January 10, 1905
(Tuesday) [Aintab]
Read from the Bible, Chron 24, and
news paper and then wrote to Rev Mr Shishmanian at Constantinople (see Nov 23
[1904]). Also wrote the following to Rev. H. K. Anketell, British Embassy,
Constantinople.
My Dear Friend,
In your busy hours can you pause just
long enough to receive greetings and well wishes from one who dearly loves you
for your very manliness? I heartily thank you for every expression of your
kindness to me during my recent and also my former visit to Constantinople. If
my humble petitions have any influence at the Throne of Grace, they will not be
offered in vain for one who has made a bouquet of happy memories in the life of
a humble servant of the Lord. You have done so much by your kindness. In this
age of prejudice and pharisaical sanctify among many of the clergy of the day
it is now refreshing for me to meet one so liberal in thought, so broad minded
in principle, and so tolerant in religious opinions as I have found at the
chapel of the British Embassy at Pera.
Pray do not mark me as a flatterer. I
love the plain simple truth and to tell it when and where occasion requ[i]res.
Fulsome adulation is a species of duplicity deserving censure almost equal with
hypocracy, and therefore I would despise myself were I to flatter (save in
jest) another to whom I owe profound respect and compliments.
Mormonism is nothing if it not be a
practical religion. It teaches me to be honest, pure, truthful, in fact a Saint—a
Latter-day Saint. Progression is our motto. If I am not better to day than I
was yesterday what good has my religion done me? “be ye perfect as your father
in heaven is perfect.” How except through progression? And one beautiful
thought in the Mormon doctrine is that progression is eternal. Perfection is
not only relative, not absolute, and even the Creator, Our Father, is a
progressive Being, still creating and still building worlds on the frontiers of
the everlasting universe, adding to his glory and might. To be deprived of the
privilege of progression would not be perfection.
And now what is the relationship of
man to Deity? Is it not that of father and children? The Holy Bible tells us
that “we are to be like him”—natural it is not? And it is not reasonable to
suppose that a child can be like its father? I concede the difference between
man and God is immeasurably greater than the difference between the little
helpless infant in the cradle and the potentate wielding his scepter of power
from the throne, but mark you, 50 short years bridges the latter difference
while man has the countless ages of eternity before him to reach that exalted
state of perfection to which our hope is leading us in Christ.
These thoughts are possibly new ones
to you, or perhaps stated in a new light, but I am sure they will not be case
aside without a serious consideration of them by one so logical and reasonable
in conclusions as you are. The following couplet expresses all I have told you,
in these words,
“As man is God once was.
As God is, man may be.”
I trust you will continue your investigations
of Mormonism which is only another name for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is
now attracting the interest of the world as an every day practical, reasonable
religion and its influence is growing for good. It is going to redeem the world from sin
and wickedness, and through it is the [g]reat millennium will be soon ushered
in. It is the fulfilling of the ancient prophesies concerning the establishment
of Gods Kingdom upon the earth in the last days.
Pardon me for this long letter. I
thought only of writing a note of thanks when I began. My wife joins me in getting
to you and thanks you for your picture. She would like to meet the wife and
daughters of a man so noble as I have described you to her. May the Lord bless
you abundantly in all your good work.
Very Sincerely Yours.
J. Wilford Booth. (Joseph Wilford
Booth, Journal, January 10, 1905, in Missionary in the Middle East: The Journals
of Joseph Wilford Booth, ed. James A. Toronto and Kent F. Schull [Provo,
Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2024], 387-89)
