Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 29, 1870.

If I can have your attention I will talk to you a few minutes. Speaking as much as I have in public makes me feel most forcibly that I have both stomach and lungs, hence I would like to have stillness in the house. I see some sisters withdrawing in consequence of their children not being quiet; I am very much obliged to them, and trust that others will do likewise if they cannot keep their children still.

I am not in the habit of making many apologies nor very many preliminaries when I speak to a congregation. Sometimes I feel to say a few words that might be called apologetic in rising to address a congregation, having that timidity which most men feel on such occasions. I have seen few public speakers in my life who were capable of rising and speaking directly upon a subject, unless it had been studied or perhaps written beforehand. To speak extempore, on the impulse of the moment, without reflection, requires considerable steadiness of the nerve. This is a matter that I have reflected upon a good deal, for in my experience I have learned that there is a modest timidity in the feelings of almost all persons I ever saw when called upon to speak to their fellow beings. This is frequently the case in private circles as well as before the public. I think I understand the reason of it; it is a matter which I have studied. I find myself here on this earth, in the midst of intelligence. I ask myself and Wisdom, where has this intelligence come from? Who has produced and brought into existence, I will say, this intelligent congregation assembled here this afternoon? We are here, but whence have we come? Where did we belong before coming here? Have we dropped accidentally from some of the planets on to this earth without order, law or rule? Perhaps some, in their reflections, have come to this conclusion, and think that is all that is known in relation to this matter. I inquire where is this intelligence from which I see, more or less, in every being, and before which I shrink when attempting to address a congregation? I ask the question of my friends, my brethren and of every man that lives: Suppose that you, through duty, are called to speak to a private family, to a small congregation, or even to children in a Sunday school, do you not feel this same timidity? Where is the man who can rise to address children without feeling this same modesty? I have seen a very few in my life who could rise before a congregation, in a prayer meeting, or go on the stage of a theater, or anywhere else, and speak with perfect ease and confidence. I think they have great reason to be thankful for their self-confidence; but where they obtained it or whether it is inherent, whether they are destitute of real refinement or have a surplus of it, it is not for me to say. I know that I do not possess this faculty. When I speak to a congregation I know that I am speaking to the intelligence that is from above. This intelligence which is within you and me is from heaven. In gazing upon the intelligence reflected in the countenances of my fellow beings, I gaze upon the image of Him whom I worship—the God I serve. I see His image and a certain amount of His intelligence there. I feel it within myself. My nature shrinks at the divinity we see in others. This is the cause of that timidity to which I have referred which I experience when rising to address a congregation.

I rise with pleasure this afternoon to speak to my friends, brethren and sisters, and to the strangers who are here; and I will take the liberty of looking at my people—my brethren and sisters, as they are, and we will look at each other as we are. I look at others as they are, and we will look at each other as we are. We will chat a little together, and I will give both Saints and strangers a few of my views. First to the Saints, I will say that you and I have professed to believe in God who reigns in the heavens, who formed the earth and the planets. No matter whether He rules the celestial, terrestrial or telestial, you and I have professed to believe in that Supreme Being who has set this machine in motion. He governs by law. He has reduced His offspring, His legitimate offspring, to all the sin, darkness, death and misery that we find on this earth; He has also provided means and, in connection with the attributes He has implanted within us, has instituted ordinances which, if we will receive and improve upon, will enable us to return back into His presence. I say to the Latter-day Saints, live your religion! Live so that the Spirit of the Lord will dwell within you, that you may know for a surety and certainty that God lives. For me to tell you that there is a God in heaven, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world; for me to tell you that Jesus will give his holy Spirit to them that believe on him and obey his Gospel, would be fruitless to you unless you obey his requirements. I know that the Latter-day Saints are looked upon by the world as dupes—as a low, degraded, imbecile race, and that we are so unwise and shortsighted, so vain and foolish, that through the great amount of enthusiasm within us, we have embraced an error, and have been duped by Joseph Smith. You who have obeyed the principles he preached know whether you are deceived or not. I know for myself and you know for yourselves.

Now let me ask you, if you trust to my faith, to my word and teachings, counsel and advice, and do not seek after the Lord to have His Spirit to guide and direct you, can I not deceive you, can I not lead you into error? Look at this and see to what mischief it would lead, and what an amount of evil could be done to a people if they did not live so that the Spirit of the Lord would dwell with them that they might know these things for themselves. It is my request, my prayer, exhortation, faith, wish and earnest desire that the Latter-day Saints will live their religion, and that they will teach their children all things pertaining to God and godliness, that they may grow up into Christ, their living head.

I would ask of my friends or foes, no matter which—I mean those who do not believe as I do—those who look upon us as a set of fanatics, I would ask a few questions of the world of mankind, of the greatest philosophers, of the greatest geniuses, and of the men of the most profound knowledge on the face of the earth, Can you tell me where you get your knowledge? Say some, “The schoolmaster taught me thus and so; my mother taught me thus and so; or I have learned it from books.” Can you tell me the origin of this knowledge? Can you direct me where I can go and get the same knowledge? Was this inherent in you? Was it developed without any nourishment, or instruction—without the life and intelligence which came from the vision of the mind? Ask the mechanic—Who influenced you to bring forth this and that improvement in mechanism? Who influenced Professor Morse to believe that he could stretch a wire round this building or any other, and then, by applying a battery at one end of the wire, that he could receive an answer at the other? Who taught Robert Fulton that he could apply steam so as to propel a vessel? Did his mother, his schoolmaster or his preacher tell him this? No, he would have spurned the idea.

Now, all this is in my remembrance. I lived nearby those who assisted Mr. Fulton in building his steamboat. He could not be dissuaded, by any means, to desist from his operations. I ask what was it that influenced the mind of Fulton in this direction? It was that invisible influence or intelligence that comes from our Creator, day by day, and night by night, in dreams and visions of the mind. “I see it, I know it,” said he. I recollect him telling some of our neighbors who assisted him in building the first steam vessel that ever was built, “I know that I can apply steam so as to propel this vessel from here to New York. I know it just as well as I live.” I recollect a Mr. Curtis, a carriage maker, who lived in the State of New York; said he, “I have a little property, and I will spend all I have to assist Mr. Fulton to put his project into successful operation; for I have faith in it.”

This is a question which I would like the scientific and philosophic world to answer, Where do you get your knowledge from? I can answer the question; they get it from that Supreme Being, a portion of whose intelligence is in each and every one. They have it not independently; it was not there until put there. They have the foundation, and they can improve and add knowledge to knowledge, wisdom to wisdom, light to light, and intelligence to intelligence. This power to increase in wisdom and intelligence so that we can know things for ourselves is within every one of us.

Now, I ask the wise, where did you get your wisdom? Was it taught you? Yes, I say it was taught you. By your professors in college? No, it was taught you by the influence of the spirit that is in man, and the inspiration of the Spirit of God giveth it understanding; and every creature can thus add intelligence to intelligence. We all know that if we learn one page of a book today, we can learn another tomorrow, and yet retain that which we learned previously; and so we can go on step by step, from day to day, improving the faculties with which God has endowed us, until we are filled with the knowledge of God.

The “Mormons” believe all this. I ask strangers and the philosophers of the world, Is there any harm in it? Is it any harm for you and me to exercise faith in God? We have faith, we live by faith; we came to these mountains by faith. We came here, I often say, though to the ears of some the expression may sound rather rude, naked and barefoot, and comparatively this is true. Is that a fact? It is. Shall I explain this? I will in part, and I will commence by satisfying the curiosity of almost everybody that comes here, or with whom our Elders converse when away. A great many men and women have an irrepressible curiosity to know how many wives Brigham Young has. I am now going to gratify that curiosity by saying, ladies and gentlemen, I have sixteen wives. If I have any more hereafter it will be my good luck and the blessing of God. “How many children have you, President Young?” I have forty-nine living children, and I hope to have a great many more. Now put that down. I impart this information to gratify the curiosity of the curious.

“President Young, did you come here naked and barefoot?” I will say, very nearly so. “How many of your wives had shoes to their feet, after leaving everything you had in the State of Illinois?” I do not think that more than one or two of my wives had shoes to their feet when we came here. We bought buckskins of the Indians and made moccasins of them. How many of these Elders had whole pantaloons when they reached here? I do not believe a dozen of them had. They had worked in the dead of winter ferrying the people across the river until they had nothing, and they came here naked and barefoot, that is, comparatively.

We had to have faith to come here. When we met Mr. Bridger on the Big Sandy River, said he, “Mr. Young, I would give a thousand dollars if I knew an ear of corn could be ripened in the Great Basin.” Said I, “Wait eighteen months and I will show you many of them.” Did I say this from knowledge? No, it was my faith; but we had not the least encouragement—from natural reasoning and all that we could learn of this country—of its sterility, its cold and frost, to believe that we could ever raise anything. But we traveled on, breaking the road through the mountains and building bridges until we arrived here, and then we did everything we could to sustain ourselves. We had faith that we could raise grain; was there any harm in this? Not at all. If we had not had faith, what would have become of us? We would have gone down in unbelief, have closed up every resource for our sustenance and should never have raised anything. I ask the whole world, is there any harm in having faith in God? Have you faith? Ask Mr. Pullman if he had faith that he could build a car more convenient than any the traveling community enjoyed before, and he will say that he had faith that he could build cars in which ladies and gentlemen might travel through the country with all the ease and comfort they could desire; and he showed his faith by his works, as we read of the ancient worthies doing. You know James says, “Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Mr. Pullman and others can show their faith by their works. We show our faith by our works. Is there any harm in this? I ask the whole Christian world, is there any harm in believing in God, in a supreme power and influence?

The Christian world believe in God, but they say He has no body. Christianity does not teach any such thing. “God has no parts and He is without passions,” say the Christian world. I do not read the Scriptures aright if this is the fact. I read that God loves, that God hates. I read that His eyes are over the works of His hands; that His arm is stretched out to save His people; that His footsteps are seen among the nations of the earth. If He has no feet, He certainly can make no impression; if He has no hands or arms he cannot reach down to save His people. I read that the Lord’s ears are open to the petitions of His people; but if He have no ears how can He hear. This is the way that I read the Bible, and I ask, is there any harm in reading and understanding it thus? There are a great many infidels now, who were formerly among our Christian friends and brethren, who are ignoring the Bible in their public schools. I do not. Is there anything in the Bible that should not be read by the scholars in schools? If there be, leave out such parts, or rather replace the language there used, with phraseology more in accordance with modern usage, so that the principles contained in the Bible may be taught in your catechisms or other books. I know that there is some plain talk in the Bible, plainer than I heard this morning; but that plain talk was the custom of the ancients. The mere phraseology there used is not of much consequence, it is the true principle which that book teaches which renders it so valuable. If any of you, ladies and gentlemen, were to step on a steamboat and cross over to Liverpool, you would hear language and see customs that you never heard or saw in Yankee land. It is the same with regard to the Bible, the phraseology is that which was customary centuries ago; but no matter what the language is, that is merely custom. But I will say that the doctrines taught in the Old and New Testaments concerning the will of God towards His children here on the earth; the history of what He has done for their salvation; the ordinances which He has instituted for their redemption; the gift of His Son and his atonement—all these are true, and we, the Latter-day Saints, believe in them.

