There is an entry in my journal about Arthur Henry King.  Arthur Henry King was a professor at BYU for four years—the exact time that I was there as a student—and I didn't get to have him as a professor!  After reading the entry in my journal, I'm sick about that all over again.  Let me tell you about Arthur Henry King.

Arthur Henry King grew up in England as a member of an old Quaker family.  He attended Cambridge University, and got his doctorate at Lund University in Sweden.  He deeply researched religions including the Anglican and Catholic Churches, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.  He was a linguistic scholar, taught at Cambridge, served the government, was twice honored by the queen, and was a world-renowned author and poet.  His wife died.  Some time later his second cousin, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, appeared on his doorstep inquiring about family history.  On the second day she explained the Church to him.  He was 56 years old.  He was converted by Joseph Smith's testimony, as explained hereafter.  He married the second cousin.  Four years after his conversion, Harold B. Lee invited him to join the faculty of Brigham Young University, where he taught for four years while I was there.  He and his wife went on to serve as the London Temple president and matron.

I, too, was converted by Joseph Smith's testimony.  I was halfway through the Book of Mormon when Marjorie sent me the pamphlet containing Joseph Smith's testimony.  I was already excited about the Book of Mormon, but that pamphlet was a revelation to me.  All sorts of lights came on.  I was suddenly able to answer my question of whether God was one person or two, or whether He was even a person or just some force in the universe.  I knew without doubt that what Joseph Smith said was true.  I believed every word.  From that moment my course in life became fixed.

Arthur Henry King read Joseph Smith's testimony from the perspective of an intellectual "stylistician," (linguistic expert).  Following is his testimony.  The first paragraph comes from a devotional that he gave at BYU.  I really, really like this paragraph.  His words are mine:

"At sixty, I have now been a member of the Church four years. I have undoubtedly

come late. Most of you were always in the Church or came to it early in life. What

I am best qualified to tell you about is the quality of the wilderness outside, and the

quality of the wilderness inside those who are outside. You may sometimes feel an

urge to go outside. You may even sometimes feel that you need to go outside to

satisfy your intellectual honesty.  What I have to report, having come in from the

cold, may be of value to you."

Now for his testimony:

"When I was first brought to read Joseph Smith’s story, I was deeply impressed.

I wasn’t inclined to be impressed. As a stylistician, I have spent my life being

disinclined to be impressed. So when I read his story, I thought to myself, this is

an extraordinary thing. This is an astonishingly matter-of-fact and cool account.

This man is not trying to persuade me of anything. He doesn’t feel the need to.

He is stating what happened to him, and he is stating it, not enthusiastically, but

in quite a matter-of-fact way. He is not trying to make me cry or feel ecstatic.

That struck me, and that began to build my testimony, for I could see that this

man was telling the truth...

"He tells about reading the Epistle of James. He doesn’t try to express his feelings.

He gives a description of his feelings instead, which is a very different thing.

Look at verse 12:

Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. (JS—H 1:12)

"I am not good enough to write a passage as good as that. That is beautiful,

well-balanced prose. And it isn’t the prose of someone who is trying to work

it out and make it nice. It is the prose of someone who is trying to tell it like it

is, who is bending all his faculties to expressing the truth and not thinking

about anything else—and above all, though writing about Joseph Smith, not

thinking about Joseph Smith, not thinking about the effect he is going to have

on others, not posturing, not posing, but just being himself...

"The whole man is involved in this account, but the whole man isn’t posturing

and appealing to you to believe it. He is merely stating it, stating it with the

whole of himself. The conviction is behind it. The emotion is there in perfect

control. It is in the rhythm, the superb rhythm of that piece, and we won’t get

that unless we read it aloud. There is an extraordinary alternation of short and

long sentences. Some of the sentences are long indeed—magnificent sentences

—periods much better than Samuel Johnson could write. So there is this

combination of a firm, convinced rhythm and a matter-of-fact statement

drawing on all the resources of early nineteenth-century prose to produce a

piece of prose better than anything Coleridge ever wrote.

"I am asked sometimes, 'Why don’t we have any great literature now?' And we

don’t, you know; we may kid ourselves or other people may try to kid us that

we do, but we don’t. There were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe;

and there it seems to have stopped. There seems to have been no supreme figure

since then. But I tell you there was one: Joseph Smith. . . ."

Having myself come in from the cold, I can tell you about the wilderness without.  It's a place you don't want to be.  It's thoughts and feelings that you don't want to have.  It's darkness and misery.  Take it from one who has been there, and who never wants to be there again.  "Remember Lot's wife," the scripture says.  (Luke 17:32).  She looked back.  I've never had the least desire to do so.  Mine is a life of light and joy, and I'm only looking ahead.

I wish that I'd have had the opportunity to know this man and to have taken a class from him.