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Decoupling
Drupal
A Decoupled Design Approach for
Web Applications
—
Deepali Mayekar
 Decoupling Drupal
A Decoupled Design Approach for
Web Applications

Deepali Mayekar
Decoupling Drupal
Deepali Mayekar
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-3320-7 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-3321-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3321-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961562
Copyright © 2017 by Deepali Mayekar
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole
or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the
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Printed on acid-free paper
Contents

About the Author����������������������������������������������������������������������������� vii

About the Technical Reviewer��������������������������������������������������������� ix
Introduction ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xi

■
■Chapter 1: Drupal on My Mind�������������������������������������������������������� 1
Modern Web Applications������������������������������������������������������������������������ 2
Content Management Systems��������������������������������������������������������������� 6
How a Content Management System Works������������������������������������������� 8
Content Creation������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8
Content Entry������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 9
Content Review��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9
Content Approval������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 9
Content Publishing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9
Creation of Content API over HTTP�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 11

Nonfunctional Aspects�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13
Using JSON to Access Content�������������������������������������������������������������� 14
Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 15
Content Preparation Is Key�������������������������������������������������������������������� 16
User Management Is Integral to CMS���������������������������������������������������� 16
Marketing Sites and CMS���������������������������������������������������������������������� 16

iii
 ■ Contents

■
■Chapter 2: Decoupled Drupal�������������������������������������������������������� 19
Multisite������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 19
Advantages of Decoupled Design���������������������������������������������������������� 20
Degree of Decoupling Could Vary���������������������������������������������������������� 21
Using Modules for Decoupling�������������������������������������������������������������� 22
Core������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 22
Core (Experimental) ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23
Field Type ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23
Multilingual������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23
Web Services���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23

Personalized vs. Anonymous Content Management����������������������������� 24

Decoupled Drupal Design: Recap���������������������������������������������������������� 25
Higher Degree of Decoupling���������������������������������������������������������������� 25
Important Announcements on Site�������������������������������������������������������� 29
Stages of Decoupling ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30
WebJars Advantage������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31
Integrating with IoT������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31
Fault-Tolerant Sites������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31
SOLID Principles in Drupal�������������������������������������������������������������������� 32
REST API������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 34
Broadcasting, Live Streaming, Social Sites, and Decoupled Drupal������ 35
Why Decoupled Drupal? Through the Lens of History��������������������������� 36
How Drupal Machine Works������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 36
Module Performance���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37
Third-Party Integration������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37

Pitching Decoupled Drupal and Estimations ���������������������������������������� 38

Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39

iv
  ■ Contents

■
■Chapter 3: Aspects of Drupal�������������������������������������������������������� 41
Use of JavaScript and Content�������������������������������������������������������������� 41
Server-Side Templates�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 44
Personalized vs. Anonymous Content��������������������������������������������������� 45
Release Frequency�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 46
Front End, Back End������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 46
Reservoir����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 47
Content������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 48
JSON API����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 48

Contenta CMS—An API-First Drupal Distribution���������������������������������� 49

Content Modeling in Drupal������������������������������������������������������������������� 49
DevOps�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 50
DevOps Helps��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51
DevOps Reliability, Shareability, and Flexibility������������������������������������������������������� 52
DevOps Best Practices������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53

■
■Chapter 4: The Drupal Headless Ecosystem and Examples���������� 55
Integrating Decoupled Drupal in an Ecosystem������������������������������������ 55
Setting Up Drupal on Pantheon������������������������������������������������������������� 55
V isual Regression Testing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57
GitHub Integration��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58
Workflow Optimization������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 59

Flying High and Sailing Infallibly����������������������������������������������������������� 60

Princess Cruises: The Challenge����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 60
Princess Cruises: The Approach����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 61
Princess Cruises: The Results��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 61
Princess Cruises: Some Observations�������������������������������������������������������������������� 62

v
 ■ Contents

Comparing Drupal and WordPress in a Decoupled Context������������������� 62

Pros for WordPress������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 62
Pros for Decoupled Drupal ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63

Making Drupal More API-First��������������������������������������������������������������� 64

W
 aterwheel������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 64
JSON API Module���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 64
GraphQL and Entity Graph Iterator�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 64

Drupal Is No Longer for Simple Sites���������������������������������������������������� 65

Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 65

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 67

vi
About the Author

Deepali Mayekar has been in the technology field for

17 years and has worked on various technologies. She is
an avid reader and writer of books on technologies she
has used. She is an electronics engineer from Mumbai
University and an Oracle-certified Java programmer.
She has been working on providing solutions using
Drupal for a few years. Her interests include the
Internet of Things, and she specializes in lightweight
applications using separation of concerns.

vii
About the Technical
Reviewer

Gaurav Mishra is an expert in user-interface

development and user-experience design, with more
than 10 years of experience. He provides workshops and
training in UI development, UX design, and Drupal.
Gaurav have played a key role in the success of many
organizations and likes to build products and services
from scratch. He lives in New Delhi, India, and likes to
spend his leisure time with his baby, Yuvika, and his
wife, Neeti. He likes all genres of music, from Indian
classical to club music. Gaurav can be reached at
[email protected] and he tweets at
@gauravmishr.

ix
Introduction

When I started working on Drupal, I experienced the modular Drupal platform, which
could do anything that a modern content management system can do— and much more.
“What else can you do with Drupal?” I always thought whenever I worked with it. Drupal
is popular for its content management application code that has been used across various
industries.
As a web content management system (CMS), Drupal has enabled the creation
of feature- and content-rich web sites for organizations large and small. The strength
of Drupal code and its popularity means that Drupal and headless Drupal can help
you build better applications. Drupal has a very thriving developer community that is
developing new and interesting contributed modules. However, even with the simplicity
of Drupal 8, similar results can be achieved for decoupling the front end and the back
end. You can read about the various levels of decoupling further in this book.
This book focuses specifically on headless, or decoupled, Drupal. I’ll walk you
through the content management system as well as the decoupled architecture and
its advantages across the various aspects of web application building. Finally, this
book answers the question of why decoupled Drupal? I hope this book helps you build
decoupled web applications and reap the benefits of headless Drupal.

xi
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CHAPTER 1

Drupal on My Mind

I was introduced to Drupal in this decade. During this time, I have seen the Drupal
community getting stronger, building new features, and frequently releasing major
versions of the package. After evaluating several tools for content management systems
(CMSs), my connection with Drupal has continued to stay strong and has made me
wonder, what else can we do with Drupal?
The Drupal interface has made building services easy from the very beginning, and
so it’s been very adaptable to stand-alone services as well as lightly coupled applications.
Services such as content authoring, content version management, and content publishing
can all be used independently. Ideally, content management systems are a bundle of these
services interacting within a given context and time. Drupal’s functioning is oblivious
to the database used or to the container and cloud used to deploy the source. Drupal’s
core functionality is sturdy and functions well for use in enterprise systems. Enterprises
including government web sites (for example, whitehouse.gov), college web sites
(University of Minnesota), and media web sites (The Beatles official site) have embraced
Drupal for their content management needs. Many have used Drupal for their complete
web-site management, whereas others have chosen Drupal modules for critical tasks in
the back end. These choices made by IT departments within these companies may change
in the future, but Drupal easily adapts to these changing needs. Drupal’s entire setup takes
no more than a few minutes, and its upgrades are easy and cost-efficient.
A typical enterprise-level web site will not be just a singled-out xyz.com with a
model-view-controller architecture, but will have multiple back-end web applications
to provide for the content's life cycle. This is the modern way of creating a web site, and
we can be sure that the complex back-end systems are not going to be any simpler in the
future. Just as the human mind is able to process various feeds simultaneously and to
make references to the future and the past, the user experience on the World Wide Web is
getting much more complex. The best we can do is to make our internal components of
complex systems simpler and less coupled.
Mobile applications and single-page applications (SPAs) also use Drupal to meet
their content management needs. Such is the reach of Drupal that thriving communities
have ensured that Drupal has touched every possible industry you can think of in the
past decade. From its very beginning, Drupal has had the intrinsic capability to provide
services as Drupal as platform, and that has been the reason for its success in this era of
microservices and REST.

© Deepali Mayekar 2017 1

D. Mayekar, Decoupling Drupal, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3321-4_1
Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Because this book is not an introduction to Drupal, I presume that you are already
familiar with it. If you haven’t worked with it, I expect that you have at considered
replacing your current content management system with Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, or
any other open source package.
In this chapter, you will read about the content management system workflow, its
evolution, and a comparison of monolithic and decoupled design. Drupal has been one
of the first players to embrace decoupled design, and this chapter will take you through its
details.

Modern Web Applications

Whenever stakeholders of large organizations decide to reduce the cost of buying software
(because of the sheer pain of costs rising in proprietary systems with every new feature—
big or small—added to the package), this is an ideal time to consider Drupal. Those
involved in such big decisions should evaluate the power, enterprise-level security, and
features possible within the Drupal world. Drupal is built using PHP, and new modules
are constantly being created with the latest WebJars or Node.js, for example—just as in
other leading open source content management systems such as WordPress or Joomla.
The nature of PHP, a server-side scripting language, is to churn out a feature as quickly as
possible. Drupal has stayed true to its intrinsic nature of building code packages, which
makes the Drupal engine (core) stronger but also pliable enough to add new features.
Many leading content management systems have stood the test of time and
continuously upgraded their systems; most notable are Adobe Experience Manager
and TeamSite. TeamSite has provided strong support via Erlang and XML to the web-
site modernization needs of many companies. But the behavior that irks most people
using monolithic and proprietary content management systems is the long debugging
time required when an issue occurs. Content management systems should play a
critical role in reducing the time required for content to be live and for the content to
be arranged in the web context. This combination of time and space accuracy needs to
be 100 percent correct for any site user, in any locale, at any time. This accuracy that the
content management system delivers helps uphold a company’s brand value, trademarks,
and copyrights as well as its ability to execute marketing strategies on the Web. If either
the timely appearance of the online content or its spatial arrangement does not get
implemented as expected, the organization’s brand image and value are directly affected.
Whoever said that “a picture speaks a thousand words” must have been well versed in
content management systems, because on a web site, for an image to make sense, it has
to be placed in the correct context.
For these reasons, the CMS workflow is designed to be accurate, to deliver online
content on time and within the correct spatial coordinates of your web page or app. A lot
of application engineering is done to make this happen programmatically, requiring a
distribution of responsibilities across the content management team and the information
technology team within a given organization.

2
 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

For example, many leading content management systems enable users to create
beautiful web pages by using interfaces made from Java code that can be easily deployed
to a live site. An expert skill level in the respective tool is needed to curate such pages,
and the team should possess a good understanding of the Java code that runs beneath.
Such teams thus have to master delivering content quickly by avoiding any loss of
communication time between the front end and the back end. Adobe Experience
Manager is a good example of a provider of such heavy applications. The UX features
provided by these types of packages is outstanding, but the features are not always
up-to-date, and many times IT teams have to wait until the features are available in the
tool's product release plan. For example, early in the decade, some content management
system packages were not REST compliant or compatible with leading social sites, and
this was a setback for companies using these older versions of tools to render content.
With Drupal, such delays in feature releases are minimal, and Drupal upgrades are quick.
Product companies building content management systems were working hard to
make their products that were using the monolithic design focused on adding more
control to the controller of such applications, while not effectively providing a continuous
evolution of the user experience and microservices. The features and modals that
Bootstrap (www.webjars.org) has been able to offer recently are admirable, and many
web sites wanted to take advantage of these developments. These WebJars are client-side
libraries (for example, jQuery and Bootstrap) packaged into JAR files. Drupal is different,
and its architecture provides an all-encompassing change: microservices and REST-based
services are encouraged within the Drupal community, and it’s possible to use Drupal in
a decoupled manner for content management. Drupal has well-separated modules, and
each module can work independently, with few (or acceptable) dependencies on the core
modules. One of the sturdy modules we will discuss in this book is the Workflow module,
which is the backbone of Drupal’s content management workflow.
If needed, Drupal can also be designed and programmed to run monolithically.
However this is not mandatory, and depends on the discretion of the enterprise
application design team. As in other monolithic applications, debugging Drupal errors
is difficult. After configurations/code is fixed, a test run is needed that can be costly,
because organizations must regressively test many modules before and after the
impacted code. In a monolithic Drupal environment, the efforts will pile up on this design
flaw, and the ability of programmers to churn out new modules and be up-to-date with
newer and trendier user experiences will gradually diminish.
Such delays in the development of web sites and user interfaces create an
environment of anxiety for senior management in the IT department. Alternatives to
proprietary and formerly favorite CMSs are put on the table for consideration of an
upgrade or replacement. Drupal, an open source package for content management
systems, has proven a savior; without resting on its past laurels, it has also been
promoting headless, or decoupled, Drupal.
Figure 1-1 compares monolithic and decoupled design.

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Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Figure 1-1. Decoupled vs. monolithic

4
 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Figure 1-1. (continued)

Decoupled design in Drupal is encouraged because it is not enough to reuse code;

organizations should focus on reusing content as well. This concept of reusing content
is possible with decoupled Drupal. Sometimes decoupled Drupal is also referred to as
headless Drupal. The concept is the same.
The organization you represent may be global and spread across locales, but a
certain percentage of its enterprise application’s elements will be shared. For example,
when you start writing a new enterprise application, 20 percent of the content (including
the logo, header, and footer) may be common among different sites hosted and supported
by your enterprise. However, with time, this percentage of shared content may increase to
60 percent, and the need will arise to provide for the content life cycle in a more efficient

5
Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

manner. Organizations make hosting decisions for their new business sites based on how
much shared content needs to be maintained. In these cases, Drupal has the advantage
with its adept workflows and content versioning.
By using decoupled Drupal, three critical risks can be reduced or completely
eliminated: the cost of setting up new content management, the manual effort of entering
content (this can sometimes be automated, though that’s not always recommended), and
the possible loss or hacking of content
Decoupled Drupal has a single point of entry and exit for the content during the
content's life cycle. The content does not exist unless it is entered into the Drupal content
management system. When it is deleted or unpublished from the CMS, it ceases to exist in
the context of the web application. Thus Drupal provides a secure and time-to-live-based
environment for the content during its life cycle. Due to this secure advantage (a single
point of entry and context-based storage), many organizations use decoupled Drupal for
content storage and version management. In addition, Drupal stands out by providing
something more: with its ability to store metadata, it can store the organization’s
trademarks, copyrights, and other intellectual property. These intellectual property
libraries can be made searchable and easily accessible through their organization in
decoupled Drupal. This kind of outreach to various industries, from personal blogging to
patent management, is possible only with decoupled design.
The Drupal platform is built such that it allows innumerable facets of content to
be stored, and it is up to the Drupal architects and designers to pick and choose which
attributes of the content they want to store as well as the publishing timeline. The data
between content can also be linked with few configuration changes. The workflow for the
content life cycle is built around the specifics chosen during design. Workflows should be
designed by taking the business needs into consideration as well as the Drupal coverage
of those needs. Workflows evolve like any other process and are not set in stone. So, the
provision to bypass certain steps in the workflow should be made using administrative
rights. You will read more about a typical content management workflow in this chapter,
but content management and decoupled Drupal are not limited to a single workflow.

■■Note Monolithic design is not a good design to build if you have frequent new additions
to the user experience. On important junctures—movement to the cloud, application
containerization, and upgrades, for example—having a monolithic design may help to answer
a few questions, but testing the main controller flow for all conditions is expensive for IT
departments. Use this book to weigh the pros and cons using Drupal’s decoupled design.

Content Management Systems

Content management systems (CMSs) have been around for more than a decade. In
the early days of mainframe computers and UNIX, content for order processing, data
warehouses, and other applications was mainly text characters; during login and major
junctures of the application, users would see text characters arranged to form the interface.

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 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

With the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Web gaining precedence over
deeply connected systems, an era of web sites began in which images, decorated text,
animation, and videos became an integral part of web site existence. Fault-tolerance was
elevated, and replication was no longer a sin. Classified generally as content data, this was
initially built inside the application server.
But as the application server started becoming overloaded and the content evolved,
content creation tasks were isolated from content management. Furthermore, image-
editing tools and audio/video-editing tools were used to create rich, interactive content.
And now this content needed to be adapted to various locales and to numerous devices
that would be used to interact with it. Responsive content was needed by everyone. Thus
began the era of characterized by an indomitable need to use content management
systems for any global site.
Figure 1-2 shows one of the first videos that was uploaded on YouTube in 2005.
Notice the quality of the video and the thought process compared to more recent
videos. This example is presented just to bring home the point that we have made huge
advancements in the types of content we view today as compared to a decade ago. The
change has been drastic, and content management systems evolved to adapt to the
changes.