Some, in their curiosity, will say, “But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?” I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible. “What is the utility of this book—the Book of Mormon? Has it been of any use whatever to the people anywhere?” O, yes. “Where and when?” I will refer to one of the sayings of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. Just before his crucifixion he said to his disciples, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.” After his crucifixion he came to this continent, chose Twelve Apostles from among the people and sent them forth to preach his Gospel. He also did many mighty miracles. He was seen to come from heaven down into the midst of the people. He organized his Church amongst them, healed the sick, and left his Church and Gospel in their midst. I am sorry to say that we see the descendants of this very people now in a very low and degraded state. I refer to the aborigines or native Indians of this continent. But this is in consequence of their apostasy and turning from God. The aborigines of this country are the descendants of this very people whom Jesus visited, to whom he delivered his Gospel, and among whom he organized his Church. They were obedient for over three hundred years, and served God with an undivided heart, after which they began to apostatize. For three hundred years the people on the continent of North and South America were benefited by the work of the Savior in organizing his Church and revealing every principle and ordinance calculated to assist them back into the presence of God. Is not that good?

“What good does it do you, Latter-day Saints?” It proves that the Bible is true. What do the infidel world say about the Bible? They say that the Bible is nothing better than last year’s almanac; it is nothing but a fable and priestcraft, and it is good for nothing. The Book of Mormon, however, declares that the Bible is true, and it proves it; and the two prove each other true. The Old and New Testaments are the stick of Judah. You recollect that the tribe of Judah tarried in Jerusalem and the Lord blessed Judah, and the result was the writings of the Old and New Testaments. But where is the stick of Joseph? Can yon tell where it is? Yes. It was the children of Joseph who came across the waters to this continent, and this land was filled with people, and the Book of Mormon or the stick of Joseph contains their writings, and they are in the hands of Ephraim. Where are the Ephraimites? They are mixed through all the nations of the earth. God is calling upon them to gather out, and He is uniting them, and they are giving the Gospel to the whole world. Is there any harm or any false doctrine in that? A great many say there is. If there is, it is all in the Bible.

When I first commenced to preach to the people, nearly forty years ago, to believe the Bible was the great requisite. I have heard some make the broad assertion that every word within the lids of the Bible was the word of God. I have said to them, “You have never read the Bible, have you?” “O, yes, and I believe every word in it is the word of God.” Well, I believe that the Bible contains the word of God, and the words of good men and the words of bad men; the words of good angels and the words of bad angels and words of the devil; and also the words uttered by the ass when he rebuked the prophet in his madness. I believe the words of the Bible are just what they are; but aside from that I believe the doctrines concerning salvation contained in that book are true, and that their observance will elevate any people, nation or family that dwells on the face of the earth. The doctrines contained in the Bible will lift to a superior condition all who observe them; they will impart to them knowledge, wisdom, charity, fill them with compassion and cause them to feel after the wants of those who are in distress, or in painful or degraded circumstances. They who observe the precepts contained in the Scriptures will be just and true, and virtuous and peaceable at home and abroad. Follow out the doctrines of the Bible and men will make splendid husbands, women excellent wives, and children will be obedient; they will make families happy and the nations wealthy and happy and lifted up above the things of this life. Can any see any harm in all this? “Oh, but you Mormons are such a strange people. It is true that we have found things in Utah different from what we expected, but still you people are so strange!” Why, what did you expect? Did you expect to see men and women with fins like fishes? We are right from your country—from England, France, Germany, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, from the South, from every State in the Union; what did you expect to see? We lived with you, went to school and to meeting with you; but still the saying is, “Oh, the Mormons are a strange people.” It is true that we are; but in what does our peculiarity consist? We do not believe in litigation, quarreling, or in having contention with each other. We take the low and degraded and lift them up. If it would be any satisfaction to any man in the world to know what advantages President Young has had, I will say that I used to have the privilege of cutting down the hemlock, beech and maple trees with my father and my brothers: and then rolling them together, burning the logs, splitting the rails, and fencing the little fields. I wonder if any of you ever did this? You who came from England, or from the rich prairies of Illinois or Missouri never did. Well, this was my education. “Did you not go to school?” Yes; I went eleven days, that was the extent of my schooling.

Now, if we can take the low and degraded and elevate them in their feelings, language and manners; if we can impart to them the sciences that are in the world, teach them all that books contain, and in addition to all this, teach them principles that are eternal, and calculated to make them a beautiful community, lovely in their appearance, intelligent in every sense of the word, would you not say that our system is praiseworthy and possesses great merit? Well, this is all in that book called the Bible, and the faithful observance of the principles taught in that book will do this for any family or nation on the earth.

We are not anxious to obtain gold; if we can obtain it by raising potatoes and wheat, all right. “Can’t you make yourselves rich by speculating?” We do not wish to. “Can’t you make yourselves rich by going to the gold mines?” We are right in the midst of them. “Why don’t you dig the gold from the earth?” Because it demoralizes any community or nation on the earth to give them gold and silver to their hearts’ content; it will ruin any nation. But give them iron and coal, good hard work, plenty to eat, good schools and good doctrine, and it will make them a healthy, wealthy and happy people.

This is the great mystery with regard to the Latter-day Saints. We have got a code of laws that the Lord Almighty has left on record in the book called the Old and New Testaments. This same code is contained in the Book of Mormon, also in another book we have, called the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. These doctrines are taught in all these books, and taught alike.

Now then, does the voice of the Lord, as heard from the heavens, ever teach men and women to do wrong? Never. You see a man or woman, in any community, no matter where they are or who they are, that is inclined to do a wrong act to themselves or anybody else, and they profess to do that under a religious influence, and you may know that their ideas of religion are false. Ladies and gentlemen, write that down. His religion is false who does not have love to God and to his fellow creatures; who does not cherish holiness of heart, purity of life, and sanctification, that he may be prepared to enter again into the presence of the Father and the Son.

The question was asked a great many times of Joseph Smith, by gentlemen who came to see him and his people, “How is it that you can control your people so easily? It appears that they do nothing but what you say; how is it that you can govern them so easily?” Said he, “I do not govern them at all. The Lord has revealed certain prin– ciples from the heavens by which we are to live in these latter days. The time is drawing near when the Lord is going to gather out His people from the wicked, and He is going to cut short His work in righteousness, and the principles which He has revealed I have taught to the people and they are trying to live according to them, and they control themselves.”

Gentlemen, this is the great secret now in controlling this people. It is thought that I control them, but it is not so. It is as much as I can do to control myself and to keep myself straight and teach the people the principles by which they should live. Do all do it? No, and the consequence is we see wickedness in the land. Men do very wrong. Who is guilty? The Lord? No. The religion we have embraced? No. The counsel we have given? No. I have had the question asked me, in the days of Joseph, “Mr. Young, I suppose that you would obey Joseph Smith, let him tell you to do what he might?” “Well, I think I would.” “Suppose that he should tell you to kill your neighbor or to steal, or to do this, that or the other, that is wrong, would you do it?” I would reply, “Wait till I am told. I have never yet been told from heaven, by Joseph Smith, the Old or New Testament, the Book of Mormon or the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, to do a wrong thing; and I will wait until I am, before I say what I would do; that is time enough.”

“Well, have you not committed wrong?” I may have committed a great many wrongs for want of judgment or wisdom—a little here and a little there. “But have you not done great wrongs?” I have not. I know what is in the hearts of almost every person who comes to this city. It is hurled throughout the length and breadth of our country like lightning that Brigham Young and the “Mormons” are guilty of doing this, that and the other, I need not reiterate; and it is often asked, “Have not you Mormons been guilty of this or that crime or evil?” I answer, no, ladies and gentlemen, we have not. It is the wicked who do these crimes; it is men who will go to hell; and then they try to palm them off on the just and righteous. You can imagine what you please of the stories you have read about the people of Utah from the pens of every lying scribbler who has been here. Imagine what you please, but write this down, publish it in your little paper (the Trans-Continental), that a Saint will never do wrong if he knows it. If a man will do a wrong thing willfully, he is not a Saint. When you hear of Brigham Young, and of his brethren who are in the faith of the holy Gospel, doing this wrong and that wrong, wait until you find out the truth before you publish it to the world.

We have been asked a good many times, “Why do you not publish the truth in regard to these lies which are circulated about you?” We might do this if we owned all the papers published in Christendom. Who will publish a letter from me or my brethren? Who will publish the truth from us? If it gets into one paper, it is slipped under the counter or somewhere else; but it never gets into a second. They will send forth lies concerning us very readily. The old adage is that a lie will creep through the keyhole and go a thousand miles while truth is getting out of doors; and our experience has proved this. We have not the influence and power necessary to refute the falsehoods circulated about us. We depend on God, who sits in the heavens. Our trust is in Him who created the heavens, who formed the earth, and who has brought forth His children on the earth, and who has given the intelligence which they possess. He has given them the privilege of choosing for themselves, whether it be good or evil; but the result of our choice is still in His hand. All His children have the right of making a path for themselves, of walking to the right or to the left, of telling the truth or that which is not true. This right God has given to all people who dwell on the earth, and they can legislate and act as they please; but God holds them in His hands, and He will bring forth the results to His glory, and for the benefit of those who love and serve Him, and He will make the wrath of men to praise Him. All of us are in the hands of that God. We are all His children. We are His sons and daughters naturally, and by the principles of eternal life. We are brethren and sisters. What is it that makes the distinctions we see in the classes of the children of men? We see the low and the degraded, like the aborigines of our country; what is the cause of their being in their present condition? It is because of the rejection by their fathers of the Gospel of the Son of God. The Gospel brings intelligence, happiness, and glory to all who obey it and live according to its precepts. It will give them intelligence that comes from God. Their minds will be open so as to understand things as they are; they will rejoice in being blessed themselves and in blessing their fellow beings, and in being prepared to reenter the presence of the Father and the Son. This will be their delight. Is this so? It is.

