ON GATHERING.

Liverpool, October 13, 1847.

Reverend and Dear Sir,—You have doubtless been ready to ask, time and again, why this GATHERING together of such large bodies of Saints? Why can they not stay in their former residences, like other christians? And may they not do more good to their fellow-men by scattering about amongst the people promiscuously? Why, go away off to some distant part of the earth? is not the Almighty God to be found as much in one place as another? Furthermore, says one, it is exceedingly dangerous to community at large to allow any large body of people, of the same faith and doctrine, to assemble themselves in any one place, their influence being rendered formidable by reason of concentration and union.

My dear sir, have not cogitations like these passed through your mind, and been reiterated in your hearing more than once, concerning Latter-day Saints? Delusion! delusion! is reiterated on many sides. What can these Latter-day Saints mean—selling out their possessions at so great a sacrifice, and leaving a comfortable and pleasant home for a far distant land, even crossing the wide Atlantic! Has there been the like fanaticism since the time of the crusades? On the land, hundreds of wagons, yea thousands in all, are seen rolling their whitened canvas over the wide prairies, accompanied by their flocks and herds; and on the ocean a multitude of ships are wafting the inhabitants of distant islands and continents to the same destination!

Now, I propose to meet these inquiries and reflections promptly and fairly. In the first place, if the church is guided by the spirit of revelation, God, the author of all true revelation, knows what is good for his people, and He will not require them to gather without good and sufficient reasons. For the church that is not guided by the spirit of sacred inspiration, is guided by mammon or the devil; for every church will serve God or mammon. Well, says one, I don't believe that God ever did, or ever will, require people to gather together and leave their country and kindred. Aye, indeed; but you believe the Bible, I trust, which informs you not only how God has gathered his people in different periods of the world, but also, that He will gather them together in the dispensation of the fulness of times.

Do I need to remind you, sir, that God required Abraham to rise up and leave his country and kindred, and go in search of a country that he should afterwards show him. He was obedient, and went from one country to another, the Lord being his counsellor and guide. The ancient saints and prophets generally were "strangers" in consequence of being called to leave their home and country. Their obedience to such a call, through faith, constituted them heirs of an inheritance. Abraham became an heir of the country which he was not permitted to possess in time, but he will hold the same in eternity, with a city built upon it according to the counsel of God.

In the dispensation given to Moses, he was required to gather the people out of all the land of Egypt, and take them to the land of Canaan; and what was very remarkable, he was required to slay and destroy the inhabitants, in order to make room for the great gathering of the Hebrews. The children of God and the people of this world cannot dwell together; they are always contrary one to the other.

What fellowship hath Christ with Belial, or believers with unbelievers? The Egyptians could have no fellowship with the Hebrews after they were told that a prophet had sprung up among them. The Hebrews told a marvellous tale about the Lord appearing to Moses in the "burning bush." They pretended to have revelation and work miracles as in the early days of Potipher and Joseph; but this pretension to angels, prophets, and miracles, speedily sundered all ties of harmony and fellowship, and it was necessary for the Hebrews to leave the country. God required it of them, and even ordered them into an unpromising wilderness, to be subject to hunger, and thirst, and many hardships.

The same spirit of opposition to miracles, prophets, and angels exists now; and the righteous can no more keep the ordinances and commandments of God now, without persecution even to death from the world, than the Hebrews could do it. For the same reason Lot gathered out of Sodom —even angels could not stop a night in Sodom without being mobbed; accordingly, the Lord commanded him to gather up so many as would go with him and flee to the mountain. His reason for the gathering in this case was, that He could not properly punish the Sodomites, unless the righteous were gathered out of the city in the first place. Likewise, when Jerusalem was about to be destroyed, Jesus instructed his disciples to flee to the mountain.

It was persecution that scattered the primitive Saints abroad in the days of Jesus. Jesus had taught Paul and Peter, that the Saints could not be preserved on the earth, and the kingdom built up, without the Saints were gathered together in one. He told them, absolutely and unequivocally, that he should gather the disciples in the day of restitution. Such was their sense of the immediateness of gathering, and of the second coming of Christ, that they were troubled when the disciples were gathered, lest the day of the Lord was at hand; but Paul disabused them, and told them that there must be a "falling away" before the notable day of the Lord should come.

Paul informed his brethren, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, God would gather together in one, all things both in heaven and upon earth and under the earth. John speaks of the same, probably as the day of the great battle of God Almighty, Jesus signified that He would gather his people, the elect, even if he had to send his angels to the four corners of the earth to bring them, after the manner in which he sent to Sodom to bring Lot out of it to a place of safety. He declared he would gather the wheat into the garner, and the tares into bundles to be burned. The prophets, too, long before the meridian of time, saw with enrapturing vision, the sons coming from afar, and the daughters from the ends of the earth.