Figure 1-2. One of the first videos on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw)

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Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

This video was hardly 18 seconds long. This and many other videos uploaded at that time
were short, and the video was blurry. YouTube launched a new era of video content becoming
bigger and better. The earlier Flash and HTML animations slowly bowed out of the Web.

How a Content Management System Works

Just as a book needs chapters, indexes, and an engaging book cover, a content
management system is many such books sewn together, each making a reference to
the other. Because of this interconnectivity and complexity, the number of features,
functional and nonfunctional, increases, and these features cannot be developed through
just a model-view-controller application.
The functional features are as follows:
• Content related
• Content creation
• Content entry
• Content review
• Content approval
• Content publishing

• API related (Service layer)

• Creation of content API over HTTP
The nonfunctional aspects of a content management system are as follows:
• Logging: Leaving an audit trail of who changed the content, or
digital rights management (for example, copyrights)
• Security: In a distributed environment, managing security
and preventing denial-of-service attacks to the subscribing
applications
Point cuts: Monitoring endpoints and providing and
1. 
maintenance

Content Creation
Content should make an impact on the viewer. In this first content-related step,
content leaps out as an idea. Eventually, content goes through a complete idea-design-
implementation cycle, but it starts as an idea. During the idea phase, we imagine the
impact of the content by considering its potential success as part of a marketing strategy,
the environmental changes that the content could bring, and the sales targets that it
could help meet. Many companies outsource this activity to external creative agencies.
The IT team handling content management in your organization needs to work closely
with these agencies and marketing teams in order to understand the content idea and to
launch clear timelines. It helps to be involved in the idea stage of content creation.

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 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Content Entry
After content is received by the organization (often as delivered by the creative agency),
the content management team needs to add that content into the CMS tool (Drupal,
in this case). The content is entered based on the certain specifications (indicated by
a template ort style guide) that were agreed upon by the collaborating teams before
the content’s creation. The spatial arrangement of the content needs to be verified in a
production-like environment according to the specifications. This task of checking the
correctness is called content review.
The people who enter the content during this stage are called content entry actors.
Generally, these are internal members of the organization who specialize in lightweight
HTML, CSS, and video content. They should be able to work with internal and external teams.

Content Review
During content review, the CMS team can send the content back to previous steps with
objections. However, the objections should be stated precisely, with clear mention of
the problematic content name, content type, content location (expected), and the actual
issue/s. Sometimes the creative agencies may not consider the importance of the content’s
reusability. However, the reviewer needs to be keep the focus on the organization’s needs
and should build a strategy around reusing and building continuity in content.
The content review team always comprise internal organizational staff assigned to
this task who work closely with the marketing and information technology teams.

Content Approval
Content approvers are senior supervisory staff responsible for approving the look and
feel of the content as well as its timing. In addition, this team communicates the verity
of the content. They work on the workflow, and each day may approve much of the
content coming from their teams—generally, content entry personnel in different product
categories. This workflow approval is traceable through audits, to ensure that the content
is not passed on without verification to the higher environment.
These content approver actors are supervisors who have similar responsibilities as
the content review team, but with the additional authority to reject or approve content
in the context of the web site or web page. These people also have command over the
product category, as they are accountable for it. Content approvers can take on the
additional responsibility of digital rights management of the content.

Content Publishing
After content is approved, it can be published to the next ordinal environment by using
a simple publish script that runs in the background or by using manual intervention.
This choice of publishing component remains in the hands of the content management
system team. They should consult the marketing teams to check how frequently the
publishing and refreshing of content is needed by each unit. Such detailed publishing
scenarios can be laid out to increase the productivity of the content management team;
the application processing time is well-utilized in this way as well.

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Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Along with content publishing, content can also be unpublished if the stakeholders
have any special concerns or if there is new content that makes the existing content
obsolete. Unpublishing content is generally based on the organization’s preferences and
marketing strategy.
Content publishers could be more inclined toward release management and work as
part of the IT team within the organization. Based on the organization’s needs and focus,
this job of publishing could be handled by other members within the IT department and
could be automated with deployment scripts.
Figure 1-3 shows the content management team’s personnel placement and
handshake, or transfer of responsibility.

Figure 1-3. Content management team

Content management teams follow the workflow multiple times a day, and many
times for a single piece of content. The entry and review process may require sending
multiple versions of an image or video to the next stage. This content should be
forwarded sequentially to the approver without a glitch. Many teams have used e-mail for
this workflow, to let the next action be known within the team. Sometimes a dashboard
is effective as well. The content management system should be able to handle this
configuration, messaging, and approval management.

10
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 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Creation of Content API over HTTP

API-based communication between the WebJar (front end) and the Drupal engine
(back end) is the glue that keeps the two discrete systems in tandem. The past few major
versions of Drupal have provided support for a REST-based API. Querying using the
Drupal application node allows the service caller to receive the information in JSON
format. This feature has been widely used for social media integration (for example, with
Open Graph).
In decoupled Drupal, we use this feature a lot to make complete use of REST APIs.
The end user and the content creators are oblivious to these APIs, because they just need
to enter the content in Drupal and view it on the Web. They do not need to know the
internal functioning of the APIs. The developers who have designed decoupled Drupal
and support for this service layer need to be aware of the all the APIs. They need to run
tests to ensure that the APIs are always functioning, especially because web applications
these days are committed to the promise of high availability and performance.
In addition to the web site being the primary user of the APIs and Drupal being
the back end, other origin sites could have been promised access to your organization’s
content by a service subscribed by your organization. A typical example is a store locator
that can access your product database or content library on Drupal by using an agreed-
upon API to provide your web page with stores when accessed with a combination key
of location and product. These are just some of the ways content management systems
are being used on the Web. These demands for third-party integration with web sites
has been increasing because of the various SaaS-based products available, with less
development needed for integration when used with decoupled Drupal. Figure 1-4 shows
a common example of using decoupled Drupal with third-party integrations.

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Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Figure 1-4. Easy integration with third-party hosted content

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 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Nonfunctional Aspects
The nonfunctional aspects of a web site in decoupled Drupal present major concerns for
security vulnerabilities (for example, a denial of service or an insufficient transport layer
protocol), lossy data transmission, and access to secret information. In this section, you
will learn about fixing these vulnerabilities by using other tools or systems in the Drupal
ecosystem.
A denial of service (DoS) is a vulnerability that has been widely fixed by using
higher-order caches or content delivery networks such as Akamai and CloudFront. Using
these third-party tools requires a subscription or fees. Using decoupled Drupal does not
increase this vulnerability; a web site that is already using a WebJar will continue to face
the same level of DoS risk as it faces before changing to decoupled Drupal. If a new site
has to be migrated from a complex but advanced Adobe Experience Manager to a WebJar,
Angular, decoupled Drupal, the vulnerability needs to be tested before implementation
and fixed as required. The REST API is widely used, and the initial risks that concerned
developers and organizations in the past have now been allayed.
Drupal is also an amazing tool for reconciling during audits. Leaving audit trails
indicating the insertion, review, and approval of content is important for teams that
support large content management systems. It has been found that although content has
a shelf life— during which it is created, used, and in the end fades out—the content on
the site has an exponential rise in number of contents on site and the internal categories.
Contrary to the product category, content also form their own categories which help them
distinguish their space on the page. For example, the Header-Footer category includes
the header and footer, which ideally should be the same across the site. The Interactive
and Banner Page category includes occasion-based content. Later in this section, you will
read more about the classification of content.
As we build content categories, the content’s hierarchy gets formed for your site. This
taxonomy helps keep the web site organized and free of errors. The folder structure in the
taxonomy also maintains the life of the content. The content life can be extended based on
decisions by the creative agencies and marketing team. To extend this lifetime, a parameter
can be set on each piece of content that will determine its expiration date and time. Content
management is an ongoing process that never stops as long as we have content to share.
These content management tasks include reviewing the taxonomy, reviewing the
expiration of visible content, evaluating content, deciding which content should be the most
important and visible, and reviewing the publishing status. These tasks need to be done
regularly by the content management team, mainly the content approvers and the IT team.
During these discussions, team members may use reports generated by an analytics tool that
points out the most viewed content/products, videos, images, and interactive pages.
The publishing status and reports can be derived from the Drupal Workflow module.
The e-mail feature can be enabled to inform the publisher of any failure that occurs
between two environments or of any other PHP error.
These reviews should happen in addition to the daily tasks completed within the
content workflow described previously in Figure 1-3.

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Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Over the years, the location of content and the space it needs has evolved. Content
dwells in files on shared storage, on shared space in the cloud (for example, Amazon S3),
and in database fields. A strategy to extract the content and render it onscreen requires
the help of a framework. Templates act as a framework for the content. The framework
should support requests from different countries or from different sites and render the
exact page template and the content to the WebJar. The JAR will then render the content
as expected to the user. An average a web site whose main purpose is marketing will have
no more than 10 to 15 templates. A web-site style guide should detail the various design
aspects of the web site and its templates. Because JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
has become a standard for sharing content over browsers and servers alike, we will see
greater use of JSON in accessing content.

Using JSON to Access Content

The last few major versions of Drupal have offered REST-based access to the content
nodes. The JavaScript in the front end needs to access the nodes and should be able to
easily convert the JSON into the required JavaScript object. An example of JSON reading
code can be seen here:

var myCarousel = '{

"name":"Page_Homepage",
"description":"My company - Latest Deals",
"url1":"//url of the image 1 of the carousel in cloud"}',
"url2":"//url of the image 2 of the carousel in cloud"}

var myObj = JSON.parse(myJSON);

Similar fields in the Drupal content entry screen can be stored with names such as
Name, Description, and URL, for ease of understanding.
A carousel, a common user experience feature, can be implemented using decoupled
Drupal. Maintenance of this feature generally involves changing images in Drupal by using
the content entry module. Once the images or the corresponding URLs are changed, the
module needs to be published to the succeeding environments and made live.
An example of a carousel using Bootstrap is shown in Figure 1-5.

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 Chapter 1 ■ Drupal on My Mind

Figure 1-5. Using carousel with Bootstrap (https://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/

bootstrap_carousel.asp)

■■Note Headers, carousels, sliders, and many other features that elevate the user
experience can be broken down into individual components such as text, image (various
sizes), videos (links, snippets), placeholders, fallback images, and metadata. Content can be
stored in the Drupal template or content entry form and can be published to a live site by
using the preceding content management process.

Testing
Testing in decoupled Drupal is proportional to the development of services and hence
is easy to estimate. The team would need to write one-time test cases in PHP to test the
workflow or use web-based Selenium. There are no restrictions on how the content
management workflow can be tested; sometimes even e-mail confirmations are enough
to ensure a complete test. Every module in Drupal comes with its own test folder, and
the test cases can be placed in that folder. During the design of a decoupled Drupal
application, a test plan needs to be created, and test cases need to be identified for all
back-end operations in Drupal (for example, content authoring, content review/approval,
and publishing tasks). As in a software testing life cycle for any test case, tests need to be
modified with every release to confirm and match the latest configurations.
Connectivity tests between the Drupal back end, third-party service endpoints, and
the front-end servers need to be monitored, and any errors need to be reported to the
support or operations team in a timely manner.

15
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
Eternal punishment is God's punishment; everlasting punishment is God's punishment; or, in other words, it is the
name of the punishment God inflicts, He being eternal in His nature.

Whosoever, therefore, receives God's punishment, receives eternal punishment, whether it is endured one hour, one
day, one week, one year, or one age. "And they were judged every man according to their works." (Rev. xx, 13).
Some shall be beaten with few and some with many stripes (Luke xii, 47, 48). Here we have plainly set forth the
fact that all men are not punished alike, that some receive a greater punishment than others.

That, as their works are so shall be the punishment awarded them. "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand
before God: and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead
were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the
dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them." (Rev. xx, 12, 13.)

These were the words of John, upon the Isle of Patmos, and most impressively he adds, "And if any man shall take
away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of
the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Rev. xx, 19.)

We consider that enough has been said to establish the principles we have advanced, and we will call upon all to
whom these words shall come, to exercise faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to repent of their sins, to be baptised
for the remission of them, to receive the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then to serve the
God of Israel with all their might, mind and strength.

"Many men will say, 'I will never forsake you, but will stand by you
at all times.' But the moment you teach them some of the mysteries of
the Kingdom of God that are retained in the heavens and are to be
revealed to the children of men when they are prepared for them,
they will be the first to stone you and put you to death. It was the
same principle that crucified the Lord Jesus Christ, and will cause
the people to kill the Prophets in this generation."

—Joseph Smith.

"The angel taught Joseph Smith those principles which are

necessary for the salvation of the world, and the Lord gave him
commandments and sealed upon him the Priesthood, giving him
power to administer in the ordinances of the Lord."

—Wilford Woodruff.

"When you see a people loaded with irons and delivered to the
executioner, be not hasty to say—This is an unruly people that would
trouble the peace of the earth. For peradventure it is a martyr's
people, which suffer for the salvation of humanity."

LA MENNAIS.
 (TRACT NO. 3.)
OPINIONS OF THE LEADING STATESMEN OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE EDMUNDS LAW.

GENTILE OPINIONS OF THE "MORMON" PEOPLE.

STATISTICS OF CRIME AND EDUCATION.

REFUTATION OF THE SPAULDING STORY.

JUDGE SUMNER HOWARD ON THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.

BY ELDER JOHN MORGAN.

The attention of the candid, thinking, reader is called to the following extracts culled from the speeches made by
the distinguished gentlemen, who, in defense of the Constitution of the United States, opposed the passage of the
Edmunds law:

UNITED STATES SENATE, FEBRUARY, 1882.

Showing the Unconstitutionality of the Law, and that it is not Morals but Money that is the moving cause of the
present Crusade against the "Mormons."

SENATOR VEST, MISSOURI.

What I object to in this bill is that it is a bill of attainder, unconstitutional in the Territories, unconstitutional in the
States, unconstitutional wherever the flag of the Republic wavers to-day in supremacy. It is a bill of attainder
because it inflicts a punishment, in the language of the Supreme Court of the United States, without trial by a
judicial tribunal.

Mr. President, as I said before, I am prepared for the abuse and calumny that will follow any man who dares to
oppose any bill here against polygamy; and yet, so help me God, if my official life should terminate to-morrow, I
would not give my vote for the principles contained in this measure.

SENATOR MORGAN, ALABAMA.

This, Mr. President, is to all intents and purposes an ex post facto law. If I have rightly constructed the language in
which the seventh section is couched, it undertakes to create a crime and punish a man for the commission of it at a
time before the statute itself was enacted, certainly before this method of punishment is prescribed; and if I
understand anything in reference to constitutional law, it is that you cannot impose a new punishment upon one
who has been guilty even of a crime against the law, so as to make it retroactive in its effect and in its operation.

Now we have the entire case under the Constitution. I submit to the honorable committee and to the Senate that
this bill is amenable to two constitutional objections in the particulars I have named. First, it is an ex post facto
law, punishing men for crimes heretofore committed, and to which the punishment now sought to be annexed was
not annexed at the time of their commission. The next is that it is a bill of attainder, a bill of pains and penalties,
whereby the legislative department of the Government usurps the functions of the judicial, and puts a man under
condemnation without trial and without even the due observance of the forms of law. As the act stands on its face,
and as the purposes of it are entirely apparent from its whole tenor, I think there could not be a more flagrant
violation of the Constitution.

SENATOR LAMAR, MISSISSIPPI.

In my opinion, sir, it is a cruel measure, and will inflict unspeakable sufferings upon large masses, many of whom
are innocent victims.

SENATOR CALL, FLORIDA.

