PROPHECY FULFILLED.

181

PROPHECY FULFILLED.

(From the Deseret News, Feb. 6th, 1867.)

enormous to prevent its perpetration; and one of those governors issued an order to have the "Mormons" exterminated, or driven from the State. A State legislature, where noted mobocrats sat as representative of the people, threw out the petition of the Saints, and would not permit a com

Over thirty-three years ago the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints received a commandment from the Lord to seek redress at the hands of the legally constituted authorities, for the wrongs which they had suffered. They were then few in number, compared with the present time. But the same spirit of persecution which after-mittee to investigate their case, as the wards drove them mercilessly from the eastern States to this wild region of country, had even then made them suffer bitterly by mob violence. To recount the persecutions which they endured, would be to relate the most barbarous and unprecedented acts ever perpetrated in any country claiming to be civilized.

Statements of their sufferings and the outrages committed upon them, were submitted to the constituted authorities, sustained by the strongest and most unimpeachable testimony; but their petitions were treated with neglect, and contemptuously cast aside. In accordance with the commandment which they had received, judges, governors, State legislatures, the Congress of the nation, and the President, were severally appealed to, as redress failed to be obtained from each; while the persecutions increased in virulence in proportion with the increasing numbers of those who composed the

Church.

Judges disgraced their judicial position, refused to the injured Saints even the shadow of justice, leagued themselves with the mobocrats and ruffians to destroy the "Mormons," and harassed them and their leaders with the most unjust accusations and vexatious lawsuits, denying them the privilege of calling witnesses by trumping up charges against those whoin they thus called and having them arrested, while men were suborned to swear anything and everything which might secure a conviction; yet in that they were foiled through the providences of the Almighty. Governors, instead of hearkening to their importunities, winked at their enemies, to whom no crime was sufficiently

evidence would have revealed their own turpitude. Congress referred back the memorial forwarded to them to the same legislature; and the then President of the nation, after treating the deputation which waited on him almost with contempt, said, "Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you;" and, "If I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri!”

The Lord, in the revelation referred to, declared what would be the result if these repeated appeals were unheeded, and if the importunings of his persecuted Saints did not obtain redress for them :-"And if the President heed them not, then will the Lord arise and come forth out of his hiding place, and in his fury vex the nation, and in his hot displeasure, and in his fierce anger, in his time, will cut off those wicked, unfaithful and unjust stewards, and appoint them their portion among hypocrites and unbelievers." (Doc. & Cov., page 283, 3rd European edition.) From the time when the commandment was given, until the first appeal was made to the President by the Prophet Joseph Smith in person, something like six years had elapsed, during which petition after petition, and memorial after memorial, had been presented to various authorities, and supported by immense numbers of affidavits from the outraged and oppressed, and from friends of law and order who were not members of the Church. But redress was not obtained, and the appeal was carried to the Lord of Hosts, whose commandment had been thus strictly obeyed. Have the words of the Lord been thus far fulfilled, when he declared the consequences of refusing

redress to his people? Has not the | in its infancy, which a few years after nation been vexed with a sore vexa- shook the nation with its accumulated tion? Have those wicked, unfaithful and baleful power. and unjust stewards been removed from their places? Let facts bear witness.

One great reason why the cry of disloyalty has been raised against us, as a people, has been because we have honestly told the nation of the troubles and distress which were coming upon it. In doing this, we but declared what the Almighty had revealed. But with all the threatened evils, there were conditions expressed, obedience to which would have warded off the day of tribulation, as Nineveh was saved through repentance on the preaching of Jonah. But it is unfashionable now to believe in God, or to admit that he has anything to do with nations, their governments, their greatness, and their downfall. Yet He lives; and men fulfil his purposes while they deny his power and sneer at his threatenings.

But where are those unjust stewards they who refused redress and closed their ears against the wail of the orphan, the cry of the widow, and the importunity of outraged, robbed, and plundered citizens, at whose sufferings they carelessly looked, and to whom they refused justice? Wiped out! to employ an expressive though not very elegant phrase. As a party, they have lost the power which they held so long. They are cut off," and to-day they are impotent in the Councils of the nation. Can they see the fulfilment of that prophecy uttered more than thirty-three years ago, by Joseph the Prophet? They feel it, but do not even yet see it, though it has been fulfilled upon them to the very letter. We are not speaking of principles, but of acts and their results.

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The party at whose hands we sought for redress so long, and that refused it to us, has already felt the chastening hand of the Lord. What is man that he should dash himself against the buckler of the Almighty! The reins of power are in other hands. Will they pursue the course of their predecessors, and refuse us our Constitutional rights? Or will they be nobler, more generous, and better friends of the nation than those whose places they occupy? Time will show.

