StrangJamesJ
1850 01 24
to Frank
Gospel Herald
14 Feb 1850
Vol IV
No 48
pp 286-287
Tags: MAAP Documents, Strang James J., 1850, To Frank, Gospel Herald, 0167
Gospel Herald, 14 Feb 1850, Vol. IV, No. 48, pp 286-287
Baltimore, Md., Jan. 24th, 1850.
Dear Frank: - Last evening I heard Henry Slicer, the famous Methodist preacher,
some years Chaplain to the United States Senate, speak on temperance. He is much
celebrated for talent, none of which I could discover, either in his discourse or personal
appearance. I should take him to be a voluptuous man, and a demagogue. He takes
high rank as a political stump orator. But I cannot imagine that he would be enduced at
all, except that as a popular preacher he has a peculiar influence, such as politicians
are willing to purchase on any terms. In his last evening’s discourse I saw nothing of
even the tact necessary for a popular preacher, even among ranters. But as
temperance is a subject which involves little of mystery in its hell fires, doubtless the
field was not suitable to bring forward his crops.
Babbitt is at Washington trying to puff up Deseret into consequence, but without
much prospect of success. His only hope is in the fact that slavery exists in Deseret,
and in some possible but improbable compromise of that exciting question, it may
possibly receive a momentary consideration sufficient to get him his three dollars a day.
The Elders in the east, as far as I am in correspondence with them, are generally
greatly prospered in their ministry. Those in New York (except the city) and in Canada I
have scarcely heard from. But those with whom I am in correspondence will bring up
one thousand emigrants within the next season, if nothing unlooked for happens to
prevent.
“When the cat’s away
The kittens play.” – Old Saw.
It should read,
“When the cat’s away
The vermin play.”
John E. Page is a brave man. Those who were with him in Missouri will doubtless
all agree as to that. You have often heard him tell of the phrenologist in Boston, who
said he “should be a General, or a preacher.” Accordingly when he got to New York he
mixed the two ideas together, by saying in his sermon that “Jesus Christ was a going to
have a fisty-cuff fight with this generation.” Probably expecting the Lord Jesus to be
Field Marshall, or General-in-Chief, he intends to get a place in his “fisty-cuff fight” as a
Brigadier General at least, by showing himself brave enough to preach down all that he
has ever preached up.
Brewster’s apostacy dates back earlier than Page’s apostolic mission. To preach
up Brewster he must assume that his whole ministry has been in rebellion against God.
After the faithfulness with which he has labored in building up Satan’s kingdom for a
dozen years, he must be eminently qualified just now to purify the kingdom of God.
Truly his course looks to me like the boy who, quarreling with his play-fellows, went to
the henroost and picked up what he found at the bottom and chewed it, to spit in their
faces. If Page can afford to rake up all the musses he has started, for the pleasure of
telling who helped him, I am perfectly content that he should fatten on it. I was never in
any one of them.
How did he puff and blow when McLellin took his present position; denying, as he
now does, baptism for the dead, the authority of the priesthood, and the existence of the
true church for many years past. How many times has he asserted that “if preaching to,
and the baptism of, the dead were not true, the Bible was an imposition, and the religion
it reveals bitter mockery. The ablest works that he has ever published were on the
authority of the priesthood, which he now denies. A series of revelations by which he
professes to have been guided during his whole ministry, have all been false; but he
has now just found the truth in a return to sectarianism. We have no right to be
surprised that these things. Having departed from the faith, he has lost sight of the
divine light. With no light but that of sectarians, he can only preach their doctrine. Truly
and sincerely, James J. Strang.