New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Book of Mormon; Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
In this connection, too, it should be remembered the class of people
for whom the Book of Mormon was especially prepared. While a revelation
to all the world, and containing profound truths the depths of which
man by human wisdom has not yet sounded, it is primarily designed
for the benighted, native American races, fallen from the high
station their forefathers once held in God's favor; and its simple
plainness and faith-promoting power will yet constitute it a mighty
instrumentality in bringing those races to a knowledge of God, and a
true understanding of their relationship to him. Hence I say, it is
pre-eminently fitting that this book should be of such character as to
appeal to the understanding of the simple, and those who are willing
and happy to be taught of God. And then, in any event, religion is
and ought to be a simple business, since among even highly civilized
nations there are many unlearned people who can understand only that
which is simple, and religion concerns alike the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. But plain to the point of being simple
as the Book of Mormon is, when men are made aware of its power to
rest the mind, to cheer the heart, to uplift the soul, they go to its
pages for help as the lame and blind and sick were wont to go to old
Bethsaida's pool, to whose waters an angel's touch had imparted healing
virtues.
The spirit of the Book of Mormon, then, its beneficent influence upon
men's minds, are among the strongest evidences of its truth. This will
appear all the more if the reader will call to mind the fact that this
influence does not arise from the cleverness of its construction; for
its structure, as men view books, is complex, confusing and clumsy. Its
spirit and influence do not arise from its strictly logical treatment
of historical events, much less from its philosophical treatment of
them; compared in these particulars with the works of Hume, Macaulay,
Gibbon, Hallan or George Bancroft, it could be esteemed contemptible.
Nor do the beneficent effects of the book upon the minds of men arise
from its rhetoric, its beauty of diction, or the pleasing correctness
of its language; in all these particulars it is admitted to be faulty;
it has few or none of these merely human excellencies for which it may
be desired. Whatever power it possesses to cheer, comfort and encourage
men; whatever power to build up hope, create faith or promote charity,
exists not by virtue of its human excellencies, but in spite of their
absence; therefore such influence for good as it possesses must be
attributed to the Spirit of God in which it was written, and by which
it is permeated; and by reason of the presence of that spirit in it,
the book itself must be accorded a divine origin.
_The Poetry the Book of Mormon has Inspired_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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