There is nothing theocratic in the government of the Mormon Church that is exhibited to the world. It does not
claim to govern the Territory of Utah. It acknowledges the authority of the Government of the United States. You
cannot assail it by declaring it as a matter of opinion on the part of the American Congress that for a man to
worship God according to his belief, as Mormons do (however contrary to our opinions and our wishes), is a
theocracy to be suppressed with fire and sword. But if you will make war upon it, let it not be by striking down the
liberties of your people and doing violence to your own holy faith; but assail it with the red right hand of war, with
the sword to stab it out, and say to them: "Proclaim your heresies and conduct your rites beyond the limits of this
Territory of the United States." Sir, this is worse than open, flagrant war. This is asserting to the people that what
our fathers, acting under the teachings of the Christian religion, fought for more than a hundred years to
accomplish, shall be thrown away. This is an assertion by the Congress of the United States that there may be a
trial by a packed and prejudiced court, by partial jurors, by a man's enemies, and not his friends; that a government
shall be constructed in which the vast majority—nine-tenths of the people—in defiance of the principles which
control our whole political system, a government of a minority shall be constructed through penal provisions and
through verdicts of courts selected and organized to try and convict!

SENATOR BROWN, GEORGIA.

The bill proposes to apply a religious test to the Mormons, in so far as it punishes the Mormon for his opinions, it
is a religious test applied. He believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet as much as I believe that Jeremiah was a
prophet; and while I think he is in an egregious error, I have no right to proscribe him because of his belief as long
as he does not practice immorality. And I have no right to do more as a legislator than to prescribe rules to punish
him for his immoralities, and leave him to the full enjoyment of his religious opinions, just as I claim the right to
enjoy my own opinions. If we commence striking down any sect, however despised or however unpopular, on
account of opinion's sake, we do not know how soon the fires of Smithfield may be rekindled or the gallows of
New England for witches again be erected, or when another Catholic convent will be burned down.

We do not know how long it will be before the clamor would be raised by the religious institutions of this country,
that no member of a church who holds the infallibility of the Pope or the doctrine of transubstantiation should hold
office or vote in this country. We do not know how long it would be before it would be said that no member of a
church who believed in close communion and baptism by immersion as the only mode, should vote or hold office
in this country. You are treading on dangerous ground when you open this floodgate anew. We have passed the
period where there is for the present any clamor on this subject, except as against the Mormons; but it seems there
must be some periodical outcry against some denomination. Popular vengeance is now turned against the
Mormons. When we are done with them, I know not who will next be considered the proper subject of it.

To accomplish this great object the Territorial practices of half a century are to be blotted out, local self-
government is to be destroyed, the church is to be plundered, and the prosperous region of Utah is to be subjected
to the rule of satraps whose unlimited power will enable them to rob and pillage the people at pleasure. If this
system is once inaugurated, bitter as was our experience in the South during the late reconstruction period when
our affairs were being regulated, it was mildness itself compared with what is in store for Utah as long as the
wealth accumulated by the Mormons is not exhausted.

Mr. President, I shall be a party to no such proceedings. Other sections of the Union have frequently run wild in
keeping up with New England ideas and New England practices on issues of this character. I presume they will do
so again, but I, for one, shall not be a party to the enactment or enforcement of unconstitutional, tyrannical, and
oppressive legislation for the purpose of crushing the Mormons or any other sect for the gratification of New
England or any other section. The precedents which we are making, when the persons and parties in the States who
feel it their duty to regulate the affairs of others find themselves unemployed and the regulation of Mormonism no
longer profitable, will be used against other sects. Whether the Baptists, or the Catholics, or the Quakers will be
selected for the next victim does not yet appear. But he who supposes that this spirit of restless and illegal
intermeddling with the affairs of other sections will be satiated or appeased by the sacrifice of the Mormons has
read modern history to little advantage.

The Mormon sect is marked for the first victim. The Constitution and the practices of the Government are to be
disregarded and if need be trampled down to gratify the ire of dominant intermeddling.

And such is the fanaticism now prevalent in reference to the Mormon sect, that when it is clearly shown the
regulation which they desire can not take place within the Constitution and laws, the restless regulators will
doubtless be ready to follow the example of Mr. Stevens and regulate Mormonism outside of the Constitution. But
why should Southern men become camp-followers in this crusade?

The Mormons may, however, be consoled by the reflection that their privileges need not be curtailed if they are
obedient, nor the present practice diminished, but they must change the name and no longer conduct the wicked
practice in what they call the "marriage relation."

The Government considers this no great hardship, as it freely permits in the Mormons, if called by the right name,
what it does not punish in other people. For, without violating the policy of the Government in so far as it has been
proclaimed by its Utah Commission, if the Mormons will conform to its requirements as to the mode, the practice
of prostitution in Utah need not in the slightest degree be diminished. The clamor is not against the Mormon for
having more than one woman, but for calling more than one his wife. And the Mormons will do well to remember
that the policy of putting the whole population, men, women, and children to the sword, and filling the whole land
with wailing, blood, and carnage will not be wanting in advocates if a portion of them still continue, each to
cohabit with more than one woman in what they call "the marriage relation."

The Government and people of the United States have deliberately determined that they must call it by the proper
name. Let the Mormon who has a plurality of women remember that he must conform to the practice elsewhere
and call but one of them his wife.

This, Mr. President, is the point we have reached. This is the distinction we have drawn. This is our present policy
and practice as applied to the Territory of Utah. What consummate statesmanship!

Others who feel it their duty upon such hollow pretexts to destroy a prosperous Territory by such unconstitutional
and illegal means as are proposed will doubtless proceed with this unnatural warfare until they have seen the result
of their folly.

Let those whose ambition prompts them to such deeds of daring take part in this tyrannical and illegal conquest
over a helpless people, who, to gratify an insatiate fanaticism, are to be crushed without the morals of this country
being in the slightest degree improved or illegal sexual intercourse in the least degree diminished, and let them
enjoy the fruits of their triumph.

But as I have sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and can not therefore belong to the army of
the conquerors, I shall have no right to claim any of the trophies of the victory. Nor when the slaughter comes shall
I have upon my hands the stain of the blood of any of the victims. Nor shall I share in the responsibility when in
future our present unconstitutional and unjustifiable legislation against the Mormons shall be used as a precedent
for like legislation to crush some other sect or denomination, who may have chance, as the Mormons now do, to
fall under the ban of popular fanaticism and indignation which will afford another pretext for New England
interference and regulation.

There are over fifty millions of people in the United States; and there are probably twenty times as many persons
practicing prostitution, or illegal sexual intercourse, in the other parts of the Union as the whole number who
practice it in Utah. Many of the features of its practice in the other States and Territories, including foeticide,
illegal divorce, etc., are quite as revolting, or more so, than in Utah. It is assumed in the other parts of the Union,
where a greatly larger number of persons practice sexual impurity than the whole number of Mormon polygamists,
that polygamy must be put down at any cost. It is certainly a matter of great importance that polygamy,
prostitution, foeticide and illegal divorce, whether practiced in Utah or in any other part of the United States,
should be put down. And if we have it in our power by constitutional means to accomplish that end no one would
be more rejoiced than I. But having taken a solemn oath to support the Constitution of the United States, I cannot
as a Senator vote for a measure which I am satisfied is a plain violation of the Constitution to crush out polygamy,
or to accomplish any other object. And we would do well to bear in mind that if the Congress of the United States
disregards and violates the Constitution of the United States in its eager haste to crush a sect but little over one
hundred thousand strong, the result of the precedent may be the crushing out of one sect after another, until it ends
in the complete overthrow of the liberties of fifty millions of people, who are expected to applaud our efforts to
crush the Mormons without regard to constitutional difficulties or constitutional obligations.

No matter what the popular applause may be on the one hand or the popular condemnation on the other, I will join
in no hue and cry against any sect that requires me to vote for measures in open violation of the fundamental law
of the land. And we would do well to bear in mind that an illegal persecution of any sect always excites sympathy
for the persecuted and greatly increases its number. The late Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, when asked what
would be the effect of the Edmunds bill on Mormonism, replied, "The effect will be to make more Mormons."

But I may be asked, "What means can we adopt to destroy this great evil in Utah?" I reply we can not do it by
passing unconstitutional laws, or adopting illegal or unconstitutional means, or by striking down republican
government in the Territory.

The Christian churches of this country spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year sending missionaries to
foreign lands where polygamy is practiced. In India and in China alone more than 500,000,000 of people practice
or acquiesce in the practice of polygamy. And yet the Christian churches are not discouraged, but they send
missionaries there, hoping finally to convert the whole mass of the people. Why, then, should we not send
missionaries to Utah, where only about 12,000 people practice and a little over 100,000 people believe in
polygamy? If the Christian churches are willing to make the effort to convert 500,000,000 of polygamists in the
East, why should they not with less effort convert 100,000 within the limits of our own land? If the first task is
within the range of possibility, what is there to discourage us from the smaller undertaking? There are a great many
people in Utah who might be converted by the proper effort. They are our neighbors, our fellow-citizens. Shall we
give them up as reprobates, and make no effort to save them, and join in a crusade to crush them? They speak our
language, they are within easy reach. Why give them up and turn to the heathen of other lands, who neither
understand our language nor have anything of race or sympathy in common with us? Have the Christian churches
done their duty to the Mormon people? If you can not convince their leaders you can convert thousands of the
people. It may be easier to cry "Crucify them" than it is to try to help convert them. But can the churches reconcile
it to conscience that duty is as well performed in the one case as in the other?

MR. HOUSE OF TENNESSEE.

Now it seems to me that if the Supreme Court of the United States knows what a bill of attainder is, the eighth and
ninth sections of this act are clearly in violation of the Constitution. When I took a seat in this House I took an oath
to support the Constitution of the United States. I can not and will not swear to a lie even to emphasize my
abhorrence of polygamy or to punish a Mormon, and with my views of this act I would have had to do so if I had
voted for the bill when it passed. It would seem that after organizing a packed jury to convict, the authors of the
bill ought then to have been willing to await a conviction before depriving American citizens of the right to vote or
hold office. For what is an American, deprived of those rights? He may live in a land of boasted freedom, but thus
stripped of the rights and privileges that freemen most value, he is no better than a slave.

Let the carpet bagger, expelled finally from every State in the American Union with the brand of disgrace stamped
upon his brow, lift up his head once more and turn his face toward the setting sun. Utah beckons him to a new field
of pillage and fresh pastures of pilfering. Let him pack his grip sack and start. The Mormons have no friends, and
no one will come forward to defend or protect their rights. A returning board, from whose decision there is no
appeal, sent out from the American Congress baptized with the spirit of persecution and intolerance, will enter
Utah to trample beneath their feet the rights of the people of that far-off and ill-fated land. Mr. Speaker, I would not
place a dog under the dominion of a set of carpet-baggers, re-enforced by a returning board, unless I meant to have
him robbed of his bone. A more grinding tyranny, a more absolute despotism was never established over any
people.

The Mormons have been guilty of believing in, and some of them practicing, polygamy. But they have been guilty
of another sin also. They have committed the offense of belonging to the democratic party. That Territory now has
a population about large enough to be admitted into the Union. It would not do to let it enter the Union as a
democratic State. There is not now the least danger of it. After it has passed under the manipulations of the
returning board, after her people have been driven from their homes under the oppressive laws that will be passed
under the powers conferred by this law, after the carpet-bagger has gone in and taken possession, Utah, clothed in
the habiliments of the republican party, will be welcomed into the sisterhood of States. I did desire to notice some
other features of this law, but time forbids. It was passed under the operation of the previous question, and no one
had the opportunity to discuss it or to point out its imperfections. The Delegate sent here by the people of that
Territory, by a barefaced usurpation on the part of the governor, was denied a certificate of election, and was not
allowed to take the seat to which he had been elected, or to speak in behalf of his people while they were being
robbed of their rights.

HON. JAMES W. STILLMAN, FREETHINKER, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 12TH FEB., 1884.

The bill which Senator Hoar has reported is an ex post facto law, because it changes the rules of evidence as
already indicated. The Edmunds bill is a bill of attainder; and it is an ex post facto law, because it punishes these
people without a judicial trial; it increases the punishment for polygamy by disfranchisement and disqualification
to hold office. Every Senator and every Representative who voted for that bill had taken a solemn oath to support
the Constitution of the United States, and yet, unmindful of that oath, actuated by the spirit of religious bigotry and
fanaticism which I have denounced here to-night, they lost sight entirely of their constitutional obligations, and
nullified one of the most important provisions of that great instrument.

RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.

JUDGE JEREMIAH S. BLACK'S ARGUMENT.

The end and object of this whole system of hostile measures against Utah seems to be the destruction of the
popular rule in that Territory. I may be wrong—for I can only reason from the fact that is known to the fact that is
not known—but I do not think that the promoters of this legislation care a straw how much or how little the
Mormons are married. It is not their wives, but their property; not beauty, but booty, that they are after. I have not
much faith in political piety, but I do most devoutly believe in the hunger of political adventurers for spoils of
every kind. How else can you account for the struggles they are now making to get possession of all the local
offices in the Territory, including the treasurer, auditor, and all depositories of public money? If they do not want to
rob the people, why do they reach out their hands for such a grab as this?

Coming back to the original and fundamental proposition that you have no authority to legislate about marriage in
a Territory, you will ask what then are we to do with polygamy? It is a bad thing and a false religion that allows it.
But the people of Utah have as good a right to their false religion as you have to your true one. Then you add that
it is not a religious error merely, but a crime which ought to be extirpated by the sword of the civil magistrate. That
is also conceded. But those people have a civil government of their own, which is as wrong-headed as their
Church. Both are free to do evil on this and kindred subjects if they please, and they are neither of them
answerable to you. That brings you to the end of your string. You are compelled to treat this offense as you treat
others in the States and in the Territories—that is, leave it to be dealt with by the powers that are ordained of God
or by God Himself, who will in due time become the minister of His own justice.

*****

In regard to the unholy crusade periodically waged against the "Mormons" by godless men, and specially revived
at every recurring Congressional session for the purpose of provoking proscriptive anti-Mormon legislation, the
following forcible and faithful word-picture (which is as true as photography, and to which over 150,000 Utonians
can make oath), drawn by the Honorable Thomas Fitch, ex-United States Senator, unmistakably illustrates the
motives which inspire every such wicked ringocratic movement.

At the constitutional convention held in Salt Lake City, February, 1872, Mr. Fitch, United States Senator from
Nevada, said;
There is no safety for the people of Utah without a State government; for under the present condition of affairs,
their property, their liberties, and their very lives are in constant and increasing jeopardy. James B. McKean
(United States Chief Justice in Utah) is morally and hopelessly deaf to the most common demands of the
opponents of his policy, and in a case where a Mormon or a Mormon sympathizer, or a conservative Gentile, be
concerned, there may be found rulings unparalleled in all the jurisprudence of England or America. The mineral
deposits have attracted here a large number of restless, unscrupulous and reckless men, the hereditary foes of
industry, order and law. Finding the courts and federal officers arrayed against the Mormons, with pleased lacrity
this class have placed themselves on the side of courts and officers. Elements ordinarily discordant blend together
in the same seething cauldron. The bagnios and hells shout hosannas to the courts; the altars of religion are
infested with the paraphernalia and the presence of vice; the drunkard espouses the cause of temperance; the
companion of harlots preaches the beauties of virtue and continence. All believe that license will be granted by the
leaders in order to advance their sacred cause, and the result is an immense support from those friends of
immorality and architects of disorder who care nothing for the cause, but everything for the license. These
constitute a nucleus of reformers and a mass of ruffians, a centre of zealots and a circumference of plunderers. The
dramshop interest hopes to escape the Mormon tax of $300 per month by sustaining a judge who will enjoin a
collection of the tax, and the prostitutes persuade their patrons to support judges who will interfere by habeas
corpus with any practical enforcement of municipal ordinances. Every interest of industry is disastrously affected
by this unholy alliance, every right of the citizen is threatened, if not assailed, by this ungodly combination.

