Twenty-nine-year-old geologist and college president James E. Talmage noted in his journal in 1891: "Today I had an interview with the First Presidency of the Church ... another appointment for an interview was set for Monday next." From these two meetings came a commission to write twenty-four lectures, twenty-two of which were delivered to college audiences, treating the basic tenets of LDS belief. The lectures were published by the church as The Articles of Faith, to date the only authorized, book-length explication of Mormon doctrine. The book proved to be the first of several seminal treatises by Talmage that would dominate the landscape of LDS thought to the present.
Talmage said that he was honored to write for the church and that he intended his work to be a gift. However, after the first print run of 10,500 quickly sold out, church president Lorenzo Snow insisted that he receive a reciprocal "gift" from the church of $1,500 for the copyright. The book sold well for half of a century. Besides articulating well-established points of doctrine, The Articles of Faith addressed controversies concerning eternal progress, the Holy Ghost, the kingdom of God, rebaptism, and unforgivable sins.
Accompanying this edition of The Articles of Faith--an exact, photomechanical reproduction of the first edition--is another, albeit lesser-known work compiled by Talmage entitled Latter-day Revelation, a 1930 abridged version of the church’s Doctrine and Covenants that was apparently intended to replace the lengthier compilation. Latter-day Revelation was translated into several languages and was, for some time, the only version of the Doctrine and Covenants available in those languages. Yet the book quietly disappeared soon after its release. In the preface to the present edition, Talmage scholar James P. Harris explains why and provides further context for Talmage’s treatment of the Articles of Faith.
James Edward Talmage was 13 years old when his family emigrated from their native England and settled in Provo, Utah. Intelligent and thirsty for knowledge, James was a part-time member of the faculty of the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah, by the time he was 17. He went on to study chemistry and geology at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Membership in many prominent scientific societies gave James Talmage access to important people and publications and helped him combat much of the prejudice faced by Latter-day Saints at the time. In 1888 he married Mary May Booth. They became the parents of eight children. From 1894 to 1897 he was president of the University of Deseret in Salt Lake City (now the University of Utah). During that time he bought one of the popular new chain-driven bicycles and rode it often. One evening he arrived home an hour late for dinner, bruised, bloodied, and dirty. Near his home was a single-plank bridge across a ditch. Normally, he dismounted and crossed on foot. But this time he felt he could ride across. He kept at it, crash after crash, until he mastered the maneuver. Elder Talmage was an effective lecturer, and some of his talks and lessons became the basis of some of the books for which he is well-known, including The Articles of Faith. Prior to his call to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1911, the First Presidency had asked him to write a book on the life and ministry of the Savior. Later, a room was set aside in the Salt Lake Temple where Elder Talmage could concentrate on his writing. His 700-page book, Jesus the Christ, was published in 1915 and has been reprinted several times since then.