E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Macfarlane,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(/)
A religion, to be worth while, must give satisfactory answers to thegreat questions of life: What am I? Whence came I? What is the object ofthis life? and what is my destiny? True, we walk by faith, and not bysight, but yet the eye of faith must have some light by which to see.Added Upon is an effort to give in brief an outline of "the scheme ofthings," "the ways of God to men" as taught by the Gospel of Christ andbelieved in by the Latter-day Saints; and to justify and praise theseways, by a glance along the Great Plan, from a point in the distant pastto a point in the future—not so far away, it is to be hoped.
On subjects where little of a definite character is revealed, the story,of necessity, could not go into great detail. It is suggestive only; butit is hoped that the mind of the reader, illumined by the Spirit of theLord, will be able to fill in all the details that the heart may desire,to wander at will in the garden of the Lord, and dwell in peace in themansions of the Father.
Many have told me that when they read Added Upon, it seemed to have beenwritten directly to them. My greatest reward is to know that the littlestory has touched a sympathetic chord in the hearts of the Latter-daySaints, and that it has brought to some aching hearts a little ray ofhope and consolation.
This story of things past, things present, and things to come has beenbefore the Latter-day Saints for fourteen years. During this time, itseems to have won for itself a place in their hearts and in theirliterature. A reviewer of the book when it was first published said that"so great and grand a subject merits a more elaborate treatment." Manysince then have said the story should be "added upon," and the presentenlarged edition is an attempt to meet in a small way these demands. Thetruths restored to the earth through "Mormonism" are capable ofillimitable enlargement; and when we contemplate these gloriousteachings, we are led to exclaim with the poet:
N.A.
Salt Lake City, Utah,
May, 1912.
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works ofold.
"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earthwas.
"When there were