Henry W. Naisbitt

In the final chapter of Mosiah, King Mosiah and his people face the fundamental political question—what form of government to choose. After Mosiah demonstrates the potential problems with a monarchy, the people choose a more democratic form of government, under the rule of judges. As the first chief judge, Alma then discovers that even democracy faces difficulties.

While many early Mormon poems dealt with political issues, the majority were reactions either to the persecutions in Missouri and Illinois or to the enforcement of anti-bigamy laws in Utah. The poem I found for this lesson is an exception to that norm.

The author of this poem, Henry W. Naisbitt, was born in 1826. His father died when he was still a boy, so he neglected school to help his mother. But despite the family circumstances, Naisbitt had a great love for reading, which may explain his  literary talent. After apprenticing as a maker of copper kettles, learning to make silk hats and learning carpentry, Naisbitt ended up in the grocery business. He joined the LDS Church in 1850 and immigrated to Utah in 1854. By the late 1800s he had become well known as an exponent of Mormonism and he regularly spoke in the Tabernacle on a variety of occasions and his poems and articles appeared frequently in Mormon periodicals. He served two missions to Great Britain. During the first, from 1876 to 1878, he served as the editor of the Millennial Star. He served the second mission starting in 1898 (at age 72) as a counselor to European Mission President Platte D. Lyman. After returning in 1901, he published a volume of poetry, Rhymelets in Many Moods. He died in 1908.

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Our Kings

By Henry W. Naisbitt

“The kingliest kings are crowned with thorns.” — Gerald Massey.

“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.” — Revelations.

Who feels like war, who seeks to turn

The tide of thought which swells to-day?

Who feels the flame of purpose burn

‘Gainst vested right, or tyrant’s sway?

‘Tis well they count the certain cost,

Before they raise the sweeping storm;

And understand if wrecked or tossed,

“Earth’s kingliest kings are crowned with thorn.”

This every age hath given to those

Whose godhead burst the narrow bound,

By custom set by books, or laws

To circumscribe, or truth to bound.

No dungeon dark enough for them;

No death too fierce or too forlorn;

Justice and mercy died—and then—

“The kingliest kings were crowned with thorn.”

For every science martyrs bled,

On every path of thought they fell,

But ages learn from heroes dead,

That truth will rule, who may rebel!

And garnished sepulchres are raised

To men despised and roughly torn,

While fools repeat the name none praised,

“The kingliest kings once crowned with thorn.”

Who asks a mission man to bless?

Who pants for right, unselfish, brave?

Let history tell that no caress

So certain as a martyr’s grave!

Yet if such feel inspired of God

With that high trust of kinship born,

The wrath of man may seem no rod,

“To kingliest kings when crowned with thorn.”

Whate’er the conquest we may seek,

Whate’er we wish to curb or break,

Error with hoary head, or weak

As childhood in its wilful wake;

Be sure, if victory must be won,

If once resolved in tears to groan;

So truth be with us it empowers,

“Though kingliest kings are crowned with thorn.”

And days shall come, I hail them now,

When work which makes a man divine,

Shall have the inspiring care and eye

Of rulers sent as Gods to shine!

Roll on, ye glorious times ahead,

Bring blessings for the crowds unborn,

And resurrect our deathless dead,

“Our kingliest kings once crowned with thorn.”

The Contributor, v2 n12 pg 377
September 1881

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This may be one of those poems where late 19th-century English and British usage gets in the way of our understanding today. I at first thought that some of the words had been switched for something else because of OCR errors, but found that was incorrect. The image of “thorns” is also a bit challenging—is Naisbitt referring to the crown of thorns that Christ wore? or simply to the difficulties that all rulers face—the almost inevitable injustices that every government perpetrates in its attempts to make life better or preserve power (depending on your point of view).

Regardless, this poem includes some fascinating parallels with what Mosiah discussed in advocating the rule of judges. While Naisbitt sees difficulties with a monarchy, ruled by those “Whose godhead burst the narrow bound” and who are responsible for the martyrs who “For every science… bled,” he also, in the end, foresees righteous “rulers sent as Gods to shine” and would “resurrect our deathless dead.”

But the message of this poem is one directed at those who would overthrow the tyrant, urging them to “count the cost, / Before they raise the sweeping storm,” suggesting that “history [tells] that no caress / [is] So certain as a martyr’s grave,” and observing that “ages learn from heroes dead.”