We feel very humble in reflecting upon this matter. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He has decreed that justice,

The dark and bloody wave which so lately rolled over the nation, was not only a consequence of the rejection of the revelations of the Almighty to its inhabitants, but was a natural and inevitable result of the manner in which the Saints were treated, in being cruelly wronged, and redress refused when importuned for. The government which can look calmly on while thirty thousand citizens of the nation are robbed of every right, by mob violence, and forced to seek shelter with the beasts of the wilderness, and with scarcely less savage beings in the form of men, is simply watching in quiet-righteousness, liberty and freedom, ness the growth of a monster which, when fully developed, will seize it by the throat and strangle it. If our government had been in the hands of wise and far-seeing statesmen, they would have known that when they permitted the Constitution to be trampled on in the case of the "Mormons," the evil would grow until it became powerful enough to require the nation's might to grapple with it. Then was the time to have crushed the evil,

shall have control over this favored land; and he holds those who sway the sceptre of power on it responsible for their acts; and the results of those acts he will make visible among the people. He inspired our fathers to frame the Constitution which has been our glory and pride, and the basis of our national greatness; and he requires of their children that its spirit be cherished, and its provisious honored.

The future of the American continent is very clearly portrayed in the Book of Mormon, every item of which will be literally fulfilled. Repentance and obedience to the mandates of that Book will save the nation; but impenitence and a rejection of the same, will bring desolation and an utter overthrow.

THE PROJECTED JEWISH COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE.

183

THE PROJECTED JEWISH COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE.

(From the Jewish Chronicle, March 1st, 1867.)

signed to the Jews a considerable part. This scheme for the "Organization of the International Society of the Orient," lately formed the theme of a lecture, delivered at Dublin, by the Rev. John Jones, of Kirkdala, in the course of which he remarked :

"As Messrs. Isidor and Cohn, even | national convention in behalf of the so have other pious men united with wounded in time of war, published a the Alliance for the colonization of programme of a scheme for the ameliPalestine. Among others, M. Blu-oration of Palestine, in which he asmenthal, the well known traveller in Palestine, M. Levy Bing, whose ardent zeal for our religion and people is likewise known to you, and, as a matter of course, your humble correspondent, who did not quit his honored friend, Rabbi Natonek, from the first day when he (the rabbi) surprised him (the correspondent) with his visit, until they took leave of each other at the railway station. The rabbi has returned to his home via Amsterdam, Cologne, Munich, and Vienna. As soon as he shall have recovered from the hardships of this his first journey, he intends to travel about in Hungary, Poland, and the Danubian Principalities, in order to preach on his colonization scheme from the pulpit, and to establish sub-committees in the name of the Alliance. He will then, if the Almighty gives him strength and health, go to Palestine himself, whither Rabbi Kalischer too is resolved to go, and whither probably some other gentlemen from France and Germany will repair with M. Albert Cohn, in order to labor on the spot with renewed vigor for the realisation of the colonization scheme. I conclude with the words of our revered chief rabbi, ' And the Lord will have mercy.'

"P.S.-As I learn, a meeting of the elders of the Cologne congregation took place on Sunday last, when it was resolved to solicit their pastor, Rabbi Schwarz, to form a sub-committee in connection with the Alliance for the colonization scheme.

"MORITZ HESS." How attractive the idea of Jewish restoration proves to certain minds, and how busy their imagination is in magnifying and depicting in glowing colors every circumstance that can in any way promote their favorite idea, will appear from the following:

A gentleman, writing from Basle, Switzerland, as correspondent of one of the American papers, states: "The society is being rapidly formed, with the strongest influences, financial and political, at his back. The Rothchilds, Sir Moses Montefiore, and other great capitalists among the Jews, are actively in sympathy with the undertaking. The plan has the favor of more than one crowned head in Europe, among them the Emperor Napoleon, of whose especial theories of nationalities it is a welcome development. Several noblemen of England, and the leading names of the Faubourg St. Germain, are also among its friends."