I was very much gratified a day or two ago with a little circumstance that transpired while a company of ladies and gentlemen were visiting me. We were talking over some circumstances relating to our coming to the valleys, and our hardships after we got here. I said it was faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that enabled us to endure. A lady present said, “That is right, I believe in exercising faith in him. Have faith in God, for God will bless all who have faith in Him, no matter who they are nor by whom called; if you have faith in God, and live according to the light you have, God will lead you to glory.”

I delight to hear a person give an intimation of their having faith in God; to hear it said, “I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in his crucifixion and atonement, and in his ordinances.” These ordinances we are trying to live, that we may glorify God, and prepare ourselves to build up His Zion on the earth, that the world may be filled with peace, knowledge and joy.

God help us to do so!

Discourse by Elder John Taylor, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 6, 1870.

The Scriptures inform us “that no man knows the things of God, but by the Spirit of God;” and then no man can speak the things of God unless aided by the Spirit of the Lord; and no people can comprehend the things spoken unless inspired and guided by the same Spirit. We need this Spirit continually and so do all mankind, to guide us, to enable us to comprehend the laws of life, to regulate and concentrate our thoughts, to elevate and ennoble our feelings, to give force and vitality to our actions, and to place us in a position before God, before men, and before the holy angels, that will be right, acceptable and proper to all true intelligence, to the angelic host, and to our heavenly Father. It matters very little what we are engaged in, it is impossible for us to do right without the guidance of the Almighty; but aided and directed by the Spirit of the Lord, we can act in consonance with the dignity of our high position as immortal beings possessing the holy Priesthood, and participating in the new and everlasting covenant; by the aid of that unerring Spirit we can fulfil the measure of our creation and prepare ourselves for an inheritance in the celestial kingdom of our God.

We are told “that the world by wisdom knows not God;” yet they do comprehend a great many things, and because of the spread of general intelligence and the great progress of science, literature and the arts, they believe they can find out God. Like the framers of Babel’s Tower, they seek to penetrate the heavens on natural principles. Like them they are mistaken, as all men have been who have sought to solve the problem of life through the influence of human wisdom. No man ever did understand God on this principle; neither can they by mortal agency alone understand the principles of life and salvation. No man in the present generation comprehends them on this principle; neither will human wisdom enable any man who ever will live to understand them. It is true that mankind, within a short time, have made great advances in the arts and sciences. During the last half century scientific research has made many wonderful developments; and many things which, before that time, were unknown to the human family, are now quite familiar. There was very little known of the application of the power of steam half a century ago. I remember, very well, the first steamboat and locomotive that were propelled by steam, and riding on the first railway. Before that, locomotion had to depend upon the winds and tides and horse power and a few other agencies. These are now supplanted by what all will acknowledge as a very superior agent—namely, the power of steam.

Electricity, or rather its application, so as to subserve the wants of man, was unknown until a comparatively recent period. I refer now more particularly to the electric telegraph. That has been a means of greatly facilitating the transmission of thought and the spread of intelligence among the human family, and has been a great advantage to the world at large. When we came to this valley, for instance, even so late as that, we had to depend upon ox teams to bring our mails and to convey intelligence from the East, and I have known it to be four, five, and sometimes as long as six months before we knew what President was elected. Now we can have it in fewer minutes; this exhibits a great improvement in such matters.

I can remember the time when we had to plod along at night, nearly in the dark, in our largest cities, the streets being lighted only by dim oil lamps. Now we have gas and various luminous oils, which we have made the earth teem forth by millions of gallons, that are almost equivalent to gas. Daguerreotyping, or as it is more generally called photography, is another great achievement of the human mind, conferring the power to take likenesses, landscapes and views in a moment, which formerly required days or months, even by the most eminent artists.

In machinery and chemistry, manufactures, and many other scientific developments connected with human life, wonderful advances have been made, and the world seems to have been progressing with great rapidity in the arts and sciences, in regard to manufactures. Some years ago every texture had to be spun by a single thread, now, by the aid of steam and machinery, it is done by thousands and hundreds of thousands. We might go on enumerating many other improvements which have taken place within the past few years; from which it is very evident that the progress of the present generation has far eclipsed that of any preceding it, of which we have any knowledge. Because of these things it has been supposed by many that the human intellect is capable of grasping everything in this world and the world to come—even eternal things, and many men have got puffed up and vain in their imaginations because of the discoveries they have made and the advancement in science, literature and the arts. They forget “that every good and perfect gift proceeds from God, the Father of light, in whom there is no variableness nor the shadow of a turning.” They forget that every particle of wisdom that any man possesses comes from God, and that without Him they would still continue to grope in the dark. They forget that, with all the increase of wisdom and intelligence and the expansion of the human mind, they are in the dark in regard to God, and that no man by wisdom can find Him out. The mystery which enshrouds Him is as high as heaven, as deep as hell and as wide as the universe; and it is unfathomable and incomprehensible by human intelligence, unaided by the inspiration of the Almighty.

There are men, it is true, who profess from the little knowledge they have of earthly things, by a series of deductions, to be able to find out heavenly things, but there is a very material difference between the two. There is a philosophy of the earth and a philosophy of the heavens; the latter can unravel all mysteries pertaining to earth; but the philosophy of the earth cannot enter into the mysteries of the kingdom of God, or the purposes of the Most High. But because of the advancement to which I have alluded, men set themselves up as teachers of things pertaining to spiritual matters, of which they know nothing. But the moment they do that, they exhibit their folly, vanity, imbecility and shortsightedness, for, as I have stated, they never did comprehend the things of God without the Spirit of God, and they never will. What folly it is, for men with the breath in their nostrils, who are but worms of the earth, existing as it were for a day, and tomorrow are cut down like the grass; or like the moth or butterfly, which flutters around for a brief space and then passes away into everlasting oblivion; I say what folly it is for beings so circumstanced, so weak, imbecile, circumscribed and controlled to set themselves forward, unaided by the Spirit of the Almighty, to fathom the designs of God, to unravel the principles of eternal life, to comprehend the relationship that subsists between God and man and to draw aside the curtain of futurity. Who is there who has seen God or can comprehend Him, His designs and purposes? No man is capable of fathoming these mysteries. Man, indeed, can comprehend some of the principles which are developed in nature, and only a few of these. But who can grasp the intelligence that dwells in the bosom of Jehovah? Who can unravel His designs and penetrate the unfathomable abyss of the future? Who can tell upon what principle this world was organized or anything about the denizens of those worlds that we see moving around us? It is true that by the science of astronomy nice calculation in regard to the heavenly bodies can be made; but none can tell who put those bodies in motion, how they are controlled, or by what class of people they are inhabited. As the Scriptures say, “What man, by his wis– dom, can find out God?” No one can comprehend Him. We can find ourselves to be a remarkable enigma, both in regard to body and mind—each individual man, woman and child; but who can draw aside the veil and tell how or why we came here, and what awaits us when we lay aside this mortal coil? None can do this, unless God reveals it. There never was a man, neither is there a man now, nor ever will be, that can comprehend these things upon the principle of natural or human philosophy, and nothing short of the philosophy of heaven—the intelligence that flows from God, can unravel these mysteries.

Some men will stultify themselves with the idea that in ages gone and past the human race was in a semi-civilized or barbarous condition, and that any kind of a religion would do for the people in those days; but with the progress of intelligence, the march of intellect, the development of the arts and sciences and the expansion of the human mind, it is necessary that we should have something more elevated, refined and intellectual than that which existed then. To me such notions are perfect foolishness. If I read my Bible aright and believe in it, known unto God were all things from before the foundation of the world, and I do not think that the intelligence of the nineteenth century can enlighten His mind in relation to these matters. He that framed the body, shall He not know its structure? He that organized the mind, shall not He understand it? Before this world rolled into existence or the morning stars sang together for joy, the great Eloheim comprehended all things pertaining to the world that He organized and the people who should inhabit it; the position that they would occupy and the intelligence that they would possess; their future destiny and the destiny of the world that He then made. It is vanity, puerility and weakness for men to attempt to gainsay the designs of God, or to boast of their own intelligence. What do they know? Why, they discovered awhile ago that there is such a thing as electricity. Who made that electricity? Did man? Did he originate and place it among the nature’s forces? Did it proceed from the acumen of man’s intelligence and his expansive mind? No, it always existed, and the man who discovered it—a little smarter than his fellows—only found out one of the laws of nature that emanated from and originated with God. It is just so with steam—the properties which render it so useful in subserving man’s purposes always existed, but man discovered them; if there had been no God to make these properties, no one could have found them out. It is so with the various gases and their properties, with minerals—their attractions and repulsions—they originated with God; man is incompetent to form anything of the kind. So we might go on through all man’s boasted achievements; they amount to no more than the discovery of some of the active or latent laws of nature, not comprehended by men generally, but discovered by some who consider themselves, and they no doubt are, smarter than their fellows. Where, then, is the boasted intelligence of man? Science reveals the beauty and harmony of the world material; it unveils to us ten thousand mysteries in the kingdom of nature, and shows that all forms of life through fire and analogous decay are returned again to its bosom. It unfolds to us the mysteries of cloud and rains, dew and frost, growth and decay, and reveals the operation of those silent irresistible forces which give vitality to the world. It reveals to us the more wonderful operations of distant orbs and their relations to the forces of nature. It also reveals another grand principle, that the laws of nature are immutable and unchangeable as are all the works of God. Those principles and powers and forces have undergone no change since they were first organized, or, if changed, they have returned again to the original elements from which they were derived. All of the properties of nature were as perfect at the creation as now; all the elements of nature possessed the same specific properties, affinities and capacity of combination that they do at present. Trees, shrubs, plants, flowers, birds, beasts, fishes and man were as perfect then as now. God’s works are all perfect and governed by eternal laws. It reminds me of an infant; I can compare it to nothing else. The new-born child is perfectly oblivious to anything and everything around it, although marvelous in its organization and perfect in its structure. By and by it holds up its hand and discovers for the first time that it has a hand. It had it before, but a new light bursts upon the brain of the child, and it discovers it has a hand, and no doubt thinks it is wonderful wise in finding it out, just as some of our philosophers do when they discover the properties of matter. But God made the child’s hand, and it was in existence before its brain was capable of comprehending it. And so were all these things, about the discovery of which men boast so much. God made them and made them perfect. Yet men will boast that they know things independent of God, whereas unless they had been aided by the Spirit of the Lord, and unless the principles had existed they never could have been found out, for no man could have originated them himself. All that man has ever done, with all his boasted intelligence, has been simply to develop or find out a few of the common principles of nature that always have existed, and always will exist, for these things and every principle of nature are eternal. The Gospel is also eternal. But where is there a man who understands heavenly things? Who can unravel them? Who has been behind the veil and talked with the Gods? Who among the wise men, philosophers, divines, philanthropists, kings, rulers or authorities of the earth can comprehend God or His designs. If we can understand so imperfectly the laws of nature with which we are surrounded, with the privileges of seeing, feeling, comparing and analyzing, what do we know of things beyond our vision, hearing, or comprehension? We can read, in the history of the past, of the rise and fall of nations of the downfall of thrones and of the destruction of kingdoms; we can read of wars and rumors of wars. History points out what has transpired in relation to the nations of the earth and to men who have lived upon it, but who can penetrate into the future? Man is an immortal being: he is destined to live in time and throughout all eternity. He possesses not only a body, but a soul that will exist while “life or thought or being lasts, or immortality endures.” Who can tell in relation to this future? Who can tell things pertaining to our heavenly existence, or the object God had in view for creating this and other worlds, and the destiny of the human family? No man, except God reveals it to him. What has been and still is the position of the world in relation to these things? It has been governed by every kind of dogma and theory of religion. “Isms” of every kind have prevailed in turn—polytheism, infidelity, Christianity in its ten thousand forms, and every kind of theory and dogma that the human imagination could invent. Such contrarieties show definitely and positively that men, by wisdom, cannot find out God. And Christianity, at the present time, is no more enlightened than other systems have been. What does the Christian world know about God? Nothing; yet these very men assume the right and power to tell others what they shall and what they shall not believe in. Why, so far as the things of God are concerned, they are the veriest fools; they know neither God nor the things of God. Our Government is engaged just now in an act of this kind. Our legislators would tell me what I shall and shall not believe in, what shall be the course of my morals, as if they were immaculate and had been made perfect; as though they had inspiration from on high, and had found out the truth in all its richness, power and glory; as though they had conversed with the heavens and were acquainted with God. Oh, fools! What do they know about the truth? No more than a child about its hand. They are imbecile and ignorant and in the dark, and the greatest difficulty in the matter is—they are fools and don’t know it.