Your local magistrates are successfully defied, your local laws are disregarded, your municipal ordinances are
trampled into the mire, theft and murder walk through your streets without detection, drunkards howl their orgies
in the shadow of your altar; the glare and tumult of drinking saloons, the glitter of gambling hells, and the painting
flaunt of the bawd plying her trade, now vex the repose of streets, which beforetime heard no sound to disturb their
quiet save the busy hum of industry, the clatter of trade, and the musical tingle of mountains streams. In
prosecuting Mormons the prosecution have tried their cases beforehand on the streets, in the newspapers, by public
meetings, by petitions, and over the telegraph wires, by means of their leading adviser, the Salt Lake agent of the
Associated Press. There is no evidence so base or worthless but is sufficient to indict a Mormon; there is no
evidence sufficiently damning to indict a man who would swear against a Mormon. In support of these statements
a volume of details of acts of injustice and tyranny might be compiled from the official records. One instance will
suffice. Brigham Young, an American citizen of character, of wealth, of enterprise; an old man who justly
possesses the love and confidence of his people, and the respect of those who know and comprehend him, has been
sent to prison upon the uncorroborated oath of one of the most remarkable scoundrels that any age has produced, a
man known to infamy as William A. Hickman, a human butcher, by the side of whom all malefactors of history are
angels; a creature who, according to his own published statement, is a camp follower without enthusiasm, a bravo
without passion, a murderer without motive, an assassin without hatred.

The religious and secular leaders of Utah, men who are respected by many honest, earnest people who are not of
their faith, men who are believed to be innocent by many influential and independent journals not of their way of
thinking, men who are held fast in the embrace of a hundred thousand hearts, men who have filled the land with
monuments of industry and progress and human happiness, are likely to be sacrificed because a manufactured and
unjust public sentiment demands their conviction.

I say deliberately, that with the history of the past behind me, with the signs of the present before me; I say with
sorrow and humiliation that the Mormon charged with crime who now walks into the courts of his country goes
not to his deliverance, but to his doom; that the Mormon who in a civil action seeks his rights in the courts of his
country goes not to his redress, but his spoliation. The Mormons have been joined each year by a few desperate
outcasts, men who were outlawed for crime as the Mormons were outlawed for religion. Such men followed the
tide of Mormon immigration; they attached themselves to Mormon trains; they professed belief in the Mormon
faith and devotion to the Mormon leaders. It was impossible to know their histories, it was impossible to fathom
their motives. They were given food, given shelter, given employment, although seldom trusted. Let such men be
tempted by assured promises and they will swear their crimes upon others whose lives and hearts contrast with
theirs as the white snow contrasts with the mire it covers. How many such men are there in Utah? Convicted liars,
professional thieves, confessed assassins, trembling perjurers, who have hung for years upon the outskirts of the
little societies which gathered together and built themselves up amid these mountain fastnesses. One such man has
served to accuse and caused to be imprisoned several of your most honored citizens. Half a dozen such, instigated
by cowardice and avarice, with savage hearts filled with a lust of rapine, would crowd every jail in the Territory.
The Mormons are judged abroad, not by their thousands of deeds of charity and kindness, but by a few deeds of
blood unjustly accredited to their leaders. You will never hear how tens of thousands of people have been brought
from famine and hopeless toil to lives of peace and plenty, of the thousands of passing emigrants who have been
fed and sheltered and succored.

Your antagonist is hydra-headed and hundred-armed. Whether by bigoted judges, by packed juries, by partisan
officers, by Puritan missionaries, by iron-limbed laws, by armies from abroad, or by foes and defections at home,
the assault is continuous and unrelenting, though unprovoked.

Now, in order to preserve the thrift, the industry, the wealth, the progress, the temperate life, the virtues of Utah
from spoliation and devastation and ruin; in order to save a hundred noble pioneer citizens and this honest, earnest,
calumniated people from outlawry, or the gibbet, or incarceration, you must have a State government. Every other
refuge of good men, every other protection of innocent men is closed in your faces. A State government means
juries impartially selected from all citizens, and judges chosen by a majority of the people, and officers of your
own selection; it means honest, economical government; it means peace and security, and exemption from
persecution.

FRUITS OF "MORMONISM."

"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Can an impure
fountain send forth pure water?"—JESUS.

Bishop D. S. Tuttle—now and for years past an Episcopal clergyman in Salt Lake City—in a lecture on
"Mormonism," published in the New York Sun, November, 1877, held these views:

"In Salt Lake City alone there are over 17,000 Latter-day Saints, Now, who are they? I will tell you, and I
think, that after I have concluded, you will look on them more favorably than you have been accustomed to
do. Springing from the centre of your own State (New York) in 1830, they drifted slowly westward until they
finally rested in the basin of the Great Salt Lake. I know that the people of the east have obtained the most
unfavorable opinion of them, and have judged them unjustly. They have many traits that are worthy of
admiration, and they believe with a fervent faith that their religion is a direct revelation from God. We of the
east are accustomed to look upon the Mormons as either a licentious, arrogant or rebellious mob, bent only on
defying the United States Government and deriding the faith of the Christians. This is not so. I know them to
be honest, faithful, prayerful workers, and earnest in their faith that heaven will bless the Church of Latter-day
Saints. Another strong and admirable feature in the Mormon religion is the tenacious and efficient
organization. They follow with the greatest care all the forms of the old church."

From the caustic pen of Henry Edger, in the New York Evolution, July, 1877:

The Federal Government is doing at this moment a great injustice to the 200,000 Mormons in Utah. We have
no right to demand any conditions of Mormons more than Presbyterians or Methodists. The Federal
Government engaged in a crusade of extermination against a people with such a record as the Mormons have
to show, is a spectacle of which no one can be proud. Unfortunately we need not go out into the Rocky
Mountains to find debasing, superstitious and immoral practices, sheltering themselves under the cloak of
religion; nor do we need go to Utah to find polygamy openly and shamelessly practised. A polygamy which
sacrifices utterly and dooms to a fate most horrible all the wives but one, deceiving and betraying her also, is
surely not very much morally superior to a polygamy that, for the first time in modern society, completely
shuts out that horrible social institution, prostitution. That the government of the United States can virtually
introduce the brothel, the gambling house and various other charming New York institutions into Salt Lake
under color of abolishing Mormon polygamy is unhappily only too plainly evident. Driven by mob violence
from one State to another, despoiled of their legitimate possessions—fruits of honest toil—this despised and
grossly wronged people found their way at last across the trackless desert and by an almost unexampled
perseverance and industry created an oasis in the desert itself.

Elder Miles Grant, the Adventist, and editor of The World's Crisis, says:
 "After a careful observation for some days, we came to the settled conclusion that there is less licentiousness
in Salt Lake City than in any other one of the same size in the United States; and were we to bring up a family
of children in these last days of wickedness, we should have less fears of their moral corruption, were they in
that city than in any other. Swearing, drinking, gambling, idleness, and licentiousness have made but small
headway there, when compared with other places of equal size."

In a late visit of Governor Safford, of Arizona, to a "Mormon" colony on the Little Colorado, he writes:

We were kindly received by the colonists, numbering some 400 souls, who made us welcomed and gave us
freely of such comforts as they had, as this people do to all strangers who come among them. Every one
works with a will. They have no drones, and the work they have accomplished in so short a time is truly
wonderful. All concede that we need an energetic, industrious, economical and self-relying people to subdue
and bring into use the vast unproductive lands of Arizona. These Mormons fill every one of the above
requirements. Tea, coffee, tobacco and spirituous liquors they do not use. They are spoken of by those living
nearest to them as the kindest of neighbors, and all strangers receive a hearty welcome among them. They
have a splendid robust looking lot of children, and are very desirous of having schools.

General Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania, says:

I have given you in terms the opinion my four years' experience has enabled me to form of the Mormons,
preferring to force you to deduce it for yourselves from the facts. But I will add that I have not heard a single
charge made against them as a community—against their habitual purity of life, their willing integrity, their
toleration of religious differences of opinion, their regard for the laws, their devotion to the constitutional
government under which we live—that I do not, from my own observation, or upon the testimony of others,
know to be unfounded.

Chief Justice White, formerly of Huntsville, Alabama, in charging the Grand Jury, Salt Lake City, February, 1876,
said:

I do not utter the language of prejudice, nor treat lightly or derisively the Mormon people or their faith. No
matter how much I differ from them in belief, nor how widely they differ from the American people in
matters of religion, yet testing them and it by a standard which the world recognizes as just, that is, what they
have practised and what they have accomplished, and they deserve higher consideration than ever has been
accorded to them. Industry, frugality, temperance, honesty, and in every respect but one, obedience to the law,
are with them the common practices of life.

This land thy have redeemed from sterility, and occupied its once barren solitudes with cities, villages,
cultivated fields and farm houses, and made it the habitation of a numerous people, where a beggar is never
seen and alms houses are neither needed or known. These are facts and accomplishments which any candid
observer recognizes and every fair mind admits.

United States Prosecuting Attorney Dickson:

It was a matter of history that the Mormons did not cohabit together, in the sense as used by the other side,
without a form of marriage, and it was alone this form of marriage and the practice under it, and not sexual
sins, that Congress was legislating against. They knew that those sins are not upheld in Utah, but are
condemned by the Mormons and deplored by the Gentiles; they recognized the Mormon system of marriage
as a constant menace against monogamous marriage, and thus legislated against it, and it was the prevention
of its continuance that was the primal object of the law. The cause and necessity of the act showed its
intention and the only objects against which it should be directed; and for this it could be extended to its full
purpose. The design and only purpose of the law was to root out and extirpate polygamy. The two systems of
marriage could not dwell side by side. If polygamy was allowed to grow, without being placed under the ban
of the law and of public opinion, it would in the end supplant the monogamic system, and was a constant
threat and menace to and jeopardized the latter, and Congress so viewed it.

The following statistics covering the year 1882, obtained mainly from Gentile sources, furnish their own comment.
Let the reader bear in mind that the non-"Mormons" of Utah are clamorous for the enforcement of unconstitutional
laws against the "Mormons," for the purpose of purifying their morals and Christianizing their practices.

These men and their associates, are the ones, who engage in the wholesale denunciation of the "Mormon" people.

CRIMINAL STATISTICS.

Assault and battery 40 260

Assault with intent to kill 40 260
Assault with deadly weapons 2
Assault with intent to commit rape 7
Assault with threats 1 5
Murder 18
Manslaughter 1 15
Attempt to murder 1
Accused of murder 4
Threatening to murder 6
Mayhem 1
Dueling 2
Prostitution 1
Keeping brothels 95
Lewd conduct 27
Insulting women 6
Exposing person 3
Nuisance 9
Obscene and profane language 5
Forgery and counterfeiting 4 24
Drunkenness 8
Drunk and disorderly 68 307
Drunk and profane 29 151
Selling liquor without license 12 136
Gambling and keeping gambling houses 18
Mail and highway robbery 1 52
Grand larceny 1 6
Burglary 3 48
Disturbing peace 1 8
Bigamy 34 111
Destroying property 1
Arson 15 26
Obtaining money under false pretenses 26
Opium smoking, etc 25
Stealing railroad rides 16
Vagrancy 19
Violating prison rules 147
Total 6

So that the Mormons, comprising seventy-eight per cent. of the population of the Territory, contributed one-eighth
of the arrests made during 1882, and the non-Mormons, having only twenty-two per cent., contributed seven-
eighths.

In those pursuits having a demoralizing tendency, the distribution was as follows:

 Mormons. Non-Mormons.
No. saloons and breweries 16 146
No. billiard tables and bowling alleys 1 46
No. gambling houses 10
Total 17 202

The number of brothels throughout the Territory was twelve, all kept by non-Mormons; number of inmates not
given.

The criminal record of Salt Lake City, for 1882, shows that in a population of about 25,000, divided between
Mormons and non-Mormons as nineteen to six, the total number of arrests was 1,561, of which 188 were
Mormons, and 1,373 non-Mormons.

If it should be suspected that these territorial and city exhibits show an unfair discrimination in favor of the
Mormon population, through the sympathy of the Mormon police officers and magistrates, such suspicion will be
removed by the summary of the records of the territorial penitentiary for the same year. It will be recollected that
for the conviction of this class of criminals, the whole machinery of the law, judicial and ministerial, is in the
hands of the Federal government. The number of penitentiary convicts for the year was twenty-eight. Of these but
one was an orthodox Mormon, and she a woman, confined for one day for contempt of court; five others were
Mormons only by reason of their parentage, and the remaining twenty-two were; eight Catholics, four Methodists,
one Jew, one Adventist, one Presbyterian, and seven of no religious faith.

EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS.

In 1870, according to the United States census report (taken in Utah by non-Mormons), Utah's enviable record
stood as follows:

School Illiteracy, Paupers. Insane Convicts. Printing and Chu

attendance, cannot and Publishing Edif
5 to 18 read or Idiotic. Establishments.
years. write, 10
years
and
upwards.
UTAH 35 11 6 5 3 14 19
UNITED STATES 31 26 31 16 9 6 17
PENNSYLVANIA 30 10 45 17 9 9 14
NEW YORK 21 9 59 23 12 7 12
MASSACHUSETTS 25 12 55 20 11 11 12
DIST. OF 27 40 23 35 9 11 8
COLUMBI
CALIFORNIA 24 10 41 22 19 14 9

THE BOOK OF MORMON.

Among the many theories advanced by the opponents of truth, to account for the existence of the Book of
Mormon, is the untenable, but widely believed, story that one Solomon Spaulding wrote it, and that it was
surreptitiously appropriated by the Prophet Joseph Smith. Thousands, doubtless, believe this silly attempt to an
explanation to-day; but the following correspondence will probably serve to enlighten the minds of those who wish
information on this subject.

Letter from President Fairchild, of Oberlin College, Ohio, New York Observer of February 5th, 1885:

SOLOMON SPAULDING AND THE BOOK OF MORMON.

 The theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon in the traditional manuscript of Solomon Spaulding will
probably have to be relinquished. That manuscript is doubtless now in the possession of Mr. L. L. Rice, of
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands,[A] formerly an anti-slavery editor in Ohio, and for many years State printer of
Columbus. During a recent visit to Honolulu, I suggested to Mr. Rice that he might have valuable anti-slavery
documents in his possession which he would be willing to contribute to the rich collection already in the
Oberlin College library. In pursuance of this suggestion Mr. Rice began looking over his old pamphlets and
papers, and at length came upon an old, worn and faded manuscript of about 175 pages, small, quarto,
purporting to be a history of the migration and conflicts of the ancient Indian tribes which occupied the
territory now belonging to the States of New York, Ohio and Kentucky. On the last page of this manuscript is
a certificate and signature giving the names of several persons known to the signer, who have assured him
that to their personal knowledge, the manuscript was the writing of Solomon Spaulding. Mr. Rice has no
recollection how or when this manuscript came into his possession. It was enveloped in a coarse piece of
wrapping paper, and endorsed in Mr. Rice's handwriting, "A Manuscript Story."
[Footnote A:—Since the publication of this letter, the M.S.S. has been placed in Oberlin college library by Mr. Rice.]

There seems no reason to doubt that this is the long lost story. Mr. Rice, myself and others compared it with
the Book of Mormon and could detect no resemblance between the two, in general or detail. There seems to
be no name nor incident common to the two. The solemn style of the Book of Mormon, in imitation of the
English Scriptures, does not appear in the manuscript. The only resemblance is in the fact that both profess to
set forth the history of the lost tribes. Some other explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon must be
found, if any explanation is required.

JAMES H. FAIRCHILD.

From Bibliotheca Sacra.

Rev. C. M. Hyde, D.D., of the North Pacific Missionary Institute, contributes an article to the Boston
Congregationalist, in which he gives a history of the manuscript from the beginning and of the attempts made
by Hurlburt, Howe and others to connect it with the Book of Mormon, and thus concludes his lengthy and
interesting contribution:

The story has not the slightest resemblance in names, incidents or style to anything in the Book of Mormon.
Its first nine chapters are headed: Introduction; An Epitomy of the Author's Life, and of his Arrival in
America; An Account of the Settlement of the Ship's Company; Many Particulars respecting the Natives; A
Journey to the N. W.; A Description of the Ohohs; Description of the Learning; Religion; An Account of the
Baska, Government and Money.