The scheme contemplates the obtaining from the Sultan of Turkey a concession of Palestine for a moneyed consideration. Such are the exigencies of the Sultan's exchequer, that money, come from where it may, is not to be refused. In this fact the society place their hopes of success, and that they will succeed is more than a mere surmise. Having obtained a concession of Palestine, the society will immediately construct a port at Jaffa, and a good road or railroad from that city to Jerusalem. At the same time, by the aid of special committees, Jews of Morocco, of Poland, of Moldavia, of Wallachia, of the East, of Africa, &c., would be forwarded to the newly conceded territory, their colonization there being facilitated by the well known religious sentiment of the Jews in reference to the Holy Land. These colonies of the Jews would then have distributions of land made to them at

It will be recollected that last year M. Henry Dunant, of Geneva, the philanthropic originator of the inter-cost prices, while the city of Jerusalem

CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES, or marriages among blood relations, have sometimes been approbated, and at other times forbidden by the Almighty. The sons of Adam were obliged to marry their own sisters, or remain wifeless. It is true, some of his younger sons and daughters could have married neices and nephews, or the children of their older brothers and sisters. The great command to multiply and replenish the earth could not have been obeyed, if own brothers and sisters, and those of near blood, had not entered into marriage relations. If such marriages were wrong, the Lord could have easily remedied them, by creating wives and husbands for each of the children of Adam. But as divine wisdom considered it best to create only one pair, he must have considered consanguineous marriages as perfectly right and lawful, and made no provisions to the contrary.

Marriage among blood cousins was also sanctioned by the Lord in the days of Noah. The grand children of Noah, being brothers and sisters, and first cousins, were also commanded by the Lord, through Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, to multiply and replenish the earth. (Gen. 9: 1.) This they could not lawfully have done without marrying those very nearly related. Here, then, are two very conspicuous examples, where such marriages were, not only sanctioned, but absolutely commanded. Therefore, marriages between own brothers and sisters, and first cousins, and uncles and neices, could not have been wicked and evil before the Lord, nor in any manner displeasing in his sight. It cannot be argued that circumstances absolutely compelled such marriages; for God was abundantly able to have provided wives, either by

EDITORIAL.

185 creation or otherwise, to have prevented sinful marriages; but the very fact of his not providing any other way, and yet commanding them to multiply, proves, beyond all controversy, that marriage between blood relations was a divine institution both before and after the flood.

Under the law of Moses, however, consanguineous marriages were strictly forbidden, under heavy penalties. Indeed, this strict law, which Paul characterizes as a law of bondage, forbade the polygamist from marrying the sister of his wife, although of no blood relation. But the great Prophet and holy Patriarch Jacob married four wives, two of whom were own sisters, and God blessed him and his wives abundantly. Thus we see that what the law made sinful at one time, was counted a great blessing at another.

The law of Moses did not permit marriages with daughters-in-law, yet the Lion of the tribe of Judah, even Jesus Christ, and all the kings of Judah, descended from Pharez, the son of Judah, by his daughter-in-law Tamer.

The law of Moses prohibited marriages with daughters, yet righteous Lot, who was counted worthy to entertain angels over night, and to escape the destruction of Sodom, begat Moab and Ammon by his two daughters. To what extent Judah and Lot were condemned for their acts is not revealed; but it is certain, that many things, interdicted by the law of Moses, were justifiable both before this law was given, and after it was fulfilled.

Sexual intercourse, without marriage, was, not only severely condemned by the law of Moses, but in every other dispensation. It was a heinious crime in the eyes of the Almighty, and generally subjected the guilty parties to death.

Polygamy, or the marriage of plural wives, was commanded under the law of Moses, and rules given to regulate the same: this institution was also approbated and greatly blessed many centuries before the Mosaic law was given. It was likewise greatly blessed in the days of the Prophets and judges of Israel, and during the reign of their kings, and was in full force among Israel at the advent of the Messiah, and during his ministry, and in no part of the New Testament was this divine domestic relation abrogated. It seems to have been a standing, permanent institution, sanctioned in all dispensations. And yet, under certain circumstances, it was not wisdom to be practiced. In the early days of Adam, and for a few generations after the flood, the people were few; the number of males and females was about equal; hence the practice of polygamy, at that time, would have deprived some of the male members of their small communities of having any wife: this would have been wrong-an act of injustice towards neighboring individuals. Such were also the circumstances among the early families of the children of Lehi who colonized, in ancient times, South America: they were but few in number-their males and females about equal; hence, the males were expressly limited, for the time being, by the direct command of God, to one wife each this was right, and gave them all an equal privilege, until in future generations they should grow into a nation, and by wars and other casualties, be reduced to inequalities in sexual numbers, and a preponderance of females be found in the land. Then, under a new set of circumstances, plurality by divine command would be justifiable, indeed, absolutely necessary, as an act of justice to the surplus female population, that all might become honored wives and mothers. It was for this reason, that the law given to the small colony of Nephites, limiting them to one