Just as these chapters from the Book of Mormon make clear that the questions of governing aren’t easy to solve, so too, Naisbitt sees difficulty for those who would rebel against tyranny and he may even be hinting that the cost of rebellion might be higher than the cost of minor injustice.

The story behind this poem is somewhat unusual. According to the preceding article in the Millennial Star, Parley P. Pratt visited the author, Sarah Smith, on June 15, 1842, when she gave him an account of a vision she received on December 26, 1835. In the vision she is singing hymns in a beautiful garden when Jesus, along with 24 angels, comes and meets her, leads her past hell, tells her that her soul is saved and takes her to heaven, where she sings hymns with them. She concludes:

“The following is one of the hymns which I sung with Jesus and the angels, as we walked in the garden, and which I have ever since retained in my memory, without the slightest alteration in word or syllable:”

No one doth know

by Sarah Smith (as told to Parley P. Pratt)

No one doth know, no tongue can tell,

Whet I’ve gone through since I’ve lain ill;

But Christ has eased me of my pain,

And sanctified my soul in him.

Weep not for me, ’tis all in vain,

Weep for your sins, and then refrain;

For Christ says come, I’ll ease your pain,

If you will come to me again.

O what a happy day ’twill be,

When Christ shall say come reign with me;

When through the pearly gates of heaven,

We’ll sing glad hymns of joy to heaven.

O what a joyful sound to hear

The Saints and angels singing there,

O then, I’ll join in heart, and sing

With Jesus Christ, my heavenly king.

And when I reach that blissful throne,

And have the robes of glory on:

And the bright crown which Christ has given:

Ready prepared for me in heaven.

Oh then I’ll sing, and praise my Lord,

With hymns of joy in one accord;

And angels whispering, all shall say.

Glory unto our Lord most high.

Millennial Star, August 1842

There is no indication in the accompanying text that Sarah Smith was ill in any way, so one possible way to interpret this is that ill is a metaphor for a sinful state.

Given the backstory, as a hymn this has some odd elements. Would Christ really sing a hymn about himself? In addition, while it starts out as a poem about redemption from the illness, by the third stanza it changes into a poem about the celestial life.

Still, the sentiment and ideas of pain and redemption from sin or illness are there, able accompaniment to Alma 36.

This post is my attempt to even out to some degree that problem. If we look now at which Mormons have made the news so far this year, we won’t forget them in the last part of the year. At least, that is the theory. Your comments and criticisms are welcome, of course.

This may be one of those years when the choice seems very obvious. Its hard to dispute the fact that Mitt Romney has had a huge impact in the news so far this year. But this misses one of the fun parts of the Mormon of the Year designation—discovering Mormons you don’t know about who have made some kind of impact in the news during the year. Its not just about naming the top guy on the list, its learning about the rest of the names as well.

Romney is such an obvious choice that, for the purposes of this post, he is banned from being mentioned from this point on. Instead, let’s put together a list of those who, based on what has happened so far this year, we should remember in December. OK?

To get us started, here are a few of the names I think have made or will have made a significant impact by the end of the year:

• Joanna Brooks—The columnist and academic self-published a memoir, subsequently picked up by a major book publisher, and attracted significant attention for her Religion Dispatches column from fans and detractors on both ends of the political spectrum.
• Bryce Harper—The outstanding baseball player selected #1 in the 2010 Major League Baseball draft made his major league baseball debut with the Washington Nationals and promptly played at or above expectations. Should he keep up this level of performance, he is a strong candidate for rookie of the year.
• Gordon Moon, of Duchesne, Utah — LDS Bishop who was accused of failing to report a sexual assault. IMO, the case probably did more to publicize how local leaders should handle potential abuse cases than
• Gay BYU students & Mormon parents of gays — For their viral videos attempting to reduce gay suicides.
• Mia Love — black, conservative GOP politician running for a seat in the U. S. House of Reps.
• Larry Echohawk — former head of the U S Bureau of Indian Affairs who accepted a call as a General Authority at April Conference.
• Neon Trees — Provo-based musical group made headlines because of its objections to alcohol and tobacco ads and sponsorships at their concerts around the world.

[FWIW, I left off the names of two men who have been or are being prosecuted for financial frauds and whose Mormon beliefs hit the media because I'm not sure how readers will react to them on the list.]

Who have I missed?

Parley P. Pratt

I think the most significant event in Mosiah 18-24 is the baptism of Alma and his followers in the Waters of Mormon. There we find the great description of the Baptismal covenant, in which those baptized

…are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places…

This event led me to a poem by Parley P. Pratt about Baptism, a hymn that seeks to encourage non-members to partake of the ordinance.

