[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
It was nighttime in the Ohio town of Kirtland, and Apostle
Parley P. Pratt had already gone to bed when there was a
knock at the door.
It was several brethren with fellow Apostle Heber C.
Kimball who said he had felt inspired to wake Elder Pratt
and give him a blessing.
"Thou shalt go to upper Canada, even to the city of
Toronto, and there thou shalt find a people
prepared for the gospel.
And thou shalt organize the Church among them.
And from the things growing out of this mission shall the
fulness of the gospel spread into England."
So as Brother Pratt prepared for his journey in far off
Toronto, the Lord was preparing for the conversion
of the future third President of His Church in the latter
days, John Taylor.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Born November 1, 1808 in Milnthorpe, Westmoreland
County, England, John Taylor as a young boy had seen the
vision of an angel in the heavens holding a trumpet to
his mouth and sounding a message to the nations, a
vision John didn't understand until years later.
He was baptized a member of the Church of
England as a baby.
And when he was about 16, John decided to join
the Methodist Church.
And within five years from that time, John and his family
had immigrated to Toronto, where he became a class leader
in the Methodist Church there.
One class member was Leonora Cannon, who had traveled to
Canada from England as a ladies' companion.
John Taylor had met his future wife.
As time went on, he and several friends became
dissatisfied with many Methodist doctrines and formed
their own study group.
While this group held their meetings, a nearly destitute
Parley P. Pratt left a sick wife down in Ohio to go to
upper Canada, even to Toronto, to preach the restored gospel.
After John had heard Parley preach, however, he was not
converted immediately.
For three weeks he followed the American from place to
place, listening to his sermons and recording them so
he could compare them with the scriptures.
He also made a prayerful study of the Book of Mormon and the
Doctrine and Covenants.
Finally, he was convinced that the true gospel of Jesus
Christ had been restored to the earth by heavenly
messengers.
The meaning of his childhood vision had been made clear.
He and Leonora were baptized in May 1836.
Others of the study group were also baptized, among them
Joseph Fielding.
He asked John Taylor to write concerning the gospel to his
brother, a minister in Preston, England.
And thus, the way was prepared for the fulness of the gospel
to be spread into England, as Elder Kimball had prophesied.
Only a few months after his baptism, John Taylor was
placed in charge of the Church in Canada until a year later,
Joseph Smith asked John to settle in Far West, Missouri.
There the Taylors lived for a year, long enough for John to
be ordained an Apostle in 1838, and long enough to
suffer through some of the worst mob persecutions the
Saints saw in Missouri.
So within a few months, the Taylors were moving again.
This time to Illinois, where they lived in an old military
barracks while John prepared for a mission to England.
After his mission, he helped to build Nauvoo into one of
the finest cities in the West and served his community more
than ably as editor of two papers, the Times and Seasons
concerned more with Church matters and the Nauvoo
Neighbor, concentrating more on cultural
and educational matters.
Then on June 27, 1844, tragedy struck in nearby Carthage, and
John Taylor was there.
[SINGING A POOR WAYFARING MAN OF GRIEF]
"I sang a song that had lately been introduced into Nauvoo.
The song was very much in accordance with our feelings,
where our spirits were all depressed and gloomy with
ominous forebodings.
Soon afterward, I saw men with painted faces coming around
the corner of the jail.
[GUN SHOT]
"A ball passed through the panel of the door and struck
Brother Hyrum.
[GUN SHOT]
"Another ball from outside entered his back.
They pushed the door some distance open and discharged
their guns into the room, when I parried them off with my
walking stick.
[GUN SHOTS RING]
"I remember feeling as though my time had come.
After parrying the guns for some time, seeing no hope of
escaping, it occurred to me that we might have some
friends outside.
I made a spring for the window.
As I reached the window, I was struck.
[GUN SHOT]
"I felt myself
falling outside, [GUN SHOT]
but immediately I fell inside from some unknown cause and
[GUN SHOTS RING]
falling under the bed not far from the window.
While on my way, I was wounded in three other places.
Joseph also made an attempt to leap out of the window.
[GUN SHOTS RING]
"Oh, how lonely was that
feeling--cold, barren, and desolate.
Our Prophet, our counselor, our general, our leader was
gone."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
But the Church did not die with the Prophet, nor did John
Taylor, who was miraculously saved, as his watch stopped a
bullet aimed for his heart.
During the winter of 1846, John with two other Apostles
was called on a second mission to England, where they spent
nine months settling problems in the branches of the Church
and gathering scientific instruments for the Saints to
use in their westward trek.
They returned in April 1847, just in time to deliver the
instruments to Brigham Young, who was leaving for the West
with the advanced company.
John Taylor was left behind to help organize and lead the
main body of Saints in their westward
journey two months later.
John Taylor remained in Salt Lake Valley that first trying
winter, while Brigham Young and others of the Twelve
returned to Winter Quarters, Nebraska.
Two years later, John Taylor left Utah to fulfill a mission
to France, where he organized a project for bringing the
sugar beet industry to Utah and directed the translation
of the Book of Mormon into French and German.
Later in the Eastern United States, he presided over the
branches of the Church.
