| CHAPTER VII.
BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION Sunday, November 5, 1876, was a bright but cold day. Very little snow was on the ground. Father, mother, and I went to morning meeting, after which, in company with about two hundred others, we immediately repaired to the home of William Lively, where mother and I prepared for baptism. From there we went to the Thames River whre, right under the Port Stanley Bridge, elder John J. Cornish immersed us. I believed then as I do now, that the Christian mode of baptism was immersion, and that “water baptism is for the remission of sins.” I felt the solemnity of the occasion resting upon me, and felt that our heavenly Father had pardoned all my sins. By brother-in-law came to see us baptized, but was ashamed to let people see him in company with the latter Day Saints, so he went on the other side of the river, hid himself under some bushes, and witnessed the baptism. In the afternoon of the same day at a prayer meeting in the church we were confirmed under the hands of Elders Joseph Luff and John J. Cornish. I was then a Latter Day Saint. I felt that as my name was written in the record of the church, so it was also written in the Lamb’s Book of Life; that I had been translated from the kingdom of darkness [54] into the kingdom of God’s dear Son; that I was now an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. O, how my views had changed! In the past I had been taught to look upon God a being a something that had no body (Church of England Prayer Book, article 1; Catholic Cathecism, by Rev. P. Collet; Methodist Discipline, article 1)—a something whom no person had ever seen and no one ever would see; but as I studied I read how Adam saw God and conversed with him in the Garden of Eden; that “Enoch walked with God,” and Abraham walked before the Almighty God and prepared a feast of cakes, butter, and milk, and a part of a calf, tender and good, and that the Lord and two angels ate of the food while Abraham stood by them under the tree, and when the dinner was over God and Abraham walked together. When they finished their conversation the scriptural statement is, “And the Lord went his way, as he had left communing with Abraham, and Abraham returned unto his place.” Again: “And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham—Genesis 13. I read how Jacob declared, “He had seen God face to face.” And in case Jacob should think it was not God, but that it was an angel, “God appeared unto Jacob again,” and “God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. . . . And God said unto him, I am God Almighty And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him—Genesis 35: 9-13. I then read the scriptural account of “Moses and [54] Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel” who “saw the God of Israel and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone. . . . They saw God and did eat and drink.” After that Moses was permitted to see God at different times as the Bible says, “and the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”—Exodus 9. I also read in many parts of the Old Testament that many other men were permitted to see God, and when I looked into the New Testament I read that .Jesus Christ was “the express image of his [God’s] person,” and that he was “in the form of God.” I also read both in the Old and New Testaments that “man was made in the image” “and after the similitude of God,” and thank Heaven, I not only read that God had a body, and that men had seen him, both in Old and New Testament times, but that by perfect obedience to the gospel, I could be made pure, and I read that the “pure in heart shall see God,” and that when the storms of this life have ended he will come to earth and they (the pure in heart) shall see God, and that they (the pure in heart) shall be his, people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. “He that hath this hope purifieth himself.” Thank God for such a hope. It is true that I knew but very little of God; but from the little I had learned when a child in Sunday [55] school and from the few sermons I had heard, and revival meetings I had attended, I thought God a cruel being who had created the human family, and that because Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, God was going to thrust all of Adam’s posterity into a burning lake of fire and brimstone, there to welter in the seething flames of an eternal hell. But that there was a child born of a virgin, whose name was Jesus Christ, and God made an agreement with this child, when he was grown to be a man, that if he would die on the cross, all who would believe on him would be permitted to live in heaven with them, but that all other people who would not believe that Jesus was God’s Son, must go to the fires of hells there to burn for ever and ever. I had then read from a book called The Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisrns, these words: By the decree of God for the manifestation of his glory some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. The angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite that it can not be increased or diminished. These, with other things I had heard, made me think God was unjust and cruel. I confess I was in one sense afraid of God, but I could not love him. I thought if I had been born in order to be sent to hell “by the decree of God for the manifestation of his glory” for something I could not do or could not help doing, I felt justified in saying, “I would pound upon the sooty doors of my infernal prison and make the blackened and gloomy caverns [56] of hell reecho with my shrieks of, Unjust! Unjust!” I could not say this was not so, but I could say if it were true that God made some for heaven and the rest for hell, that he did not do justice, and therefore I could not love him. I could not love a man if he were to take his helpless child and put it on a red-hot stove for one minute to hear it scream and see it burn. I would look upon him as a wretch who was not worthy the name of man. How then could I be expected to love a God who would take teeming millions of weak and helpless creatures who were unable to resist his awful decrees and cast them into a fire which Spurgeon says “will burn for ever,” and that “it is fire exactly like that which we have on earth”; and Professor Finney says, “is so hot that if the damned were taken out and put into a caldron of red-hot potash they would freeze to death instantly”? But when I heard the Latter Day Saints preach, when I read the Bible and the books of our church, I found that such teach as above referred to were false, that it was nothing but blasphemy, that God is a loving Father who is “too good to be unkind.” I learned that our Savior came and paid the debt of original sin, so that no man will be sent to hell because Adam did wrong, but that man will he judged and rewarded according to his works: “that men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgression”; that through the atonement of Christ all men may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. Oh, how different this doctrine from that which [57] presented God as an unmerciful, spiteful tyrant! In place of viewing him as the eternal foe of the erring and blind, I read that he was and is ever blessing his children, both the evil and the good, and that his dear Son was called the “friend of sinners”; not that he passed by their sins as a thing of naught, but he loved and pitied and wept over erring humanity, for he knew that they would (if they did not repent and seek forgiveness) be called to render an account for every sinful word and deed, and be punished according to the degree of crime they had committed. The Scriptures taught me that though God would punish man for every sin, yet it would not be because God hated the sinner, but on the contrary, because he loved him; and that when the wicked had paid the “uttermost farthing,” or had paid the penalty for their sin, they would receive a reward for the good they had performed in life. There has no man lived upon the earth who has not performed some kind act; and the Savior said that even the giver of a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple shall in no wise lose his reward; and he certainly taught that there would be an end to the punishment of the wicked when he said through his servant Paul, that by his atonement every man shall be made alive and be rewarded according to the deeds done in the body; and each shall receive a glory in his own order. The apostle has said that God has sworn by him self that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ, to the glory of [58] God the Father. The Savior, while in his ministry here on earth, said: All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blaasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not he forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosovever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come—Matthew 12:31,32. |
| RC Evans page Previous Chapter (6) Next Chapter (8) |
 |