Baptism was first published in the very first issue of the Millennial Star, the monthly Church periodical in England. Immediately after publishing the first issue of the Star, Pratt was charged with producing a hymnal and other books needed for regular Church meetings there. Under the title Repent Ye Gentiles All this hymn was included, and it appeared in LDS hymnals until the 1927 hymnal, used until it was replaced in 1948. I’m not sure why it was dropped from the hymnal–it seems as doctrinally sound as other hymns.

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Baptism

by Parley P. Pratt

Repent ye Gentiles all,

And come and be baptiz’d;

It is the Saviour’s call,

He’s spoken from the skies,

And sent the message we declare,

His second coming to prepare.

Be buried with your Lord,

And rise divinely new,

‘Tis his eternal word—

The ancient path pursue,

The promised blessing now secure,

The Spirit’s seal, for ever sure.

Ye souls with sin distress’d,

Who fain would find relief;

Come, on his promise rest,

He will assuage your grief,

He’ll send the Spirit from on high,

When with the gospel you comply.

Come be adopted in,

With Israel’s chosen race,

And wash away your sins,

The promised blessing taste;

The covenant stands for ever sure,

To all who to the end endure.

Millennial Star, v1 n1
May 1840

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There are a couple of intriguing things in the hymn that might sound a little strange to the modern LDS ear. The first line of the second stanza, “Be buried with your Lord” sounds a bit protestant (Baptist, I assume)—the only time that the phrase has been used in General Conference in the past 50 years is when someone has died and was buried with an object, or when quoting Paul (Colossians 2:12 or Romans 6:4). The first line of the last stanza, “Come be adopted in” refers to a concept that isn’t emphasized much today (adoption into the House of Israel has been mentioned in Conference just a handful of times since 1950).

But even in the “buried with your Lord” line, as well as in many other lines of the poem, we can read echoes of the description of baptism in Mosiah. Alma’s initial baptism is described as being “buried in the water” (Mosiah 18:14). Baptism is described as a ‘covenant’ (v 13), just as it is in the poem’s next to last line. And the idea that those who are baptized will “keep his commandments” (v 10) appears in the last line of the third stanza, “When with the gospel you comply.”

Of course, to a degree these are all ideas that we might expect of an LDS poem about baptism today; but they weren’t quite as well understood when Pratt penned these lines in 1840. And they served as part of Mormon practice and culture for more than 100 years.

And as an adjunct to a lesson like this one, I think these lines may have some life in them yet.

To my surprise, after I was ushered into the room, the bishop’s counselor extended a calling to me. He explained that it was church policy to obtain the husband’s permission before his wife even found out about the calling.

When my husband remarked dubiously that this is the first time he’d ever encountered such a policy, the counselor said (somewhat defensively) that they had been instructed to do it that way by the stake president. According to him, it’s part of an ongoing effort to “help the brethren step up to their responsibility to preside in their homes.”

He didn’t go into the details of how exactly being given control over whether their wives get the opportunity to serve at church helps men to be better husbands and fathers.

Needless to say, I found the exchange depressing, not to mention insulting. To my later chagrin, I didn’t say a whole lot other than accepting the call, partially because I was just floored by it happening in the first place, and partially because I wasn’t sure what TO say.

I found it embarrassingly awkward to be treated like a child who needs permission. Because, um, last time I looked at our relationship, my husband was not my parental authority figure. But how childishly petulant does it sound to stamp your foot at the bishop’s counselor and say, “don’t treat me like a child!” It was obvious to me that at least to this particular man, I would sound like a power hungry insubordinate and a bad wife if I objected to what he evidently considered a divinely sanctioned policy.

My husband and I had a lengthy discussion about it afterward, during which I was eventually able to roll my eyes and laugh ruefully at what had happened, and pass it off as a relatively minor annoyance.

Until this morning, that is, when I was sitting in the pew after Sacrament Meeting, and a brother in the ward came up to our row. He said hello to me, and then promptly turned to my husband, to ask if it was all right if I substituted in his primary class next week. I just stared. To his everlasting credit, my husband simply responded, “she’s her own person. Ask her.”

You’d think I would have come up with some kind of appropriate response myself after my experience a few weeks earlier, but again, I merely said I would do it (once the good brother’s attention had finally wandered back to me, that is, of course).

