--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1844 to 1845. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 5 number: 17 published: 1844-09-15 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“Foreign News,” *Times and Seasons* 5, no. 17 (September 15, 1844): 642–646." printed_title: FOREIGN NEWS. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-15_5_17 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v5n17.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-15_5_17 start_page: 642 end_page: 646 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1844 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1844-09-15_5_17 publication_year: 1844 --- # Foreign News It is a day of strange appearances. Every thing indicates something more than meets the eye. Every nation is opening events which astonish mankind: Even the heart of man begins to melt at the prospect before it. The unquenchable thirst for news; the continuity of emigration; the wars and rumors of wars, with many other signs of the distress of nations, from the old world-as it is called across the ocean-whispers so loud to the understanding, that he that runs may read the label on the eastern sky: The end is nigh. France is filled with a spirit of rebellion and when the cholera was sweeping its thousands, mobs were collecting to slay their tens of thousands. While the hospitals were crowded with the sick, and the groans of the dying filled the air, the fashionable French were holding cholera balls and dancing at the judgments of the Almighty.-In England, where an anxious multitude have been waiting for a reformation in government for years, disappointment is destruction. The house of lords has rejected the Reform Bill, and the proud hearted Englishman says-Reform or revolution! No stop there: for the sound comes across the Atlantic. Reform or ruin!-All the kingdoms of the east seem to be preparing to act the part allotted to them, when the Lord rebukes the nations. As on a morning of some great festival, the church bell, the cannon, the small arms, the music, and the cheers of the multitude, arouse all to what is going on, and thunders to man: Behold the day! so also earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, the distress of nations, the constant tide of emigration to the west, the wide spreading ravages of the cholera morbus, and the joy of the saints of God as they come out of Babylon, alarms the world, and whispers to every mortal, watch ye, for the time is at hand for the second coming of Jesus Christ, the redeemer of Israal [Israel], with peace on earth and good will to man. Watch the signs of his coming, that ye be not deceived. In connexion [connection] with the star, we publish a weekly paper entitled the UPPER MISSOURI ADVERTISER. It will contain sketches of the news of the day, politics, advertisements, and whatever tends to promote the interest of the great west. Independence, July, 1832. From the N. Y. Prophet. MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PREVALEBIT." "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to mis-doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple."-Milton. The distinguishing characteristics of the age, in political and religious matters, is a tendency to Ultraism. In the language of an eminent writer, "men seem to see now as they never saw before, in extent as well as in clearness of visions. We are almost ready to persuade ourselves the experience of the past is of little value to us; that the change of circumstances is so great, that what was wisdom once is no longer such;" that the political or religious systems which we now rear on the ruins of the old ones, must ever endure as the monuments of superior wisdom. Gibbon informs us that it was while viewing the ruins of ancient Rome, that he first formed the idea of that gigantic work, to which he devoted so large a portion of his life; a work replete with instruction from the dead in our dangers and our duties he thought that history was philosophy teaching by example: and indeed it is so. We may gaze with speechless admiration upon the monuments which fallen nations have left of their glory, on the Ionic elegance of the temples of Apollo at Miletus, and Diana at Ephesus, the Doric grandeur and sublimity of the temple of Theseus at Athens, what are these confessed standards of excellence in the fine arts, compared with the price at which they were purchased-the price of liberty?-Where are Athens and Rome? These once glorious republics have become blended with the chaos of the past; they live only in our memories; their downfall may be traced to their departure from those virtues which were the foundation stones of their strength. Who will look for one moment at modern Rome, where he may see the ruins even of the ancient city? What is true of nations is equally true of the people of God, if they depart from his counsels, their destruction is sure, and God leaves them to rear their own systems upon a heterogeneous mass of error and truth, which they vainly suppose are decided improvements of his plan of salvation, and must eventually supersede it. But who I ask, that is not thoroughly imbued with the common spirit of ultraism and innovation, will regard for a moment, the religious systems of man, when he may behold in all its native simplicity and dignity, the plan of salvation as devised by Almighty God? Like the early christians, the Latter Day Saints are charged by the priests of the day, with being innovators, a charge which they indignantly disdain, and which is truly farsical [farcical], considering the source from whence it