And even when this, to them almost interminable, period has rolled away, and they rise from the dead, instead of a welcome exaltation to the presence and society of the sons of God, an eternal banishment awaits them. They never can come where God and Christ dwell, but will be servants in the dominions of the Saints, their former victims.
This extraordinary personage was born in Sharon, Windsor County,
Vermont, United States, December 23rd, 1805.
He removed with his father, during childhood, and settled near Palmyra, in Wayne County, New York. Amid these forest wilds he was reared a farmer, and inured to all the hardships, toils, and privations of a newly settled country. His education was therefore very limited. When about seventeen years of age, he had several open visions, in which a holy angel ministered to him, admonished him for his sins, taught him repentance, and faith in the crucified and risen Messiah, opened to him the Scriptures of the Prophets, unfolding the field of prophecy pertaining to the latter-day glory, and the doctrines of Christ and his ancient Apostles.
On the 22nd Sept., 1827, the angel directed him to a hill a few miles distant, called anciently Cumorah. Around this hill, in the fifth century of the Christian era, had rallied the last remnant of a once powerful and highly polished nation called the Nephites.
Here, two hundred and thirty thousand men, women and children, marshalled themselves for a last defence, in legions of ten thousand each, under their respective commanders, at whose head was the renowned Mormon, the General of a hundred battles. And here they received the enemy in untold numbers, and melted away before them, till none remained except a few that fled to the southward, and a few that fell wounded, and were left by the enemy among the unburied dead.
Among these latter were General Mormon, and his son, and second in command—General Moroni.
These were the last Prophets of a nation, now no more. They held the sacred records, compiled and transmitted from their fathers, from the remotest antiquity. They held the Urim and Thummim, and the compass of Lehi, which had been prepared by Providence, to guide a colony from Jerusalem to America.
In the hill Cumorah, they deposited all these things. Here they lay concealed for fourteen hundred years. And here did the angel Moroni direct the young Joseph to behold these sacred things, in their sacred deposit, and to receive, from these long-silent and gloomy archives, an abridged record of the whole, and with it the Urim and Thummim.
The abridged record, thus obtained, was engraved in Egyptian characters, on gold plates, by the hands of the two Prophets and Generals—Mormon and Moroni. By the instructions of the angel, and the use of the Urim and Thummim, the youthful Joseph, now a Prophet and Seer, was enabled to translate the abridgment, or rather the unsealed portion which was destined for the present age.
This done, the angel of the Lord appeared to three other persons, called Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer; showed them the golden plates, and the engravings thereon; bore testimony of their correct translation by the Prophet Joseph, and commanded them to bear a faithful testimony of the same. Two of these were respectable farmers, and the other was a school-master.