The Articles of Faith

 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 ultimately delivered to college audiences, treating the basic tenets of LDS beliefs. The lectures were then published by the church as The Articles of Faith, the only authorized, book-length explication of Mormon belief. The book proved to be one of several seminal treatises Talmage would write that would dominate the landscape of Mormon beliefs for a century.