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Home >> LDS Authors >> Smith Joseph >> History of The Church v3 (J. Smith) >> Adventures of the Prisoners Remaining in Missouri-the Prophet's Narrative of Personal Experiences in Missouri.
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Adventures of the Prisoners Remaining in Missouri-the Prophet's Narrative of Personal Experiences in Missouri.

Saturday, May 18.-Finished my business at Quincy for the present.

Sunday, 19.-I arrived at home [Commerce] this evening.

Monday 10.-At home attending to a variety of business.

Tuesday, 21.-To show the feelings of that long scattered branch of the house of Israel, the Jews, I here quote a letter written by one of their number, on hearing; that his son had embraced Christianity:

Rabbi Landau's Letter to His Son.

Breslau, May 21st, 1839.

My Dear Son-I received the letter of the Berlin Rabbi, and when I read it there ran tears out of my eyes in torrents; my inward parts shook, my heart became as a stone! Now do you not know that the Lord sent me already many hard tribulations? That many sorrows do vex me? But this new harm which you are about to inflict, makes me forget all the former, does horribly surpass them; as well respecting its sharpness, as its stings! I write you this lying on my bed, because my body is afflicted not less than my soul, at the report that you were about to do something which I had not expected from you. I fainted; my nerves and feeling sank, and only by the help of a physician, for whom I sent immediately, I am able to write these lines to you with a trembling hand.

Alas! you, my son, whom I have bred, nourished and fostered; whom I have strengthened spiritually as well as bodily, you will commit a crime on me! Do not shed the innocent blood of your parents for no harm have we inflicted upon you; we are not conscious of any guilt against you, but at all times we thought it our duty to show to you, our first born, all love and goodness. I thought I should have some cheering account of you, but, alas! how terribly I have been disappointed!

But to be short; your outward circumstances are such that you may finish your study or [suffer] pain. Do you think that the Christians, to whom you will go over by changing your religion, will support you and fill up the place of our fellow believers? Do not imagine that your outward reasons, therefore, if you have any, are nothing. But out of true persuasion, you will, as I think, not change our true and holy doctrine, for that deceitful, untrue and perverse doctrine of Christianity.

What! will you give up a pearl for that which is nothing, which is of no value in itself? But you are light-minded; think of the last judgment; of that day when the books will be opened and hidden things will be made manifest; of that day when death will approach you in a narrow pass; when you cannot go out of the way! Think of your death bed, from which you will not rise any more, but from which you will be called before the judgment seat of the Lord!

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