In looking for a literary work to go with the second Gospel Doctrine lesson this year, I was struck by some of the parallels between what Nephi experiences in the first few chapters in the Book of Mormon and what the early Mormons went through in traveling to Utah. Many of those we call the pioneers left comfortable homes, like Nephi and his family, and traveled to a “promised land” “into the wilderness.” And perhaps half or more of the pioneers also had to travel over an ocean to reach the promised land.<\/p>\n
Despite the literary possibilities in this parallel (largely unrealized as far as I know), the poem I found this week is from well before the Mormon trek. While it isn’t specifically about the Book of Mormon text, it does talk about the need for obedience something like Nephi’s “I will go and do the things the Lord commands” statement. And, it addresses the idea of traveling into a promised land through the wilderness\u2014but the group doing the traveling is “Pilgrims,” which I assume is a generic reference to religious peregrines rather than to the Massachusetts settlers of 1620.<\/p>\n
Like many Mormon poems before the Mormon trek, this one has a millennial flavor to it, an expectation of the return of Christ. Surprisingly, it was first published anonymously in the second issue of the Evening and Morning Star, in July 1832, making this one of the earliest published Mormon poems\u2014an something quite prescient of the later trek and travails of the pioneers. Like the other poems in the Evening and Morning Star, it was meant to be sung in Church services, and may have been intended for the first LDS hymnal, but in the end it was not included.<\/p>\n
[I should note that while this poem theoretically could have been written by a non-Mormon, I haven’t been able to find it published anywhere but in a Mormon publication\u2014and in very few of those.]<\/p>\n
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In looking for a literary work to go with the second Gospel Doctrine lesson this year, I was struck by some of the parallels between what Nephi experiences in the first few chapters in the Book of Mormon and what the early Mormons went through in traveling to Utah. Many of those we call the pioneers left comfortable homes, like Nephi and his family, and traveled to a “promised land” “into the wilderness.” And perhaps half or more of the pioneers also had to travel over an ocean to reach the promised land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-school-lesson-book-of-mormon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18318,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18315\/revisions\/18318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}