We consider, and always have since this Church was organized, that that part of Scripture that I quoted before is true—namely, “No, man knows the things of God but by the Spirit of God.” We, as Latter-day Saints, understood no correct principle until it was revealed to us. I did not, nor have I ever met with anybody that did, and I have traveled very extensively over the world that we live in, and have met with all classes and grades of men in different nations. We, as Latter-day Saints, are indebted to the revelations of God, given unto Joseph Smith, for the knowledge of the very first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and he could not have known it unless it had been revealed to him. One thing I did know of myself before I came into this Church, and that is more than a great many know of themselves—namely, that I was a fool, and did not know anything unless God revealed it. It takes a great deal of hammering to get that into some men’s minds. The main questions in my mind, when this Gospel came, were, “Is this true?” “Is this from God, or is it not?” “Has God, indeed, spoken as this man says He has?” If He has not, it is all a fiction, a farce and delusion, like the other “isms” that exist in the world; if He has, it is for me to obey, no matter what the consequences may be.

There is one thing that has always been satisfactory to my mind in relation to this Gospel—there has never been one principle revealed, at any time, but what has been instructive and in accordance with the Scriptures, which we consider to be of divine origin. Never one principle but what could be substantiated by the word of God, although we did not know it before, and the world does not know it now. And I may also say that there has never been a principle revealed but what has been strictly philosophical and is in accordance with good, sound common sense; and, furthermore, I will go on beyond that and say that no principle ever will be revealed but what will be in accordance with philosophy, if we can comprehend it. As there is a philosophy of the earth and a philosophy of the heavens, it needs heavenly instruction to comprehend the heavenly things. But, as I said be– fore, “no man knows the things of God, but by the Spirit of God.” The Scriptures show unto us how we may obtain that Spirit, which will give us a knowledge for ourselves.

When this Gospel was revealed, it was declared unto us that it was an everlasting Gospel, that there was a Priesthood associated with it, and that that Priesthood was everlasting; so we were presented with an everlasting Priesthood, and with an everlasting Gospel. There was also an everlasting covenant associated with it. We were told how we might obtain a knowledge of this Gospel for ourselves—the promise being that if we would repent of our sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of them, by one having authority, we should receive the Holy Ghost. We were also told that Holy Ghost would place us in communication with God; that it would take of the things of God and show them unto us, and that we should know for a certainty, each of us for ourselves, of the truths that had been proclaimed unto us.

This was the position that we were placed in. We went forward and obeyed it, for we were told that God had revealed Himself from the heavens, that He had restored the Gospel by the means of a holy angel, as referred to by John the Revelator, and that He had restored, by authority direct from heaven, communication between Himself, the heavenly world and His creatures here. We were told that by obedience to that Gospel we should be made the recipients of a Spirit which would bring things past to our remembrance, that would lead us into all truth and show us things to come.

Believing in this message, this vast crowd of people before me today, went forth and bowed in obedience, and they received that Spirit, and they knew and do know that the Gospel they had preached unto them came not in word only, but, in power and in the demonstration of the Spirit, and that the Holy Ghost accompanied it. You know, and I know, that when you obeyed this Gospel and had hands laid upon you for the reception of the Holy Ghost, you received it. Who else knows anything about it? Nobody. Do any of these strangers around? No. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Except, a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Then what do they know about it? You talk to a blind man about colors, and ask him to tell the difference between red and white, black and blue, and he would tell you perhaps that one was long and the other short, that one was light and the other heavy. He could not describe, nor his sense comprehend it. Jesus said a man could not see the kingdom of God unless he was born of the Spirit. Did he speak the truth? I think he did. And when you were born again of the water and of the Spirit, you saw and you entered into the kingdom of God, and things that you were ignorant of before, you then comprehended. Many of you felt a good deal like the blind man spoken of in the Scriptures, after he had been healed by our Savior. The Scribes and Pharisees, a learned and very holy body of men—spoke to his father, saying, “Give God the glory, for we know that this man is a sinner.” They knew that Jesus was an impostor, a deceiver, a false prophet, a blasphemer, and that he cast out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of devils, and that he was one of the wickedest, meanest curses in existence. “Give God the glory,” said they, “for we know this man is a sinner.” The father of him who had been healed of his blindness said, “Whether he is a sinner, I know not; but this I do know, that whereas this my son was once blind and now he sees.” Now a great many of you here are very much deluded in the estimation of the philosophers, wise men and priests of the world; but if you do not comprehend the philosophy of the whole matter, one thing you all know—that once you were blind, but now you see. You understood that years ago and you understand it today, and no man can deprive you of that knowledge, or strip you of that information. No man can rob you of that light: it is the gift of God, it emanates from Jehovah, and no man can take it away, or reason or legislate it away; it is an eternal principle, emanating from God, and that is something the worldly-wise and great know nothing about. You who are here today, who have obeyed this Gospel, are witnesses of the truth of which I speak; I am a witness and I bear witness to it.

We are told that Jesus said on a certain occasion to his disciples, “It is necessary that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come. If I go away I will send you a Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost.” What will it do for you? It will lead you into all truth, so that you will see eye to eye and comprehend the purposes of God; you will march in line; you will be under one instructor; you will have one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God who is in all and through all, will inspire and guide and dictate you; you will not be split up and divided as the sectarians are—every man taking his own course, every man for himself and the devil for the whole; it will not be setting up human intellect above the intelligence and inspiration of the Almighty. Instead of this, all will bow to the dictates of Jehovah; the aspiration of every heart will be, “O, God, thou that rulest in the heavens; O thou Supreme Governor of the universe, that created all things and controls all things, impart to me a small moiety of Thy wisdom! Inspire me with a little of that intelligence that dwells in Thy bosom! Give me a little of Thy Holy Spirit, that I may comprehend Thee and Thy laws, and walk in obedience to Thy commands!” This will be the feeling of that individual. “O God, teach me the paths of life and then give power to walk in them!”

Jesus told them they should have the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; the Spirit should bring things past to their remembrance, it should enable them to comprehend something about the world and why it was organized and by whom; why man was placed upon it; what the position of the human family is in relation to the present, past and future; find out what God’s dealings had been with the human family in ages gone and past, and His designs in relation to the world. Then it should unfold things to come, it should draw back the curtain of futurity and by the inspiration and intelligence of that Spirit which proceeds from God, it should grasp the future. It should comprehend the destiny of the human family, and by the revelations which God should communicate, make known the life to come in the eternal worlds. This is the kind of thing that the everlasting Gospel communicates, and it is the revelation of God to man. But the world, as I said before, know not the things of God, and they cannot comprehend them.

I have had it asked me by philosophers, “Is this the only way you propose to ameliorate the condition of the human family—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, baptism for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost?” Yes, that is God’s way of doing it; that is the way He has pointed out. I remember, on one occasion, being in the city of Paris, and a gentleman came to me to inquire concerning the Gospel. He was associated with a system of socialism, very common in France, called Icarianism. A company of them went to Nauvoo after we left. This gentleman was a philosopher, and the society was trying to carry out its philosophy in France, and they aimed to bring about the Millennium. They never prayed to God, they were going to do it by human intelligence. This gentleman, whose name was Krolikrosky, called upon me, when after a lengthy conversation on the principles of our faith, said he, referring to faith, repentance, baptism and the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost, the first principles of our Gospel: “Is this all you propose to ameliorate the condition of the world?” “Yes.” He answered, “I hope you will succeed, but I am afraid you will not.” “Permit me,” I said, “to draw your attention to one or two things. I am a religionist.” “Yes.” “I profess to have had revelation from God; you do not.” “That is so,” said he. “You have sent out to Nauvoo a number of your most intellectual men, well provided with means of every kind and with talent of the first order. Now what is the result? They have gone to a place that we have deserted; they found houses built, gardens and farms enclosed, nothing to do but to take possession of them?” “Yes. They found buildings of all kinds, public and private, in which they could live and congregate.” “Yes. Was there ever a people better situated in regard to testing your natural philosophy? You could not have hit upon a better place. It is a fertile country, on the banks of the most magnificent stream in the United States—the Mississippi. Houses built, gardens made, fields enclosed and cultivated. You have wise men among you—the wisest, the creme de la creme of your society, yet with all this and the favorable circumstances under which your people commenced there, what have you done? Every time that I take up a paper of yours the cry from there is, ‘Send us means;’ ‘we want means;‘ we are in difficulty;’ ‘we want more money.’ This is their eternal cry, is it not?” “Yes.” “Now,” said I, “on the other hand, we left our farms, houses, gardens, fields, orchards, and everything we had, except what we took along in the shape of food, seeds, farming utensils, wagons, carts, and we wandered for from ten to fifteen hundred miles, with handcarts, ox teams and any way we could, and settled, finally, among the red savages of the forest. We had no fields to go to and no houses built; when we went there it was a desert—a howling wilderness, and the natives with which we were surrounded were as savage as the country itself. Now then, what is the result? We have only been there a few years, but what are we doing? We are sending money to bring in our emigration; we are sending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and have expended half a million a year in teams to bring in our poor from the nations. But what of you wise men who know not God, and think you know better than He does, what are you doing—you philosophers, intelligent men and philanthropists, crying out eternally, “Send us help?” “Which is the best?” Said he, “Mr. Taylor, I have nothing to say.”