emanates; from those miserably flimsy pretenders to christianity, who wield an influence decidedly inimical to her extension, and indeed hostile to her very existence, for while the avowed infidel attempts openly, but fruitlessly, to sap he [the] foundation upon which rests Christ's Church. These with the more specious appearance of friendship and zeal for her doctrines, wage war not merely with her enemies, but covertly with christianity herself. These pseudo friends in the persons of ministers and church members, have taken her under their insidious protection, only to dishonor her at their leisure, and use what advantages they have acquired by faithless and hollow professions, to give an air of probability to the plausible mischiefs which they have prepared against her, and to plunder her by stealth of some of her fairest distinctions, so that we are wholly unable to recognize her in the painted, patched, and disfigured garb in which they have arrayed her. It was once said by Talleyrand, of a celebrated physician, that he knew a little of everything, even of medicine. But it may not be said of these persons, with all their professions, that they have embraced even the first principles of the doctrine of Christ. I write with warmth but with no roots of bitterness in my heart; I write with the solemn conviction of my responsibility as one who has embraced the truth in the love of it, and in view of the august tribunal before which all men must one day appear. Oh! that God would inspire me with wisdom from on high, to present truth in such plainness that some wayward wanderer in the wilds of error may fall in love with her who is coming out of the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved. Any person but tolerably conversant with the annals of history, must know that there is no principle which is so directly opposed to the tastes and views of the formalist or profligate, as revelation from God; a principle which God's people have always held, and for which martyrs have died in every age-a principle (this fact none dare dispute) which has always distinguished the people of God in the days of their obedience and prosperity. When men have rejected revelation, and hewn out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no water; then it is that God has left them in their flagrant wickedness, to all the distraction of division and uncertainty, to the worse than Cimmerian darkness of an enslaved mind-Thus it was with the Jews; they killed the prophets which were among them, and God left them to their own ways: and immediately they divided into different sects. Herodians, Pharisees, Saducees, Samaritans, and others, just like the sects of the present day, without any bond of union, all of them utterly destitute of a knowledge of God; their natural inclinations and blindness led them to place false constructions upon the prophesies, and of course they did not know when they were fulfilled. They declared if they had lived in the days of their fathers, they would not have killed the prophets, but evinced the utter futility of their professions, by slaying those whom God had sent among them. The mystery of the whole was they were destitute of revelation which God intended, but for the wickedness of man, should always remain in the church-Lo! the fulness [fullness] of time had come, and God spake as he did on the morn of creation, "Let there be light" and there was light. The messiah had come, but Oh! how humbly, how directly the reverse from the common expectation; the Jews had rejected the prophets, and they knew him not. Who will say that the prophets are not necessary? Who will say that revelation is unnecessary? Jesus went forth (preceded by John, who worked no miracle) and established his church on the foundation of apostles and prophets, he himself being the chief cornerstone. Ephesians ii 20. And he gave to this church spiritual gifts, which were to continue in the church so long as she remained in an organized form. Eph., iv., 1 Cor. xii. And for this church he prayed just previous to his betrayal, when he knew that he must soon leave them, "Neither pray I for thee alone; but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. That they may all be one; as the father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. How different all this is from the religion of the present day; even the very foundation is taken away, and most of the gifts, and so far from praying for a union which the gospel contemplates, and for which Jesus prayed as an evidence to the world of the divinity of his mission, the religionists of the present day, when talking with the Mormons, delight to call to mind and expatiate on the advantages of division in the christian church; the fact of division they are too often reminded of by the jeers of the sceptic [skeptic], and the failure of their much loved projects, and to cancel their confusion, they have taxed their inventive powers, to construct some kind of a robe to hide its hideous deformity. How preposterous to tell us of its advantages. Allowing that some benefit might arise from discussion, can they at all compare with the more serious of the tapestry-garments dipped in blood, the groans of the wounded and the dying-the broad and constantly swelling ranks of infidelity, embracing the brightest and most promising portion of the world, and last, not least, that spirit of bigotry and persecution which is as savage as the tiger, and as cruel and relentless as the grave. I ask where is the grin? and echo answers where? How anyone can for a moment suppose after studying the New Testament, that any