An able writer, he penned essays, editorials, poems, and
wrote the book Mediation and Atonement, a major
contribution to an understanding of the Atonement
of Christ, who is the Redeemer of mankind and Mediator with
the Father.
One of his most courageous writings, however, came as a
part of his calling in the eastern states.
The doctrine of plural marriage had recently been
announced, and to help curb the renewed surge of
anti-Mormon sentiment, Brigham Young sent brethren to various
cities around the country to set up newspapers and tell the
Mormon viewpoint.
John Taylor went to New York and located in the very heart
of that city's newspaper world, centered between the
New York Herald and the Tribune, two of the most
outspoken anti-Mormon newspapers in New York, on the
corner of N and Nassau Streets.
And what did Mr. Taylor call his newspaper?
Why, The Mormon.
With a masthead filling at least one fourth of the front
page, editor Taylor left no doubt in the reader's mind
that he believed it is better to represent ourselves than be
represented by others.
"We are Mormon," he declared in the first issue, "inside
and out, at home or abroad, in public and in private,
everywhere." Well had he earned his unofficial title
"defender of the faith."
After returning to Utah once again, he was able to spend a
little more time with his family, as he filled various
civic and territorial positions.
Then in 1877, John Taylor was called to the most important
assignment in his Church career.
On August 25th, Brigham Young died.
And as President of the Council of the Twelve
Apostles, John Taylor assumed the leadership of the Church.
Three years later in the Tabernacle at October general
conference 1880, the new First Presidency was sustained by
the separate priesthood quorums of the Church, a
procedure instituted by John Taylor, one of several
procedural and organizational changes he made to meet the
needs of a growing Church, one which is still observed.
As Church President, John Taylor faced
challenges small and great.
Each challenge, however, was met with a characteristic
width and forthrightness he had shown in his lifelong
defense of the gospel.
In 1882, after he had officially been President of
the Church for only two years, the Church's very survival was
threatened with passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act in the
United States Congress.
Anti-Mormon sentiment had been growing steadily since the
public announcement of plural marriage
some 30 years earlier.
The effect of that bill on Church members was
devastating.
With the stroke of a pen, over 12,000 citizens lost their
right to vote, to serve on juries, or to hold public
office--not only citizens who practiced plural marriage, but
as the law was interpreted by federal officials, those who
also simply believed in the practice.
Furthermore, most Church leaders went into hiding to
avoid the possibility of life imprisonment under one judge's
ruling, which could send them to prison for up to five years
for each day that they lived with any one of
their plural wives.
Although the ruling was later declared unconstitutional,
thousands of Mormon fathers did go to prison "for
conscience sake," as they expressed it.
Perhaps no one was better prepared to defend the Church
at this time than John Taylor.
Yet, even his experience was little match for the onrushing
tide of legal judgments.
Even he found it necessary to go into hiding.
In his last public appearance in February 1885, he asked:
"What would you do?
Would you resent these outrages and break the heads
of the men engaged in them?
No, avoid them, just as you would wolves or snakes.
But no breaking of heads, no bloodshed,
rendering evil for evil.
Let us try to cultivate the spirit of the gospel."
That night following his sermon, President Taylor went
into self-imposed exile in the homes of friendly Saints.
Despite the need for secrecy and limited travel, an amazing
amount of correspondence and Church
business was carried out.
Business and news was mostly done through the mail.
Personal meetings were rare.
The First Presidency, for example, met only once at
midnight during the two and a half years of President
Taylor's exile.
And visits from family members were almost as rare.
His love for and advice to them had to be conveyed
through the mail, as in the letter that he wrote on his
78th birthday:
"Some of you have written that you would like to
have a peep at me.
I heartily reciprocate that feeling and would like to have
a peep at you on this occasion, but in my bodily
absence, my spirit and peace shall be with you."
And characteristically rising above his problems, he
advised:
"If we are doing the will of the Lord, out persecutions and
trials may be blessings in disguise.
Our great Redeemer said, Blessed are ye when men shall
persecute you for my sake.
Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven, for so
persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
We should feel, as Paul said in his day, For our affliction
is but for a moment."
And perhaps the challenges and trials faced by John Taylor
did seem to him but for a moment, for within that year
his health began to fail.
And on Monday, July 25, 1887, his spirit slipped beyond the
reach of his enemies.
Seventy-six years later a tribute to John Taylor was
published in the Congressional Record of the United States,
where he was praised "as a leader of his people, as a
missionary who converted hundreds to the church in
America, England, France, and other countries, as a
journalist and editor, as a legislator, and as a devoted
husband and father.
But further, he was a strong and determined defender of
human liberty."
And so it was that President John Taylor would be
considered a giant among men of any generation.
"We are in the hands of God.
And the nation is also in the hands of God.
And we can do nothing, unless He permits it.
Neither can this or any other nation.
"He controls them according to the council of His own will,
and He manipulates, manages, and directs the affairs of the
children of men.
He has appointed us to do a work.
It is not our work, but we are willing to
do it with His help.
Will He be thwarted in His designs?
I tell you, no.
The kingdom of God will rule forth, and no man can stay
it."
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