Letters Exhibiting the Most Prominent Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — A Closer Reading

Rhetorical Posture and Audience

Spencer addresses Crowel directly as 'Sir,' maintaining a formal, respectful tone even as he challenges the minister's assumptions. The letters are not private correspondence but public argument: Spencer notes that he published them 'after consultation with the Prophet and Patriarch (since martyred).' This detail reveals that the work is both a defense and a recruitment tool, aimed at readers familiar with Protestant theology. Spencer frequently invokes shared scriptural ground—citing Daniel, Ruth, and the patriarchs—before introducing distinctive Latter-day Saint interpretations. His strategy is to claim continuity with biblical precedent while asserting that modern revelation restores lost truths.

The Metaphor of Gathering

One of the most striking features of the excerpts is Spencer's extended metaphor of the 'gathering' as a physical and spiritual migration. He writes of depositing 'our very bones in the land of Zion' with the same fervor as the patriarchs, and describes the Latter-day Saints as 'flying as clouds and as doves to their windows.' The language is deliberately apocalyptic: 'the gathering is the great universal national preacher of the last days' and 'speaks in trumpet tones.' Spencer contrasts the faithful with those who, like Orpah or Lot's family, hesitate to leave their native countries. This binary—gathered versus scattered, obedient versus rebellious—structures his argument throughout the letters.

Scriptural Argument and Prophetic Urgency

Spencer's method is to weave together Old Testament types and New Testament promises, treating them as directly applicable to the 1840s. He cites the valley of dry bones, the inheritance of Canaan, and the 144,000 as proof that the Latter-day Saints are reenacting ancient patterns. The tone is urgent: 'If men have not the spirit of gathering they are blind and cannot see afar off, and are nigh unto burning.' This urgency is reinforced by the historical context—the work was published in Liverpool in 1848, a year of revolutions and cholera outbreaks, though Spencer does not mention these events. Instead, he insists that the 'nations wonder at the spectacle' of the Saints' migration, a claim that positions the reader as a witness to prophecy in action.

Diction and the Voice of Authority

Spencer's prose is marked by a distinctive blend of learned formality and prophetic intensity. He uses legalistic phrases ('for ought I know'), academic titles ('A.B.'), and references to his own education, yet he also employs vivid, almost poetic imagery: 'their bones, like the precious valley of dry bones, will be the guardian care of angels.' The sentences are often long and periodic, building to a climax. The farewell address and the appended poems—including one by 'Miss E. R. Snow'—suggest a communal, devotional dimension to the work. Spencer's voice is that of a scholar-pastor who believes he is delivering a divine message, and his diction reinforces this authority.

Readers approaching Spencer's Letters should attend to the interplay between its public, polemical purpose and its intimate epistolary form. The work rewards attention to how Spencer selects and interprets scripture, how he constructs his audience, and how he uses metaphor to make abstract doctrine concrete. The excerpts provided offer only a partial view—particularly of the later letters on priesthood, apostasy, and restitution—but they reveal a writer deeply engaged in a rhetorical project of persuasion and identity formation.

I keep thinking about Spencer’s letters—the way he framed gathering as a quiet, inevitable tide rather than a shout. It reminded me of something gentler I found later, how The Great War in Verse and Prose — Background and Themes holds sorrow the same way, not arguing with you, just letting the weight sit until you notice it. Strange how two different worlds can leave the same hush.