After I finished crying on my husband’s shoulder in the hallway over the whole indignity of it all, I started contemplating what would be the best/most appropriate response to a situation like this (since it appears that at least in this ward, it happens frequently).

Should I just grin and bear it? Is there some kind of church policy that might actually somehow be construed to mean that a wife needs her husband’s permission before she undertakes to do any sort of positive action? To what ridiculous ends will this lead us? When I call a Relief Society sister to ask if she’ll take dinner to someone in the ward, should I really be speaking with her husband first to see if it’s OK with him?

I should add that the second story did actually have a happy ending. My husband had a lengthy discussion with the offending primary teacher, who said he had only been trying to be respectful (of whom? The “man of the house,” I suppose). He said it was just like when he had asked his wife’s father for her hand in marriage. Sigh. Just like.

I’m not sure if he was convinced by my husband’s energetic explanations, or just thought we were weird, but I was very touched when this same brother came up to me after church and apologized for offending me. He said that he was sorry he had made me feel bad, and grateful he had now been educated so he wouldn’t do it again. He was really humble and sincere, and it made me feel so much better to have my feelings acknowledged. It also made me feel a little hopeful that change might actually sometimes happen, at least on the individual level, if we approach it in a constructive way.

So with that said, what is the most constructive way? What would you say if your husband were asked to speak for you (or you were asked to speak for your wife)? What have you said in situations like these? Do you think it’s more effective when speaking to an intentional or oblivious chauvinist for my husband to point out that he thinks it’s inappropriate to be treated like he owns me? Or should I say it myself?

At 394 pages with 12-point font (not the tiny print one sometimes finds in reference volumes) it might seem a little light for the genre, but that adds to what you might call the readability of the book. The first of four major sections presents six 10-page essays covering the entire span of the Mormon experience, essentially a short but dense course in LDS history:

• Foundation: 1820-1830, by James B. Allen
• Development: 1831-1844, by Stephen C. Taysom
• Exodus and Settlement: 1845-1869, by Ardis E. Parshall
• Conflict: 1869-1890, by W. Paul Reeve
• Transition: 1890-1941, by Thomas G. Alexander
• Expansion: 1941-Present, by Jessie L. Embry

As this list illustrates, the authors for essays and articles in the book include seasoned scholars, younger scholars, and independent scholars (those without a present academic affiliation). Bloggers are well represented: Julie Smith (Mormon Scripture), Nate Oman (Mormonism and Secular Government), Brad Kramer (Local Worship), J. Stapley (Mormon Missiology), Samuel Brown (Mormonism as Restoration), Blair Dee Hodges (Correlation), Bruce A. Crow (Mormon Battalion), just about everyone on the perm roster at Juvenile Instructor, and of course Ardis, who like her co-editor wrote about a dozen short entries as well as the longer historical essay listed above.

I am not so bold as to try to critique any particular entry or even the selection of topics — I’m sure there were dozens of potential entries that weren’t included simply because you can’t include everything in a single volume. A full table of contents for the book is available at the book’s Amazon page. The fourth section of the book, Issues, is really outstanding: 23 short articles of about five pages each on such topics as Mormonism and Blacks (by Margaret Blair Young and Darius Aidan Gray), Mormonism and Race (Armand Mauss), Mormonism as a World Religion (David Clark Knowlton), and Non-Mormon Views of Mormonism (Jan Shipps).

I hate to spend the whole review speaking in generalities without sharing a little bit of the content of this enlightening volume, so I will end with a second list giving one surprising fact or statement drawn from the biographical articles on each President of the LDS Church. I guess I’m hoping to show that these aren’t just Sunday School summaries — there really is a lot of information in the book that many readers, even well-read ones, will not have encountered before. For all presidents except Joseph Smith, I will note the years served as President of an organized First Presidency, along with the author of each article.

