ELDER ORSON HYDE.
LETTER I.
Trieste, January 1, 1842.
DEAR BRETHREN OF THE TWELVE,
As the blushing orb of light from his eastern temple sends forth, this morning, over Alpine heights, his streaming columns of golden brightness to greet the earth with a happy new year, welcome its arrival, and crown it with a celestial radience, I might be justly charged with ingratitude towards a gracious and merciful Providence, and a want of generosity and reciprocal kindness towards my brethren, did I neglect to acknowledge the kind aid and protection which heaven has granted me in answer to your faith and prayers. Permit me, therefore, to commence my letter by wishing you all "a happy new year;" and through you, allow me to extend the same wish to all the saints, both in England and America; but particularly to my wife and dear little children.
I am happy to improve the opportunity, which this hour affords, of writing to you, and that happiness is increased by a firm conviction, that a letter from your unworthy brother, in the Lord, will be received by you with a friendship and cordiality corresponding to that which now animate my bosom.
Since it has pleased the Lord to grant unto me health and prosperity—to protect me from the dangers of the climates—from the plague and pestilence that have carried death and mourning on their wing, and return me again in safety to a land of civilised life, these things demand my highest gratitude, as well as demonstrations of praise and thanksgiving, to His exalted name.
As a member, therefore, of your honourable quorum, bearing, in common with you, the responsibility under which HEAVEN has laid us, to spread the word of life among the perishing nations of the earth, allow me to say, that, on the 21st of October last, "my natural eyes, for the first time, beheld" Jerusalem; and as I gazed upon it and its environs, the mountains and hills by which it is surrounded, and considered, that this is the stage upon which so many scenes of wonders have been acted, where prophets were stoned, and the Saviour of sinners slain, a storm of commingled emotions suddenly arose in my breast, the force of which was only spent in a profuse shower of tears.