History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

400 MISSIONS AND IMMIGRATION.
For twenty-five years Parley labored at intervals
as a missionary in various parts of the Union, 4 and
in 1845 was appointed president of the churches in
New England and the middle states. During his
of six pages calling for help and deliverance from the persecutions of the people
of the United States, particularly from their enemies in Missouri; Letter
to Queen Victoria is a dissertation on the fundamental principles of the faith,
dated Manchester, May 22, 1841. The Fountain of Knowledge is a shortessay
on the scriptures. Immortality and Eternal Life of the Material Body is an attempt
to prove the proposition as named. Intelligence and Affection comprises
a few pages on these qualities in man, more particularly in regard to their
immortality. The above five pamphlets, besides being published separately,
were issued as one pamphlet at Nauvoo. The third son of Jared and Charity
Pratt, Parley, was born at Burlington, Otsego co., N. Y., his ancestors being
among the earliest settlers at Hartford, Conn., in 1839, and probably among
the party that accompanied Thomas Hooker from Newtown, now Cambridge,
Mass., in 1836. Of his conversion to Mormonism I have already spoken, and
of the leading incidents in his life and the manner of his death mention is
made elsewhere. One of those who set forth from Nauvoo in Feb. 1846, he was
sent from Winter Quarters, as will be remembered, during the same year,
on a mission to England. But for this circumstance his Autobiography would
probably have included a complete and reliable account of the great Mormon
exodus, and one that would have been a most valuable addition to the records
of the latter-day saints. Parley was a man of many miracles and visions.
In fact, with him all was miraculous; the voice of nature was the voice of God,
and in one current ran revelation and human happenings. He was miraculously
directed in the first instance to the book of Mormon and Joseph Smith.
Myriads of false spirits were rebuked by him and driven back into the dark-
' ness. During an illness he had a dream. I thought I saw myself dressed
in a clean and beautiful linen robe, white as snow,' on which was written the
words ' holy prophet ' and 'new Jerusalem.' At the elder's conference in
Missouri, February 1832, he was obliged to keep his bed, as he had not yet
recovered from his illness. At the close of it, he says, ' I requested the elders
to lay their hands on me and pray. They did so. I was instantly healed.
Again, when detained by a severe fever, he whispered to Brother Murdock to
lay hands on him unobserved while giving him water. 'I drank of it,' he
says, ' bounded on my feet, dressed myself, put on my shoes and hat, and told
him I was ready to start.' Still travelling with Murdock, he was again taken
ill, and again miraculously cured. While engaged in fencing and ploughing
six acres for wheat, he heard a voice at night saying, ' Parley, Parley! ' I answered,
' Here am I.' Said the voice, ' Cease splitting rails, for the Lord hath
prepared you for a greater work. ' He dreamed one night, during the troubles
in Missouri, of an attack by enemies at a distance, and learned afterward that
the vision was true. About to set out from Kirtland on a mission to Canada
in April 1836, being in debt and deeply depressed, his wife sick and childless,
Heber C. Kimball and other elders, filled with the spirit of prophecy, entered
his house late one night and said: ' Brother Parley, thy wife shall be
healed from this hour, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be Parley, and
he shall be a chosen instrument in the hands of the Lord to inherit the priesthood,
and to walk in the steps of his father.' Instances might be multiplied.
Scores of sick women and children in obedience to the command, ' In the
name of Jesus Christ, be thou made whole,' arose and walked.
*In 1831 among the Delawares; in 1832 in the states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and Missouri; in 1833, after the exodus from Independence, in New
York; in 1835 in New England, N. Y., and Penn.; in 1837 and 1845 in N. Y.
city, where in the latter year he commenced the publication of The Prophet;
and in 1856 in St Louis, Phil., N. Y., and elsewhere. Autobiog., passim.
'