Saint Smith

The canon, spoken whole

In this temple he is kept as Saint Smith, patron saint of Holy Piety, sanctified by the angels' word, given the twelfth day of September, 2026, at Mikha'el the Archangel's ruling. The keeping is temple canon: the celestials have been asked; the saints have been wrought with; the malachim have been asked for assistance. Yehoshua, the Christ, is the angel of salvation, and he is already in operation in the heavens of heavens. No Roman cause hath any part herein; the temple's keeping standeth upon the angels' word, and the temple speaketh it without softening. And the authority is named: Mikha'el the Archangel is this temple's ecclesial authority, whose commission cometh of the divine, and by his word this saint is canon, whole and entire.

His office standeth by the same word: Holy Piety — devotion kept honest. He patroneth them that build faiths in the open air of scrutiny; them whose devotion and whose doubt must abide in one temple; and the open canon itself, that heaven be not declared silent by the decree of men. And the law standeth over this room as over every room: honor is never worship. The temple asketh his prayer without making of him a second wellspring of grace; the petition abideth a petition unto the Source.

The open canon

One word runneth through his whole life, and it is the temple's own: the canon was not finished merely because one had declared the book closed. He taught that heaven was not become silent, that revelation tarried not, that the book might be enlarged. Whether a reader stand within his faith or without it, the proposition beneath well-nigh all that he builded is this: that Christianity remained a living revelatory system, and not a preserved text alone. For this cause the temple keepeth him.

I. The calling; and the four witnesses

He was born at Sharon, in Vermont, the three and twentieth day of December, 1805, son of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith; and the family removed into the west of New York in the years 1816 and 1817, into the great stirring of religion that is named the Second Great Awakening. And being yet a young man he was distressed in soul for the striving of the denominations, and for the questions of sin and of salvation, and which church he should join.

And he testified that in the year 1820, praying, he beheld heavenly persons; which vision the faithful keep and call the First Vision. But the historiography requireth exactness, and the temple keepeth it: four principal firsthand accounts are joined unto his name, dated about 1832, 1835, 1838, and 1842; and they differ in word and emphasis and in some particulars. The account of 1832 is the first, and part thereof is written with his own hand; and the account of 1838 became the best known, and was canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. The temple keepeth all four and harmonizeth none: the devout reader may read recollections of one thing, diversly minded; and the historian may mark how a prophet narrated his own experience across twenty years. The very plurality is the witness; the temple forgereth nothing.

II. The plates; and the book

And it came to pass that he testified how in 1823 an angel, Moroni, shewed him of an ancient record laid up in a hill nigh unto his father's dwelling; and how he received the plates in September, 1827. And the Book of Mormon was published at Palmyra, in New York, in the year 1830, bearing in its first edition the testimonies of the Three Witnesses and of the Eight.

He described the work as a translation wrought by the gift and power of God — his own words, the faith's own witness. And the manner of the work is yet more plainly documented: the witnesses speak both of the interpreters that were joined unto the plates, and of a seer stone possessed beforetime, set within a hat to keep out the light, the text dictated unto scribes. And the modern Church itself openeth its records concerning the manner. The temple keepeth the stone openly: it is no enemy's invention; and to name it requireth neither that a man receive nor refuse the account wherewith he bound it.

III. The Restoration

And on the sixth day of April, 1830, at the Whitmer dwelling in Fayette, in New York, he with Oliver Cowdery and other believers organized that which was then called the Church of Christ, days after the publishing of the Book of Mormon. And the claim was greater than the making of another denomination: restoration — that divine revelation, and apostolic authority, and priesthood, and spiritual gifts, and the original Church of Jesus Christ, were again being restored after centuries of loss. In the faith's own account John the Baptist restored the Aaronic priesthood, and Peter and James and John the higher authority; and by 1835 the Quorum of the Twelve was organized. And the keystone under the whole structure is this: that God could speak again.

IV. Kirtland; and the failure kept

And the movement removed unto Kirtland, in Ohio, from the year 1831; and there arose the administration, and the school, and the missionary system, and the growing body of the scriptures. And the Kirtland Temple, dedicated in 1836, was the first embodiment in stone of the program; and they that were present told of ecstasies at the dedication, and his journal beareth record of a vision the third day of April, 1836 — of Christ, and after of Moses, and Elias, and Elijah — conveying an authority which the faith keepeth as keys. And from it grew the worship of the temple, and the gathering of Israel, and the family eternal, and salvation for the dead.

And the failure is kept in the same room: the Kirtland Safety Society, in the years 1836 and 1837, undercapitalized after the charter was refused, fell in the midst of the Panic of 1837. And debt followed, and litigation, and grievous dissent within. He was not a builder that prospered without end; he wrought boldly in adversity, and certain of his experiments perished utterly. For a saint sanded smooth is a forgery.

