PREDICTION THAT AN APPARENTLY BARREN WOMAN WOULD GIVE BIRTH TO A SON—ITS LITERAL FULFILLMENT—THAT SON'S REVERENCE FOR THE ELDER WHO MADE THE PREDICTION.

ACCORDING to the Scriptures, prophecy was one of the gift which should characterize the Church in the last days, and thousands can attest that the gift has been enjoyed by the Latter-day Saints to a marked degree.

Under the influence of the Spirit of the Lord many of the Elders have made predictions that have really frightened themselves when they have contemplated them afterwards, for it was only by the eye of the Spirit they could see any probability of their fulfillment.

A case in point is related by Elder C., who filled a mission in England in the early sixties. He, in company with the president of the mission and several other Elders, visited a branch of the Church in which a large number of Saints had made preparations to migrate to Utah, and who desired a blessing under the hands of the Elders before undertaking the journey. It came Elder C.'s turn to bless a. sister who had been married a good many years, but who had no children. She was not perhaps as old as her appearance indicated, but her hair was almost white. In the course of the blessing pronounced upon her Elder C., under the prompting of the Spirit, promised that she should journey safely to Zion and there establish and enjoy a comfortable home, and give birth to a son who would live to call her blessed.

In a spirit of fun the other Elders afterwards jollied Elder C. a good deal about the promise he had made that sister, telling him he had better look at the color of a woman's hair before making her any such extravagant promises as he had in that instance. He was somewhat plagued by their raillery and could offer no defense except to say that the Spirit had prompted him to say what he did. He remembered the promise, but had no means of learning the subsequent history of the sister until a year or so afterward, when, after his return home from his mission, he chanced to meet her husband, who joyfully hailed him with the exclamation, "That boy you promised is born!" But then he added, with tears in his eyes that his wife, who had fondly clung to the promise, was fifty-three years old at the time of the child's birth, and had only lived a short time afterwards, but died happy in the consciousness that the boy survived her, and in the hope that he would indeed live to call her blessed. The parents regarded him as a child of promise, as much so as Isaac of old was, who was born to Sarah in her old age, and named him in honor of Elder C. giving him his christian and surname as well as the surname of his father.

Years afterwards that son, having reached a marriageable age and grown to be a stalwart man, journeyed a long distance with his intended bride to get Elder C., (whom he had never seen, but whom he had been taught from infancy to revere) to perform the marriage ceremony for him, and his ever-increasing posterity will doubtless be taught, as they come to years of understanding, the story of the inspired prediction and its literal fulfillment, as here related.