On the evening after the
dedication of the Temple, hundreds of the brethren received the ministering of
angels, saw the light and personages of angels, and bore testimony of it. They
spake in new tongues, and had a greater manifestation of the power of God than
that described by Luke on the day of Pentecost. Yet a great portion of the
persons who saw these manifestations, in a few years, and some of them in a few
weeks, apostatized. If the Lord had on that occasion revealed one single
sentiment more, or went one step further to reveal more fully the law of
redemption, I believe He would have upset the whole of us. The fact was, He
dare not, on that very account, reveal to us a single principle farther than He
had done, for He had tried, over and over again, to do it. He tried at
Jerusalem; He tried away back before the flood; He tried in the days of Moses;
and He had tried, from time to time, to find a people to whom He could reveal
the law of salvation, and He never could fully accomplish it; and He was determined
this time to be so careful, and advance the idea so slowly, to communicate them
to the children of men with such great caution that, at all hazards, a few of
them might be able to understand and obey. For, says the Lord, my ways are not
as your ways, nor my thoughts as your thoughts; for as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts.
For instance, you tell a man
he must be baptized for the remission of his sins; then the query arises,
"What use is it to dip a man in water?" You tell a man he should
repent of his sins, cease to do evil, and learn to do well, and the answer is,
"Well, and what is the reason of all that!" Tell him that he should
receive the imposition of hands on his head for the reception of the Holy
Ghost, and he will feel some as the old woman did where I was preaching and
baptizing in England. An old lady came to be baptized; we accordingly baptized
her. When the time came to attend to the ordinance of confirmation, I began to
confirm the company of new disciples. I had noticed that she lacked soap and
water, things that evidently were scarce about her house. When I came up to lay
my hands upon her, says she, "Don't you lay your filthy paws upon my
head." The fact of it was, she had received all the law of redemption she
could receive, and the law of laying on of hands looked so foolish to her that
she would not have anything to do with it.
This serves to illustrate
the saying, that our ways are not as the ways of the Lord, nor our thoughts as
His; neither do the plans which the Lord has devised for the good of man
correspond with the plans and views which men devise for their own good. Now if
the Lord had considered it wisdom, on the day of the Kirtland endowment and
great solemn assembly, to come forward and reveal to the children of men the
facts that are laid down plainly in the Bible, and had told them that, without
the law of sealing, no man could be exalted to a throne in the celestial
kingdom, that is, without he had a woman by his side; and that no woman could
be exalted in the celestial world, without she was exalted with a man at her
head; that the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man in
the Lord; had He revealed this simple sentiment, up would have jumped some man,
saying, "What! got to have a woman sealed to me in order to be saved, in
order to be exalted to thrones, dominions, and eternal increase?"
"Yes." "I do not believe a word of it, I cannot stand that, for
I never intended to get married, I do not believe in any of this
nonsense." At the same time, perhaps somebody else might have had faith to
receive it. Again up jumps somebody else, "Brother Joseph, I have had two
wives in my lifetime, cannot I have them both in eternity?"
"No." If he had said yes, perhaps we should all have apostatized at
once.
George A. Smith,
"Gathering and Sanctification of the People of God," March 18, 1855,
(Liverpool: F.D. Richards, 1855), 2:215-16
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