1. Joseph Smith, 1830-1844 (Jed Woodworth) – Joseph Smith “is not known to have preached a sermon before he organized the Church of Christ, in April 1830.”
2. Brigham Young, 1847-1877 (John G. Turner) – When Brigham moved to reorganize a First Presidency in 1847, several of the Twelve, including Orson Pratt, opposed the action.
3. John Taylor, 1880-1887 (Ardis E. Parshall) – John Taylor’s last public address was on February 1, 1884; after than, he was “on the underground” (in hiding, at various locations) until his death in 1887.
4. Wilford Woodruff, 1889-1898 (Thomas G. Alexander) – While serving as the president of the St. George temple, Woodruff introduced “vicarious temple ordinances for deceased men and women not related to Mormons — particularly national and international political, literary, and scientific leaders.”
5. Lorenzo Snow, 1898-1901 (Alan L. Morrell) – The Church was almost bankrupt when Snow took over leadership in 1898; he issued Church bonds and set the expectation that every Latter-day Saint would pay a full tithing. Church finances turned around within a few short years.
6. Joseph F. Smith, 1901-1918 (Christopher C. Jones) – The man who really ended polygamy with the Second Manifesto of 1904, part of a successful transition from the confrontational stance of the 19th-century Church to the accommodationist stance (my term) of the 20th-century Church.
7. Heber J. Grant, 1918-1945 (W. Paul Reeve) – Grant served as President almost 27 years and oversaw the emergence of two defining features of modern Mormonism: during Prohibition, “a more stringent implementation of the Word of Wisdom”; and during the Great Depression, the Church Welfare Program.
8. George Albert Smith, 1945-1951 (Gary James Bergera) – Married just after his 22nd birthday, he and his wife together served an LDS mission to the southern states from 1892 to 1894.
9. David O. McKay, 1951-1970 (Gregory A. Prince) – A clean-shaven monogamist and “the first college graduate to serve as president.” Along with Ernest Wilkinson, “transform[ed] BYU from a small, bucolic college into the largest private university in the United States.”
10. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1970-1972 (Matthew Bowman) – Church Historian from 1921 to 1970, his 1938 publication of The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith made many of Joseph’s teachings “available to the general public for the first time.”
11. Harold B. Lee, 1972-1973 (J. B. Haws) – Mr. Correlation.
12. Spencer W. Kimball, 1973-1985 (Jacob W. Olmstead) – Kimball successfully opposed “efforts to deploy the MX missle in the Great Basin in 1981.” And there was that revelation in 1978.
13. Ezra Taft Benson, 1985-1994 (J. B. Haws) – To the surprise of some, “the preeminent focus of his ministry [as President of the Church] was the Book of Mormon,” not anti-Communism. See the 1988 Conference talk Flooding the Earth With the Book of Mormon.
14. Howard W. Hunter, 1994-1995 (W. Paul Reeve) – The first LDS President born in the 20th century; also the shortest tenure (8 months, 26 days) of any LDS President.
15. Gordon B. Hinckley, 1995-2008 (Gary James Bergera) – Called as an additional counselor to President Kimball in 1981, “Hinckley guided the Church as de facto president” during Kimball’s last years in the mid-1980s, then again acted as de facto president during President Benson’s decline in the early 1990s.
16. Thomas S. Monson, 2010-present (Gary James Bergera) – President Monson spearheaded efforts to build an LDS temple in East Germany (completed 1985) and to secure permission for LDS missionaries to proselyte there (1988). At the time, these were stunning developments, coming several years before the Berlin Wall came down (1989) and Germany reunified (1990).

My advice: beg, borrow, or buy this book. You will enjoy it.

In many ways the idea of sealing a testimony in blood is intriguing. It is not, of course, a purely Mormon concept, for it was a frequently discussed concept in the 1800s, usually when discussing the death of Stephen and the other apostles (it is not often used to refer to the Savior). For some reason, the concept seems to have declined in popularity since 1900. Even in Mormonism, the concept of sealing a testimony has declined in general conference talks[1].

While the lesson focuses on other subject, the idea of martyrdom is one that Mormonism is very familiar with. While I haven’t found any poems that talk about Abinadi’s martyrdom, there are many that speak of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom. I’ve included one of these below:

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O give me back my Prophet dear

by John Taylor

O give me back my Prophet dear,

And Patriarch, O give them back;

The Saints of latter days to cheer,

And lead them in the gospel track.

But ah! they’re gone from my embrace,

From earthly scenes their spirits fled;

Those two, the best of Adam’s race,

Now lie entombed among the dead.

Ye men of wisdom tell me why,

When guilt nor crime in them were found,

Why now their blood doth loudly cry,

From prison walls, and Carthage ground

Your tongues are mute, but pray attend,

The secret I will now relate,

Why those whom God to earth did lend,

Have met the suffering martyr’s fate.

It is because they strove to gain,

Beyond the grave a heaven of bliss;

Because they made the gospel plain,

And led the Saints in righteousness.

It is because God called them forth,

And led them by his own right hand

Christ’s coming to proclaim on earth,

And gather Israel to their land.

