Steadfast

The following beautiful touch upon the steadfastness and faith, and preservation of the Saints in the last days is from the New York Messenger.

"Brethren, the Church of the Saints has stood firm and unmoved amidst all the lies and slander that ever was or ever can be invented by men or devils; therefore they have nothing more to fear from that source. You have stood firm amid the rattle of chains, the groaning and creaking of prison doors, and the gloom of dungeons.

The vexations caused by the abuse of civil and military authority, have never moved you from your faith, or checked your progress.

The roar of artillery, the sharp crack of the rifle, the pistol, bayonets, the whistle of musket-balls, and the clashing of swords, have all been tried in vain: the Church of the Saints has survived all these efforts, and while her sons, daughters, prophets, apostles and leaders, together with the aged and the infant, have fallen martyrs, she has still stood firm and united, maintaining her position and moving forward her enterprise. States have spent their fury and exhausted their resources in vain to check her progress. Governors and Legislatures have withheld all protection, deprived her of every right, and even combined with murderers to exterminate, rob, drive, plunder and murder. But you have withstood all their efforts, even in the days of the infancy of the church, and while you were weak in faith and few in numbers, and your progress is still onward in power and majesty. What now have we to fear? What new enemy can come into the field? What new trial has the church to meet? We boldly answer, none. We bid defiance to all the hosts of Satan-to all the spirits of hell-all the lying priests, editors and 'christians,; who follow them-to all the States, Governors and Legislatures in the world-or to death itself, to bring a trial upon the Church of Latter-day Saints that they have not already effectually met, and proved themselves competent to surmount. Therefore we have nothing now left to fear or dread. We are able, in the strength of the God of Joseph, to fill the world with truth and wisdom, and to establish peace, and bring in everlasting righteousness, for ere long the Lord of Lords, and King of Kings will descend from heaven, with all his mighty hosts to help us, and to complete the victory.-And the last enemy which shall be subdued under the feet of God and his Saints, is death. Then hosannah [hosanna] to God and the Lamb, and hail to the immortal Joseph and all the martyrs.-They shall be crowned and enthroned, and enter upon their high and responsible offices as kings, priests, presidents and governors and judges, by acclamation, and reign, and his Saints take the kingdom under the whole heaven and possess it, for they are worthy.

Then shall governors, legislators and rulers of this world, who once had a little brief authority, walk up to the bar of Justice, and receive a righteous sentence. Then shall their abuses of the Saints be had in remembrance,

and they shall be an abhorrence unto all flesh, for their worm shall not die, nor shall their fire be quenched.

An extract from a letter written to JOHN ADAMS by THOMAS JEFFERSON, of Virginia, published by Mr. John Stewart, of New York, in the second volume of the 'Bible of Nature,' page 271-272.

"I feel, therefore I 'exist.' I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existences, then. I call them matter. I feel them changing places: this gives me motion. Where there is an an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive thought to be an action of a particular organization of matter, formed for that purpose by its creator, as well as that attraction is an action of matter, or magnetism of loadstone [lodestone].

When he who denies to the Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action, called thinking, shall show how he could endow the sun with the mode of action called attraction, which reins the planets in the track of their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will and by that will put matter into motion, then the materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothing. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angles, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by the Locks, the Traceys, and the Stewarts. At what age (Athanasius and the Council of Nice) of the Christian Church this heresy of immaterialism, or masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us, indeed, that God is a spirit, but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers, generally, of the three first centuries, held it to be matter, light and thin indeed, an etherial [ethereal] gas; but still matter.

TO JOHN ADAMS."

Will the editor of the Messenger inform us whether Thomas Jefferson was a Mormon or not? As ever, yours,

J. M. GRANT.

Mr. Holley, N. J. July 15, 1845.

(->) It seems the editor of the Messenger has not answered Elder Grant's request, and so we take the responsibility to give a sentence of revelation on the subject, which came through the great prophet and seer, Joseph Smith. On the 373d page of the second edition of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, last words: "And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, BY THE HANDS OF WISE MEN, whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the lands by the shedding of blood" So it seems that the immortal Thomas Jefferson was so much of a Saint or Mormon, that God knew he was a wise man, and raised him up on purpose to prepare the way for breaking to pieces Nebuchadnezzar's image of governments, priests, misrule, confnsion [confusion] and false religion.'

The whole world can bear witness that God's "wise men" have shown more genuine humanity and wisdom, that all christendom put together; and this makes revelation triumphant. Glory to God, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and all the prophets! men could kill their bodies, but they could not hurt their souls, nor their words. They are eternal.