James Adams. Part 2. Aspects of the Sermon.

[Cross posted from By Common Consent.]

For part 1, see here.

The late summer and early fall of 1843 was not a healthy time in Nauvoo. Philadelphia had yellow fever in the summer (and it emptied the town) and Nauvoo had malaria. If you could survive a year, the general weakness would usually subside and you had a good chance of staying alive. But the eldery and the very young had a more guarded prognosis. Often, malaria teamed up with pneumonia or cholera or some other bug to take out even the robust. In James Adams’ case, cholera got the blame for his August 11 demise:

Classical Scattering and The Convergence of Science and Religion?

In the mid 1960s the theory of classical wave motion took a leap ahead with an incredibly simple idea. A formalism allowing a single family of equations to describe seemingly diverse phenomena like wave motion in plasmas and other conducting fluids, the propagation of light (electromagnetic waves) and sound in complex media, seismic waves, electric waves on transmission lines, even the movement of fish larvae in ocean currents.

Praise to the Man

On the 166th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s death.
William Wines Phelps’ pean to Joseph Smith:

August, 1844.

On a Recent Winter Night

While I was driving home one evening this past year, these lines came to mind. Since this month is the 21st anniversary of my son’s death, I share them with you.

“Learn How to Live and How to Die”

Much of Joseph Smith’s preaching about death was meant to compel his listeners to faith. Over the years of my own life I have seen death. Even if you don’t experience death as it was in the early 19th century, if you live long enough, you will see it impact your life.

I have buried a son, a brother, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and unrelated friends. Looking at death as inevitable has become a routine matter. But what is it for us survivors? It is first and foremost, loss. Whatever theology one subscribes to, or to no theology at all, this is the universal fact. The dead don’t come back. You don’t find him or her sleeping in their bed the next morning after the funeral.

They are gone.

Lorenzo Barnes – One of the Many – One of a Kind

Among the Charles Finney’s, Lyman Beecher’s, Alex Campbell’s and Joseph Smith’s of early American religion stood the nearly anonymous men and women who were followers or advocates. For the most part in this age of improvement, Americans seemed to be moving on from one idea to a better one, just as they moved from one place to another. But for the Mormons, a core of dedicated people made up a missionary cohort that converted the thousands who formed the Latter-day Saints into a history-making wedge of Americana.

Robert J. Matthews. RIP

Robert Matthews, long time religion professor at BYU and JST scholar passed away today. Sympathies to his family and friends. Perhaps now he knows the answers to many of those deep questions.

Former dean of religious education at Brigham Young University, Robert Matthews played a significant role in many LDS Church projects. He worked to thaw relations between the (then) Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ) and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his study of the manuscripts of Joseph Smith’s biblical revisions, held at the time in RLDS archives.

Among many Church assignments, Matthews served as president of the Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah.