Eliza Roxcy Snow, circa 1870
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
This poem, by Eliza R. Snow (1804-1887), appeared in the official Latter-day Saint hymnal as late as the 1941 edition but disappeared thereafter. \u00a0I wish it had not, because I think its message very important.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was a na\u00efve undergraduate, we laughed about some people who, we joked, appeared to believe in the injunction \u201cThink not, when you gather to Zion.\u201d \u00a0As one professor (who subsequently served, among many other things, as a General Authority) quipped, \u201cIn the world, they have questions but no answers. \u00a0In Zion, we all too often have answers but no questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I still regard that as a problem. \u00a0Since those days, though, I\u2019ve come to take Sister Snow\u2019s own point much more seriously.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Think not when you gather to Zion,<\/span><\/p>\nYour troubles and trials are through,<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u00a0nothing but comfort and pleasure\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAre waiting in Zion for you. <\/span><\/p>\nNo,\u00a0no, \u2019tis designed as a furnace,<\/span><\/p>\nAll substance, all textures to try,<\/span><\/p>\nTo\u00a0burn all the \u201cwood, hay, and stubble,\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe gold from the dross purify.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
2. Think not when you gather to Zion, <\/span><\/p>\nThat all will be holy and pure; <\/span><\/p>\nThat\u00a0fraud and deception are banished,<\/span><\/p>\nAnd confidence wholly secure.<\/span><\/p>\nNo, no, for the Lord our Redeemer<\/span><\/p>\nHas said that the tares with the wheat<\/span><\/p>\nMust\u00a0grow till the great day of burning<\/span><\/p>\nShall render the harvest complete.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
3. Think not when you gather to Zion,<\/span><\/p>\nThe saints here have nothing to do<\/span><\/p>\nBut to look to your personal welfare,<\/span><\/p>\nAnd always be comforting you.<\/span><\/p>\nNo, those who are faithful are doing<\/span><\/p>\nWhat they find to do with their might;<\/span><\/p>\nTo gather the scattered of Israel<\/span><\/p>\nThey labor by day and by night.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
4. Think not when you gather to Zion,<\/span><\/p>\nThe prize and the victory won.<\/span><\/p>\nThink not that the warfare is ended,<\/span><\/p>\nThe work of salvation is done.<\/span><\/p>\nNo, no, for the great prince of darkness<\/span><\/p>\nA tenfold exertion will make,<\/span><\/p>\nWhen he sees you go to the fountain,<\/span><\/p>\nWhere freely the truth you may take.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
During my teenage years in southern California, when my beloved older brother went off to spend his senior year at Brigham Young University and very much under his influence, I developed a deep and passionate love for BYU and for the idea<\/em>\u00a0of BYU. \u00a0And, for all of the human frailty that I saw during my first nearly three decades on the faculty, that passionate commitment continued. \u00a0It was seriously damaged by certain events in 2012 and thereafter, but, considerably sadder and perhaps somewhat wiser, it persists.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the most uninspired mistakes that I ever saw committed at BYU, though, one of the most signal cases of an absence of vision, was its failure to retain my former student \u2014 and my former colleague in the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative \u2014 Glen Cooper, as a member of the faculty in the BYU History Department. \u00a0Dr. Cooper is a world-class scholar in an extraordinarily demanding and difficult field that requires the combination of a multitude of unusual skills. \u00a0Unfortunately, it\u2019s precisely his multidisciplinary expertise, I suppose, that makes him seem to some an awkward fit in the artificially fragmented world of current academia.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently, he made a presentation at the David M. Kennedy Center at Brigham Young University:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMemory and Erasure in the Story of the West: Where Have All the Muslims Gone?,\u201d by Dr. Glen Cooper, discusses how the Islamic World has been erased from the foundational strictures [?\u00a0sic<\/em>] of the Western world. Glen Cooper graduated from Brigham Young University in physics and astronomy, and continued his academic career by studying philosophy at Oxford. Later, Dr. Cooper went on to earn his Ph.D. in the history of Islamic science and culture from Columbia University. Additionally, Dr. Cooper has worked on the Islamic Translation series at the BYU Maxwell Institute, taught Middle Eastern history at BYU, and taught history and religion classes at the Claremont Colleges in greater Los Angeles. He has also taught Greek, Byzantine, Jewish, and South Asian history courses. Dr. Cooper is very widely published, especially on the topic of Islamic science, and currently resides in Springville, Utah, where he is working away on his next book.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can watch Dr. Cooper\u2019s Kennedy Center lecture here:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMemory and Erasure in the Story of the West: Where Have All the Muslims Gone?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 This poem, by Eliza R. Snow (1804-1887), appeared in the official Latter-day Saint hymnal as late as the 1941 edition but disappeared thereafter. \u00a0I wish it had not, because I think its message very important. \u00a0 When I was a na\u00efve undergraduate, we laughed about some people who, we joked, appeared to believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1152,2818,2821,1239,506,243],"class_list":["post-69412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brigham-young-university","tag-glen-cooper","tag-history-of-science","tag-islam-and-the-west","tag-islamic-science","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Eliza](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/01\/Eliza_Roxcy_Snow_photograph.png\")
<\/a>