Times and Seasons (, Hancock Co., IL), 2 May 1842, vol. 3, no. 13, pp. 767–782; edited by JS. For more complete source information, see the source note for Letter to Isaac Galland, 22 Mar. 1839.
Historical Introduction
The 2 May 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons, a periodical published in , Illinois, was the thirteenth number in its third volume.JS purchased the and the newspaper from in February 1842 and was identified as its editor from 15 February to 15 October 1842. Although JS was named as the editor in the 15 February issue, he did not consider himself the editor of the newspaper until the 1 March 1842 issue. , , and others helped JS produce the Times and Seasons from March through October 1842, but JS was directly responsible for the content of the newspaper.
The fifth issue that JS oversaw as editor was dated 2 May 1842 and contained a letter to the Saints from the , urging them to fund the construction of the ; letters from missionaries and church members in the eastern and Europe; an extract of the “History of Joseph Smith,” which was printed serially in the newspaper; and reprinted articles from several other newspapers, including the church newspaper in , the Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star. In addition to this material, the issue also contained editorial content, meaning content created by JS as the editor or his editorial staff for the paper. This content in the 2 May issue included commentaries on articles about mummies, an editorial on the Nauvoo temple, news from proselytizing , commentary on an article about Judaism, and notices concerning temple donations and a position with the printing office staff. Selected editorial content from the 2 May issue is featured here, with individual introductions for each passage.
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.
The Millennial Star was a monthly church newspaper edited by Parley P. Pratt and first published in Manchester, England, in May 1840. (“Prospectus,” Millennial Star, May 1840, 1:1–2.)
fused and choatic mass of unorganized existence; let him hear the voice of truth and power as its first sentence rolls in majesty of wisdom from the lips of Deity; let him behold the first movement of chaos as it begins to come to order; let him contemplate its various workings till the heavens and earth, and man and beast, and plant and flower, startle into conscious being, in all the beauty of joyous existence; let him observe every minute particular of its progress through time, in all its various changes; let him contemplate the changing seasons as they roll in hours and days, and months and years; let his thoughts reach to the starry heavens and view them in all their motions and revolutions—the sun in its daily course, the planets in their annual revolutions, the blazing comet as it moves afar in the wilds of ether, and returns from its journey of a hundred or a thousand years; let him return to earth and view the vegetable kingdom as it blooms and ripens, and falls again to decay in the revolving seasons—the time worn oak of a thousand years as it braves the tempest, or the modest flower whose life is but a day; let him view the animal creation in all its variety as it appears and passes in turn from the stage of action; let him contemplate man, from his infant formation through all the changes of his various life till he returns to dust; let him view the laborious revolutions of the groaning earth and its various inhabitants through all their temporal career, till wearied nature sinks to rest, and worn by slowly rolling years, the earth itself shall die; lastly, let him contemplate all nature regenerated, renewed, and starting into being, while death itself shall conquered be, and immortality alone endure.
The vision ended. Man! what hast thou seen? Answer: Nothing out of the ordinary course; all I beheld was nature moving in perfect accordance with the law of its existence: not one single deviation or shadow of turning from the immutable laws of truth.
But hast thou seen no miracle? Yes; it was all miraculous it was all achieved by the law of light, which was the immediate power of God; but it was all upon the most natural, easy, simple, and plain principles of nature in its varied order; and which to call the most miraculous I know not! Whether it was the creation of a world, the blosoming of a flower, the hatching of a butterfly, or the resurrection of the body, and the making of new heavens and a new earth. All these were so many displays of the power of God.
All these were miraculous.
All these were natural.
All these were spiritual.
All these were adapted to the simplest capacity, aided by the spirit of God.
All these were too sublime for an arch-angel to comprehend by his own capacity without the spirit of revelation.
.
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NOTICE.
Jessee [Jesse] Turpin has been before the of the City of , and is proven clear of the charges prefered against him; restored to full fellowship, and to his former standing in his .
I obeyed, I returned back to my in the field and rehearsed the whole matter to him. He replied to me, that it was of God, and to go and do as commanded by the messenger. I left the field and went to the place where the messenger had told me the were deposited; and owing to the distinctness of the vision which I had had concerning it, I knew the place the instant that I arrived there. Convenient to the village of , Ontario co. New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood; on the west side of this hill not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates deposited in a stone box: this stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all round was covered with earth. Having removed the earth and obtained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the stone and with a little exertion raised it up, I looked in and there indeed did I behold the plates, the and the Breastplate as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement; in the bottom of the box were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I made an attempt to take them out but was forbidden by the messenger and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, neither would until four years from that time, but he told me that I should come to that place precisely in one year from that time, and that he would there meet with me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates. Accordingly as I had been commanded I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews respecting what the Lord was going to do and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days. As my ’s worldly circumstances were very limited, we were under the necessity of laboring with our hands, hiring by days works and other [p. 771]