It is because the priests of Baal

Were desperate their craft to save;

And when they saw it doomed to fail,

They sent the Prophets to the grave.

Like scenes the ancient Prophets saw,

Like these, the ancient Prophets fell;

And till the resurrection dawn,

Prophet and Patriarch—Fare thee well.

Times and Seasons, 1 August 1845

There are some similarities between what Taylor describes here and Abinadi’s situation—the ‘priests of Baal’ aren’t very different from King Noah’s priests and Joseph Smith’s motivation is similar to Abinadi’s—but the connection isn’t very strong. Still the concept of martyrdom is here.

Taylor meant for this poem to be sung as a hymn, specifying in the Times and Seasons that it be sung to the tune “Indian Student’s Lament,” a popular song of the time with the same meter and number of lines per verse. But there are a number of phrases in the poem that are quite un-hymn-like, starting with the very conversational line “But ah! they’re gone from my embrace” and the introduction of a question in one stanza that is only answered in the next (I guess you can’t really stop singing after the second verse, which ends “The secret I will now relate, / Why those whom God to earth did lend, / Have met the suffering martyr’s fate”).

Despite these problems, O Give Me Back My Prophet Dear was put in the LDS hymnal and remained there until it was dropped with the current hymnal in 1985.

Notes

[1] I searched the General Conference Corpus for all forms of the word “seal’ within 4 words of the word “testimony.” 150 of the 228 hits occurred in the 1st half of the period covered by the corpus (1850-2010). The last 40 years of conference talks mention these terms just 23 times.

John Taylor

Often LDS lessons based on the scriptures cover such a broad range of topics in the scriptures given that the stated theme of the lesson doesn’t capture what is going on in the scripture passages. While this lesson is certainly one of those times, the poem I found is really about the stated theme of the lesson: prophets, seers and revelators.

In early Mormon poetry and writings, this usually referred to one person: the Prophet Joseph Smith. Where today we talk more about prophets generally, for the first 30 years of Mormonism, the prophet mostly referred to Joseph Smith specifically. And it is in the context of Joseph Smith that we learn their ideas about what a Prophet or Seer or Revelator is.

The specific verses in the book of Mormon readings for this week that refer to the seer are Mosiah 8:13-17, in which Ammon tells Limhi both that a seer can read the plates that Limhis’s people have found and something about what a seer does. In the following poem, poet and future prophet John Taylor not only lauds Joseph Smith the prophet and seer of his time, but also gives some characteristics of what a seer is and what he does:

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The Seer

by John Taylor

Written for the dedication of the Seventy’s Hall (Nauvoo),
and dedicated to President Brigham Young.

The seer;—the seer;—Joseph the seer—

I’ll sing of the Prophet ever dear:

His equal now cannot be found,—

By searching the wide world around.

With Gods he soared, in the realms of day;

And men he taught the heavenly way.

The earthly seer! the heavenly seer,

I love to dwell on his mem’ry dear:—

The chose of God, and the friend of men,

He brought the priesthood back again,

He gazed on the past, on the present too;—

And ope’d the heav’nly world to view.

Of noble seed—of heavenly birth,

He came to bless the sons of earth:

With keys by the Almighty given,

He opened the full rich stores of heaven,

O’er the world that was wrapt in sable night,

Like the sun he spread his golden light.

He strove,—O, how he strove to stay,

The stream of crime in its reckless way—

with a mighty mind, and a noble aim

He urg’d the wayward to reclaim:

‘Mid the foaming billows of argry strife—

He stood at the helm, of the ship of life.

The saints;—the saints; his only pride,

For them he liv’d, for them he died!

Their joys were his;—their sorrows too;—

He lov’d the saints;—he lov’d Nauvoo.

Unchanged in death, with a Saviors love

He pleads their cause, in the courts above.

The seer;—the seer—Joseph the seer!

O, how I love his memory dear,

The just and wise, the pure and free,

A father he was, and is to me.

Let fiends now rage in their dark hour;—

No matter, he is beyond their power.

He’s free;—he’s free;—the Prophet’s free!

He is where he will ever be,

Beyond the reach of mobs and strife,

He rests unharm’d in endless life,

His home’s in the sky;— he dwells with the Gods,

Far from the furious rage of mobs.

He died; he died—for those he lov’d,

He reigns;—he reigns in realms above,

He waits with the just who have gone before,

To welcome the saints to Zions shore;

Shout, shout ye saints—this boon is given,

We’ll meet our martyr’d seer in heaven.

