Parley P Pratt Quotes

The gift of the Holy Ghost...quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates, and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity. It develops beauty of person, form, and features. It tends to health, vigor, animation, and social feeling. It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.

The mission of the Holy Ghost is to partake of the things of the Father and the Son and teach them unto those who have received the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. He guides the true disciples in all truth, shows them things to come, reveals the past and makes known the hidden treasures of the kingdom of God.

I have seen ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath in the courts of England; I have witnessed a congress in solemn session to give laws to nations;...but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight, in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri.

The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy.

The spirit world is moved, the silence broken, The ancient Seers from out the ground have spoken. The appointed years on time's fleet wings have fled. And voices whisper from the ancient dead. Volumes of truth the sacred archives yield. The past, the glorious future, stand revealed.

There is one only living and true God, without body, parts, or passions; consisting of three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” It is painful to the human mind to be compelled to admit, that such wonderful inconsistencies of language or ideas, have ever found place in any human creed. Yet, so it is.

Among the popular errors of modern times, an opinion prevails that miracles are events which transpire contrary to the laws of nature, that they are effects without a cause. If such is the fact, then, there never has been a miracle, and there never will be one. The laws of nature are the laws of truth. Truth is unchangeable, and independent in its own sphere. A law of nature never has been broken. And it is an absolute impossibility that such law ever should be broken.

The modern world, called "Christian" claims to have perpetuated the system called "Christianity," while, at the same time, it declares, that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit have ceased. With as much propriety it might be contended, that the magnet “had been perpetuated, but had lost its magnetic properties; that water was perpetuated with all its virtues, but had lost its power to quench thirst, or seek its own level; that fire was still fire, but had lost its heat.

That which, at first sight, appears to be contrary to the known laws of nature, will always be found, on investigation, to be in perfect accordance with those laws. For instance, had a sailor of the last century been running before the wind, and met with a vessel running at a good rate of speed, directly in opposition to the wind and current, this sight would have presented, to his understanding, a miracle in the highest possible sense of the term, that is, an event entirely contrary to the laws of nature, as known to him.

In sum, disciples might do well to avoid the bibliolatry that characterizes scripture as unerring truth. Parley Pratt made this point himself in The Fountain of Knowledge, a small pamphlet he wrote in 1844. With elegant metaphor, he noted that scripture resulted from revelatory process and was thus the product of revealed truth, not the other way around. We do well to look to a stream for nourishing water, but we do better to secure the fountain. That fountain, Pratt noted, is “the gift of revelation,” which “the restoration of all things” heralds.21 Or, in George MacDonald’s metaphor, we should hold the scriptures as “the moon of our darkness, . . . not dear as the sun towards which we haste." p56

And Elder Parley P. Pratt wrote that “Gods, angels and men are all of one species, one race, one great family, widely diffused among the planetary systems, as colonies, kingdoms, nations, &c.”2

Two of our number now commenced work as tailors in the village of Independence,” wrote Parley P. Pratt, “while the others crossed the frontier line and commenced a mission among the Lamanites.

Among the variety of commodities which attract the attention of mankind, there is one thing of more value than all others. A principle which, if once possessed, will greatly assist in obtaining all other things worth possessing, whether it were power, wealth, riches, honors, thrones, or dominions. Comparatively few have ever possessed it, although it was within the reach of many others, but they were either not aware of it, or did not know its value. It has worked wonders for the few who have possessed it. Some it enabled to escape from drowning, while every soul who did not possess it was lost in the mighty deep. Others it saved from famine, while thousands perished all around them; by it men have often been raised to dignity in the state; yea, more, some have been raised to the throne of empires. The possession of it has sometimes raised men from a dungeon to a palace; and there are instances in which those that possessed it were delivered from the flames, while cities were consumed, and every soul, themselves excepted, perished. Frequently, when a famine or the sword has destroyed a city or nation, they alone who possessed it escaped unhurt. By this time the reader inquires, What can this be? Inform me, and I will purchase it, even at the sacrifice of all I possess on earth. Well, kind reader, this treasure is FOREKNOWLEDGE! a knowledge of things future! Let a book be published, entitled, "A Knowledge of the Future," and let mankind be really convinced that it did give a certain, definite knowledge of future events, so that its pages unfold the future history of the nations, and of many great events, as the history of Greece or Rome does unfold the past, and a large edition would immediately sell at a great sum per copy; indeed, they would be above all price. Now, kind reader, the books of the Prophets, and the Spirit of Prophecy were intended for this very purpose. Well did the Apostle say, "Covet earnestly the best gifts; but rather that ye prophesy.