Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 3/Number 2/Comments on Romans 15

For whatever things were written, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.—Romans 15:4.

Various methods have been employed, at different periods and by different persons, to convey useful knowledge to mankind. The knowledge most useful and most important to man is that of morals and religion. These sciences afford not only the most pleasant and elevated subjects of meditation, but evidently possess a very powerful influence over human happiness, both in the life that now is, and that which is to come.

The principles of morality and religion, have by some, been delivered in short plain significant sentences, and have been left to produce their effect by their own weight and evidence.—Public teachers have at other times taken pains to explain and enforce these principles; have demonstrated their reasonableness and utility; and have exhibited the criminality, the danger and the misery of neglecting or transgressing them. The charms and graces of poetry have been employed to set off the native modest beauties of truth and virtue, and allegory has spread her veil over them, in order to stimulate our ardor in the pursuit, and to heighten our pleasure in the discovery. The penetration of genius, the enchantment of eloquence, and the creative energy of fancy, have successively lent their aid to those gentle guides of human life, those condescending ministers to human comfort.

But in the lapse of time, and waste of years, thousands of their pretended advocates have run before they were sent, multiplied words without that wisdom which comes from above, and darkened counsel without conveying that knowledge that is necessary to salvation.

The historian's page has been unfolded, ages and generations elapsed and gone, have been made to pass in review; the lessons of religion and virtue have been forcibly inculcated, by a fair and impartial disclosure of the effects, which the observance or neglect of them, have produced on the affairs of men. And the pencil of history has enriched the canvass, not only with men in groups, but selecting distinguished individuals, delineating them in their just proportions, and enlivening them with the colors of nature, has exhibited a collection of striking portraits, for entertainment and instruction. In contemplating these, we seem to expatiate in a vast gallery of family pictures, and take delight in comparing the various features of the extensive kindred as they resemble or differ from each other, and through the physiognomy piercing into the heart, we find them though dead, yet speaking and pleasing companions.

The holy scriptures possess an acknowledged superiority over all other writings in all the different kinds of literary composition which is called Biography or a delineation of the fortunes, character and conduct of particular persons; and whether the historians be themselves the men they describe and record, or whether from proper sources of information, they record the lives and destinies of others.

Now the professed purpose of all history is without fear or favor, without partiality or prejudice to represent men and things as they really are,—that goodness may receive its just tribute of praise and vice meet its deserved censure and condemnation. It is evident this end is most easily and most certainly attained when our attention is confined to one particular object, or to a few at most; this may be judged of by the feelings and operations of the mind in the contemplation of other objects.

When from the summit of some lofty mountain we survey the wide extended landscape; though highly delighted we feel ourselves bewildered and overwhelmed, by the profusion and variety of beauties which nature spreads around us. But when we enter into the detail of nature; when we attend the footsteps of a friend through some favored beautiful spot, which the eye and the mind can take in at once; feeling ourselves at ease with undivided, undistracted attention we contemplate the whole, we examine and arrange the parts; the imagination indeed is less expanded but the heart is more gratified; our pleasure is less violent and tumultuous, but it is more intense, more complete and continues much longer; what is lost in respect of sublimity, is gained in perspicuity, force and duration.

Take another instance:—The starry heavens present a prospect equally agreeable to every eye. The delights of a calm serene evening, are as much relished by the simple and unlettered, as by the philosopher. But who will compare the vague admiration of the child or the clown with the scientific joy of the astronomer, who can reduce into order, what to the untutored eye is involved in confusion: who can trace the path of each little star; and from their past experiences can calculate to an instant of time their future oppositions and conjunctions?

Once more:—It is highly gratifying to find ourselves in the midst of a public assembly of agreeable people of both sexes and to partake of the general cheerfulness and benevolence.—But what are the cheerfulness and benevolence of a public assembly compared with the endearments of friendship and the meltings of love?

To enjoy these we must retire from the crowd and have recourse to the individual. In like manner whatever satisfaction and improvement may be derived from general histories of mankind, which we would not be thought by any means to depreciate; yet the history of particular persons, if executed with fidelity and skill while it exercises the judgement [judgment] more severely, so it fixes down the attention more closely and makes its way more directly and more forcibly to the heart. To those who are acquainted with this kind of writing, much need not be said, to convince the superior excellence of the sacred penmen. Biographers merely human, uninspired, necessarily lie under many disadvantages and are liable to many mistakes. The lapse of time is incessantly thick[e]ning the veil which is spread over remote persons and events. The materials of history lie buried, confounded, and dispersed among the ruins of antiquity; and cannot be easily distinguished and separated, even by the eye of discernment and the hand of dishonesty, from the rubbish of fiction. And as they are not always furnished by truth and nature, so neither are they always selected with judgement [judgment], nor employed with taste and discernment.