Meant to be sung to the tune: The Sea.
Times and Seasons, 1 January 1845

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While the scriptural account seems pretty straightforward in its description of a seer, Taylor’s poetry seems to suggest a bit more. He describes Joseph as “The earthly seer! the heavenly seer,” which, to my mind, suggests some kind of role in the hereafter for seers, although I have no idea what exactly that might be. He later suggests one possible role in the hereafter, saying that “He pleased their cause in the courts above” and in the very end, “He reigns;—he reigns in realms above, / He waits with the just who have gone before, / To welcome the saints to Zions shore.” Elsewhere, Taylor’s description of a seer is more straightforward. He says of the seer: “He gazed on the past, on the present too;— / and ope’d the heav’nly world to view.”

Taylor is not the most accomplished of early Mormon poets (Parley P. Pratt, Eliza R. Snow and John Lyon were better, IMO), but his poetry was far from ignored. This piece was meant as a hymn and, according to the instruction in the published version, was meant to be sung to the tune of a popular song, “The Sea,” probably the tune used for a song by Barry Cornwall which became popular in the 1830s and which was republished multiple times in popular newspapers and magazines. Taylor’s poem uses the same meter, but has a stanza twice the length of Cornwall’s song, so, I surmise, the tune was meant to be repeated. The text was first printed as a single sheet, apparently provided to those attending the dedication, which lasted seven days from December 26, 1844 to January 1, 1845. The same setting was the included in the Times and Seasons. It was later published in the Nauvoo Neighbor and the Frontier Guardian.

As a hymn, it was included in the Liverpool Hymnal of 1847, and was republished in LDS Hymnals through the 1948 book, but was not included in the most recent (1985) hymnal. Somewhere among the string of hymnals, the tune “The Sea” was dropped, and an arrangement of the tune “Neukomm.” by Ebenezer Beesley was used instead, which required changing the order of some of the words and repeating some of the lines.

While I have no idea why it was dropped from the hymnal, I wonder if it wasn’t because it concentrated too much on Joseph Smith. I know we have some hymns that still do this, but this hymn seems to go a bit beyond what the others do, IMO (although I haven’t studied that issue in depth). It is also not the strongest hymn, so it could be that it was dropped simply because there was so many better hymns, and hadn’t gained a place among those beloved hymns that would be impossible to replace.

Still, The Seer does provide a window on the role of a prophet, seer and revelator, and so would be interesting to contemplate along with Mosiah 8:13-17 in the lesson.

[Disclaimer: In what follows I offer a brief phenomenological sketch of human intimacy. Read on at your own peril.]

In chapter 12 on “Immutability and Impassibility” in The Attributes of God, Ostler claims that: “In the view I am proposing here, the ultimate moral criteria is the intrinsic value of creativity exemplified in its highest form in personality realized in full personhood” (386). Or again, taking Martin Buber’s phenomenological analysis of “I/Thou” versus “I/It” ways of relating to other people as a frame, Ostler says:

The highest good consists precisely in the relationship that is created between two persons who fully and properly value each other through entering into relation with one another. This relationship is accomplished precisely in entering into the emotional life of the other so that the “other” enters into the shared life of the lover. God enters into this relation constituted as a Thou by taking our very experience and value into his life. God penetrates our being and envelops us in his being. He allows us to enter into him and become a part of his experience just as he enters and induces, to the extent we value him and accept his love, sublime unity and joy.

The most analogous human experience is the intimate agape united with eros of husband and wife in sexual union. The spouse who is properly valued in the relationship is a source of greatest value and the most extreme pleasure and satisfaction known to mortals; but a spouse who is used as a mere thing in such an intimate relationship is a whore. (386)

I think Ostler is on to something here, but I wonder if, in general, we’re not still too Platonic (in all applicable senses of the word) and/or too German-Romantic, in our discussions of sex.

Does sex – in all its raw emotional, material, and spiritual intimacy – really involve bodies as vanishing points for the reciprocal interpenetration of two free subjects? If I am clearly both a subject (a “Thou”) and an object (an “It”), does sex unfold as the union of two increasingly transparent Thou’s?

I wonder if we’d be better off inverting the frame.

Granted the profound intimacy of sacred sex, what is the character of this intimacy? What is the most obvious thing we can say about sex?

Sex (especially sex as sacrament) is about bodies and aspects of bodies.

