Elias: An Epic of the AgesWhitney, Orson F. (Orson Ferguson)
Religion
Elias: An Epic of the Ages
Whitney, Orson F. (Orson Ferguson)
Latter Day Saint churches -- Poetry; Latter Day Saints -- Poetry
3--696. **Peace to Flow.** "(I) The immense field covered by the
conquests of Alexander gave to the civilized world a unity of
language, without which it would have been, humanly speaking,
impossible for the earliest preachers to have made known the good
tidings in every land which they traversed. (II) The rise of the
Roman Empire created a political unity which reflected in every
direction the doctrines of the new faith. (III) The dispersion of the
Jews prepared vast multitudes of Greeks and Romans for the unity of a
pure morality and a monotheistic faith. The Gospel emanated from the
capital of Judea; it was preached in the tongue of Athens; it was
diffused through the empire of Rome; the feet of its earliest
missionaries traversed the solid structure of undeviating roads by
which the Roman legionaries--'those massive hammers of the whole
earth'--had made straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Semite and Aryan had been unconscious instruments in the hands of God
for the spread of a religion which, in its first beginnings, both
alike detested and despised. The letters of Hebrew and Greek and
Latin inscribed above the cross were the prophetic and unconscious
testimony of three of the world's noblest languages to the undying
claims of Him who suffered to obliterate the animosities of the
nations which spoke them, and to unite them all together in the one
great Family of God."--Dean Farrar, in "The Life and Work of St.
Paul," abridged edition, Book II, pp. 61, 62.
4--706. **She-Wolf's Might.** The She-Wolf, traditionally the nurse
of Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome, was also an emblem of that
world-conquering power, which, though eventually it persecuted the
Christians, at first protected them from their Jewish oppressors.
Judah's emblem was the Lion. As for the remaining figure in the
allusion, it is written that the Saviour said to his disciples: "I
send you forth as lambs among wolves."
5--707. **Iron-Limbed.** The phrases "iron-limbed," "brazen-loin,"
"silver-breasted," "golden Babylon," characterize respectively the
Roman, Graeco-Macedonian, Medo-Persian, and Babylonian empires,
which, in reverse order, ruled successively the ancient world.
Beginning with Babylon, the "head of gold," these four universal
powers figure in the Prophet Daniel's interpretation of
Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2).
6--713. **Asian Kin.** Alexander the Great extended his conquests as
far eastward as India, whose native inhabitants claim kinship with
European peoples through a common Aryan ancestry. If this claim be
true, then the Hindoos, like the Europeans, are descended from
Japheth, the eldest son of Noah, and consequently are "Gentiles"--a
word springing from "Gentilis," meaning "of a nation," that is, a
nation not of Israel.
7--718. **Kurush.** Cyrus, founder of the Medo-Persian empire.
8--730. **Lofty Vineyards.** D. and C. 88:51-61.
9--731. **Spirit Moon and Speaking Stars.** The Holy Ghost and the
Apostolic Twelve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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