Isaiah says, "the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see, all they gather themselves together, they come to thee; thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then shalt thou see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged, because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows? Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the corners of the earth."

The gathering of Saints to one place is necessary in order to preserve their genealogies, and to secure to them those inheritances, the title to which must be substantiated by legitimate records, kept in the archives of the house of God. Whenever God has had a people. He has been careful to instruct them to keep an accurate record of marriages and the issues of marriage; from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, and thence to David down to Jesus Christ, the genealogy must necessarily be preserved. Says David, "God setteth people in families as a flock." "He arrangeth them in families." But if these families intermarry with those who do not keep the laws of God, nor conform to his ordinances, the records of genealogy are soon obliterated from the knowledge of men, and the proof of a legitimate title to inheritance is thereby extinct; and unless Saints are gathered out from the midst of unbelievers, they are more liable to intermarry and become alienated from the ordinances and covenants of the Lord. If Isaac and Ishmael have no records of parentage, how can one claim rights of lineage above another? God will assign rewards to men according to the records of their deserts, and one great pre-requisite to the final restitution of all things, is the reviving and establishing of proper records of genealogy, and covenants, and promises, and patriarchal blessings.

In one instance God had to rescind the marriages of a numerous people, because such marriages, by their issue, would tend to frustrate the grace of God to the righteous, and entail blessings upon a strange people that God designed to curse. The ordinances of the church and institutions of God's house cannot be carried into execution in a land belonging to "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;" because aliens from God will not have the Lord to rule over them. They consider that the laws of God set two against three, and three against two, the father-in-law against the son-in-law, &c.; and so do they have this effect, and always will have it, until the Saints are separated from their adversaries. Before there can be anything like a true, godlike, peaceful millennium, a separation must take place between the righteous and disobedient; even as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, even so must God's will be done with friends and foes on earth, like as in heaven.

Had the Jews received Jesus Christ, He would have set up just such a kingdom on earth as in heaven, and the honest from all nations would have been gathered to his standard. But seeing they would pierce the Shepherd, and scatter the sheep through a long cloudy day, as it had been prophesied of Him and his followers; He, nevertheless, assured his disciples that his people should be gathered, in the latter days, as wheat into the garner. John says to the Saints in the last days, that are scattered among the confused nations of the whole earth:—"Come out of her my people, and be not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues." Here the reason why Saints should come out of other nations is distinctly avowed—"to escape her plagues." The same reason that was assigned why Lot should go out of Sodom.

The idea prevalent that God would inflict all his judgments in one great tremendous DAY, is as absurd as the notion is universal. The famine and dearth were at the command of Elijah. The earthquake that swallowed up Dathan and the company of Abiram, was at the command of Moses. Moses also stretched out his hand as a signal to the accumulated seas to overwhelm the Egyptians, and they obeyed his mandate. But I will not multiply proofs. God will pour out his vials of wrath, and distress the nations till they will learn and practice righteousness; and his people must flee to their appointed hiding place till the indignation is overpast, otherwise they have no guaranty for their safety. The Hebrews were obliged to mark their houses, lest the destroying angel should slay both them and the Egyptians. The Lord God has decreed a consumption upon the whole earth, therefore let the righteous flee to the strongholds of Zion, that are preparing in that land that was promised to the Patriarch Joseph, while it is an accepted time, and the evil days come not.

Jesus cautioned Jerusalem saints to beware of imitating the silly and dilatory part of Lot's wife. The righteous are no more secure from approaching judgments than the wicked, except they obey the commands of God. Even a prophet was once slain by a lion, because he dared to disobey the Lord. No man should neglect any means by which he can be removed, and help to remove others, from those nations that are as inevitably doomed to destruction for rebellion, as the Canaanites of former times.

Sir, we feel the very same extraordinary interest in depositing our very bones in the land of Zion, that the patriarchs formerly felt when they commanded that their bones should be removed, to the country and burying place which God had designated. If there is enthusiasm in this sentiment, sir, it is the enthusiasm of patriarchs and prophets that kept the divine mandates, and knew well the order of the resurrection, and the necessity of having their bones laid on the identical land that should afterwards be their possession and inheritance for ever and ever. Did not the Lord apportion off the land of Canaan to the twelve tribes to be their inheritance for ever? and shall not the one hundred and forty-four thousand in the latter days be equally tenacious to possess the very inheritance that was promised them to be a perpetual possession in time and eternity? There, their bones, like the precious valley of dry bones, will be the guardian care of angels, and in the resurrection stand up like a consolidated army, while the disobedient and ungodly shall be scattered and driven as chaff before the wind.