Besides, every man sits down to write, whether of ages past or the present, of characters near or remote, with a bias upon his mind, and this he naturally endeavors to communicate to his reader. All men have their favorite periods, causes, characters, which of course, they strive, at any rate, to embellish, to support, to recommend. They are equally subject to antipithies [antipathies] on the other hand, under the influence of which, they as naturally, strive to depress, to expose, to censure what they dislike, and as men write and speak, so they read and hear under the influence of prejudice and passion. Where the historian's opinions coincide with our own, we cheerfully allow him to be in the right; when they differ, without hesitation we pronounce him to be mistaken.

Most of the writers of profane ancient history are chargeable with an absurdity, which greatly discredits the facts they relate, and reduces their works almost to a level with fable.—They attempt too much, they must needs account for every thing; they conjecture when light fails them, and because it is probable or certain that eminent men employed eloquence on important public occasions, their historians at the distance of many centuries without record or written document of any kind whatever, have from the ample store of a fertile imagination, furnished posterity with the elaborate harangues of generals, statesmen and kings. These it is acknowledged are among the most ingenious, beautiful and interesting of the traces of antiquity which they have transmitted to us: What man of taste could bear to think of stripping these elegant performances of one of their chief excellencies? But truth is always injured by the slightest connexion with fable. The moment I begin to read one of the animated speeches of a hero or a senator, which were never composed, delivered or written, till the historian arose, I feel myself instantly transported from the real theatre of human life into a fairy region. I am agreeably amused, nay delighted; but the sacred impress of truth is rendered fainter and feebler on my mind; and when I lay down the book it is not the fire and address of the speaker, but the skill and ingenuity of the writer, I admire. Modern history more correct and faithful than ancient, has fallen however into an absurdity not much less censurable. I mean that fanciful delineation of character, with which the accounts of certain periods, and the lives of distinguished personages, commonly conclude; in which we often find a bold hypothesis hazarded for the sake of a point; and a strong feature added to, or taken away from a character, merely to help the author to round his period.

Finally a great part of profane history is altogether uninteresting to the bulk of mankind. The events recorded are removed to a vast distance and have entirely spent their force. The actors exhibited are either too lofty to admit of our approach with any interest or satisfaction to ourselves; too brutal to be considered without disgust or too low to be worthy of our regard. The very scenes of action are become inaccessible or unknown; are altered, obliterated or disregarded. Where Alexander conquered and how Caesar fell, are to us mere nothings.

But on opening the sacred volume, all these obstructions in the way of knowledge, of truth, of pleasure, disappear; length of duration can oppose no cloud to that intelligence with which "a thousand years are as one day, and a day as a thousand years." The human heart is there unfolded to our view by him that knows what is in men, and whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good. The men and the events therein represented are universally and perpetually interesting, for they are blended with the "things which accompany salvation," and affect our everlasting peace. There the writers, whether they speak of themselves or of other men are continually under the direction of the spirit of all truth and wisdom. These venerable men, though subject to like passions with others, there speak not of themselves, but from God, "for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and all scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

When we study the lives, the characters of men, we are almost imperceptibly led to contemplate our own. Lost to ourselves, lost to our friends, lost to the society in which we live and lost to the world, will be our time spent in reading the history of other men and other times than these in which we live, if we do not shun the views and follies, imitate the examples, and emulate the virtues of these characters our better judgment teaches us to admire.—Our fathers were, we are. The curtain has dropped, and has hid ages and generations past from our eyes. Our scene is going on, and must likewise speedily close. We are not perhaps furnishing materials for history.—When we die, obscurity may spread the vail of oblivion over us, but let it be remembered that every man's life is of importance in himself, his family, his friends and in the sight of God his heavenly Father. They are by no means the best men who have made the most noise in the world, neither are they the worst against whom the shafts of calumny and bitter reproach have spent their force. Actions that have obtained the greatest celebrity have not always been the most commendable in the sight of God. While those springing from a heart actuated by a consciousness of the approbation of heaven, have more frequently been the fruit of modest innocence and retirement, and will remain in oblivion till the searcher of hearts "shall try every man's work of what sort it is." Scenes of violence and blood; the workings of ambition pride and revenge, compose the annals of men.—But piety and purity, temperance and humility, which are little noticed and soon forgotten of the world; are held in everlasting remembrance before God. And happy, (we believe) had it been for many of those, whose names and deeds have been transmitted to us with renown, if they had never been born. Our corruption subdued, is a victory infinitely more desirable and more truly honorable, than a triumph gained amidst the confused noise of ten thousand warriors and as many garments rolled in blood; "for he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." Let us all remember that to be a child of God is far more honorable than to be descended from kings, and to be a saint is a much higher title than hero.

The period is fast approaching when time itself shall be swallowed up or as the revelator expresses it, should be no longer, when Adam and his youngest son will be contemporaries, when the mystery of providence shall be closed up, the mystery of grace finished, and the ways of God fully vindicated to men.

Though wickedness now abounds and the love of many waxes cold, however we may deprecate it, such is yet the fact, and such will be the fact till the arch deceiver is bound and his works swept from the earth.

Notwithstanding iniquity abounds and will abound as we have before remarked, yet that does not lessen the obligation of every individual of the human family.

To govern his passions with absolute away,

And grow wiser & better as life wears away.

W.