This
reminds me of a little circumstance that transpired here a year ago last
summer. You, no doubt, well recollect Elder Day, (a Baptist minister on his way
to California,) who used to preach to us so nicely. I preached one day when he
was present. In the course of my remarks, I brought up the subject of the
Deity—at the point touching the character of our Father in heaven, upon which
he desired the most to be instructed. I dropped the subject and turned to
something else. He went to dinner with me, and while we sat at the dinner
table, he said, "Brother Young, I was waiting with all my anxious heart,
with mouth, eyes, and ears open to receive something great and glorious."
"What about, brother Day?" "Why, as you were describing the
Deity, and just came to the point I was the most anxious to have expounded,
behold you waived it and turned to something else." I smiled and said,
"After I had taught them how, I wanted the people to add the rest of the
sermon themselves." He said, "I declare, brother Young, I would have
given anything I possessed in the world, if you had continued your remarks
until I had obtained the knowledge I desired." I inquired the nature of
it. "To know the character of God." I smiled and said, "Are you
a preacher of the Gospel?" "Yes." "How long have you been a
preacher?" "Twenty-seven years I have been a preacher of the Gospel
of Christ." "And you have been a minister so long, and have never
learned anything about the character of the Being about whom you have been
preaching! I am astonished! Now you want to find out the character of God. I
can make you answer the question yourself in a few minutes." "Well, I
do not know, brother Young: it is a very mysterious subject to mortal
man." "Now, let me ask you a single question. Will you tell me what
God our. Father in heaven appears like?" He sat a considerable time, while
the colour on his cheeks ebbed and flowed alternately, till at last he replied,
"Brother Young, I will not presume to describe the character of the
Deity." I smiled, and he thought I was treating the subject lightly.
"I am not making light of the subject, but I am smiling at your folly,
that you—a teacher in Israel—a man who should stand between the living and the
dead—yet know nothing about your Father and God. Were I in your place, I would
never preach another sermon while I lived, until I learned more about God. Do
you believe the Bible?" "I do." "What resemblance did our
father Adam bear to his God, when he placed him in the Garden of Eden?"
Before he had time to reply, I asked him what resemblance Jesus bore to man in
his incarnation? and "Do you believe Moses, who said the Lord made Adam in
his own image and after his own likeness? This may appear to you a curiosity;
but do you not see, bona fide, that the Lord made Adam like himself; and the
Saviour we read of was made to look so like him, that he was the express image
of his person ?" He laughed at his folly himself. "Why," said
he, "Brother Young, I never once thought of it before in all my life, and
I have been a preacher twenty-seven years." He never had known anything
about the character of the God he worshipped; but, like the Athenians, had
raised an altar with the inscription, "To the unknown God." (JOD
6:317-18 | April 7, 1852 [note: this sermon was just 2 days before the first
"Adam-God" sermon--cf. JOD 1:50-51])