The aged and infirm among us, fervently desire to carry their bones, while animated with life, to the land of Zion, as an expression of their faith in the promise of God, that he will resurrect them and plant them in that same "heavenly" country which they now seek. What Canaan was to ancient saints and prophets, the land of Joseph will be to the saints and prophets of the last days, and more abundantly. If men have not the spirit of gathering they are blind and cannot see afar off, and are nigh unto burning. The gathering is one great test of faith, by which you may know who is on the Lord's side. Kindred spirits long to congregate together.

The language of Ruth is expressive of the desires of God's people in all ages. "Thy people is my people, and their God is my God, and where thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge." Her sister Orpah could forego the society of saints and the ordinances of God sooner than part with her native country and kindred. A portion of Lot's family saw no wisdom in the gathering until it was too late. Sir, the gathering is the great universal national preacher of the last days. It speaks in trumpet tones out of every nation where it has been commenced. As birds retire before a storm, and fowls before the darkness of night, so the multitudes that go out by sea and land is a practical warning that cannot be mistaken by those that remain.

The nations wonder at the spectacle of such multitudes going out of their midst under the warning voice of Jehovah, and are ready to cry out, who are these that fly as clouds and as doves to their windows? Who are these Latter-day Saints? What is their doctrine, and whither are they fleeing? The sound of the gathering goeth into all the earth. The fear and dread of approaching calamities take possession of the nations. The righteous are being withdrawn apart, in order that the Almighty may stretch out his chastening hand, and inflict his sore judgment upon rebellious nations. There is no room to mistake the faith and sincerity of those whose gathering together is without a parallel for magnitude of enterprise. The Israelites performed a journey that might have been compassed in about forty days, but the Latter-day gathering brings sons and daughters from the ends of the earth.

The great design of Jesus in bringing the righteous to unity of faith and the knowledge of God, is wonderfully facilitated by bringing the righteous together in one place. The ancient Jews were taught of God to build up Jerusalem as a place of gathering; and those whose circumstances forbid them to locate there, either from political or agricultural interests, were required to visit Jerusalem at least three times a year, where they could interchange hospitalities and friendships, and contract matrimonial alliances, &c. Also, in addition to these facilities of union, their baptisms were to be performed in the national font; their marriage rites, and records of genealogy, were to be performed and deposited in the archives of the great Temple of the Lord at Jerusalem.

In this great city of gathering, their frequent and splendid national festivals were to be held from generation to generation. By these multiplied means, the union of Jews became proverbially strong; and their attachments to their nation and kindred, and national rights and usages, became as enduring as their existence. If, perchance, they should be scattered amongst the remote nations of the earth, still the recollection of their journeyings to Jerusalem in social groups—their splendid festivals at the national capitol—their royal affinity with the great and good of God's people—vibrated through their minds with resuscitating power. There it was that the Almighty condescended to reveal his acceptance of their sacrifices, and bless the people from the greatest to the least, and even speak to the people through their High Priest at least once a year.

Now, when God shall build up Zion and his Holy House in the tops of the mountains, and all nations flow into it, will He not appear in his glory? Such a measure of union, and strength of attachment to the Lord and his people, the last days will exhibit as was never before realized on the earth; then will Zion rise and shine, her light being come, and the glory of God being risen upon her—yea, be an eternal excellency and the praise and joy of the whole earth!

Who, sir, can contemplate the glory of Zion, when God shall have gathered his people from the four corners of the earth, and made of them a great nation, an "innumerable company," and blessed them with his own laws and ordinances, binding them together in a new and everlasting covenant, without the most thrilling emotions of love, gratitude, and joy in believing. Break out, O thou inhabitant of Zion, and sing for the glory that shall shortly be revealed; when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of Christ, and the stakes thereof shall no more be thrown down for ever!

Now, sir, in conclusion, may I not say, with all deference to the misguided teachers of modern christianity, that the Lord is performing a marvellous work and a wonder in the greatest of all gatherings since the foundation of the world. He is gathering his righteous hosts from the nations of the earth to one place, and setting his forces in battle array against the powers of darkness, and against all flesh that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And by truth, and by judgments, he will thoroughly cleanse the earth, and overthrow more wickedness in ten years to come, than blind, boasting, self-righteous modern christianity can in ten thousand years.

Please to accept my warmest desires for your present and everlasting peace and welfare.

Your humble servant,

ORSON SPENCER.