“Oh, you’re worse than I thought!” she cried. “Come now, do try. I want you to be made better, for my sake.” She looked at him with real pleading in her eyes. He dropped back to the ground with a thrill of searching religious fervour.
“Go on,” he said, feelingly. “I’m ready for anything. I have kind of a good feeling running through me already. I do believe you’ll be a powerful lot of benefit to me.”
“You must have faith,” she answered, intent on the book. “Now I’ll tell you some things first.”
Had the Gentile been attentive he might have learned that the Book of Mormon is an inspired record of equal authority with the Jewish Scriptures, containing the revelations of Jehovah to his Israel of the western world as the Bible his revelations to Israel in the Orient,—the veritable “stick of Joseph,” that was to be one with “the stick of Judah;” that the angel Moroni, a messenger from the presence of God, appeared to Joseph Smith, clad in robes of light, and told him where were hid the plates of gold on which were graven this fulness of the everlasting gospel; how that Joseph, after a few years of preparation, was let to take these sacred plates from the hill of Cumorah; also an instrument called the Urim and Thummim, consisting of two stones set in a silver bow and made fast to a breast-plate, this having been prepared by the hands of God for use in translating the record on the plates; how Joseph, seated behind a curtain and looking through the Urim and Thummim at the characters on the plates, had seen their English equivalents over them, and dictated these to his amanuensis on the other side of the curtain.
He might have learned that when the book was thus translated, the angel Moroni had reclaimed the golden plates and the Urim and Thummim, leaving the sacred deposit of doctrine to be given to the world by Joseph Smith; that the Saviour had subsequently appeared to Joseph; also Peter, James, and John, who laid hands upon him, ordained him, gave him the Holy Ghost, authorised him to baptise for the remission of sins, and to organise the Kingdom of God on earth.
“Do you understand so far?” she asked.
“It’s fine!” he answered, fervently. “I feel kind of a glow coming over me already.”
She looked at him closely, with a quick suspicion, but found his profile uninforming; at least of anything needful at the moment.
“Remember you must have faith,” she admonished him, “if you are to win your inheritance; and not question or doubt or find fault, or—or make fun of anything. It says right here on the title-page, ‘And now if there be faults, it be the mistake of men; wherefore condemn not the things of God that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ.’ There now, remember!”
“Who’s finding fault or making fun?” he asked, in tones that seemed to be pained.