A Voice from Jerusalem: Or, A Sketch of the Travels and Ministry of Elder Orson HydeHyde, Orson
Religion
A Voice from Jerusalem: Or, A Sketch of the Travels and Ministry of Elder Orson Hyde
Hyde, Orson
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Missions; Jerusalem -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel
After some considerable conversation upon the priesthood and the
renewal of the covenant, I called upon him to repent and be baptized
for the remission of his sins, that he might receive the gift of
the Holy Ghost. What! said he, _I_ be baptized! Yes, said I, _you_
be baptized. Why, said he, I have been baptized already! I replied
something after the following: "You have, probably, been sprinkled,
but that has no more to do with baptism than any other ordinance of
man's device; and even if you had been immersed, you would not have
bettered your condition, for your priesthood is without power. If,
indeed, the catholic church had power to give you an ordination, and
by that ordination confer the priesthood upon you, they certainly
had power to nullify that act, and take the priesthood from you; and
this power they exercised when you dissented from their communion, by
excluding you from their church. But if the catholic church possessed
not the priesthood, of course your claims to it are as groundless as
the airy phantoms of heathen mythology: so view the question on which
side you may, there is no possible chance of admitting the validity of
your claims to it. Be it known, therefore, that ordinances performed
under the administration of such a priesthood, though they may even be
correct in form, will be found destitute of the seal of that authority
by which heaven will recognise his own in the day when every man's work
shall be tried: though a priesthood may be clothed with the wealth
and honours of a great and powerful nation, and command the respect
and veneration of multitudes whose eyes are blinded by the thick veil
of popular opinion, and whose powers of reflection and deep thought
are confused and lost in the general cry of "great is Diana of the
Ephesians," yet all this does not impart to it the divine sanction,
or animate it with the spirit of life and power from the bosom of the
living God; and there is a period in future time, when, in the smoking
ruins of Babel's pride and glory, it must fall and retire to the shades
of forgetfulness, to the grief and mortification of its unfortunate
votaries.
In consequence of his great volubility, I was under the disagreeable
necessity of tuning my voice to a pretty high key, and of spacing short
between words; determining that neither his greatness nor learning
should shield him from the shafts of a faithful testimony: but there
is more hope of those Jews receiving the fullness of the gospel, whose
minds have never been poisoned by the bane of modern sectarianism,
which closes the mouth of deity, and shuts up in heaven all the angels,
visions, and prophecyings.
Mrs. Whiting told me that there had been four Jewish people in
Jerusalem converted and baptized by the English minister, and four
only; and that a part of the ground for an English church had been
purchased there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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