There is no attempt whatever to imitate Bible language, and to introduce quotations from the Bible, as in the
Book of Mormon. On the contrary, Rev. Solomon Spaulding seems to have been a man who had no very high
regard for the Bible. There are two manuscript leaves in the parcel of the same size and handwriting as the
other 171 pages of manuscript. A few sentences will show the views of the writer. "It is enough for me to
know that propositions which are in contradiction to each other can not both be true, and that doctrines and
facts which represent the Supreme Being as a barbarous and cruel tyrant can never be dictated by infinite
wisdom. * * * But, notwithstanding I disavow my belief in the divinity of the Bible, and consider it as a mere
human production, designed to enrich and aggrandize its authors, yet casting aside a considerable mass of
rubbish and fanatical rant, I find that it contains a system of ethics or morals which cannot be excelled on
account of their tendency to ameliorate the condition of man." It would seem improbable from such avowed
belief that Rev. Solomon Spaulding was an orthodox minister, who wrote the Book of Mormon in Biblical
style, while in poor health, for his own amusement. The statement is more probable that he wrote this
Manuscript Found, with the idea of making a little money, if he could find some one to print it for him.

It is evident from an inspection of this manuscript, and from the above statements that who ever wrote the
Book of Mormon, Solomon Spaulding did not.

The manuscript is now in the possession of Professor James H. Fairchild, or rather of Oberlin College, Ohio,
of which he is President. It was sent there to be deposited in the college library, by Mr. L. L. Rice, of
 Honolulu, Sandwish Islands, among whose papers it was found at that place. Mr. Rice lived formerly in Ohio,
and in 1839-40 he and his partner bought the Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph, of E. D. Howe, and in the transfer
of type, presses, stock, etc., there was a large collection of books, manuscripts, etc., among them the
manuscript in question. E.D. Howe was the publisher of a book against Mormonism, called "Mormonism
Unveiled," and obtained the "Manuscript Found" from the notorious "Dr." D. P. Hurlburt, who obtained it
from Mrs. Davidson, Solomon Spaulding's widow, who had remarried. Hurlburt never returned it. The reason
assigned to Mrs. Davidson for its non-publication as an expose of the Book of Mormon was, that when
examined it was found not to be what had been expected. One has only to glance through it to see the
propriety of that conclusion.

When Mr. Rice moved to Honolulu this manuscript, with other literary rubbish that had not been destroyed,
was taken with him. It was not until Prof. Fairchild, being on a visit to Mr. Rice, questioned him concerning
any old papers he might have in his possession relating to anti-slavery matters, that in looking for them this
manuscript was turned up. It bore the following endorsement:

"The writings of Solomon Spaulding proved by Aron Wright, Oliver Smith, John N. Miller and others. The
testimonies of the above gentlemen are now in my possession.

(Signed), D.P. HURLBURT.

The chain of evidence is complete. There can be no doubt that this is the long lost "Manuscript Found," about
which there has been so much speculation. Mr. Rice and Professor Fairchild both examined it critically, compared
it with the Book of Mormon, and came to the conclusion that there was not the slightest connection between the
two books, and no similarity whatever in matter, purpose, narrative, names, language, style, or anything else. The
manuscript looks old and faded, has 170 odd pages, small quarto, and was tied up, with a string in a coarse paper
wrapper.

MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.

We give below an extract from the Lee trial, showing briefly and conclusively that the authorities of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the "Mormon" people, were innocent of any complicity whatever, in the
terrible tragedy enacted at Mountain Meadows, that on the contrary President Brigham Young sought by every
means in his power to save the unfortunate emigrants.

Remarks made by Mr. Sumner Howard, Ex-Chief Justice of Arizona, and United States Prosecuting Attorney at the
second trial of John D. Lee:

"He proposed to prove that John D. Lee, without any authority from any council or officer, but in direct opposition
to the feelings and wishes of the officers of the Mormon Church, had gone to the Mountain Meadows, where the
Indians were then encamped, accompanied only by a little Indian boy, and had assumed command of the Indians,
whom he had induced, by promises of great booty, to attack these emigrants. All these charges against John D. Lee,
he (District Attorney Howard) proposed to prove to the jury by competent testimony, beyond reasonable doubt, or
beyond any doubt, and thought no appeal to the jury would be required to induce them to give a verdict in
accordance with the evidence."

"James Haslam, of Wellsville, Cache Valley, was sworn. He lived in Cedar City in 1857; was ordered by Haight to
take a message to President Young with all speed; knew the contents of the message; left Cedar City on Monday,
September 7, 1857, between 5 and 6 p.m., and arrived at Salt Lake on Thursday at 11 a. m.; started back at 3 p.m.,
and reached Cedar about 11 a. m. Sunday morning, September 13th; delivered the answer from President Young to
Haight, who said it was too late. Witness testified that when leaving Salt Lake to return, President Young said to
him: "Go with all speed, spare no horseflesh. The emigrants must not be meddled with, if it takes all Iron County
to prevent it. They must go free and unmolested.' Witness knew the contents of the answer. He got back with the
message the Sunday after the massacre and reported to Haight, who said, 'It is too late.'"

At the second trial the evidence was plain and direct as to Lee's complicity in the massacre; he was convicted by
"Mormon" testimony, and a verdict of "guilty" was brought in against him by a "Mormon" jury.
At the close of the second trial U. S. District Attorney Sumner Howard, in his opening address, repeated again that
he had come for the purpose of trying John D. Lee, because the evidence led and pointed to him as the main
instigator and leader, and he had given the jury unanswerable documentary evidence, proving that the authorities
of the Mormon Church knew nothing of the butchery until after it was committed, and that Lee, in his letter to
President Young a few weeks later, had knowingly misrepresented the actual facts relative to the massacre, seeking
to keep him still in the dark and in ignorance. He had received all the assistance any United States official could
ask on earth in any case. Nothing had been kept back, and he was determined to clear the calendar of every
indictment against any and every actual guilty participator in the massacre.

"When the Gentiles reject the Gospel it will be taken from them and
given to the house of Israel."

—Wilford Woodruff.

"We have never violated the laws of this country; we have every
right to live under their protection, and are entitled to all the
privileges guaranteed by our State and National Constitution."

—Joseph Smith.
 JOSEPH SMITH.
WAS HE A PROPHET OF GOD? AN INVESTIGATION AND
TESTIMONY, BY J. M. SJODAHL. 1891.

The controversy between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the various churches of the world
turns upon one great question, viz.: Has God again revealed His will to mankind through Joseph Smith, the
Prophet? If He has, and this can be proven, then the controversy is at an end, and it is the duty of all to accept the
message of that prophet as from God. Then to accept the gospel which Joseph Smith preached is to accept God,
who sent him, and to reject it is to reject God. This question is, therefore, one of the greatest importance and
should be carefully considered by everyone who is concerned about the salvation of his own soul and the souls of
those who are dear to him.

The question is a twofold one, and each part of it demands a separate consideration.

1. Are the books of the Bible all that is necessary for the guidance of men to eternal life and exhaltation, or, is
continuous revelation necessary?

2. Is there any evidence, supposing continuous revelation to be necessary, that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of
God?

I.

The question: Are the books of the Bible all that is necessary to guide us to the attainment of eternal salvation? has
been variously answered.

The Romanists claim that they are not. They give to genuine tradition the same authority as to the written word and
submit both to the interpretation of their infallible Pope.

Most of the Protestants deny the authority of the tradition and the infallibility of any one representative of the
church. They claim that the written word, as contained in the Bible, is the only necessary and authoritative guide in
matters of religion. An eminent Baptist divine, Dr. Angus, says: "As the Holy Scriptures claim to be regarded as
the book of God, a divine authority, so they claim to be the only authority. It is not a rule, it is the rule both of
practice and faith. To ascertain its meaning, we employ reason and the opinions of good men, and the experience
of a devout heart; but no one of these helps, nor all combined, can be regarded as of coordinate authority." (Bible
Handbook, page 69.)

Bishop Grundtvig was aware of the weakness of this Protestantic position, taken and vigorously defended by the
reformers. For the guidance of the "church" he claimed in the first place a "living word," a continuous tradition,
expounding the "written word," which, he insisted, is nothing but a dead letter until quickened by the Holy Spirit,
present in the "church;" and in his view, curiously enough, not the books of the Bible but the Apostolic Symbol
was the written word, par excellence, composed, probably, by our Savior himself and transmitted from the
Apostles to the posterity in all ages. The worthy bishop gave to the Apostolic Symbol the place that is otherwise
generally accorded to the books of the Bible, and agreed with the Romanists in holding the necessity of a living
interpreter, directed by the Spirit, while, with the Protestants, he denied the claims of the Pope, or any pope, as to
the monopoly of this office.

The Latter-day Saints hold that the books of the Bible were sufficient for the people to whom they were addressed
and for the purpose for which they were written. As records of God's dealings with mankind in ages past, and as
prophecies of things yet future, they contain instructions for all ages and all nations; but as circumstances change,
as new emergencies arise, and the plans of God develop, continued revelations are just as necessary for the
guidance of the church as revelation ever was. "A religion that excludes new revelation from its principles, is just
the very religion that suits the devil * * * for he knows well that God has nothing to do, nor ever had, with any
religion that did not acknowledge prophets and revelators, through whom He could speak and reveal His will to
His sons and daughters." (Orson Pratt. The Seer, vol. ii, No. 5, May, 1854.)

Thus the various views on the question may be briefly stated.

The word of God, the Bible itself, amply justifies, I think, the position of the Latter-day Saints on this important
question. The purposes for which the various books were written; the difficulties that present themselves when the
exact meaning of many passages is investigated; the usual dealings of God with His people, as explained in the
Bible, and many predictions of new revelations, all these facts give evidence of the correctness of the position
taken by the Church of Christ in this last dispensation. What man needs, is not only a Bible and a genuine
tradition, expounded by an interpreter, even if this should have, in some degree, the Holy Spirit, but he needs first
of all and above all a direct communication with God, his heavenly Father. He may study the written word humbly
and carefully, and thereby he will certainly, through the aid of the Holy Spirit, acquire much useful knowledge
concerning religion and eternal truths; he will, if following the precepts laid down, be led onward and forward and
attain a certain degree of eternal happiness. But the knowledge necessary for the work to be done in connection
with the establishment of the dispensation of the fulness of times or for the obtaining of the glory emanating from
the ordinances of this dispensation, he will never acquire by his own study of any amount of sacred literature.

The truth of this statement becomes self-evident, when we mark the purpose for which the sacred books were
written. If there were any book of the Bible by God designated to be a complete code of laws, all-sufficient for all
times and all conditions, such a fact might reasonably be expected to be either expressly stated, or implied
somewhere within the covers of the sacred volume. But no such statement is to be found, nor can it be shown to be
implied, when the scope of each book is clearly understood.

THE PENTATEUCH.

The Pentateuch, for instance, contains the principles on which the Jewish theocracy was founded, a dispensation
that was, according to prophetic declarations, only to last for a certain time. In the first eleven chapters of Genesis
we find a few outlines of the Patriarchal dispensation, and some of the ordinances of that dispensation are referred
to without any detailed account. The last chapters of Genesis contain merely a brief historical sketch of the
transition from the patriarchal dispensation to the Mosaic dispensation. The remaining books of Moses (as indeed
all of the Old Testament) are chiefly an incomplete history of the dealings of God with that one nation which He
had chosen for the purpose of communicating His will to mankind, until the appearance of the promised "Seed."
But the dispensation itself was a transient one. The principles upon which it was founded must necessarily also be
subject to such modifications as a new dispensation would require. Paul, the greatest Jewish scholar of his age, is
very emphatic on this point. "It (the Mosaic law) was added because of transgression, till the Seed should come to
whom the promise was made." "Before faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should
afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified
by faith. But after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Galatians iii, 23-25.) "(God) also has
made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life. But if the ministration of death (the Mosaic law), written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that
the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory
was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? * * For if that which is done
away (the law) was glorious, much more that which remaineth." (II Cor. iii, 6-11.)

The laws of the Mosaic dispensation have, according to the same apostle, no more claim or binding force, relative
to the members of the Christian dispensation, than a dead husband has to a living wife: "For the woman which has
a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the
law of her husband; * * wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ." (Rom.
vii, 2-4.)

THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.

Of the remaining historical books of the Old Testament much need not be said. The book of Joshua describes the
settlement of the Israelites in the Holy Land. In the Judges we read of repeated apostasy, its punishment and God's
mercy in delivering the penitent. The books of Samuel show the establishment of the ancient prophetic office and
also the rejection of this divine appointment and of God as the ruler, and how God, yielding to the demands of His
blinded people, allows them to have a king. In the Books of the Kings, to which the Chronicles seem to be a
supplement, we can trace the awful consequences of the revolt of the people against the prophetic office, until the
nation, after a short time of prosperity under David and Solomon, falls to pieces and are carried away captives.

THE POETICAL BOOKS.

The poetical books are effusions of devout hearts contemplating the past mercies of God, His present goodness and
faithfulness, and containing more or less distinct predictions of the future events in the Kingdom of God. The
Psalms, many of which were composed by David, were intended for the edification of the people when gathered to
their national festivities in Jerusalem. The singing of them formed, no doubt, an important part of the service. The
book of Job and the Song of Songs are specimens of early dramatic compositions. The hero of the book of Job was
an inhabitant of Uz, in the northeast part of the Arabian desert, and a contemporary, perhaps, of Terah, the father of
Abraham. There are some grand lessons laid down in the book. The question is discussed whether great suffering
is not an evidence of great guilt. The friends of Job affirm this, while he himself, under the greatest afflictions,
denies it, appealing to God's righteousness and faithfulness. The Song of Songs, the best one of the one thousand
and five which Solomon composed (I Kings iv, 32), is a description of wedded love, one of the noblest affections
which man is capable of enjoying, and was probably composed when Solomon introduced into his family an
Egyptian princess (I Kings iii, 1; vii, 8; ix, 24) as a plural wife. The Proverbs, and the Ecclesiastes contain many
sentiments showing both the wisdom and the vanity of the world, pointing to Him who is the Wisdom, the Truth,
and the Light of the World.

In all these books we find truths scattered as numerous and as beautifully as the stars in a clear November evening
sky; but the very scope of each book is such that it cannot be accepted as a closed and finished code of revelations,
sufficient for all contingencies that can ever arise in the history of the human race, any more than the beautifully
sparkling light of the stars is all that is necessary for the illumination of the earth.

THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS.

These contain many predictions bearing directly on the last days, for prophecy is a record of future events, as
history is a record of past events. But in reading ancient prophecy, one very common error must be avoided, viz.,
to suppose that the prophets generally described the events of the last days. This they evidently do not do. Their
prophecies generally concern such events as were immediately future in their own time, and in which their own
generation was, on that account, mostly interested. Prophecies are often read as if they all related to events which
are still future, and which we therefore look at with anxious interest, whereas the truth is that events long ago
transpired, and which we have almost forgotten, but which once were the great epochs of history, form the
important theme of the bulk of prophetical predictions. In some cases prophecy covers the ground of events yet to
transpire. But then, it is noticeable that the more remote the events described are, the more vague and dim the
visions concerning them become, until we clearly perceive that, were it not for the new additional light of
continued revelations upon the last scenes of the history of the world, we would never, from the first predictions
delivered, be able to form a clear and distinct idea of these scenes.

Notice, as an illustration of this, the first prediction of the "seed of woman" who should crush the head of the
serpent, and follow the gradual development of this prophecy, until later prophets are able by the Spirit of God to
describe not only many minute details of the birth, life and death of our Savior (Isaiah), but also the precise time
for his coming in the flesh (Daniel). And so it is with all predictions given. They increase in clearness as the events
draw near. They indicate, therefore, by their very nature the necessity of continued revelation, as the first rays of
morning indicate the approach of the coming daylight.

In reading the prophetical books, this must be kept in view.

JONAH is the most ancient of the prophets whose written records have come down to us. He lived more than eight
hundred years before Christ. His book is a narrative of how the prophet was called on a mission to the great city of
Nineveh but in disobedience to the command of God, he fled in an opposite direction, intending to go to Tarshish.
On the way, however, a great storm arose. Jonah, on his own suggestion, was thrown into the sea, and by a great
fish carried back to the land he had left. After this miraculous deliverance, he goes to Nineveh and delivers his
message, which results in the repentance of the inhabitants and the repeal of the announced judgment.

The spiritual lessons conveyed in the narrative are very important and instructive. Yet the prediction delivered is
one that chiefly concerned the people of Nineveh for whom it was intended.

