“Apply the subject to the cases of such as are convinced of the truth of Christianity but do not heartily embrace it, and openly espouse its cause”

Within the little village of Palmyra, New York, at the corner of Main Street and Canandaigua Road stand four churches.

Preaching Manuals, The Eighteenth Century, Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Smith

The Sermon Culture of the America prior to Joseph Smith’s advent was dominated by several important figures. Certainly the most well known of the 18th century was Jonathan Edwards. While Joseph Smith rarely penned much of anything, and never wrote down a sermon, he had stock topics that he returned to with some frequency.

KFD5 (the Sermon in the Grove) and Display Postscript

I’ve been using LaTeX to construct typographical facsimiles for Joseph Smith (JS) sermon docs. The packages available to create “critical texts” are pretty feature rich, but limited in how text can be manipulated. Twenty odd years ago, Steve Jobs started NeXT Computer. The display technology was a breakthrough in a number of ways. One thing it allowed was the possibility to form and shape text like never before. Drag and drop on steroids. Pushing text around, shrinking/growing font size, moving text and characters upside down, sideways, curving it, writing sideways in margins. It was perfect for projects like mine. But it died and nothing like it seems to be available now. This is just a wish for it to return.

Joseph Smith Papers Journals vol. 2

Trek on over and see J. Stapley’s review. It’s excellent.