We care nothing about the opinions of men, let them look upon us as they may. We can say as the old Apostle said, “We are living epistles, known and read of all men.” Judge us by our works. Do thieves, renegades, blacklegs and corrupt men accomplish the work done here? Where are your Gentile associations? Here we have a magnificent city called Corinne, instituted by you gentlemen Gentiles here. What a magnificent place it is! It looks as if Tophet has been spewed out to people it with honorable American citizens! Yet these men will prate to us about morality, the poor miserable curses! O, shame, if thou hadst any blood in thy body, thou wouldst blush for very shame at the transactions of this world in which we live.

But we believe in God, and you Latter-day Saints, your religion is as true as it was ten, twenty, thirty, or eighteen hundred or six thousand years ago. It has not changed, and I do not think that it will. It is everlasting; it is eternal in its nature and its consequences, and, whether other men know what they are doing or not, we do. If others do not attend to eternity, we do; if others know nothing about God, we do, and we know where we are going and how we are going. God has pointed out to us the path, and we intend to walk in it, in spite of all the powers of earth and hell.

God has taught us the relationship that should exist between us and the eternal worlds. That is a thing that is very much found fault with. He has unveiled the future to us and told us that man is not made for here alone, and then to die and rot and be forgotten, or to sing himself away somewhere beyond the bounds of time and space where nobody ever was nor ever will be. We have been taught something different from that. We are aiming at eternal exaltation, at thrones, principalities and powers in the eternal worlds. Being made in the image of God, male and female, and having had developed to us the laws of this life and the laws of the life to come, we take the privilege of walking according to these laws, despite the ideas and notions of men.

Who is there among the men of the world who know anything about the future? I know how it was with me, and how it was with you, Jew, Gentile, Mormon, everybody. What was it! If you applied to the priesthood of the day to be married, the priest told you he joined you in the holy bonds of matrimony until death. And what then? You had to find out the rest by your own ingenuity. No matter about the future. Is that all man was made for—to live, marry and die—and nothing pertaining to the future? Is man made in the image of God? Is God our Father? Is there a heaven above? Is there an eternity before us, and are we to prepare ourselves for it or not? We take the liberty of following the counsel of Jehovah, revealed to us in relation to it.

What man has a claim upon his wife in eternity? It is true that some of the writers of the yellow-backed literature have a philosophy a little in advance of the priests of the day. Some of them do tell us about eternal unions. They expect to be married here and hereafter. They know nothing about it, still they are in advance of the clergy. They follow the instincts of nature, and nature unperverted looks forward to a reunion. We are not governed by opinion in these matters. God has revealed the principle, and our wives are sealed to us for time and eternity. When we get through with this life we expect to be associated in the next, and therefore we pursue the course that we do, and no power this side of hell, nor there either, can stop it.

Our course is onward. The Lord has revealed to us the pearl of great price. We have sacrificed everything that the world calls good to purchase it; we are in possession and we will not part with it for worlds. We “fear not men, who can kill the body,” as Jesus said; and after that there is no more that they can do. We fear God who is able to cast both soul and body into hell. Yea, we fear Him.

We make our covenants, then, for eternity, because the Gospel is an everlasting Gospel. Every truth that ever did exist is everlasting. Man is an eternal being; his body is eternal. It may die and slumber, but it will burst the barriers of the tomb and come forth in the resurrection of the just. I know that some of our wise men, even some among us, profess to think that these things are only folly. However, I look at them differently. I believe the Bible; I believe in the revelations of God and in the manifestations of the Spirit of God. I would rather possess the feeling that Job had when he was afflicted, cast out, oppressed and despoiled, when he lay scraping himself with a potsherd, wallowing in ashes, than the proud and lofty folly that dwells in the heart of the unbeliever and scorner. Said Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that He shall stand in the latter days upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, not for another; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Those were his feelings. This transpired in the “dark ages,” when men did not know so much about electricity, locomotives and a few other scientific discoveries, as they do in this enlightened age. I also read in the sayings of the prophets, given under the inspiration of the Almighty, that “the dead, small and great, shall rise, and that bone shall be joined to its bone, sinew to sinew, and they became a living army before God.” I knew a man, whom many of you knew, who built a tomb for himself in the city of Nauvoo. His name was Joseph Smith, and many of you heard him say what I shall now relate. Said he, “I expect when the time of the resurrection comes to rise up in my tomb there, and strike hands with my brethren, with my father and with my mother, and hail the day when we shall burst from the barriers of the tomb and awake to immortal life.” Have you never heard him talk thus? I have. Shall we reject from our belief the glorious principles of eternity—the resurrection of the just? Says John, when wrapt in prophetic vision, and clothed upon with the Spirit and power of God and the revelations of Jehovah, “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and all nations stood before God.”

I want a part in the resurrection. The angel said, “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection.” I want to have part in the first resurrection. It is that which leads me to hope. It is that hope which buoys me up under difficulties and sustains me while passing through tribulation, for I know as well as Job knew that my “Redeemer lives, and that He shall stand in the latter day upon the earth,” and I know that I shall stand upon it with him. I therefore bear this testimony.

Allow me to quote a little Scripture. You know that there is a saying, by one of the Apostles, that Jesus was a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek; and speaking further of this Melchizedek, the Apostle says he was “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of years.” A very singular sort of man, was he not? Did you ever see a man like that? We are told that Jesus was a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Now, there never was a man without father or mother, but this refers to his Priesthood, that was without beginning of days or end of years, and Jesus had the same kind of Priesthood that Melchizedek had.

Now we talk about the everlasting Gospel, and we will go back to some of these dark ages referred to. The Melchizedek Priesthood holds the mysteries of the revelations of God. Wherever that Priesthood exists, there also exists a knowledge of the laws of God; and wherever the Gospel has existed, there has always been revelation; and where there has been no revelation, there never has been the true Gospel. Let us go back to those times. We find that the Gospel was preached unto Abraham, and that Melchizedek was the man to whom Abraham paid tithes, and that Melchizedek blessed him. Paul tells us, “Verily the less is blessed of the better.” Now Abraham had the Gospel, and Melchizedek had it, and the law was added because of transgression; and by and by, when Jesus came, He was a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, and he restored the Gospel, and consequently revelations, the opening of the heavens and the manifestation of the power of God; and whenever the Gospel has existed, in any age of the world, these same manifestations have existed with it; and whenever these have not been upon the earth, there has been no Gospel. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.”

In addition to Melchizedek, the Bible also mentions a man called Moses, and he had the Gospel, for Paul tells us “that he preached it to the children of Israel in the wilderness, but that it profited them nothing, not being mixed with faith.” There was another man called Elijah, that we read of in the Bible. He was one of those fanatics who believe in revelation, and he had the Gospel. We come down to the time that Jesus was here on the earth; and on one occasion we read that he was on the mount with three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, and Jesus was transfigured before them. And Peter said, “Master, it is good for us to be here, let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses and one for Elias.” What? Was Moses, that old fellow who led the children of Israel from Egypt, there? That shows that he had the everlasting Gospel and Priesthood; and having got rid of the affairs of this world, he returned to minister to Jesus when he was on the earth. Was Elias there too? So Peter said. What was he doing there? He died long before, but having held the everlasting Priesthood he lived again, and lives for evermore. We will go to another man. There are curious things in the Bible, if the people only believed them; but they do not, and that is the trouble. I refer to John, the beloved disciple. We are told that he was banished because he was a fanatic—I was going to say a Mormon—as John did not agree with the enlightenment, philosophy and intelligence that existed then. What did they do with him? They banished him and sent him to the Isle of Patmos; and compelled him to labor among the slaves in the lead mines; he was not fit for civilized society, but they could not deprive him of fellowship. While there with the Almighty, he was carried away in the Spirit, and that Spirit manifested to him things past, for generations gone; things present—the condition of the churches that then existed; and also things to come—the world with all its myriads of inhabitants down to the winding-up scene. He saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, called the Book of Life; and he saw a hundred and forty-four thousand, and a number that no man can number, who sang a new song, and the glories of eternity, and the past, present and future were unveiled before his vision. He saw the new Jerusalem descend from above, and the Zion from above meeting the Zion from below, and they were married and became one. He saw the end of the nations, and of the world. “Cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces were dissolved,” and everything passed away. He gazed upon the whole; and a mighty angel stood before him, and he was about to bow down before him and to worship him; but the angel said, “Stop, do not worship me!” “Why? Who are you? You are a glorious personage; you are filled with greatness, and surrounded by majesty, glory and power, and the visions of eternity seem to be at your command, for you have unfolded them to me. Will you not let me worship you?” “No.” “Who are you?” “I am one of thy fellowservants, the prophets, who kept the testimony of Jesus, and the word of God, while here upon the earth, and feared God and kept His commandments. Do not worship me, worship God.” Said he, “I am one of those old fellows who were buffeted, persecuted and misrepresented just as you are; despised as you are by fools who knew nothing about God or eternity.”

Well, now, we believe these things. We believe in a religion that will reach into eternity, that will bring us into connection with God. We believe that God has set up His kingdom on the earth; we believe and know that it will roll forth and spread and extend, that Zion will be built up, that the glory of God will rest upon it; that the arm of Jehovah will be made bare in its defense; that the power of God will be exerted in behalf of His people; that Zion will rise and shine, and that the glory of God will be manifested among His Saints. We know that this kingdom will grow and increase until the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, and that He shall rule and reign forever and ever. And we expect to join in the universal anthem, “Hosanna, hosanna, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” and will reign until all enemies are under His feet.

