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Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842

Source Note

Times and Seasons (, Hancock Co., IL), 15 Oct. 1842, vol. 3, no. 24, pp. 943–958; edited by JS. For more complete source information, see the source note for Letter to Isaac Galland, 22 Mar. 1839.

Historical Introduction

JS, assisted by and , served as editor for the 15 October 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons, the twenty-fourth and final issue in the third volume. It is highly unlikely that JS played any significant role in writing editorial content for this particular issue, because he spent much of October in hiding in Henderson County, Illinois. Nevertheless, as the newspaper’s editor, he was ultimately responsible for its content. This was the last issue published under JS’s editorship.
The non-editorial content in the issue, which is not featured here, included an installation of the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” and several articles reprinted from other newspapers on the impact of violence and disease in various places around the world, including the outbreak of cholera in Europe, the slaughter of Chinese forces by British soldiers in China, ongoing labor protests in , and the destruction in Cuba caused by a recent storm.
Editorial content in this issue included commentary on biblical history, a rebuttal of rumors that JS had fled to , and criticism of published comparisons of the Bible with the writing of William Shakespeare. Additional editorial content included a defense of JS’s decision to hide from law enforcement officials who were seeking his arrest and his extradition to ; a passage countering opinions that the Latter-day Saints should flee , Illinois, in order to avoid future persecution; and an article presenting evidence for Christianity’s general falling away from the primitive church described in the New Testament. Furthermore, the editors included comments on reports of ’s lectures in , a description of a pamphlet wrote about the church written in German, an introduction to a brief history of Australia, and a request for church members to renew their subscriptions to the newspaper.
Note that only the editorial content created specifically for this issue of the Times and Seasons is annotated here. Articles reprinted from other papers, letters, conference minutes, and notices, are reproduced here but not annotated. Items that are stand-alone JS documents are annotated elsewhere; links are provided to these stand-alone documents.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    See Historical Introduction to Times and Seasons, 1 Sept. 1842.

  2. [2]

    JS, Journal, 7–29 Oct. 1842.

  3. [3]

    Notice, 15 Nov. 1842.

  4. [4]

    “History of Joseph Smith,” “Passing Events,” “Butchery in China,” “Disturbances in the Provinces,” and “Great Gale at Havana,” Times and Seasons, 15 Oct. 1842, 3:943–948.

  5. [5]

    See “Editorial Method”.

Asterisk (*) denotes a "featured" version, which includes an introduction and annotation. *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 *Notice, 11 October 1842 Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 History, 1838–1856, volume D-1 [1 August 1842–1 July 1843] “History of Joseph Smith” Letter from “Old Fifty,” 15 October 1842 Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842

Page 955

true answer. Men cannot, by the spirit of men, show the true way to heaven; the experience of every age plainly proves this. The religion of Jesus Christ, taught by himself, and practiced by his Apostles under the miraculous “power from on high,” began to loose its efficacy, power, simplicity, and glory that surpasseth understanding, when men, so far exceeded the heavenly rule as to use their own opinions, notions, and judgments, in preference to the revealed will of God. To elucidate this principle, we shall bring in a quotation from [Johann Lorenz von] Mosheim, relative to the apostacy of the church in the fifth century, viz:
The doctrines of religion were, at this time, understood and represented in a manner that savored little of their native purity and simplicity. They were drawn out by labored commentaries beyond the terms in which the divine wisdom had thought fit to reveal them; and were examined with that minuteness and subtility that were only proper to cover them with obscurity. And what was still worse, the theological notions that generally prevailed, were proved rather by the authorities and logical discussions of the ancient doctors, than by the unerring dictates of the divine word.— And again—this procedure of the Roman tribunal—by which, the authority of certain lawyers—a pleurality of voices among them—or the sentiments of the more learned and illustrious, were made to decide the point in dispute—was, in this century, admitted as a standing law, both in the deliberations and councils, and in the management of religious controversy.—Reason, and even common sense, were, in some measure, excluded from every question; and that was determined as right and true, which appeared such to the greatest number, or had been approved by doctors of the greatest note in the preceding times. The acts of the various councils, yet extant, manifestly show that his was the case.
It will readily be seen by the above extract, that men, and not the comforter as prohecied in John, governed the teachings of those who stood as watchmen, or shepherds, for the kingdom of our Lord. Lamentable is the fact, too, from this (5th) century down to the present nineteenth, that not one solitary sample of a better state, or more perfect unity, of the church can be found upon the pages of history: no; more division, more distraction, more persecution of one sect against another; more bloodshed; more folly; more pride, and less spirit; less veneration of sacred things; less brotherly love; less virtue; less temperance; less fruits of humility; and less charity, are visible in each succeeding year, in every country, throughout christendom.
Since the comforter left men, and pride and ambition have ruled the way wherein some have endeavored to enter into heaven, in a greater or less degree, wealth, and not a “pure heart” has swayed the destinies of what pretended to be the “church:”—and the prince of this world has spread his dominions in all the earth; and his wife, as the whore of Babylon, with the multiplicity of daughters playing the harlot among all nations, have left but a small chance for eight hundred millions of people to escape the curse pronounced by the prophet Malachi. Well may the Apostle James exclaim—
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.— Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemed and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
 
————
MORMONISM—, &c.
“Five feet nine inches high, with black eyes, black hair sprinkled with grey, dark complexion, and rather a thin face,—such, as nearly as we could judge by lamp light, was the aspect presented by this would be notable personage, the other evening, in Marlboro’ Chapel, . We hardly knew, after all, what to think of him and his purposes. His manner does not impress us, as that of one actuated by any very high and noble impulses. Yet, that all he is saying and doing is falsehood and forgery we are not at all inclined to think. That he read sundry documents that were genuine we have no manner of doubt. That his original instigation to what he is doing, is the purest in the world, we must confess we do not believe.— However, be his motives what they may, we [p. 955]
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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842
ID #
8158
Total Pages
16
Print Volume Location
JSP, D11:155–174
Handwriting on This Page
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Footnotes

  1. [62]

    See Luke 24:49.

  2. [63]

    See Philippians 4:7.

  3. [64]

    Mosheim was a German Lutheran church historian and theologian who lived in northwest Germany during the eighteenth century. In his many published writings, he mixed the natural-law principles of the Enlightenment with historic customs and a belief in supernatural revelation. (Stroup, Struggle for Identity in the Clerical Estate, 50–79.)

    Stroup, John. The Struggle for Identity in the Clerical Estate: Northwest German Protestant Opposition to Absolutist Policy in the Eighteenth Century. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1984.

  4. [65]

    Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, 2:39–40.

    Mosheim, Johann Lorenz. An Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern; in Which the Rise, Progress, and Variations of Church Power, Are Considered in Their Connexion with the State of Learning and Philosophy, and the Political History of Europe during That Period. Translated by Archibald Maclaine. 2 vols. Baltimore: Plaskitt and Cugle, 1842.

  5. [66]

    See John 14:26.

  6. [67]

    See Isaiah 56:10–11.

  7. [68]

    This is a reference to Satan. (See John 14:30.)

  8. [69]

    See Revelation 17:5.

  9. [70]

    Eight hundred million people may have been the Times and Seasons editors’ estimate of the world’s population at that time. During the 1840s, the global population was probably somewhere between 954 million and 1.2 billion people. (Livi-Bacci, Concise History of World Population, 25.)

    Livi-Bacci, Massimo. A Concise History of World Population. 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley- Blackwell, 2017.

  10. [71]

    See Malachi 3:8–9.

  11. [72]

    See James 5:1–8.

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