Yesterday I went up to Salt Lake to watch the new Joseph Smith movie with my family. I’d already seen it once before, back in January, and the second time round it was even better. At the beginning of the movie there’s a quote from Emerson that says, “The need was never greater for new revelation than now.” And I’ve found the source. I don’t have my Emerson book with me, but in the October 2004 General Conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a talk, Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, in which he said this:
Later, the incomparable Ralph Waldo Emerson rocked the very foundations of New England ecclesiastical orthodoxy when he said to the Divinity School at Harvard: “It is my duty to say to you that the need was never greater [for] new revelation than now. The doctrine of inspiration is lost. . . . Miracles, prophecy, . . . the holy life, exist as ancient history [only]. . . . Men have come to speak of . . . revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. . . . It is the office of a true teacher,” he warned, “to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.” (The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (1940), 75, 71, 80.)
Good quote. Throughout the movie, I couldn’t help but be filled with a love for Joseph, for who he was and how much he did for humankind. There’s no one on earth, next to Jesus Christ only, that I admire and look up to as much as Joseph Smith. No, not because I’ve been a member of the Church all my life and grew up in the faith, but because I’ve read his words, and there’s light in them. It’s the light that shines forth from God, his signature if you will, and it’s clearer in Joseph’s teachings than anywhere else I’ve seen other than the words of Christ himself. The story itself is miraculous (a 14-year-old boy seeing God and Christ in a grove, and then several years later translating an ancient record in 60 days by the power of God?), and it would certainly be hard to believe if there weren’t the handprint of the Lord on it. Either Joseph was completely, utterly insane, or he was telling the truth. There’s no middle ground. “I saw God the Father and Jesus Christ” is either the truth or a lie, nothing in between. Joseph’s sincerity and dedication to the cause even through persecution and martyrdom seal the truth of his testimony. But what if he was wrong, misinformed, off his rocker? Impossible, I say — look at what he did, what he said, what he wrote. His are not the words of a madman. Truth and light shine out from them like the rays of the sun at dawn.
[tags]Joseph Smith, Emerson, LDS, Mormon[/tags]
Comments
This quote comes from Emerson’s Divinity School Address. It’s really an excellent speech. Emerson delivered this address to senior class at the Harvard Divinity School, cautioning them against ignoring the divinity of Christ or acting as though God was dead. Very powerful words against the modern idea that the reports of Christ’s miracles and divinity are exaggerations, and that he should he held only as a “great moral teacher.”
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