It has been observed that the prophet himself, in his miraculous deliverance from the deep, furnishes "the fullest
and nearest shadow of Christ's lying in the grave, which the scriptures afford," but then it must also be
remembered that this type would by no means have been clear to us had not Christ himself pointed it out. It is only
through new revelation on the subject that we are enabled to see the resemblance between the deliverance of Jonah
and the resurrection of Christ. This "fullest and nearest shadow" is therefore in itself a proof of the necessity of
continuous revelation.

JOEL was contemporary with Jonah. He lived B.C. 810-795, and addressed himself to Judah. He first delineates an
impending devastation under the picture of successive armies of locusts, and of burning drought.

There are some differences of opinion as to the events to which these opening visions refer. They most probably
refer to the successive subjugations of the country by Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.

Then follows an exhortation to penitence, fasting and prayer, and a promise of deliverance from the evils
predicted. In the second chapter, v. 18-31, the effusion of the Holy Spirit, previous to the destruction of Jerusalem
and subsequent calamities, "the great and terrible day of the Lord," is clearly predicted. But here again a new
revelation, which was given through Peter (Acts ii, 16-21) was needed to point out that the fulfilment of the
prediction took place at the day of Pentecost. The Jews were well conversant with the writings of this prophet and
held him in great reverence, but they could not see the connection between the prophecy and its fulfilment, until
pointed out to them by an inspired servant of God. And this remark applies to almost all prophecy.

The last clause of the last verse of the second chapter, as well as the third chapter, refer to events yet future. The
gathering of the nations of the earth to the valley of Jehosaphat and their destruction, the establishment of
Jerusalem as the holy city and the glorious state of the millennial kingdom are the themes treated on. But—let us
repeat the remark—when the fulfilment of these predictions comes, the world will need inspired men to point that
fulfilment out, just as the Jews needed on the day of Pentecost. The book of Joel furnishes decisive proof of the
necessity of continuous revelation.

AMOS was another contemporary of Jonah and of Joel. He lived B.C. 810-785. His residence was Bethel, and he
was sent as a messenger to Israel. The first two chapters of his book contain predictions of the judgments of God
upon the various states surrounding Judea. "The Lord will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem," an
indication of the anger of Jehovah against these states. The punishment of Syria, of the Philistines, of Tyre, Edom
and Ammon, Moab, and, finally, also of Judah and Israel are foretold. The prophet then devotes four chapters to
exhorting the people to repentance, reminds them of what God had done for them. But as he sees that his
exhortations have no effect, he sets forth in visions the approaching destruction of the people, until the inhabitants
of Bethel tried to prohibit him from prophesying any more among them (chapter vii). The prophet, however,
continues in the name of the Lord, who had called him to the office, to describe the near destruction of the nation.
And having done so he closes his book with a few verses (chapter ix, 11-15) on a still future restoration, the glory
of which shall be shared by Edom and other Gentile nations, a prediction that is referred to by Peter (Acts, xv, 17),
as beginning to be fulfilled in the establishment of the Church of Christ. And here, again, a new revelation was
required to make the precise meaning of the prediction clear.

HOSEA was a native of Israel, and lived B.C. 800-725. His ministry lasted about sixty years, until the ten tribes
were led captive by the Assyrians, and his prophecies are almost exclusively directed against Israel, the most
prominent tribe of which was Ephraim, with the capital of Samaria. At the time of this prophet the idolatry
commenced by Jeroboam in Dan and Bethel had continued for one hundred and fifty years, and all classes of the
people were sunk in vices of various kinds.
The first three chapters of his book contain a symbolic representation of the fallen people and God's statement that
He had now rejected them. In order to exemplify this, the prophet is commanded to wed a "wife of whoredoms"
and to give to the children names indicating the wrath of God. The prophet having complied with this command is
again directed to love another adulteress "according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel" (iii; 1),
thus giving to the ten tribes remarkable object lessons concerning their faithlessness towards Jehovah. The severe
denunciations in this part of the book close with promises of a final restoration (chapter ii, 14-24; iii, 4, 5).

The following chapters reiterate more fully the subjects of the first three. In chapters iv-x, the prophet brings up the
charges against the people: "There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, lying,
killing, stealing and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood." "The priests are like the
people." For these sins the judgment of destruction is pronounced, but the book closes with a prediction of God's
blessings as the final outcome.

Whether these last promises refer to the return of some Israelites under Ezra or whether they remain to be fulfilled
is not clear from the book itself. Paul, directed by the Spirit of revelation, applies some of these promises to the
Gentiles (Romans ix, 25, 26), an application that could not be made except by the light of continuous revelation.

ISAIAH lived B.C. 765-698 and was, consequently, part of the time contemporary with Hosea. He prophesied
among the Jews, as Hosea prophesied among the Israelites.

The political aspect of the world at this time is important to notice. Judea and Israel had not long been two
kingdoms, and the latter was fast approaching her destruction. With Moab, Edom and the Philistines, Judah had
repeated conflicts, each of these tributaries striving more or less successfully to gain independence. Assyria was
now growing in strength and extending her conquests on all sides. Egypt had been subdued by Ethiopia and the
two countries were strengthened by a union. A struggle between Egypt and Assyria, the two rival powers of the
world, was coming, and both of these powers endeavored to secure the alliance of Judah as well as of Israel,
wherefore the injunctions of the prophets were for the people of God to keep a strictly neutral position without any
regard to flatteries or threatenings. Babylon had just commenced her struggle for independence, and tried to form
an alliance with Judah, for which purpose a special ambassador, Merodach Baladan, was sent to King Hezekiah.
This pious king in an unguarded moment, entertained the messengers and displayed to them his own treasures and
the treasures of the house of the Lord, which kindness and courtesy drew forth from the more clear seeing prophet
of God the awful announcement that the time would come when all these treasures would be carried away into
Babylon, and that even the princes of Judah should be made base slaves in the palace of Babel (chapter xxxix).

During the time of this prophet, the kingdom of Judah was invaded by the combined forces of Syria and Israel.
This unfortunate kingdom, Israel, had fallen through idolatry and every sin, but she filled her cup of iniquity by
combining with an idolatrous nation in war upon her brethren. This brought the long predicted destruction, and
Israel was captured by the Assyrians. The event stands out more clearly as a judgment of God when it is
remembered that the same Assyrian power was miraculously, defeated when attempting to invade Judah.

If we keep these facts in view, the writings of Isaiah become intelligible and clear.

The first twelve chapters of this book contain reproofs, warnings and promises, chiefly directed to Judah and
Israel. In these promises, predictions of the coming Messiah and his work are prominent. The next chapters (xiii-
xxiii) are directed against Assyria, Babylon, Moab, Egypt, Philistia, Syria, Edom and Tyre. In chapters xxiv-xxxv
the sins and the misery of the people are rebuked. The Assyrian invasion is predicted and the destruction of
Samaria, while the deliverance of Jerusalem is being promised. The following four chapters are historical,
describing the invasion of Senacherib and the defeat of his army, and also the sickness of the King Hezekiah and
his recovery. The closing chapters (xl:lxvi) are again prophetic, embracing events from the Babylonian captivity to
the establishment of the millennial Kingdom of Christ. The deliverance of the Jews from Babylon, the character,
sufferings, death and glory of Messiah; the gospel call of the Gentile world; the wickedness of the Jews in
rejecting Messiah and their consequent scattering; their final return and the prevalence of the Kingdom of God, all
these are clearly predicted, but the subjects are often blended together, and the transition from one to another is
sometimes so rapid as to render it difficult to follow the connection. Indeed, in order to understand fully the
passages that refer to events yet future, some divine revelation seems to be necessary. For it is only by the aid of
the spirit of prophecy that prophecies can be fully understood.
MICAH, B.C. 758-699, was a contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, and lived in the southern part of the kingdom of
Judah. He does little more than reiterate the predictions of the two mentioned prophets, adding such illustrations
and exhortations as were suitable to the class among whom he labored.

One of his most remarkable predictions states that the gift of prophecy should be withdrawn from the ten tribes for
a long time. "Therefore, night shall be sent you, that ye shall not have a vision, and it shall be dark unto you, that
ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall
the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from
God" (iii: 6, 7). Here it is predicted that the people should be left in spiritual darkness because of the cessation of
prophecy, but the darkness shall not be an everlasting one, for it is a "night" caused by the "setting of the sun," and
consequently, as day follows night, so a time will again come when the prophetic day shall dawn upon the people.
This is clearly implied in the language used, so that the very threat to withdraw the Spirit of prophecy implies a
promise of its renewal.

NAHUM, B.C. 720-690. This prophet was contemporary with Micah and Isaiah. He commenced his ministry at
the time of the captivity of the ten tribes. And while the Assyrian power was boasting over this success, he is called
upon to announce the fall and destruction of their great metropolis, Nineveh. This is the theme of the whole book.
Nahum wrote his predictions in poetical form, and its sublimity of style is unsurpassed. The twelfth and thirteenth
verses of the first chapter are a parenthetic insertion, giving to the captives in Assyria a promise of deliverance at
some future time.

INTERVAL OF FIFTY YEARS.

For a space of one hundred and fifty years the voice of prophecy had now been heard among the people.
Sometimes two or more inspired men had been raised up at the same time, in different parts of the country. But
with the death of Isaiah, Micah, and Nahum, an interval of fifty years comes, during which period no prophecies
were delivered, as far as we know. During this time the ten tribes toil in their captivity, and Judah, still in
possession of his inheritance in Palestine, is growing in sin and hastening on to destruction. But as this fatal
moment approaches, God again sends inspired messengers to warn the people, and to declare His decrees. He
never overthrows nations without due warning. He never said that further revelations were superfluous.

REVIVAL OF PROPHECY.

ZEPHANIAH, B.C. 640-609, revives the prophetic office again after fifty years' interval. It seems that God left the
people to themselves during the reign of the wicked King Manasseh, and first whey Josiah had ascended the throne
the voice of God was again heard. This prophet announces the approaching judgment upon Judah on account of
their idolatry and other sins. Baal, with his black-robed priests (chemarin), and Moloch are to be cut off, men and
beasts, fowls and fishes to be consumed (chapter i). In the second chapter he predicts the overthrow of the
Philistines, the Moabites, Ammonites and Ethiopians, as well as the desolation of the great Assyrian capital,
Nineveh. The book closes with promises of a restoration yet future.

JEREMIAH, B.C. 628-585, was called to the prophetic office some years before the death of Zephaniah. His
prophecies are delivered in various places. He commences in his native place, Anathoth, but he was soon
compelled to flee from here on account of his persecutions; wherefore he took up his residence in Jerusalem.
During the reign of Josiah and Jehoahaz he continued his ministry uninterrupted, but when Jehojachim ascended
the throne, Jeremiah was incarcerated and sentenced to death, although the sentence was never carried out. In
prison the prophet committed his message to writing and commissioned one Baruch to read it in the temple on a
fast-day. The reckless monarch, after having heard a few pages, had the roll cut to pieces and burned. During the
reign of the next king, Jehojachin, the prophet again utters a voice of warning, but without effect. Zedekiah became
king. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, but withdrew on hearing that the Egyptians were
coming to rescue. On this occasion the prophet delivered the prediction that the Chaldeans should come again and
take the city and burn it with fire. Having delivered this message he left Jerusalem, as did, according to the Book
of Mormon, at the same time another righteous man with his family, Lehi. But Jeremiah was apprehended and
thrown into prison, where he remained until the city was taken by Nebuchadnezzar.
The incarceration of the prophet of God was the sin that filled the cup of iniquity of the Jews at this time, and it
brought speedy judgment.

The Babylonian king gave the prophet the choice of following the captives to Babylon or to remain with the
remnant. He chose the latter; and from this time all his endeavors are to turn the people to God, promising them
that if they would do so, God would yet build them up in their desolate country. But they did not listen to his
advice. They left the country and emigrated to Egypt, bringing the prophet with them (chapter xliii). Here he once
more lifts up his voice, trying to induce the people to turn to the Lord. After this we hear no more of him. Tradition
says he was put to death in Egypt by his own people.

Among the predictions of this remarkable prophet, we note the following: The fate of Zedekiah (xxxiv, 2, 3); the
precise duration of the Babylonian captivity, viz., seventy years (xxv, 11, 12); the downfall of Babylon and the
return of the Jews (xxix, 10-14). There are also many predictions concerning Messiah, whom he calls "Jehovah our
righteousness." The final salvation of Israel is set forth in many passages: iii, 15-18; xxxi, 31-34; 1, 4, 5.

As the predictions of Jeremiah are not chronologically arranged, and no clue is left as to their true chronological
order, it is sometimes very difficult to decide which predictions have already been fulfilled and which refer to
events yet future. Only through the Spirit of revelation can this be determined.

HABAKKUK, B.C. 612-598, is thought to have lived in Judea shortly before the captivity. If this supposition is
correct, he was contemporary with Jeremiah. The prophet commences his book with a lamentation over the sins of
Judah, foretelling the judgment that was to be poured out over the people through the invasion of the Chaldeans.
Then the destruction of the Chaldeans is shown unto him in a vision (chapter ii), and the book closes with a song,
composed probably for the use of the people in public worship, and designed to comfort them under the coming
afflictions.

DANIEL, B.C. 606-534, was born shortly before the Babylonian captivity and carried to Babylon in his eighteenth
year. Here, through his faithfulness to his God, he soon rose to an eminent position, and retained his power during
both the Babylonian and the Persian dynasties. He prophesied during the whole of the captivity, his last two
prophecies being delivered two years after the return of the captives. He did not return to Palestine, but died in
Babylon, at least ninety years old.

The first six chapters are a historic record, setting forth the events which led to the recognition of Daniel as a
prophet of God, also the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar, the fall of Belshazzar and the promotion of Daniel to the
office of a president over one hundred and twenty princes "who should be over the whole kingdom." This historic
record is interwoven with predictions relating to the various kingdoms of the world. Thus in the second chapter we
see before us, as in a beautiful panorama, a succession of kingdoms until the kingdom of God is being established,
"never to be destroyed," "but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever."

This prediction is distinct and clear, yet the remark made repeatedly before is applicable here: Revelation is
necessary in order to understand the details of its fulfilment. That God in the last days will establish an everlasting
kingdom, is foretold plainly enough. But "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom," so that the
prediction given does not exclude the necessity of continuous revelation. Through revelation Daniel was enabled to
predict the establishment of this kingdom; through revelation only can we perceive the establishment thereof and
recognize its existence.

The second part of the book is prophetic and comprises in its wonderful views events from the time of Daniel to
the final resurrection of the dead. It is an epitomized history of the world, written in advance of the events.

In chapter vii, the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian and Roman empires are represented by the four beasts: a
lion, a bear, a leopard and a fourth beast "dreadful and terrible, and strong, exceedingly." This, the Roman beast (or
kingdom) has ten horns, among which a "little horn" came up, having "eyes like a man and a mouth speaking great
things." The prophet follows the proceedings of this beast and particularly the little horn until "the ancient of days"
sits in judgment. Note that the whole of this vision has reference to the four empires in their religious connection
with each other, as the dream of Nebuchadnezzar (chapter ii) represents them in their political connection. The
"little horn" is therefore to be understood to represent the papal power, which afterward is said to have a time of
twelve hundred and sixty years allotted to its blasphemous rule, after which time comes the triumph of the "Saints
of the Most High."

In the eighth chapter the prophet has a vision concerning the Medo-Persian and the Grecian empires, the second
and the third "beasts" of the previous vision. The Medo-Persian empire is represented by a ram with two horns,
and the Grecian by a goat having a "notable horn," Alexander the Great, between its eyes. The conquests of
Alexander are described, and also the divisions of his kingdom into four parts. Then rises "a little horn" as in the
previous vision, a false, crafty tyrant, probably Antiochus Epiphanes, whose character is outlined, and whose
oppressions of the people of God causes Daniel to faint and feel sick for many days. That this little horn represents
Antiochus Epiphanes is a view entertained by the most ancient writers, but this does not exclude the probability
that the papal power is also referred to as the complete fulfilment of this part of the prophecy. What Antiochus was
to the Jews during the time of the Maccabees, the papal power has been to the Church of Christ in all ages.