God bless Israel. God bless all His Saints, and let the wrath of God be upon the enemies of Zion from this time henceforth and forever, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Discourse by President Orson Hyde, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 5, 1870.

Brethren and sisters, my heart almost falters at the idea of attempting to make you all distinctly hear me, but by the aid of the Spirit of the Lord, in answer to your good wishes and prayers, I will do my best to make you hear such things as it may suggest to me. I am thankful for this opportunity of meeting the Saints from different parts of the Territory, of beholding their friendly faces, and of greeting them with a cordial “How do you do?” and “God bless you.” It really fills me with joy and gladness, and I am thankful that I have the privilege of meeting with my brethren who bear the Priesthood, and of mingling my testimony with theirs, to establish the truths of heaven long since revealed by the Lord to His people—the Latter-day Saints. Brethren and sisters, I know that the cause in which we are engaged is the cause of God. I know that Joseph Smith was a true and faithful Prophet of the Most High God. I know that he sealed his testimony with his blood, and though he is invisible to our natural eyes at the present time, he is moving the cause of Zion by an influence which we can better feel than see. I feel thankful that I have the privilege of bearing this testimony; and not only do I bear it in behalf of the martyred Prophet, but I bear the same testimony in behalf of him whom God has placed to lead, guide and govern the affairs of His kingdom on the earth—namely, President Brigham Young.

You can all behold the “Twin Peaks” down here, when you are out in the open air, towering aloft towards heaven. You have seen the clouds gather around their brow, you have heard the thunders roll and seen the lightnings flash as if they would demolish those proud monuments of nature, and the elements have expended upon them their fury, yet after all, the clouds retired, the thunders ceased to roll, the lightnings to flash, and the sky became clearer; and there stand today those proud monuments, unscathed and unmoved. Why? Because God Almighty’s hand reared them and placed them there. And the elements by which we are more or less surrounded may gather around our President, Brigham Young, until his name is almost obscured for the time being; the thunders may roll over his head, the lightnings may flash or the clouds gather; is he affected? Is he not the same identical pillar, leading, guiding and sustaining the cause of God? Most assuredly he is. And remember that, although the elements are lively and they play around the “Twin Peaks” with a great deal of force and fury, they can have but very little effect upon them; and so it is with the man whom God has ordained and placed to guide His Saints. Apostates may cause the clouds to gather, and they may thunder and they may lighten, and they may do this, that and the other, but at last they must yield and give place to the monument that God has erected; and he will stand forth in bold relief, towering to heaven and pointing the way to eternal life.

This is my testimony. This is the way my heart feels today; and it is the way it has ever felt towards that individual; it is the way that I am inclined to think that it ever will feel. It is my determination. Why? Because I have had evidence that is unmistakable that I am occupying grounds that are correct, that are true and faithful, and I cannot forget it. I pray the Lord that He may always lead me to keep the truth in mind, vivid and clear as the sun at noonday.

Brethren and sisters, if we will be united in keeping the commandments of God, in observing and cleaving to the Word of Wisdom, not for the time being only, but always while life shall last; if we will remember our prayers and be faithful in the discharge of our duties, I will tell you that any measure, inimical to our welfare and interests it may seem, that may be sought to be carried against us, will utterly fail. We have the means within ourselves to defeat almost anything that is intended for our destruction and overthrow. However I want to talk but little about this. I have endeavored to instruct the brethren and sisters where I have labored in relation to this matter, and if I shall repeat here today some things that I have said heretofore, do not think that it is because Brother Hyde lacks a subject; but he is happy to have the opportunity of declaring the truth; and truth never becomes stale because of being often repeated.

We are a commercial and trading people, although far inland, and hence we buy and sell. Now the question is, are we always punctual to pay according to promise and agreement? I am sorry to say that in too many instances we are careless and indifferent with regard to fulfilling our word and agreement. We are told in the good Book that we should owe no man anything but love and good will; and if every man that hears the sound of my voice today could stand out like an angel of God and say, “I owe no man anything but love and good will,” what missile from the enemies’ ranks could be successfully hurled against us? I say not one. We have paid that which we owe, and no man can say aught in complaint against us because we are delinquents; and every one that knows us will be ready to say, “God bless you, you are punctual and faithful.” Do we all desire, brethren and sisters, to maintain this character and stand upon this ground? I know that cases will arise, and almost unavoidably, in which we may be indebted to our brethren; but how is it with some of us when those to whom we are indebted apply for payment? I am afraid that such creditors, instead of receiving that which is their due, are sometimes turned away with an excuse; when, if the debtor would exert himself, he might pay about as well then as at any other time. But though we may turn away a brother with an excuse, does that turn away the demands of justice and right? I tell you no. I have seen individuals who would contract a debt, apparently regardless whether they paid or not. I do not know that there are any here, but if there are I hope they will heed the words which I speak. Let me say that I very much question whether, if we have contracted debts and do not pay them, nor manifest any desire to do so, we shall go into the celestial kingdom. I cannot tell how this will be, but I should rather fear that, instead of going into the celestial kingdom, we should go down to that prison that is spoken of in the Scriptures. Hence we are exhorted to “agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison: verily, verily, I say unto thee that thou shalt not come out thence until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” Whether this Scripture legitimately applies in this case, I will not say; but to my mind it has a strong beginning in that direction. Well, if I have to go to prison and there work to pay the uttermost farthing, heaven nerve my arm so that I may meet and pay my obligations while I am in the flesh. I know that in relation to these matters some of us have been in the habit of considering, “Well, it is a brother to whom I owe this debt, and I can put him off, he will bear with me, and if he begins to make any particular demonstration towards collecting it, I will twine around him, and say, ‘Bear with me a little, and I will pay you,’” when perhaps we have no real, firm and fixed determination to pay that debt at all.

Will the Lord hear and answer our prayers if this be our condition? I cannot say, but I will tell you I would rather be clear of any obligation except those of love and good will. I would rather risk prayer offered under these circumstances than when offered while the suppliant is involved in debts and obligations he has failed to discharge.

Now, brethren and sisters, if we will train ourselves never to contract a debt, unless we feel sure, and not only feel sure, but determined, to pay according to promise, we shall not have the burdens on our shoulders that we otherwise shall have. Times are changing. Sometimes we are tempted by the allurements of the world, by the flow of money and by the abundance of everything, to go beyond the mark, and we contract debts; then perhaps there is a shutdown on the sources of prosperity, and a dark, dull time, financially, may set in, and everything we have got is at stake. Which, then, is the better way? The better way, in my opinion, is to keep clear of debt; whether times are prosperous or tight, keep clear of debt if possible.

Some will run into debt to gratify pride, and they will really rob themselves and their creditors just to keep up with this fanciful thing called fashion. Brother or sister So and So says, “I must have this or that, because somebody else has it;” or somebody has got such a thing, and I feel that I am as much entitled to it as he or she. I say let somebody else have as many fashions as they like, but let us abide by what God has given us and be content therewith; and if we really want more, let us make a little extra exertion, and before we spend money let us earn it. I know men who will actually go to work and sell the crop, that they are perhaps planting now, to merchants; and when they irrigate those crops it is not for themselves, but for them to whom they have sold it. The same is true when the grain is harvested and when it is threshed. There is no liberty, independence or nobility in this; but they who take this course are bound down and are slaves to somebody else. I feel that a little economy and self-denial would relieve us very much from this embarrassment and encumbrance. I believe the good Book says, “Except a man deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” Do we seek to deny ourselves or to gratify ourselves? Which is the greater labor, to gratify or to deny ourselves? I will tell you that if we would bestow as much labor in denying ourselves as we do in gratifying ourselves, we should feel better and should be happier, and the heavens would plead our cause more effectually. How comfortable a man feels when he can say to himself, “Though I have but little, thank God I do not owe anybody anything.” I have paid up my tithing, my emigration indebtedness, I have paid for my newspaper, and done the best I could to keep the hearts of my brethren whole by paying promptly, according to promise, so that the great machine of progress may move without obstruction and hindrance? I believe that if we will all turn in from this time and be honest, and really pay our debts and obligations, we have no great reason to fear anything injurious proceeding from any quarter.

Suppose now, brethren and sisters, that we should be united in this one thing, and should actually go to and pay our debts and obligations. Let me suggest to you one thing. Says one, “Really, I would very much like if I had the assurance that God heard my prayers.” Now, when you go home, just think of them to whom you are indebted and who is in most need among your creditors, and then go right to that individual and bless him with an installment of what you owe him, and I tell you that will aid very much the acceptance of your offering unto God; it will induce Him to hear your prayer and to answer it. If you don’t believe it, try it, and instead of putting off your brother, to whom you are indebted, and making a thousand excuses and apologies, and trying to get out of his road, go right to him, be honest, lay your heart open to him, and say, “My brother, I will do all I can for you. I will bless you by paying you what I owe, or a portion of it, and I will pay you the remainder as fast as I possibly can.” Let this course be taken throughout Israel, and see if the tables will not turn in favor of Zion. I feel that they will; let us all take this course and see.

I intend, if the Lord will let me live, and I believe He will, to work just as hard as I can to pay every just obligation that I owe, and I believe I shall accomplish it. I pray the Lord to let me live until I can say, boldly and honestly and truly, that I owe no man anything but love and goodwill; and then as much longer as He pleases. That is what I desire and intend. And I believe that if we, as a people, do this, remember our prayers, and keep the words of wisdom, the Lord will not suffer the enemy to prevail against us.

Now I look around this congregation, and contemplate that there are, perhaps, some ten or twelve thousand persons, and it may be more, I do not know, there is a very large number; then when I think that numerous as we are here we are but the representatives—not more than a tithing of those left behind, of the same stripe, iy reminds me of the words of Joseph the Prophet, when he said, “Brethren, remember that the majority of this people will never go astray; and as long as you keep with the majority you are sure to enter the celestial kingdom.” I am satisfied, brethren, that if we will go to with our might and strength and pay our debts and liabilities the blessing of God will attend us, and that too in the eyes of all the world.

I will tell you what I expect. I expect to live to see the day when those in our midst, who have sought our injury and ruin, will stand the same as men do, when discovered, that I read of in the papers, who rob henroosts or steal sheep. You know how they feel—they feel “cheap,” they would feel very mean in the presence of honorable men. I expect to live to see the day, brethren, when those who have sought our injury will quail in our presence.

