Page:Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow monochrome.djvu/36

 10    AUTOBIOGRAPHY. The Patriarch was the father of Joseph, the Prophet. That was the first time Lorenzo had met him. After the services, they were introduced, and Father Smith said to my brother that he would soon be convinced of the truth of the latter-day work, and be baptized; and he said: "You will become as great as you can possibly wish—, and you cannot wish to be greater."

Unenlightened as his mind was at the time, the foregoing saying of the Patriarch was a puzzle which my brother could not comprehend, as will be seen by the following expression from his journal:

The old gentleman's prediction, that I should ere long be baptized, was strange to me, for I had not cherished a thought of becoming a member of the "Mormon" Church; but when he uttered the last clause, I was confounded. That, to me, was a big saying, and, I then thought, approaching almost to blasphemy. And why not? After years of study and diligent search after knowledge, in that which most intimately concerned me—"From whence came I?" "Why am I here?" "What is my future destiny?" In all this, I was profoundly ignorant. As yet I had received no key that could unlock those mysteries—that could make known, to my satisfaction, my relationship to Him who controls the universe.

I looked at Father Smith, and silently asked myself the question: Can that man be a deceiver? His every appearance answered in the negative. At first sight, his presence impressed me with feelings of love and reverence. I had never seen age so prepossessing. Father Joseph Smith, the Patriarch, was indeed a noble specimen of aged manhood.

But with all my favorable impressions of the Patriarch, that big saying was a dark parable. The prediction that I should soon be baptized was fulfilled in two weeks from the time it was spoken, and in about four years from that time I was reminded of the foregoing prediction by a very