The ninth chapter contains a prayer offered by the prophet in behalf of himself and his people. He particularly
supplicates God to again restore the sanctuary in Jerusalem. As an answer to this prayer, Gabriel appears and
informs him of the precise time for the coming of Messiah, "to finish the transgression, and to make an end to sin,
and to make a reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the vision and
prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy:" In seven weeks, or in forty-nine years, reckoning from the decree of
Artaxerxes, 457 B.C., the walls of Jerusalem were to be rebuilt, though in times of great trouble. In sixty-two
weeks, or four hundred and thirty-four years, Christ was to appear, and in the midst of one week, that is after three
years and a half, to be slain.

In the tenth chapter we are allowed to cast a glance behind the veil, and contemplate the wonderful fact that
heavenly messengers are employed to convey intelligence to holy men, and that they, while so doing, have to
overcome opposing powers, much as mortal men have in the performance of their duties. A divine messenger has
been sent to instruct Daniel concerning some records in "the Scripture of Truth," a heavenly record, but this
messenger is met and opposed by "the prince of the kingdom of Persia," whereupon a struggle that lasts for twenty
days follows. The victory would apparently have been dubious had not Michael himself come to the assistance of
the messenger.

In the eleventh chapter, the things noted in "the Scripture of Truth" are detailed. These things commence with the
history of Persia. Four kings are foretold: Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius and Xerxes (v. 2). Then follows a prediction
of Alexander the Great, his history and his successors in "the South" (Egypt) and the North (Syria) down to the
time of Antiochus Epiphanes (v. 3-29). Then follows the conquest of Syria by the Romans "Chittim," (v. 30), with
the rise of the papal power (v. 31-89). The character of this power and many of its corrupt doctrines are here
predicted with minuteness. Then come the invasions of the Saracens (the king of the South) and of the Turks (the
king of the North). The countries to be conquered by the Turks are enumerated (v. 41-43), as are also those that
were to escape. The chapter closes with a prediction concerning the end of the Turkish empire, yet to be fulfilled:
"He shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to
his end, and none shall help him."

The first verse of the twelfth chapter predicts the full deliverance of the Jewish nation through the interposition of
"the great prince," Michael, an event to be looked for after the fall of "the king of the North," or the Turkish
empire, and the next verses refer to the resurrection of mankind. The book closes with some chronological
statements, unintelligible even to the prophet, himself (v. 8), but the promise is given that at the end of time many
shall receive knowledge concerning these predictions (v. 4), a promise which evidently implies renewed
revelations. For how could these things in the last days be known without such revelation, any more than Daniel
could know them without revelation?

One thing is noticeable all through this prophetic record. Each new vision requires a new revelation from God.
Daniel is constantly seeking knowledge from God concerning the right understanding of the visions given, and it is
only through this means that he receives his knowledge. Continuous revelation was necessary to this the most
remarkable prophet of the ancient world. So it is to us, if we want to understand the plans and purposes of the
Almighty. Where there is no revelation spiritual darkness prevails, notwithstanding the plainest writings of God. A
Belshazzar and the whole collegium of learned priests may see on the wall the "Mene, mene, thekel, upharsin," but
a Daniel, a man in constant communication with God, is required to interpret it according to its right meaning.
EZEKIEL, B.C. 595-574, was carried captive to Babylon at the first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, eleven years
before the destruction of Jerusalem. He was contemporary with Jeremiah and Daniel, but lived some two hundred
miles north of Babylon on the banks of the river Chebar. Tradition has it that he was put to death by a fellow-exile
whom he had rebuked for idolatry.

The predictions of this prophet were delivered, some before and some after the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar. Before this event he calls upon the people to repent and warns them against seeking aid of the
Egyptians. He assures them that the fall of their beloved city was now unavoidable. When the Chaldean king
commenced his siege of the city, God revealed this to the prophet in his exile: "Son of man," God says to him,
"write thee the name of the day, even of this day: the king of Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this same day"
(xxiv, 2). This was in the ninth year of his captivity. Three years later he received the intelligence that the city had
fallen (xxxiii, 21). During this period all the predictions of the prophet are directed against foreign nations. After
he had heard of the fall of Jerusalem, his principal object in view is to comfort the people with promises of
restoration and future blessings.

The closing chapters (xl-xlviii) of the book of Ezekiel undoubtedly refer to events yet future. The descriptions of
the glorious building there given will no doubt once be recognized in a structure hereafter to be reared by the
people of God. But as yet, like all unfulfilled predictions, much of it is obscure and cannot be understood until the
light of revelation removes all obscurity therefrom.

OBADIAH, B.C. 588-583, is supposed to have prophesied during the period between the fall of Jerusalem and the
conquest of Edom, five years later. On this supposition, he was a contemporary of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

His predictions are directed against the Edomites. And he especially points out that there was a great difference
between the judgments executed upon Judah and upon Edom. For Judah should again be raised from her present
fall and finally possess not only Judea, but also the land of the Philistines and that of the Edomites, while Edom
should be "as though they had not been" (v. 16), a prediction that has been remarkably fulfilled to our own day.
And while Edom is thus utterly swallowed up, "saviors shall come upon Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau,
and the kingdom shall be the Lord's" (v. 21).

Three nations were foremost in afflicting the ancient people of God, viz.: the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the
Edomites. Three prophets were commissioned by the Lord to announce the judgment upon these three nations:
"Nahum foretells the destruction of the Assyrians, Habakkuk of the Chaldeans, and Obadiah of the Edomites."

THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS.

As had been foretold by the prophets, and particularly by Isaiah, the exiled Jews were permitted to return home
during the reign of Cyrus. As soon as they reached the Holy Land, we find them uniting their efforts to re-establish
the religious rites of their fathers, aided by the noble leaders, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Ezra and Nehemiah. They erect
an altar of burnt offering and rebuild the destroyed temple. Then the city wall is built, and various officers
appointed as circumstances required. For further particulars the reader is referred to the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah.

It may be well to state here—although the remark may, to some extent, deviate from the subject under
consideration—that the restoration of the Jewish nation at this time was very far from being that complete
restoration to more than former privileges, liberty and glory, of which all the prophets had spoken in such glorious
terms. The promise was that the whole remnant should be delivered, even if they were as numerous as the sand on
the sea shore. But from Babylon only comparatively few ever returned. The company of Zernbbabel consisted of
fifty thousand persons, and Ezra led six thousand more home. The great bulk of people that had been born in the
foreign land never returned. (See Book of Esther).

Again, the promise was that a kingdom should be established, with the Holy City as the capital, an everlasting
kingdom governed by God himself through Messiah. This promise has never yet been fulfilled. In fact, the Jews
have never since their overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar been an independent nation, governed by rulers of their own,
except during the very short rule of the Maccabees. After their return they continued to be tributary to the Persian
king for about one hundred years, as a province of Syria. When Alexander had conquered Persia (Syria and
Palestine with it), they fell into his hands. When the Grecian empire was divided, Palestine fell into the hands of
Ptolemy Lagus as a part of the Egyptian monarchy, and it remained so for about one hundred years, when it was
transferred to the kings of Syria, in which situation it greatly suffered during the frequent wars between Egypt and
Syria. Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the Syrian kings, plundered the city and the temple and enslaved the people.
For about three years and a half they were reduced to worse than Egyptian thraldom. Their sacred manuscripts
were burnt, and the people were compelled to sacrifice to idols. The temple itself was dedicated to Jupiter, a statue
of which was erected on the altar of God. Compare Daniel's prediction of "the little horn" (chapter viii, 9-12).
Through the noble enthusiasm and patriotism of Mattathias and his sons, a struggle against the oppressor now took
place which secured to the Jews a few years of dearly bought liberty and independence, but they were soon
conquered by the Romans. Pompey marched his army into Judea, conquered Jerusalem and made the country
tributary to Rome. Herod the Great deposed the last of the Maccabean family from his office, and Palestine has
never since been an independent state. Ever since the Babylonian captivity the great bulk of the Jewish nation has
been scattered abroad, without home, without temple, without an altar, and strangers have been masters in the land
of promise. It is therefore clear that all the prophecies that relate to the glorious restoration of the Jews must be
understood of a great restoration yet future, a very important fact for the right understanding of those prophecies.

THE LAST PROPHETS OF THE OLD COVENANT.

But to return to our subject. It has been already stated that the first care of the returned exiles was to re-establish
their religion. To do this, they were under the necessity of having new revelations. True, they had the writings of
Moses and of the prophets, and they had inspired interpreters, like Ezra and Nehemiah. True, their aim was not to
construct a new economy, but simply to re-establish the old one. And yet even this they could not do acceptably to
God without the aid of revelation. Hence God raised up three prophets—Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the last
three of the old covenant. What an overwhelming proof of the necessity of continuous revelation!

HAGGAI, B.C. 520-518, is thought to have been born in Babylon, and to have emigrated with Zerubbabel.

His book contains four prophetic messages. In the first the people are reproved for neglecting to build the temple,
while they were adorning their own houses, and a command is given to begin the construction immediately
(chapter i, 1-11), to which command the people, led by Zerubbabel and Joshua, willingly responded (i, 12-15). But
in a month the zeal of the people seems to have cooled off and the second message is delivered, declaring that the
Spirit of God was still with the people. "A little while," God says, "and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and
the sea, and the dry land" (which according to Paul, Hebrews xii, 22-28, was fulfilled when the old dispensation
was superseded by the gospel dispensation), "and the desire of all nations (Messiah) shall come; and I will fill this
house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts," (chapter ii, 1-9), which "glory" is thought to refer to the presence of
Christ in this second temple instead of the Shekinah that had illuminated the first temple. In the third message,
delivered two months afterwards, the people are being rebuked for polluting themselves while working in the holy
building and offering sacrifices. God reminds them that He had blessed them abundantly, from the time they had
laid the corner-stone of the temple (chapter ii, 10-19). The fourth message is delivered the same day. It contains a
general prediction of the overthrow of the kingdoms of the world and the promise of a special blessing to
Zerubbabel at that time. It is clear enough that the right interpretation of this promise can be comprehended by no
man, until divine revelation shall make it known.

ZECHARIAH was, like Haggai, born in Babylonia and went to Palestine with Zerubbabel. The general object of
his ministry is identical with that of Haggai, and through the encouragement and wise counsels of these prophets
the people prospered, and the temple was completed in six years. But besides this general object, Zachariah
describes through direct predictions and symbolic acts, the history of the Jews until the end of time. Daniel deals
with the history of the world; Zechariah with the history of the covenant people. Among the predictions of this
prophet we will here notice some of the last. According to the ninth chapter, the surrounding heathen nations are to
be destroyed. Messiah shall come as a king (v. 9) and establish His reign upon the earth. "His dominion shall be
from sea even to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth" (verse 10). Scenes of destruction are to intervene,
however, but the Lord will deliver His people, both Judah and Ephraim (chapter x, 1-12). "I will strengthen the
house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; and they shall be as
though I had not cast them off; for I am the Lord their God, and will hear them. And they of Ephraim shall be like
a mighty man," a glorious prediction of the restorative work, commenced in our own day by God, through His
servant Joseph, the prophet. We are further told that Jerusalem shall be besieged by many nations and the result
thereof (chapter xii, 1-14); Christ shall finally appear and all the world will become "Holiness to the Lord"
(chapter xiv).

Thus prophecy, so far from leading us to expect that revelation finally will cease, being superfluous, expressly
states that Christ Himself in person will appear and communicate His will to men. "Why?" it may be asked; and
the answer is clear: "Because revelation is essential to true religion."

MALACHI, B.C. 420-397, was the successor of Haggai and the last prophet of the old covenant. The temple had
now been finished and the service of the altar established. But a spirit of worldliness and insincerity is getting hold
of both the priesthood and the people, and this prophet is especially commissioned to warn them against their sins.

But his warnings are not heeded. The people prepare themselves for calamities. The Spirit of prophecy is
withdrawn for a period of four hundred years. The temple and the people are given into the hands of Antiochus
Epiphanes. The old dispensation is virtually closed.

CONCLUSION FROM THE FOREGOING.

The conclusions arrived at now are clear and need only to be briefly stated. We have seen that no book of the Old
Testament, although all are written and preserved for the instruction of the human race in all ages, contains
anything that is of such a nature as to exclude further revelation. Not one single passage, nor all the passages
combined, are so written as to exclude the necessity of the revelations contained in the New Testament, for
instance. On the contrary, one revelation leads to another, God always giving "line upon line, precept upon
precept," imparting knowledge as men are willing and able to receive it. For it is through revelation that God
educates His servants and His people; and as in any branch of study we are led on from the fundamental principles
and find that each new truth suggests others, so here, each new truth revealed leads us to others, until—were such a
case possible—we have been permitted to exhaust the entire fulness of divine knowledge.

We have also seen that the servants of God in the old covenant declare the continuation of revelation. They do not
consider the prophetic gift or the gift of receiving revelations as peculiar to their own dispensation. They point to
"the last days" as a time in which the Spirit of the Lord is to be poured out more abundantly than in any former
period. And His presence is to be manifested through "dreams and visions." The withdrawal of these they
designate as a calamity. They speak of the time in which such heavenly gifts are withdrawn, as "night" and
"darkness" while consequently, the presence of them indicate day and light. Now, are day and light necessary for
the physical welfare of man? If so, revelations are also necessary for his spiritual advancement.

We have further seen that the establishment of new economies requires new revelations. Moses was familiar with
the revelations given to the patriarchs before him. But when he was called upon to usher in the dispensation of the
law, he could not do this without new revelations. Nor could Zerubbabel re-establish this dispensation after the
return from Babylon without the aid of revelation. Through the revelations given to the Prophet Haggai the people
"prospered" and were able to complete their work as commanded by the Lord (Ezra vi, 14). Without this, they
would not have been able to prosper.

Sometimes we see that revelations are given to faithful servants of God as a special favor to them. In such cases,
what is seen or heard must not be recorded—as was the case with some visions of Paul in the New Testament—or,
if recorded, is sealed up in mystical expressions, unintelligible to the common reader, until the Spirit of revelation
gives the true interpretation thereof. This was the case with some of Daniel's visions, and with at least one of the
visions of John (Rev. x, 4, 5).

Are revelations, then, given in order to establish new economies, to preserve the children of God from falling into
darkness, to instruct them about things known to God alone, in one word to lead men unto salvation? Surely, there
never can be a time when revelation is not necessary.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

But it will be said, no one (except the Jews perhaps) contend that the Old Testament alone contains all that is
necessary to know. The New Testament is a supplement to the Old Testament, and the two together contain the
fulness of God's revelations. The prophecies of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the New, and to the volume thus
completed nothing must be added.

Is there anything in the New Testament to verify this statement so universally accepted as true among the
"Christian" Protestantic world? Or does the New Testament confirm the conclusions we have arrived at in the
perusal of the Old?

The New Testament contains five historic books, viz.: the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; fourteen
letters written by Paul; three by John, and two by Peter, one letter by James, and one by Jude, to which collection
comes one prophetic book by John.

THE FOUR GOSPELS.

The four Gospels are brief, biographical sketches, records of a few of the works and teachings of our Lord.

It may be supposed that those disciples of Christ that were able to write, like Matthew and John, would keep
journals while they followed their master, witnessing his works and listening to his teachings. These journals
would, after the crucifixion and ascension, naturally be read in private and in public. They would be copied and
distributed in the various branches of the church and form texts for discourses, and thus be augmented with such
incidents or sayings which were still retained in the memories of those who had been eye witnesses. In this way
several versions of the doings and sayings of our Lord began to circulate, some, no doubt, contradicting others,
until the necessity became universally felt to have some authentic record, showing exactly what was reliable of the
many circulating reports, and what was not reliable. And the result is the four gospels according to Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.

At what precise time these gospels were completed in their present form is a question not yet settled between the
various critics. That they, in their present form, were issued by the apostles, whose names they bear, seems
irreconcilable with some facts. There are, for instance, words and phrases found, which could hardly have had any
significance until some time after the time of the apostles. The word "kephas" (John i, 43) does not occur in
classical Hebrew, but is used by later Talmudistic writers signifying something hard, a rock. "Petra" (Matt. xvi, 18)
meaning a "rock," has a strong Latin color, while the Hebrew for "rock" is "zur." And the expression "to take up
the cross," or "to bear the cross," is all the more remarkable, as in the Hebrew there was at that time no word
equivalent to "cross," which is of Latin origin. Even later Jewish writers found it difficult to adequately express the
idea of a cross, and hence used the word zelem, which, however, signifies an image, and the translations of the
New Testament, both into Hebrew and Arabic, have found no better way out of the difficulty than to adopt the
Chaldaic zeliba, gallows. Of this a modern form, zelab, is made to represent the idea "cross." From these and many
other circumstances, we seem justified in the conclusion that the four gospels have been subjected to foreign
influences, which have modified their form in various ways. But that they are based upon and contain the
"memoirs" of our Lord, as published by the apostles, by mouth and pen, need not be doubted. The testimony of
antiquity is conclusive on this point.

