For a wise and glorious purpose, Thou hast placed me here on earth; And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth. Yet oft-times a secret something, Whisper'd, "You're a stranger here;" And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere. I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy spirit from on high; But until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heavens are parents single? No; the thought makes reason stare; Truth is reason; truth eternal, Tells me I've a Mother there. When I leave this frail existence-- When I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal court on high? Then at length, when I've completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation, Let me come and dwell with you. A divine drama set to song. And as it is but a choral dramatization, in the simple hymn form, of the celestial themes revealed through Joseph Smith, it will strikingly illustrate the vast system of Mormon theology, which links the heavens and the earths. It is well remembered what an ecstacy filled the minds of the transcendental Christians of America, when the voice of Theodore Parker, bursting into the fervor of a new revelation, addressed, in prayer, our Father and Mother in heaven! An archangel proclamation that! Henceforth shall the mother half of creation be worshipped with that of the God-Father; and in that worship woman, by the very association of ideas, shall be exalted in the coming civilization. Wonderful revelation, Brother Theodore; worthy thy glorious intellect! Quite as wonderful that it was not universal long before thy day! But it will be strange news to many that years before Theodore Parker breathed that theme in public prayer, the Mormon people sang their hymn of invocation to the Father and Mother in heaven, given them by the Hebraic pen of Eliza R. Snow. And in this connection it will be proper to relate the fact that a Mormon woman once lived as a servant in the house of Theodore Parker. With a disciple's pardonable cunning she was in the habit of leaving Mormon books in the way of her master. It is not unlikely that the great transcendentalist had read the Mormon poetess' hymn to "Our Father-and-Mother God!" And perhaps it will appear still more strange to the reader, who may have been told that woman in the Mormon scheme ranked low--almost to the barbarian scale--to learn that the revelation of the Father and Mother of creation, given through the Mormon prophet, and set to song by a kindred spirit, is the basic idea of the whole Mormon theology. The hymn of invocation not only treats our God parents in this grand primeval sense, but the poetess weaves around their parental centre the divine drama of the pre-existence of worlds.