church not organized according to the pattern there laid down by the great Head of the church, can be the true one, it is difficult to conceive, unless their creed be "credo quia impossible." The pigmy form, dissonant spirit, repulsive aspect, and incongruous teachings, of the present churches, prove to any person with a cast of mind ordinarily reflective, that they are the growth of any other than an apostolic age. It is impossible to convince the world that that decrepid [decrepit] form without dignity or grace, characterized by a certainty of disposition, wholesale denunciation, and a spirit of falsehood and murderous persecution, is the pure, peaceful, transferring, religion of Him who spake as a man never spake. It is most certainly obvious that there has been a wide departure from the simplicity of primitive christianity. This apostasy has been foretold in the days of the apostles. I Tim. iv, Tim. ii, iii., &c. At the close of the sixteenth century, such men as Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Melancthon, awoke from their profound slumbers, heartily sick of the corruptions and mummeries of Papacy, and were hailed by thousands of the sons and daughters of oppression and superstition, as the suspicious omens of a brighter and happier day. They discarded, to be sure, many of the follies of the system of religion from which they had just emerged, but after all, theirs was a partial reformation-they were still in Babylon-their highest aims seem to be to mend the old system; and prove that time to the present day, at different periods, such men as Wesley Murray, Edwards, Campbell, and have arisen from some cause or another, and have become the projectors of new editions of christianity, so that the religious world has become a Babel of conflicting faiths; and the skeptic points triumphantly to the opposing sects, as an unanswerable argument in favor of his assertion that the Bible affords ample ground on which to rear superstructures of faith wide as poles asunder, and therefore cannot have emanated from God. Christianity as it fell from the lips of Jesus Christ and his apostles, is now treated as if it had at length been discovered to be fictitious; not only by infidel and the unthinking, but by the various denominations of modern christians themselves. From the days in which Christ said the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force, men have been aware of the miserable inefficiency of their faith, yet no one has looked with longing, lingering desire towards God for a restoration of the faith once delivered to the saints, the great mass have been willing to hear and teach for doctrines the commandments of men. No never had the voice of man been heard for centuries proclaiming the apostolic faith, God saw fit, to send forth into his vineyard, a youth, with the bloom of boyhood upon his cheek, uninitiated in the mysteries of controversies, totally unacquainted with the erudition of the schools, one who loved truth and the approbation of his God, better than the praise of man. He was the son of an indigent man, depending entirely upon manual labor for his subsistence. Under these circumstances he went forth gifted with that wisdom which comes from God only, which all the machinations of his enemies were not able to gainsay or resist. All the eloquence of the most gifted pulpit orators were not able to gainsay or resist. All the eloquence of the most gifted pulpit orators; all the arguments of the most profound reasoners; the whole host of historians, logicians and polemics, have been unable to detect a single departure from the scriptures, in the religion which he promulgated. The wicked falsehoods of catch-penny tracts, pamphlets and newspaper effusions, which have been widely and industriously circulated; the foul calumnies of perfidious hypocrites who have been excommunicated from her bosom; the almost incredible labors and unparalelled [unparalleled] self-denial and truculent persecution to which her ministry has been subjected, all, ALL, have not been able to prevent the most rapid and astonishing progress of primitive christianity, that has been known since Jesus dwelt among men. Already she has a foothold in various parts of the United States, the Canadas, Nova,Scotia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the islands of the sea, &c., and this church who was looked upon as contemptible, is now formidable in numbers, and Daniel predicted the little stone shall fill the whole earth. This gospel of the kingdom must first be preached among all nations, then shall the end come. Who, I ask most solemnly, who, but the most sceptical [skeptical], cannot recognize the hand of God in all this? In the prosecution of their holy work, the saints of God are obligated to contend with not only the almost invincible force of educational prejudices, pre-conceived and long established opinions, but also with the greatest and foulest flood of falsehood that was ever put in circulation by satan himself, mendaciorum loquacissimus and all his host. It is almost, if not quite, beyond the range of language to exaggerate here, my heart grows warm as I write upon this subject and I wonder that the red hot bolts of heaven's condign vengeance have not been visited upon them. I shudder for the people of this generation, who have aided in this nefarious work, by the suppression of truth or otherwise, when I call to mind that there is a day of terrible retribution at hand, when all men shall stand at the judgment seat of Christ, to be judged according to the deeds done in the body. Then will the hollow-hearted professor of