Take pornography as a counterpoint. From the perspective of consumption, the problem with pornography is not that it involves too much flesh, too much objectification, too much materiality. The problem with pornography is that it disconnects sex from the difficulty and demands of real bodies and substitutes air-brushed spectacle instead. Pornography is spectral and it is consumed by ghosts.

Being a body, being human is not simple. We are objects, not just subjects. And our bodies, as objects, vastly exceed the grasp of our subjectivity. A defining phenomenological feature of my lived experience of my own flesh is its strangeness, its opacity, its willfulness, its quasi-autonomy.

What’s to be done?

Sex, it seems to me, is that one place where we jointly confront, negotiate, and celebrate precisely this being-body, this being-more-than-a-subject. The intimacy of sex hinges on the intimacy of a shared confession that we both are bodies and that these bodies we share are, even to ourselves, a mystery.

In sex, we are smack at the intersection of divine purposes we don’t quite understand and a blind animal drive 3.5 billion years in the making. In sex, we are two Thou’s joined in the intimacy of a shared It.

Practicing intimacy, do you find the other person’s thoughts and desires and feelings growing increasingly transparent, obvious, accessible? Or do you find instead that the intimacy spreads from a common willingness to trust in both the opaque mystery of the other’s body and your own?

Is sex an emptying of the body’s opacity? Or a joint emptying of selves into the opacity of these bodies?

Sacred sex is sacred because, in all material tenderness, it allows our It-ness to actually take center stage.

Or so it seems to me.

With respect to theology, we might then ask two related questions:

1. If Ostler is right that sacred sex is as close as mortals analogously get to divine union, then is the centrality of our intertwined but opaque bodies an accidental feature of this sexual intimacy, a feature that will eventually be purified and rendered translucent in divine light? Or is this dark matter essential to sex being what it is?

2. Further, on what basis should we decide what’s accidental and what’s essential to this intimacy? Scripture? Metaphysics? Phenomenology? Biology? All of the above? Which in light of which?

John Lyon

The culmination of King Benjamin’s address to his people was the “mighty change” they experienced which led them to repent and covenant to keep the commandments and to seek to do good continually. While the scripture says that they “had no more disposition to do evil,” given the later history of this people, we might surmise that the disposition didn’t last. Nor did Benjamin expect that his people would remain sinless, but instead they would likely need a disposition to seek and obtain forgiveness. I suspect that one aspect of the “mighty change” described in the Book of Mormon is exactly that, seeking forgiveness for errors and sin.

So, perhaps we can see something of this “mighty change” in our attitude toward forgiveness. Do we quickly recognize error and seek forgiveness, or do we delay? Mormon poet John Lyon sees this kind of attitude in his poem on forgiveness:

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Forgiveness

by John Lyon

When I against the Lord transgress;

And none but he can know my secret sin,

Then I’ll repent, and strive his love to win;

By doing all that I’ve forgot to do,

And more devoutly, righteousness pursue;

Then shall I have forgiveness.

And should my folly cause distress,

To father, mother, sister, brother, friend;

I’ll run with speed, confess to each, and mend

The sinful breach, by new obedience I

All loss restoring, through the vile offence;

Then shall I have forgiveness.

Should love demand that I confess,

For open sin a public sense of grief;

I’ll humbly yield, if this should bring relief,

No matter what may be the penance; still,

I’ll strive the law of trespass to fulfil,

To gain from all, forgiveness.

Then shall my brethren love, and bless,

The penitent with heartfelt joy again,

While the recording angels sound the strain

Through brighter spheres: the sinner is forgiven,

And mercy, radiant with the smile of heaven,

Exults in God’s forgiveness.

Lyon

Kilmarnoch, December 11th, 1846.

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In many ways I like John Lyon better than his better-known contemporary and poetic foil, Eliza R. Snow. His poetry is often lighter and more approachable, covering subjects like currency and the death of a canary. Born in 1803, Lyon was largely self-taught, only learning to read at the age of 25, but nevertheless soon becoming an active literary participant, working for seven different newspapers in his native Scotland and assisting in the production of several anthologies of the work of other poets. He joined the LDS Church in 1844 and published his first LDS poem, “Man,” in the Millennial Star in 1845. By 1849, Mission President Orson Spencer lauded his work as “genius” and providing “unmistakable melody and power.” Lyon served an LDS mission in England, published a volume of poems, The Harp of Zion, and then immigrated to Utah, where he was made a patriarch in 1872. His Utah poems were published posthumously in the volume Songs of a Pioneer.