Saturday Night Thoughts: A Series of Dissertations on Spiritual, Historical, and Philosophic ThemesWhitney, Orson F. (Orson Ferguson)
Religion
Saturday Night Thoughts: A Series of Dissertations on Spiritual, Historical, and Philosophic Themes
Whitney, Orson F. (Orson Ferguson)
Latter Day Saint churches
Only One Gospel.--There is but one Gospel. There never has been,
and there never will be, another. [1] It is the Everlasting Gospel,
[2] the same yesterday, today and forever. In order to comprehend
it, one must not limit his survey of the subject to the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries--must not confine his calculations to any
one Gospel dispensation. He must grasp the idea of a series of such
dispensations, inter-related and connected, like the links of a mighty
chain, extending from the morning of Creation down to the end of Time.
"Mormonism" stands for the Gospel's restoration in the Dispensation of
the Fulness of Times; but that is not all. It stands for the Gospel
itself in _all_ the dispensations, as those periods are termed during
which God, from the beginning, has spoken to man and revealed from
heaven these saving principles and powers.
For All Time and for All Men.--The Everlasting Gospel does not belie
its name. It is not of any one time nor of any one place. Stretching
from eternity to eternity, it encompasses past, present and future in
its all-embracing fold. Neither is it for the benefit of any particular
class, to the exclusion of other classes. It is for all men, and was
made simple and plain that all might understand it, that its appeal
might be universal. No creed comprehensible only to a few, no religion
that mystifies the many, can by any possibility represent Him who died
that the whole world might live. There is but one Savior, and but one
Plan of Salvation; yet that Savior has many servants, saviors in a
subordinate sense, [3] and His saving plan encompasses many truths,
apportioned to the several branches of the human family, in measure
large or small, according to their capacity to receive, and their
ability to wisely use the knowledge meted out to them.
Sublimest Things are always the simplest. This is preeminently true of
the Gospel--the simple, sublime Story of God. A child can comprehend
it; and at the same time it is capable of taxing to the limit the
powers of the highest human intellect. It is the profoundest system
of philosophy that the world has ever known. All true principles of
science are parts of it, broken-off fragments of this grand Rock of
Ages--or, to change the figure, pools caught in the hollows and clefts
of Time, when the great flood of Truth, during one or more of its
earthly visitations, swept by on its way back to the Eternal Ocean. All
that is precious and exalting in religion springs from this ancient
source of divine wisdom and intelligence. Who knows not this, knows not
the Gospel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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