Well, this is no time for long sermons. There are my brethren of the Twelve here, besides many others, who want to speak; and I presume to say that I have occupied my share of the time. One thing more, however, I will say. You who have money owing to you, do not, from my remarks, go to him who owes you and take him by the throat and say, “Pay me that which thou owest.” Do not do that. No, let your debtor remain undisturbed by you; you be silent, and see whether that man’s conscience will operate upon him so as to induce him to come and make reasonable and proper satisfaction to you; and if he will not when this subject is fully laid before him you may begin to think that he is not as honest as he should be, and by and by he will work himself out of the kingdom.

I feel, brethren and sisters, that I am in the right company. If I can only manage to keep right myself, if I can only manage to be true and faithful to my God and myself, while I am in the midst of this assembly—the representatives of a host of Latter-day Saints—their hearts beating in unison with my words, and my words with their hearts, I feel that I am not following the few who break off, but that I am with the majority, and we are bound for the celestial kingdom.

God defend His people and their rights, is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 5, 1870.

During our Conference we shall require the people to pay attention and to preserve good order, and perhaps we shall require that that will not be altogether pleasing in some respects. One thing which strikes me here this morning, and which is a source of considerable annoyance to the congregation, appears to me might be avoided, and that is bringing children here who are not capable of understanding the preaching. If we were to set them on the stand, where they could hear every word, it would convey to them no knowledge or instruction, and would not be the least benefit to them. I will ask my sisters: Cannot we avoid this? Have you not daughters, sisters, or friends, or some one who can take care of these children while you attend meeting? When meetings are over, the mothers can go home and bestow all the care and attention upon their children which may be necessary. I cannot understand the utility of bringing children into such a congregation as we shall have here through the Conference, just for the sake of pleasing the mothers, when the noise made by them disturbs all around them. I therefore request that the sisters will leave their babies at home in the care of good nurses. And when you come here, sisters and brethren, sit still and make no noise by shuffling your feet or whispering. Wait till meeting is dismissed, then you may go out and talk and walk as much as you please; but while you are in this house it is necessary to keep perfectly still.

I hope our doorkeepers are instructed and understand, so that they will keep order, and also be still themselves. I have noticed sometimes that our doorkeepers and policemen will make more disturbance in a congregation than the people do. This is very unbecoming, and it certainly exhibits a great lack of understanding. If a look or motion will not answer, do not holloa; we, on the Stand, will do all the talking necessary. But if a doorkeeper holloas to this one and that one, he makes more confusion than the people will make. Now, doorkeepers, be sure that you are perfectly still; and if you are obliged to walk around here much, I would recommend that you wear india-rubber overshoes, so that you may be able to walk without making a noise.

There is another subject I wish to refer to. Last Sabbath this front gallery, the gentleman’s gallery, was very full. After meeting was dismissed I took a walk through it, and to see the floor that had been occupied by those professing to be gentlemen, and I do not know but brethren, you might have supposed that cattle had been there rolling and standing around, for here and there were great quids of tobacco, and places one or two feet square smeared with tobacco juice. I want to say to the doorkeepers that when you see gentlemen who cannot omit chewing and spitting while in this house, request them to leave; and if such persons refuse to leave, and continue their spitting, just take them and lead them out carefully and kindly. We do not want to have the house thus defiled. It is an imposition for gentlemen to spit tobacco juice around, or to leave their quids of tobacco on the floor; they dirty the house, and if a lady happen to besmear the bottom of her dress, which can hardly be avoided, it is highly offensive. We therefore request all gentlemen attending Conference to omit tobacco chewing while here. To the Elders of Israel who cannot and will not keep the Word of Wisdom, I say, omit tobacco chewing while here.

In all probability our congregations will be large, and we shall be under the necessity of being a little stringent and exacting in regard to leaving the children at home and in preserving quietness and order while in the house. You may think it a little unreasonable, sisters, to make such a request, but it is not so, for you who are here this morning have seen the great amount of confusion and annoyance the crying of children has caused; and if you cannot, for the space of two or three hours, forego the pleasure of gazing upon the faces of your little darlings, just stay at home with them. This we earnestly request while we are here in Conference. We have all the brethren of the Twelve here, except Brother Carrington, who is in Liverpool, and we shall have speeches, exhortations and advice from them, which, if followed and observed by the people, will lead them in the path of truth, light, intelligence, virtue, soberness and godliness, and we want such good order preserved and maintained that all attending Conference can hear the instructions given.

We have many things to say to the people. They need a great amount of talking to and instruction. They are a good deal like children and need to have words of counsel and advice constantly reiterated. The mother says to the child, “My darling little Johnny, don’t you get that knife,” or “Can’t you let your father’s razor alone,” or “Let the crockery alone, you will break it.” And the “little darling Johnny” lets it alone for a minute or two, but soon he makes another stretch after the knife, razor, tumbler, pitcher, or something that his mother does not want him to have, and again her voice is heard, “Johnny, let that alone, it is not good for you to have;” or, “You will break that pitcher.” Johnny sets down the pitcher, and pretty soon it is gone from his mind, but he runs around a little, and then he wants a drink, and while getting the pitcher, or perhaps the knife, the mother coaxingly says, “My darling dear, will you let that alone,” and finally, wearied with talking to “Johnny,” she probably boxes his ears. It is precisely so with the people, or many of them. We exhort them to observe the Word of Wisdom, to be faithful, truthful and prayerful, and so on, but many of them forget, and we have to ask and beseech them again and again.

We shall now dismiss our morning’s meeting, and shall assemble again at two o’clock this afternoon, and I trust that strict attention will be paid to what is said. I am of the opinion that what is said will be instructive and good for the people. We do not want the teachings of the Elders to drop upon senseless, careless, indolent ears; but let every ear be open, and every heart receive understanding, that good may result from our labors. We are teaching the people how to be saved—how to walk and talk so as to secure eternal salvation, and I do hope and pray my brethren and sisters to pay attention, that the Spirit of the Lord may be in your hearts, that you may see and understand things as they are. I would say, still further, if there be error advanced here, do not receive it, pass it by, and live so that you will know truth from error, light from darkness, the things that are of God from those not of God; and if an error should drop from the lips of one of our Elders, do not receive, believe, or practice it. Truth is what we want, and we ought to live so that we can understand and know it for ourselves. This is our privilege and duty; and we request of the Latter-day Saints, and of all people, to live so that they may know and understand the things of God, and receive and embrace them in their faith, and practice them in their lives.

Remarks by President Daniel H. Wells, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 5, 1870.

It has pleased God in the day and generation in which we live to reveal His holy Gospel. I expect that He knew the time to bring it forth; that He understood the proper time to introduce its principles, and chose that period in the world’s history in which it would be received by, at least, a portion of His children. I apprehend that He made no mistake; that the angel which John prophesied should come forth, bearing the everlasting Gospel to the children of men, came to the right person, to the true Joseph—to the one who would receive it, and bear testimony that he had seen an angel, though all the world should deride and point the finger of scorn, call him a dreamer, and treat him with every kind of contumely and reproach; and though they eventually persecuted him unto the death, they could not prevail upon him to deny that he had seen an angel, and that he received from the Lord those principles which he taught.

We believe, then, that it was the right time, and that he, the angel, came to the right person; that the Gospel has gone forth unto the world, that the minds of the children of men have been touched with the light of truth, and that it has had the effect to inspire some to seek after the Lord, to observe and keep His laws, learn His ways and walk in His paths. The object and purpose of our gathering together, brethren and sisters, is to learn of His ways, and walk in His paths.

It is one of the greatest conceivable blessings which can be conferred upon the children of men to live in the day and generation in which the Lord has sent forth His Gospel; in an age in which He has conferred upon men the authority of the holy Priesthood to administer in sacred and holy things. It is one of the greatest blessings that could be conferred upon His children to become the happy recipients of that knowledge which leads to eternal life and exaltation in His kingdom. All people have this privilege so far as the knowledge of the Gospel has come to their ears. In this the children of men are independent; they have their volition and agency to receive or to reject these principles when they shall hear them; but when they are sent forth with the authority of the holy Priesthood, which is the authority of God, and are sounded in the ears of God’s creatures here on the earth, and they reject them, they incur a fearful responsibility. Still they have the power to act as they please in this matter; but the consequences rest upon themselves—the Lord has left them without excuse. It is a matter for you and me and for all persons to canvas in their own minds, and we can then act upon our own volition in receiving or rejecting the truth.

All who have not heard the prin– ciples of life and salvation proclaimed will have the privilege of doing so; if not here, then in some other sphere or state of existence. The plan of salvation is ample, full and complete, and will save all the children of men who let it, and the Lord will be left without excuse in the final winding up, so far as the probation of man on the earth is concerned.

We read in the Scriptures that to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, is life eternal. To enable His creatures to obtain this knowledge the Lord has kindly sent forth His revelations from time to time; but we do honestly believe that the Latter-day Saints are the only people on the face of the earth at the present time that have any true knowledge of God, of the relationship that does exist between Him and the inhabitants of the earth and of the design and object of the Almighty in bringing them into existence, and the purpose to be accomplished thereby in their future state. I say we believe that the Latter-day Saints are the only people who possess this knowledge. The world have no just conceptions of the Deity; even the Christian world are without the knowledge of God as much as the heathen nations. This may be deemed a sweeping declaration, but it is susceptible of proof, if we take the Scriptures for our guide and as the foundation of our argument; that is, if the Christian world believe as they profess to do. I do not care to illustrate at this present time, or to bring evidence to bear to sustain my position, to a people who understand these arguments and principles, and who have learned better things, as is the case with this congregation. We know in whom we have trusted; we know who has led us forth to the valleys of the mountains; who has blessed the land and caused it to bring forth its strength for our sustenance; who has shielded and protected us from the power of the adversary—those who have sought our overthrow and destruction. We have learned to know Him as our Father, the Father of our spirits, and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He has exercised a parental care over us, and has delivered us at all times from the power of our enemies, brought us an inheritance in a goodly land, blessed the land and caused it to bring forth in its strength for our sustenance. We know that we are dependent upon Him for our very existence, and that by Him only are we preserved, just as well as we know that the children of men, impelled by the great adversary, Satan, are seeking to overthrow us, to break in pieces the kingdom of God, and to destroy from the face of the earth the rule and authority of the Priesthood of God.

Are we prepared to take upon ourselves the labor, the self-denial, the self-abnegation, I might say the persecution, if it should be permitted to come upon us, that continually besets the pathway of the Saint of God? If we are, we are all right; if we are not, we had better repent and seek unto the Lord for strength, retrace our steps, and get the Spirit of God in our hearts that we may become more confirmed in our most holy faith. When we received the Gospel we felt as though it would be a great privilege to devote our whole lives and all our interests in this existence to the extension of this great and glorious cause. Have we grown lukewarm in our feelings and love? If so it is time to retrace our steps, lest we become darkened in the counsel of our minds and turn away to the beggarly elements of the world.

