"O! Israel! O! Israel! in all your abidings,
Prepare for your Lord, when you hear these glad tidings."
An Israel had been prepared in all their "abidings," by visions and signs, like sister Whitney, who heard the voice of the angel, from the cloud, bidding her prepare for the coming word of the Lord. Parley P. Pratt was the elder who fulfilled her vision, and brought the word of the Lord direct from Joseph to Kirtland.
And Parley himself was one of an Israel who had been thus mysteriously prepared for the great latter-day mission, of which he became so marked an apostle.
Before he reached the age of manhood, Parley had in his native State (N.Y.) met with reverses in fortune so serious as to change the purposes of his life.
"I resolved," he says, "to bid farewell to the civilized world, where I had met with little else but disappointment, sorrow and unrewarded toil; and where sectarian divisions disgusted, and ignorance perplexed me,—and to spend the remainder of my days in the solitudes of the great West, among the natives of the forest."
In October, 1826, he took leave of his friends and started westward, coming at length to a small settlement about thirty miles west of Cleveland, in the State of Ohio. The country was covered with a dense forest, with only here and there a small opening made by the settlers, and the surface of the earth was one vast scene of mud and mire.
Alone, in a land of strangers, without home or money, and not yet twenty years of age, he became somewhat discouraged, but concluded to stop for the winter.
In the spring he resolved to return to his native State, for there was one at home whom his heart had long loved and from whom he would not have been separated, except by misfortune.
But with her, as his wife, he returned to Ohio, the following year, and made a home on the lands which he cleared with his own hands.[[1]]
Eighteen months thereafter Sidney Rigdon came into the neighborhood, as a preacher. With this reformer Parley associated himself in the ministry, and organized a society of disciples.