religion know that there is a God of justice, then will the minister of religion, and the mercenary editor, (both grand engines in these deeds) forget their ill-gotten gain, they will forget utterly their meagre [meager] short lived triumphs over truth and its faithful advocates; and they, the asperity of whose invective against the Saints of the Last Days, nothing could abate, will be crowned with shame the numerous, mournful train, will be obliged, sadly indeed, to drink the very dregs, the bitter portion of the chalice which they have prepared for themselves. The fair escutcheon of our country has been polluted, the constitution has become virtually illegible, and many of the brave sons of Columbia, have been degraded to the condition of serfs. Oh! God of our fathers, speed, oh! speed the day, when the hand of injustice shall be removed from thy people, and the glorious era of universal and everlasting righteousness shall be ushered in. The blood of the martyrs of Jesus, yea, prophets, patriarchs and saints, has crimsoned this fair land, may it ever be a memorial before thee of their undying faithfulness in thy cause. It is very common for religionists to suppose that the Latter-day Saints cannot be good people, because they are so severely persecuted. "But Christ says, "if the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you-the servant is no greater than his lord." And again-"They that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." The religion of Jesus never did and never will become so fashionable as to shield its adherents from persecution: it is only when it is mixed up with the fooleries of men, and diluted down to their taste, that it receives the adulation of the multitude. If the people of God were to be loved by the world in any age, ("I speak reverently, my heart trembles while I write,) does not the language of our Lord attribute to him a very strange way of speaking, and something of a deceptive manner?" the dreadful fires which followed the early disciples seem to have been rekindled, and the ministers of the Latter-day Saints have and do now ask themselves the question on entering their fields of labor, have I grace and strength to suffer for the gospel as they suffered. I am acquainted with elders of this church, who, even in this age of illumination and toleration, have assisted to perform the last task of sepulture to forty of their brethren at one time, who died noble martyrs for the "faith once delivered to the saints." Thousands of men, helpless women and young children, have been forcibly ejected from their peaceful homes, in an inclement season of the year, and no virtuous indignation, no, Christian sympathy was aroused in their favor; yet with all their sorrows, the Latter day Saints would not exchange their faith for any other, for the value of the universe; they know in whom they have believed, and that deliverance shall soon be theirs. In the New York Sun of the 16th ult., I noticed among some flippant remarks on Joseph Smith the beloved Prophet, an assertion that he was a heartless, unfeeling aspirant, a man without a redeeming quality; it appears to me that such a libellous [libelous] assertion, must have proceeded from very narrow or willfully distorted views. A mere cursory glance at that noble man's life, ought to cover with shame the man's face who can be guilty of such bare-faced falsehood. If such had been his character, would he have invariably stood between his people and death in all their persecutions?-Was he ever assailed by temptation to swerve from the path of the just? if so, it must have been during the late troubles at Nauvoo. To a man if acute sensibility, of warm and generous feelings as were his, it must have been painful to tear himself from his people, the partner of his choice and his children. Assassination he knew was almost inevitable, he saw the grave fast opening before him and was he unappalled? He was. Overwhelmed as a man of selfish ambition must have been, he stood firm a practised [practiced] declaration, that his was that high order of moral responsibility and benevolence to which extraordinary minds alone are attributable. He had laid down his life like a good shepherd for the sheep, the damp shroud and the lonely coffin are his, but his spirit calmly smiles in the presence of Jesus. The "blood of the martyrs shall be the seed of the church," God's nobleman the chivalry of the age, the heralds of salvation, shall be raised up by thousands and fly on the wings of the wind, to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills, all nations shall hear, and he shall come whose right it is to reign; then in the morning of the resurrection, when every chain that now binds down God's people shall be knocked off, when the martyrs for Jesus, shall at his mandate burst the bars of death, and stand with their sheaves with them upon the earth redeemed, then having passed through all their afflictions, having endured hardness like good soldiers of Jesus Christ filled with those serennial joys which flow supernal from the throne of God, like incense from a censor, Hallelujah! Hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Then shall the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of their Father in all the splendor of the regal sun, reflecting forever the celestial rays that hang from the Eternal Presence. God grant to breathe his benediction upon his people, to stretch out his arm to sustain them in all their afflictions, and preserve them blameless unto the coming of Christ is the prayer of your brother in the Lord. JOHN A EATON. Boston, Aug. l0, 1844.