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW.

According to general tradition in the early church, the annotations of Matthew were written in the vernacular
tongue of Palestine, Syro-Chaldaic, a tradition very probable indeed. But as Greek at this time was the literary
language, the original was soon translated into this tongue, under the supervision of Matthew himself, about thirty
years after the crucifixion. It may be safely assumed that our "Gospel According to St. Matthew" is in the main
identical with this original document of the Apostle.

The aim of this gospel is dearly to prove to the Jews that Jesus is the promised Messiah. It frequently refers to the
prophets, refutes the various Jewish sects, and tries to prepare the Jewish nation for the acceptance of the Gentiles
into the Kingdom of God.

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK.

While Matthew was penning his gospel for the Jews, Mark was preparing his, chiefly for the converts among the
Gentiles. This Mark was not an apostle and had not been an eye-witness to the life and deeds of our Lord. But he
was a native of Jerusalem and an intimate friend of the apostles. He accompanied Paul on some of his journeys and
attended Peter for a considerable period, and during this time he no doubt wrote the gospel that bears his name,
according to the dictates of Peter. Some have called this the "Gospel According to St. Peter," and Peter himself, in
his second epistle, refers, perhaps, to this gospel when he says: "We make known unto you the power and coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ."

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE.

The gospel according to Luke was written in Rome by Luke, the physician, one of Paul's most faithful companions
and friends. The author states that many had undertaken to collect the facts preached concerning Christ and
believed among the Christians, according to the traditions handed down from eye-witnesses, and consequently, in
order to secure a collection that would be reliable, he himself had diligently searched out everything that at the
time of the writing was available. These data, the result of diligent research, Luke endeavors to put before the
readers in chronological order, while the two previous evangelists pay but little attention to chronology. The gospel
was written under the supervision of Paul.

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN.

The latest of the gospels is that of John. It is said to have been written at Ephesus, where John resided, presiding
over the branches originated by Paul. John, having before him copies of the three previous gospels, naturally omits
many data there recorded, introducing others which he had preserved from oblivion. The chief aim of John is to set
forth the divine nature of our Lord. The previous evangelists dwell mostly on the works of our Savior in Galilee.
John omits most of that, recording his works in Judea.

Let it be remembered that this book is the last written of all the books of the Bible, about ninety-seven years after
Christ, and that its aim is to correct the errors of doctrine, then becoming common among the churches, concerning
the true character of Christ.

TESTIMONY OF THE GOSPELS.

We may now ask: When these books were written, were they intended to contain all that would ever be necessary
for men to know concerning God's plans and purposes, thus making all further revelation superfluous? What do the
gospels teach concerning this question?

The first pages of the gospel confirm the lesson we have drawn from the Old Testament, that revelation is
necessary for the establishment of a new dispensation. For the gospel dispensation is ushered in and established
through revelation. Zacharias is visited by an angel (Luke i, 11-20). Gabriel appears to Mary (Luke i, 26-38). John
the Baptist is commissioned by God to preach and baptize (John i, 6, 33). That Jesus was Messiah is manifest to
John through revelation. The Spirit descends and a voice from heaven is heard (John i, 32, 34; Matt. iii, 16, 17).
And this point is particularly noteworthy. All the ancient prophets had predicted the coming of the Messiah. Some
of them had given details about where He would be born, His parentage, and the precise time of His coming, and
yet it was necessary, when He came, to give new revelations, pointing Him out to the most devout servant of God
then living. Previous revelations are here clearly seen not to render new revelations useless. And as the gospels
thus begin with revelations, so they close with declarations that revelation should continue. For in His farewell
address to His disciples, Christ says: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself;
but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come" (John xvi, 12, 13). Christ
here expressly states that His ministry did not complete God's revelations. There were many other things to learn
than those which he had communicated, and among these were also "things to come," all of which the Spirit
should communicate to the Twelve. Revelation, then, was not to be done away with at the departure of our Lord.
The last verse of the fourth gospel, the last verse ever written in our New Testament states, moreover, that the
things recorded in the gospels are only a small fragment of all that could be written concerning the works of Christ.
These works and the lessons to be conveyed were no doubt necessary, and yet we have no record of them. The
gospels, therefore, openly admit that they are not intended to be a complete record of all that is necessary for man
to know. They claim to be written for the purpose of directing men's hearts to Jesus (John xx, 31), and point out
His promise to continue the revelation of truth through the Spirit. This is the important testimony of the gospels.
All the works and the teachings of Christ were not enough for the guidance of the first Christians. They needed and
were promised further revelation. To us has come a record not of all of Christ's teachings, but only of a very few,
merely a fragment. If all the teachings of Christ given during His ministry upon the earth were not sufficient for
the guidance of the apostles, how much less can the gospels, which contain only a small part of these teachings, be
sufficient for other men? The thought is as irrational as it is without foundation in the Word of God.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

The only question now remains: Do the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles supply us with all the teachings that
the Spirit of Truth, according to our Savior's promise, was to reveal to the Apostles, and which were necessary for
their guidance? If not, continuous revelation will be just as necessary after the New Testament dispensation as it
was after the Mosaic economy.

The book called the Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke, and may be considered as a continuation of his
Gospel. In this book we can trace the growth of Christian churches during the greater part of the first century after
Christ. It covers the period from the time of the crucifixion to the second year of the first imprisonment of Paul in
Rome, A. D. 63, and there it breaks off even without recording the issue of the trial. The book may be divided in
two parts. The first twelve chapters describe the growth of the Church of Christ among the Jews in Palestine,
chiefly through the labors of Peter. The last sixteen chapters treat of the spread of the Gospel among other nations,
chiefly through the labors of Paul. Of the works of the rest of the Apostles we have no account.

Tradition has it, that Matthew suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia; Philip in Phrygia; Thomas in India, and so on. But
of their work for the promulgating the gospel in the different parts of the world we have no record. What they
taught, what difficulties they encountered, how they preached, suffered and endured may be conjectured. But it has
not reached us in any historic record.

Nor is the Acts of the Apostles a complete record of the works of the two servants of God, whose ardent labors are
noticed. It is as fragmentary as are the gospels. Many important transactions, referred to elsewhere, are omitted.
There is no account whatever of the branch in Jerusalem after the imprisonment and deliverance of Peter. Nothing
is told of the introduction of the Gospel in Rome, the capital of the world at that time. Nor does it say anything of
Paul's many voyages, which he incidentally mentions (II Cor. xi, 25).

Considering all this, it seems as if the Spirit of Truth had been anxious to guard against the impression that this
book was intended to conclude God's revelations to mankind.

Let us consider the facts. Christ had promised to send the Spirit of Truth to His chosen Twelve. What this Spirit
was to reveal was, of course, as essential and necessary to salvation as anything that our Savior had revealed
Himself. But of all this that the Spirit, according to the promise, has revealed to the Twelve, only a small part has
been recorded. How can this small part be sufficient to us, since it was not sufficient to the first Christians?

But, besides this, the book of the Acts shows plainly the necessity of continuous revelation; for wherever the
gospel is being accepted, the gift of receiving revelation is being imparted through faith. Peter, in his first sermon,
declares that the time has now come when the Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh. Prophecy, visions, dreams
were to attend the believers (Acts ii, 17, 18); and, accordingly, whenever the gospel is preached and believed, these
manifestations follow. The heavens are opened to Stephen, and he is permitted to see the Son of God on the right
hand of the Father (Acts vi, 55, 56); an angel of the Lord appears and directs Philip (Acts viii, 26); Christ appears
to Saul (Acts ix, 3-6); through the vision of an angel Cornelius is led to send for Peter, and he receives supernatural
gifts (Acts x, 148); an angel delivers Peter from prison (Acts xii, 7, 8); the Holy Ghost reveals to the brethren in
Antioch that they should send Paul and Barnabas on a mission (Acts xiii, 1-4); through the Spirit the apostles and
elders are able to settle the dispute about the doctrine of circumcision (Acts xv, 1-31); twelve men in Ephesus
receive the Holy Ghost through the administration of Paul, and prophesy and speak in tongues (Acts xix, 1-7).
Wherever the gospel message is delivered and believed, in Palestine, in Greece, in Asia Minor, the results are the
same. The Holy Ghost is given, and His presence is manifested through these gifts.
The Acts of the Apostles has taught us this important lesson—that the gift of receiving revelations was not
confined to the Twelve nor was the gift to cease with them. The gift itself was inseparable from the gospel. Where
there is no gospel there are no revelations, but where the true gospel of Jesus Christ is, there is revelation also. The
promise of receiving the Holy Ghost, the promised Spirit of truth that was to lead into all truth and to reveal things
to come, is a universal promise: "For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even
as many as the Lord our God shall call" (Acts ii, 39).

THE EPISTLES.

The epistles of the apostles confirm most emphatically the necessity of constant revelations from God. The
apostolic churches could not do without such revelations. Hence the necessity of the churches communicating with
the apostles and the apostles writing their epistles, embodying the will of God.

For instance, an error arises, as was the case in Colossae. Paul was at the time in Rome, but the church in Colossae
sent a special messenger to Paul, viz.: Epaphras, who explained the situation to the apostle and caused the letter to
the Colossians to be written as a refutation of that peculiar error. The Scriptures were not sufficient for the
guidance of the Colossians. The new emergency required a new communication from God, a new revelation, and
God gave it through Paul, his servant.

So with all the epistles. Each has a particular object. None is a treatise on theology, putting forth all that is
necessary to know for all ages and all men. There is not one written for that purpose.

The first epistles of Paul, I and II Thessalonians, 52 and 53 A. D., express the joy and satisfaction of the apostle on
account of the manner in which the people of Thessalonica had received the gospel. He cautions them against the
sins prevalent in that great city, and comforts those who mourned over the loss of dear relatives. The "dead in the
Lord" will be resurrected at the coming of the Lord, and this event is more fully explained, in accordance with the
prophecy of Daniel concerning the "little horn" (Dan. viii).

The next epistle, that to the Galatians, A. D. 53 or 57, is a warning to the churches in that district not to mix up the
rites of the Mosaic law with the ordinances of the gospel, as the two were so different from each other as Ishmael
and Isaac, Sinai and Zion. And to give this admonition force, the writer proves that his knowledge of Christian
truth was derived not from human teaching, but from God through immediate revelation, wherefore the apostles of
the Lord had recognized him as their equal (chap. i, 2).

The epistles to the Corinthians were written A. D. 57 in reply to a letter received by Paul from the branch in
Corinth, requesting his advice on certain points (ch. vii, 1); also to correct some errors of which he had heard by
report (i, 11; v, 1; xi, 18). The state of the branch was, however, such that the Apostle deemed it necessary to send
Timothy there also, thus imparting both by letter and by verbal preaching communications from God. Mark how
special emergencies require special revelations!

The epistle to the Romans (A. D. 58) is the most systematic of all the writings of Paul, and one that by Protestants
is considered the basis of gospel theology. The scope of this epistle is to reconcile the Jews and the Gentiles in the
church of Christ, by placing all on one level in the sight of God. "All have sinned; all must be saved by the same
means." This is the whole epistle in one sentence. Now, it is instructive to notice how the apostle in this important
letter to the Romans illustrates the question under consideration. In the very first chapter he says he is constantly
praying that God may give him an opportunity of visiting Rome, not indeed as a tourist and sightseer, but "that I
might impart unto you some spiritual gift" (ch. i, 11). What "spiritual gifts" are, we learn in I Cor. xii, viz.: "Word
of wisdom," or "knowledge," "faith," "healing," "miracles," "prophecy," etc. So that it was not enough, according
to Paul, for the Christians in Rome to have all the sacred Scriptures, including this letter, but they needed
something more. They needed "spiritual gifts" continued among them. It has been reserved for later "Christians" to
discover that Paul was wrong, and that "spiritual gifts" were of no account as long as the Scriptures were to be had
at a cheap price.

To have the Spirit of God is, further, put forth as the necessary condition of a "child" of God. "If Christ be in you
the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." "As many as are led by the Spirit of
God, they are the sons of God." "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God"
(chap. viii). Such is the importance given to the possession of the Spirit of God. But we have already seen that the
very office of the Spirit is to "lead into all truth, and to reveal things to come." He who has the Spirit has,
therefore, the Spirit of revelation, and the apostle contends that man without the Spirit of revelation is a stranger
and an enemy to God (chap. viii, 5-9). The apostle further states that at the time when the fulness of the Gentiles
has been gathered in, direct communication from God will still continue. "For there shall come out of Zion the
deliverer and turn away ungodliness from Jacob" (chap. xi, 26). How could this be possible if all communication
with God had ceased with the close of the New Testament? But they have not ceased, "for the gifts and calling of
God are without repentance" (chap. xi, 29).

This may suffice to show that the great Apostle of the Gentiles never meant his letter to the Romans nor any other
letter to close the channels of revelation.

Let us remind ourselves of one more fact. The writers of the New Testament themselves state that they had not
written all that was necessary for instruction. In writing to the Corinthians about the partaking of the Lord's supper
Paul gives some general directions, but concludes by saying: "The rest will I set in order when I come" (I Cor. xi,
34). Now, what instructions or arrangements are here left out? We do not know. But we see that the written word
was not meant to convey all that was necessary to know. The same expression we find in the second letter of John.
"Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and
speak face to face" (II John, 12). See also (III John, 13). Who can then say that we in the books of the Bible have
all that written which God ever intended to convey to mankind, and that revelation has ceased? The idea is in
direct contrast to the word of the apostles.

It is instructive to notice how theologians have been compelled to turn their own reasons upside down, and to
stretch the various passages of Scripture on their learned racks in order to make them fit for all occasions. Luther's
explanation of our Lord's prayer is a curious instance. "Daily bread" means, according to that noted reformer, not
only what you eat and drink, but "bread" means also a house and a wife, obedient children, good neighbors and
"other such things." Whether in "daily bread" was included the beer-keg that Luther received among his wedding
presents, the reformer does not state, but in the "other such things" is room for a considerable quantity of "bread."
Of course, that kind of exegesis fills everything into the Bible. By it anything can be got of anything or of nothing,
but God never put it there. Man did it, and, by so doing, proved himself to be on the wrong track, to say the least.

In order to gain a sound understanding of the word of God, the various books must be read as Mr. Locke says the
Epistles ought to be read. He requires you to read through one epistle at a sitting, and observe its drift and aim.
"If," says he, "the first reading gave some light, the second gave me more; and so I persisted on reading constantly
the whole epistle over at once, till I came to have a general view of the writer's purpose, the chief branches of his
discourse, the arguments he used, and the disposition of the whole. This, I confess, is not to be obtained by one or
two hasty readings; it must be repeated again and again, with a close attention to the tenor of the discourse, and a
perfect neglect of the divisions into chapters and verses." If this plan be adopted, and the books of the Bible be
read with a humble, prayerful heart, a heart in unison with the authors that wrote, the true meaning of the word will
be grasped.

And the clearer this true meaning becomes, the more it will appear that nothing short of continued communication
with God can satisfy the heart. For it is the very purpose of the written word of God to lead men to seek this
communication with God, to guide, in other words, the straying child to its loving father.

PROPHECIES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Without entering into a more minute examination of the remaining epistles, we will proceed to consider some of
the prophecies of the Gospel dispensation.

Prominent among these prophecies are those which predict the establishment of a new dispensation in the last
days. Our Savior calls it "the regeneration," and says that in that dispensation "the Son of man shall sit on the
throne of His glory," and the Twelve "shall sit upon twelve thrones" (Matt. xix, 28).

Peter says that Christ is to be in heaven until this new dispensation, "the times of the restitution of all things"
comes (Acts iii, 21).