answer the end of their existence. In this view "the elements are the very tabernacle of God;" or, as some of your scientists put it, "the material universe is but the garment of God." Under that garment is the living, throbbing, sympathetic God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being.
God is in his world reconciling it unto himself, and working out his sovereign will. But chiefly God by his Spirit may be in man, if man will but have it so. Yea, man may be, and often is "the tabernacle of God, even temples." There may be such an indwelling of God in man that God is very near to him and not afar off. Your life, my friends, and mine, may touch the life of God; his rich spiritual grace and life may pour into our poor lives, making them rich in deed—who, then, shall talk of failure! But let us see clearly here.
While our message proclaims God to be immanent in the world by his Spirit, and pre-eminently so in man—yet also does our message proclaim God to be a person. God, my friends, with the Latter-day Saints, is not a mere abstraction, an empty word without objective reality; a merely spiritual essence or influence; but, on the contrary, God is a person in the sense that he is an individual. He is revealed to us through Jesus Christ. We believe in that revelation of God that is to be read in the life and character of the Nazarene—the Lord Jesus Christ. To us he is the very image and likeness of God; nay, as the Christ was and now is, so God is! The Christ you remember stood in his resurrected immortal body before his disciples, out on the Mount in Galilee, where he had appointed a meeting with them. As he stood there, in all the glory of a resurrected, immortal personage, no more subject to death, he said to them: "All power is given unto me, in earth and in heaven. Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo! I am with you always to the end of the world." As the Christ thus stood before his disciples he was God manifested in the flesh. And as the Son is, so we are assured, is the Father—a glorious mighty intelligence of tangible reality, as much so as the Christ was there on the mount in all his resurrected glory—a being whose heart throbs in sympathy with his children. For his children! Yes, friends; this Mormon message bids us proclaim that the children of men are also the children of God, essence of his essence, and nature of his nature. Our message proclaims man divine, as also it proclaims God human—God and man of one and the same race! But God relatively to man, perfect; man, fallen and imperfect in his present estate, yet an heir of salvation and a child of God destined to become like his Father and Elder Brother, the Christ. You see I was right in saying that God is no mere abstraction with us, but a real personal being with whom we sustain very definite relations—the relation of child to father, with all the sympathies that grow out of the conception of that relationship.
IMMORTALITY OF MAN.
One other thing that our message is burdened with is the immortality of man—a proper immortality, not merely and alone a continuation of conscious being after death, not merely a prolongation of life, but a pre-existence of life and intelligence before we tabernacled in the flesh. Our habitation was with God before we came to this earth. In our first, primeval childhood we lived in his presence, and have come forth from his presence merely to gain an experience in the midst of the conditions that prevail in this world of ours. We believe in and teach the immortality of man; an immortality that stretches backward before birth as well as forward after death.
Our message also proclaims the persistence of the individual. There is something in you, my friends, according to this Mormon message to the world—there is something in all of us, that was not created: and that will not die. Something that is indestructible and uncreatable; a something that must live, because it can not be destroyed—the soul, the intelligence of man. That entity, that intelligence—you—will not be absorbed, and lose its identity. You, friend, as an intelligence, and as a man shall live through all eternities. You, friend, shall accumulate experiences and grow in grace and knowledge, and power, and might and dominion, until you attain unto something that is worthy to be called divine—a son of God indeed!
On the day that you, our visitors, members of the Grand Army of the Republic—on the day that you parade the streets of our city, our Zion, and we shall note you as you go by—perhaps, with feeble footsteps and bowed forms, not with the elastic step of youth as when you responded to your country's call when the great Republic was in danger!—We shall look upon you on that day and note, perhaps, in our thought, the contrast. We shall think of you, my friends, in sympathetic mood; and we shall contemplate the time when these aged forms of yours shall put on immortality—when even these bodies shall give forth in the resurrection the vital elements essential to the manifestation of your spirits, in all the eternities to come. Our message, friends, reaffirms the reality of the resurrection from the dead. We are commissioned to say that though a man die, yet shall he live, and that eternally. Christ is our warrant for the reality of the resurrection of all men. You, then shall live again—aye and in immortal youth, and possessed of all the high powers of a glorious manhood. You will meet again the comrades and the old commanders beyond the heights, to hold your camp-fires and recount the glories of your victories for the preservation of our great nation. We shall think of you in this spirit as you march by, and our sympathies will go out to you, but we shall regard you as the children of God—immortal men! not only in history, but in reality. And what may not be accomplished in eternity, friends, under these circumstances? What may we not all accomplish in such a state as our gospel gives hope to believe in, through Jesus Christ our Lord? Think of eternity in which to live, with God for your friend, with good men for your associates, and eternity in which to work out the problems of existence—eternity!—its shining plane stretching out illimitably before you—I say, what may you not hope to achieve? At least development, intellectual, spiritual; at least growth, moral growth—soul growth, until at last, citizenship in the kingdom of God, sonship to God, and brotherhood with all divine Intelligences.
You see, then, my friends, this message of Mormonism, beginning so harshly, to what music it leads us! to what harmonies! We stand here, with you, panoplied in this faith, in these hopes, in this spirit of charity for the world. Our message is optimistic; we have glad tidings for the world, not a message of dole and damnation, but of assurance, of hope, and encouragement, an uplifting message. Mormonism proclaims the coming of a brighter day for the world—the long-promised millennium with the reign of the Christ—
"The morning breaks, the shadows flee!
Lo, Zion's standard is unfurled!
The dawning of a brighter day
Majestic rises on the world."The clouds of error disappear
Before the rays of truth divine;
The glory, bursting from afar,
Wide o'er the nations soon will shine."