Epilogue · Track 33

The Standard of Truth

Joseph Smith reads his own 1842 declaration that no power on earth can stop the work the plates were preserved to begin.

pov

Joseph Smith, mid-thirties, 1842

genre

Spoken-Word Benediction

scripture

The Wentworth Letter (1842)

Lyrics

The standard of truth has been erected.

No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.

Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame.

But the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent,

till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear,

till the purposes of God shall be accomplished,

And the Great Jehovah shall say

the work is done.

Behind the Song

The album closes by aging its narrator one final time

The previous song was Joseph at seventeen, discovering the plates. This song is Joseph at thirty-six, declaring the work cannot be stopped. The same voice, two ages, one work. The album literally ages its protagonist across the final two tracks. The boy who lifted the record becomes the man who interpreted it and watched it begin to reach the world.

The Wentworth Letter as benediction

Joseph wrote the Standard of Truth passage in 1842 as part of a letter to a Chicago newspaper editor named John Wentworth. It is one of the most rhetorically powerful declarations in modern American religious history. The album closes by giving the full passage to Joseph himself to read aloud. Not paraphrased, not condensed, not sung — read. The album’s last words are not the artist’s. They are the prophet’s.

Spoken-sung rather than fully sung

The passage is prose, not poetry. Joseph wrote it as a letter, not a hymn. The vocal honors that by sitting close to speech with only the slightest melodic contour. The album has used full singing for thirty-two songs. The final track refuses to sing because the words do not need it. The declaration carries itself.

The instrumental finale answers thirty-two songs of restraint

The album has lived in restraint for its entire length. Christ’s descent ended mid-line. The destruction ended in silence. Mormon’s lament refused comfort. Moroni’s prayer was a chiasmus that ended on a fragment. The album has never let itself fully swell. The instrumental finale is the album finally allowing itself to release everything it has been holding. A full orchestra and choir resolving onto a single sustained chord. The work is done. The album can finally celebrate.