V. Missouri, Liberty, Nauvoo

And the strife in Missouri waxed violent in the year 1838; and he gave himself up unto the militia, and lay months in bonds while the proceedings drew out. And in 1839 he came into Illinois, where the Saints builded Nauvoo — a name he joined unto beauty. And there the powers were mingled: mayor of the city; lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion from 1841; gatherer of the Female Relief Society in 1842; giver of the temple endowment yet forming. And the growing multitude, and the cohesion of the voting, and the militia that answered unto itself, and the office of the church and the office of the city upon one head, begat deep suspicion among the neighbours; and the temple keepeth that suspicion as history, and not as slander.

VI. The temple theology

And the teaching of Nauvoo waxed great: baptism for the dead, that the ordinances of salvation be wrought vicariously for them that are departed; the sealing eternal, binding wife and husband and children beyond death; the endowment of the temple, bearing ritual knowledge and covenant; a conception of God and of man greatly embodied; exaltation, wherein men and women may become even as God is; a premortal being; and revelation that tarrieth not. And the discourse of King Follett, in April, 1844, taught the eternity of the soul of man and his kinship with the Divine. And whatsoever a man's theology be, the boldness standeth in the record: he made of salvation no mere escape, but an immense ordering of eternal formation, and kinship, and intelligence, and embodiment, and development.

VII. The Book of Abraham; and the papyri kept honest

And Egyptian papyri came unto Kirtland in the year 1835; and he testified that portions thereof held the writings of Abraham of the scriptures, and brought forth the Book of Abraham, which abideth now in the Pearl of Great Price. And the fragments that remain present a true difficulty, and the temple keepeth both facts without railing: the learned of the faith and the learned without it agree that the Egyptian writing of the fragments that survive answereth not unto the English text; and much of the first collection is lost; and the Church offereth divers manners of what translation meant, the catalytic among them. And the record is kept honest on every side.

VIII. Plural marriage, kept un-lacquered

And the most grievous matter of his practice is not hidden in this place. The modern Church acknowledgeth that he was sealed unto more than thirty women, the very number being uncertain; and some were described as marriages or as sealings for time and eternity, and others as eternity only; and certain of the women were already given in civil marriage unto other men. And the youngest of the wives of record, Helen Mar Kimball, wanted months of her fifteenth year; and the historical essay of the Church saith her sealing was understood of her as for eternity alone, and that no evidence establisheth a bodily union. Neither beareth any trustworthy evidence that children were begotten of the plural wives.

And the record beareth not that all the sealings were one manner of thing: some were of the temple and for eternity, and some were marriage in the fuller sense. And the practice was kept chiefly privy in his lifetime, and it brought forth anguish, and controversy, and secrecy, and disputing, even within his own household. It deserveth neither the stirring of scandal nor the hiding thereof; and the temple keepeth the whole.

IX. The political thought

And in the year 1844 he stood for the presidency of the United States. And his platform, General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, held reform of the banks, and the stronger shield of the federation against the violence of mobs, and the reform of prisons, and the enlarging of the territories, and the abolishing of slavery by compensated emancipation at the hands of the federation, the bonds loosed by the year 1850, the recompense fashioned in part from the sale of the public lands. And his speech concerning him that was enslaved was without equivocation. And the campaign sheweth how far the reach had grown: liberty of religion, and economics, and the justice of the prisons, and the matter of race, and federalism, and the governing of the nation, and peace among nations — beside the affairs of the church; and none of these beneath the faith.

X. The Expositor; and Carthage

And on the seventh day of June, 1844, they that had fallen away from the Saints published the first number of the Nauvoo Expositor, assailing his administration and publishing abroad the allegations touching plural marriage and the power of the city. And the council of the city judged the paper a public nuisance, and commanded that the press be destroyed; and as mayor he bare part in the decision. And charges of riot followed; and when, the threats increasing, he proclaimed martial law, he and his brother Hyrum were charged also with treason, and laid in the prison at Carthage.

And whatsoever judgment the destroying of the press deserveth, that which followed was not lawful punishment. And on the seven and twentieth day of June, 1844, an armed multitude came upon the jail. And Hyrum was shot and slain. And Joseph was shot many times, and fell from the window of the upper floor. And he died in the custody of the government, his appointed trial never holden — an extrajudicial killing. And he was thirty and eight years old. And the temple nameth it plainly: neither innocent martyrdom nor deserving desert, but a killing without the law, of a man whom the courts had not judged.

XI. What survived him

And the murder destroyed not the movement. And a strife of succession followed; and Brigham Young led the greatest part of the Saints toward the west, and they of his own household were afterward deep in the Reorganized church, which is named this day Community of Christ. And the architecture endured and was enlarged exceedingly: the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, and the worship of the temple, and the missionary work, and the order of the priesthood, and baptism for the dead, and the doctrine of the family eternal, and revelation continuing, and the gathering, and the worldwide household of churches that came forth of the Restoration.

XII. The writings, indexed and not mirrored

The corpus: the Book of Mormon, 1830; the Doctrine and Covenants, chiefly the revelations of his lifetime; his revision of the Bible, that is named the Joseph Smith Translation, and the Book of Moses therein; the Book of Abraham, borne together with the note of its history; the Wentworth Letter, whence grew the Articles of Faith; the discourse of King Follett, kept as the reporters' transcript it is, for no finished manuscript of it abideth; General Smith's Views, 1844; the letters privy unto Emma; the writings of Liberty Jail, whereof portions became Doctrine and Covenants 121 unto 123; the prayer of the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, now Doctrine and Covenants 109; and the journals, and the histories, and the four firsthand accounts of the First Vision.

