BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY View Document
Even though the distinctive doctrines of Mormonism came to full expression during the Nauvoo period, apart from Joseph Smith's King Follett funeral sermon added as an appendix in his Voice of Truth, An Appeal to the Inhabitants of the State of New York is the only book published in Nauvoo which might be called speculative theology. Collected in its pages are five of Parley Pratt's essays, one written in December, 1843, three others written early in 1844. The Times and Seasons took notice of it in its March 15, 1844, issue, calling it "a new publication," and included excerpts from the last three essays in its next number.
The lead essay grew out of the public meeting in Nauvoo, November 29, 1843, in which Joseph Smith urged all who could "wield a pen" to write to their mother states to support the Mormon claims against Missouri. In spite of the notation on the title page, this printing of Pratt's letter to Queen Victoria was taken from the first edition. "Reprinted from the tenth European edition" is a bit hyperbolic since there were only two editions. It likely refers to the fact that these comprised ten thousand copies.
Parley Pratt wrote "Fountain of Knowledge," "Immortality of the Body," and "Intelligence and Affection," early in 1844. These essays embrace as optimistic a view of mankind as in any LDS book and hint at the dramatic concept of God that Joseph Smith would reveal in his King Follett funeral sermon. The first argues that the Bible cannot contain all knowledge and hence is not the fountain of knowledge. This fountain, the essay declares, is direct revelation from God, and the scriptures exist to invite and encourage men and women to come to it.
"Immortality of the Body" is an amplification of the ideas in Pratt's "The Regeneration and Eternal Duration of Matter." It begins by asserting that "man's body is as eternal as his soul," and that both are designed to endure throughout the life to come. Matter can neither be created nor annihilated, it declares, so the earth was not created out of nothing but organized out of existing matter. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the material body is universal. In the hereafter, "men that are prepared will actually possess a material inheritance on the earth. They will possess houses, and cities, . . . and they will eat, drink, converse, think, walk, taste, smell and enjoy." "God the Father," the essay continues, "has a real and substantial existence in human form and proportions, like Jesus Christ, and like man." That AGod is a spirit" and is omnipresent, it argues, is to be understood in the sense that his influence is everywhere felt. " Heaven then, is composed of an innumerable association of glorified worlds . . . of which our earth . . . must form some humble part."
The opening sentences of the final essay assert that intelligence and affection "have their origin in eternal, uncreated elements; and like them, must endure forever. They are the foundations of enjoyment, the main-springs of glory and exaltation, and the fountains from which emanate a thousand streams of life, and joy, and gladness." The human mind is capable of expanding to unlimited intelligence, the essay says, and when freed from the limits of a mortal body, it will grow to infinite capacity. Intelligence gives rise to affection: God "loves because he knows," and "love or affection is dependent on knowledge, or intelligence, and can only be increased by an increase of knowledge." "Our natural affections are planted in us by the Spirit of God," this essay continues, "for a wise purpose; and they are the very main-springs of life and happiness." Religious austerity, unsocial sadness, celibacy, self-denial, it states, are opposed to true religion. "We feel safe in the conclusion, that a field wide as eternity and boundless as the ocean of God's benevolence, extends before the servants of God. A field where, ambition knows no check, and zeal no limits; and where the most ardent aspirations may be more than realized. . . And where man-once a weak and helpless worm of dust may sit enthroned in majesty on high, and occupy an exalted station among the councils of the sons of God."
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 202, p. 247-49.
Used by permission of the authors.