Mormon Publications: 19th Century - A timely warning to the people of England

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HYDE, Orson. A timely warning to the people of England, of every sect and denomination, and to every individual into whose hands it may fall. By an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, late from America. Preston, 19th August, 1837. Manchester, [England], Reprinted by W. R. Thomas, Spring Gardens, [1839]. Broadside 51 x 34 cm. Text in three columns, within an ornamental border.

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In the summer of 1836 Orson Hyde published A prophetic warning to all the churches. . . . in Toronto, Canada, the earliest work that can be called a Mormon missionary tract. The following year Joseph Smith called Heber C. Kimball and Hyde to begin one of the most dramatic episodes in Mormon history, the first Mormon mission to England. On July 1, 1837 Kimball, Hyde, Willard Richards and four recent converts from Canada sailed from New York on the Garrick, arriving at Liverpool on July 19. A few days before their departure these elders distributed A prophetic warning in New York City and a month after arriving in England it appears that Hyde republished the broadside tract in Preston with the new title, A timely warning to the people of England. . . . Unfortunately there are no known extant copies of the 1837 Preston edition but there is good evidence that it was printed, making it the first Mormon work published in Great Britain. In 1839 a third edition appeared printed by W. R. Thomas of Manchester with the title referring to the 1837 Preston edition.

A timely warning (1839) and A prophetic warning (1836) are virtually identical for the first half of the text. But in the second half A timely warning eliminates the more morbid events predicted for the last days and is less severe in condemning the sectarian clergy, even though it comments on their tendency to cry "false teachers" without examining the Latter day Saints' claims. It also includes a reference to "the coming of the Son of Man, which will be witnessed by this generation" --one of the few instances in which a Mormon author speculates in print about the time of the Second Advent.

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]). Items 30, 36, and 54, p. 63-64, 68, 85-86.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.