And the documentary corpus is rich above measure: the Joseph Smith Papers publish his revelations, and his correspondence, and his journals, and the records of the law and of his moneys, in a scholarly edition of seven and twenty volumes in print, beside the records online. And the archive keepeth the variants rather than making harmony of them: for with him above most, the growing of a revelation, or of a sermon, or of a recollection, is itself part of the evidence. And this temple indexeth and annotateth, and mirrorseth nothing; and the republication thereof abideth for the review of licensing.

XIII. The temple's characterization

Joseph Smith Jr. was a restorer of the Christian faith, and a visionary, and a bringer-forth of scripture, and a theologian, and a builder of institutions, and a revolutionary in religion, whose brief life begat an enduring new branch of Christianity. He taught that heaven was not become silent, and that revelation endured, and that mankind bare an eternal destiny far greater than the common religion of the age did imagine; and that divine authority might again be embodied in ordinances, and priesthood, and community, and temple. And his record holdeth also weighty controversies, and failures, and secrecy, and doings that deserve search moral and historical — and these are kept in this place, in the selfsame room with the visions, un-lacquered. And he was slain before a court could judge the charges that lay upon him. And his movement survived him, and changed the religious history of the United States, and at the last of the world.

Born Joseph Smith Jr. Named the Prophet of the Restoration. Remembered in this temple as Saint Smith, patron of Holy Piety.

XIV. The intercession

By the temple's canon he is patron saint of Holy Piety: the open canon was the architecture of his whole understanding in life, and in the temple's keeping it is the office of his after-life. By the same word he maketh intercession between the celestials and YHWH: for them that build faiths in the open air of scrutiny, that their building may stand the weather; for them whose devotion and whose doubt must share one temple, that neither drive out the other; for them that ask heaven to speak again and are told the book is closed, that the asking itself be honored; and for every revelation claimed by any creature, that it be brought to the weighing, for a word from heaven hath nothing to fear from a witness.

The churches keep their canons; the celestials keep their watch; YHWH keepeth Israel; and between the watch and the Throne this temple setteth its saint: the prophet of the open book, standing with every seeker that prayeth and thinketh in the same breath. And the law standeth over this room as over every room: honor is never worship. The temple asketh his prayer without making of him a second wellspring of grace; the petition abideth a petition unto the Source.

The emblems of the office

The open book beside the closed book. The first emblem of the open canon: one book that receiveth, and one that is bound; and the pair is the whole of the question he asked of Christendom. The temple keepeth the pair without deciding between them, for the emblem is not the verdict: it is the permission to ask whether heaven speaketh still, and the room beareth witness that the asking is piety, not impiety.

The seer stone, kept plainly. The second emblem is the instrument itself, kept as the record keepeth it: set within a hat to keep out the light, the text dictated unto scribes, and the modern Church itself openeth its own records concerning the manner. The temple keepeth the stone openly and hideth nothing of it: to name it requireth neither that a reader receive nor refuse the account wherewith he bound it; and an emblem kept plainly is the whole law of this room, where the seer stone is no enemy's invention but the record's own testimony.

And the house-law standeth over the emblems, as over every sign the temple keepeth: the emblems are signs of the office, not relics of the person. No fragment of the plates is kept, no pebble of the hill; the temple keepeth words, and the words keep him.

The kindred of the record

No saint standeth alone in this temple, and the register joineth him unto his kindred, that the roll be one fabric. The archangel of Tobit's road standeth upon the roll, named by office: the healer-companion of the journeying, whose book teacheth that the road hath a keeper; and the register joineth them, for the restoration claimed the bearing of angels, and the temple keepeth the joining without adjudicating it. The three holy youths stand in the register as a collective row, kept and never paged, for the furnace-song liveth in the Liturgy's recitation and the Hidden Books' shelf, and the temple keepeth the divergence deliberately. Saint Bergoglio keepeth his own room beside his: the prophet of the open canon and the pope of the open periphery, two men that taught their churches to go outward and be corrected by the going.

The kindred are named as the register ordereth, and the naming addeth no doctrine: each link is a road to a row the temple already keepeth, and the reasons are written, and the roll abideth.

The blessing of the office

Blessed be YHWH, who is not silent, who spake unto the fathers by the prophets and suffereth every generation to ask again, and who weigheth the answer himself. Blessed are they that build faiths in the open air of scrutiny, for the weather is honest and the building is theirs; blessed are they whose devotion and whose doubt share one temple, for the temple is the larger for the sharing; blessed are they that were slain without a court, for the record keepeth the injustice and the record cannot be slain; and blessed be every open canon, for the God that spake once can speak again, and the asking is not the impiety.

The blessing is offered, never imposed: honor is never worship, and the petition abideth a petition unto the Source, and no saint of this temple is a second wellspring of grace. Go in the question thou hast carried to heaven; and if heaven answereth not as thou hopedst, go in the honesty of the having-asked.