I will say, this morning, that the Gospel that I received is as sweet to me today as it ever was during my existence on the earth, yea, more so, for as I advance, greater and more glorious truths and beauties develop themselves and come home to my understanding. If the first principles of the Gospel were true in the days of Joseph, they are true today. If the principles that have been developed as we have passed along were true when they first struck our minds with their convincing proofs, they are also true today. If what we believed were the whisperings of the Spirit of God confirming these truths on our minds, were really so, and we received them from Heaven, we should live faithful to what we have received, that we may progress and improve as we pass along. We have received an item of truth here and another there, as we could receive and maintain it; but the revelations declare that there are things yet to be revealed which have been kept hid from the foundations of the world. I, for one, expect that the volume of revelation will remain open, and that the servants of God will, in the future as they have in the past, read to us from the Book of Life. The reflection that we shall not be confined to what has already been given, but that we shall continue to grow and increase in the knowledge of God, and in every good, is one of the most highly-prized principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

How true it is that, when any new principle, or any new idea concerning an old principle is promulgated, the human heart seems to rise up in rebellion against it, and the Saints are no exception in this respect, for when the Lord condescends to reveal any new principle pertaining to their welfare and the building up of His kingdom on the earth, many are ready, both in feelings and practices, to rise up and rebel against it. What is the matter? Are we pent up in a nutshell and confined in our feelings to such an extent that we cannot receive new revelations and instructions from time to time when they come from the proper source? No. I think that, for the great majority of the Latter-day Saints, I can answer it is not so. It may be so with individuals; but as a general thing the Saints are glad to receive instruction, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, as they can receive and endure it. I heard President Young say that he told the Prophet Joseph never to reveal a new principle to him if he thought that he could not receive it, that it would be detrimental to his faith or cause him to turn from that which he had received. He said he would rather remain in ignorance than to have it prove a stumblingblock to him. I have seen a great many people anxious for revelation, and for the development of some great mystery concerning the kingdom of God. I have never felt so; I have been satisfied with what the Lord should condescend to reveal, and more than glad if, when it did come, I was able to receive and practice it.

How many are there within the hearing of my voice who have felt infringed upon in their feelings when they were told to sustain Zion and not to trade with their enemies. This was a new feature, but it touched things of a temporal nature. Why a great many felt as though they could not submit to be dictated to, though it was by the servant of God, in regard to temporal affairs. Is not this true, and we, too, right in the midst of Israel? O, yes, we can’t deny it, there has been considerable howling made concerning this item. But yet this is the kingdom of God, and the kingdom and the greatness thereof are to be given to the Saints of the Most High. Can we expect anything else than that His servant will dictate us concerning our temporal matters? I do not understand it in any other way. When, I would ask, can the kingdom of God be established on the earth, or in other words when can the kingdom and the greatness thereof be given to the Saints of the Most High? Never until a people is found possessing sufficient good, hard, sound sense to use the blessings of that kingdom to build it up and not to give it to the devil just as fast as the Lord hands them over to them. We have come up to Zion that we may be taught in the ways of the Lord and that we may learn to walk in His paths. And you know I have told you how independent we are—we can either receive the Gospel, or reject it and take the consequences. But let no man lay the flattering unction to his soul that he can do just as he pleases and obtain celestial glory. We can never do this except we make our ways, notions and ideas correspond with the Lord’s. If we expect to attain to celestial glory, and be prepared and qualified to receive the kingdom of God in its greatness upon the earth, we shall have to make our ways correspond with the Lord’s, so much so at least as to be found faithful in making good use of the blessings which He has entrusted to us. It is those who are found faithful over a few things unto whom the promise is made that they shall become rulers over many things. It is not those who fly the track at the moment of peril and difficulty who will obtain the blessings of high heaven; no, the Lord tests and tries us, to prove if we have integrity, and the man who flies the track, when tested, proves that he is lacking in integrity and is not worthy to receive the blessings of those who are faithful and true. Blessings are no doubt withheld in kindness for a time, for many who receive them grow fat and kick, thus proving to the Lord that they are not worthy; and peradventure He withholds blessings from many very good people, who will finally triumph over their own peculiar notions and ideas, and make their ways so far correspond with the Lord’s as to be worthy.

We are in a school of experience, brethren and sisters, and it will be well for us if we will wisely use and apply the blessings we receive and the experience that we are passing through, and so govern and control ourselves in the future that the experience of the past may be a light to our feet in time to come.

It is most desirable to us all that we should be preserved in the purity of our most holy faith, and never depart therefrom or swerve either to the right hand or to the left. The fate of others who have departed from the path of rectitude ought to be a warning to as all to be careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit, lest we fall into the same pit. It is a very easy thing for a man to get into the dark, and small things often lead to it. He sees, peradventure, something in his Bishop or Teacher, or in some of the authorities, which he does not like, and instead of going to the proper place to ascertain the truth in the case, and informing his mind correctly concerning the matter, he lets it corrode in his heart until disaffection is produced and he begins to lose confidence. In a short time, if he indulges in this spirit, he mouths it to some confidant or friend, and after doing it once he mouths it again, and if you follow that man a little longer you will find that he neglects his prayers and the duties of his calling, and very soon the counsel of his mind becomes darkened, and soon he is on the highway to apostasy, and, in fact, he has been there from the beginning, if he had only known it; and if no good friend should tell him his error, in a short time such a man goes over the dam and makes shipwreck of his faith, and that is the greatest calamity that can befall any person.

What matters it to the Saints what path they are led into if the Lord leads? If they are submissive and yield to His dictation, no matter whether it brings weal or woe, it will work out good; it may bring poverty, so far as the things of the world are concerned, but it will never bring poverty to the soul. And it will be a happy reflection when we have passed through this mortal existence, that we were able to stand the test, enduring the ordeals and remaining steadfast and faithful to the end.

I do not know that we are promised anything here but the hatred and persecution of the world; and this has been the portion of the Saints of God in every age of the world. I do believe, however, that the table is going to change; I believe that when the people are sufficiently pure and worthy, and capable of wisely using the blessings of which I have spoken, the blessings of earth and heaven will be poured upon them in rich abundance. We have a little foretaste of this in the blessings that we have received and enjoy today. Although the power of the Adversary is very great, and he still seeks the overthrow and destruction of the cause and kingdom of God on the earth; yet it is a different age of the world, it is a different dispensation; it is the dispensation of the fulness of times, in which, no matter how much we may be overturned, no matter how much individuals may suffer, or how much they may be called to endure, the final result will be triumph to the kingdom, and it will not be given to another people; but we shall have power to redeem Zion and to build that great and glorious temple in which the Saints will receive the blessings of eternity, and on which the glory of God will rest as a cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night. This people are that people; these Saints are the Saints of the Most High, to whom the kingdom and the greatness thereof will be given, and another people shall never possess it.

This should be a great satisfaction to us, and should encourage us in our pathway through all the difficulties we may have to encounter. We would not be worth much if we could not pass through ordeals. The Savior of the world had to pass through them, and we should not complain if we have to tread in his footsteps in order to obtain great blessings at the end of the race. Let us reflect on these things and go on our way rejoicing, filling the full measure of our creation with credit to ourselves, and with honor to God, our Father, who brought us to this state of existence, which is my prayer for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Remarks by President George A. Smith, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 5, 1870.

It is a great pleasure to meet with the brethren again in Conference, and it is certainly very gratifying to see the people so comfortably seated, with a prospect of enjoying the benefits and blessings of the Conference; even should the elements not be favorable we have a shelter and a shade. It has been the fortune of the Latter-day Saints never to stay in any place long enough to build a house sufficiently large to hold the people; but, with the blessing of the Lord and the united efforts of the brethren, we have room sufficient to hold a very large audience, though no doubt occasions will still occur when we shall cry out, “More room,” and probably before our Conference closes. I think, however, that we need not ask any of our brethren who reside in this city, as we have had to do, to stay at home to make room for those who may be in from a distance; all may come and be accommodated. The acoustic properties of the Tabernacle are evidently improved by the erection of the gallery, and if all who attend Conference will leave their coughing at home, sit still while here and omit shuffling their feet, they may have an opportunity of hearing pretty much everything that may be said. It will certainly require, even when all these conditions are complied with, considerable effort to fill so large a house with one voice, and that effort must be met by a corresponding effort on the part of the audience to preserve perfect stillness.

It was forty years ago on the 6th of last month since the organization of the Church took place, in the chamber of Father Whitmer, in Fayette, Seneca county, New York, with six members. The history of that forty years would require volumes to record. The institution, as it then commenced, was in its infancy; yet the Lord revealed to His servant, that He had laid the foundation of a great work; the truth of that saying has been realized by the progress of events. The changes that have transpired in connection with this people have been very remarkable. The work commenced by preaching faith in the Lord Jesus, repentance and the ordinance of baptism for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, which was an innovation upon the creeds and practices of every other religious sect; I am not aware that any one denomination believed in and practiced all the principles that were introduced at the organization of this Church. The first three of these principles were faith in the Lord Jesus, repentance, and baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. The next principle was the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost, precisely as it was pointed out by the Savior and practiced by his disciples in Judea.

There were denominations who believed in baptism by immersion, but not for the remission of sins, they believed that remission of sins was necessary previous to baptism; but they were ignorant of the possibility of the reception of the Holy Ghost, and, consequently, of the doctrine of the laying on of hands. The Church of England, it is true, would confirm by the laying on of the hand of the bishops, but not for confirming the gift of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the believers; and while all the professed believers in the doctrine of Christ had some portions or fragments of his Gospel as revealed and established by him and his Apostles, it was the Church of Latter-day Saints which introduced and established, complete, the principles of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance towards God, baptism for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. These principles were all important, and the moment the Bible was brought forth everybody could find that they coincided exactly with the principles set forth by the Savior, and it required to be spiritualized and changed to make it appear otherwise. But the Christian world had gone astray from these things, and when they were restored they rejected them. There were, however, honest persons in all of the denominations, and God has respect to every man who is honest of heart and purpose, though he may be deceived, and in error as to principle and doctrine; yet so far as that error is the result of their being deceived by the cunning craftiness of men, or of circumstances over which such have no control, the Lord in His abundant mercy looks with allowance thereon, and in His great economy He has provided different glories and ordained that all persons shall be judged according to the knowledge they possess and the use they make of that knowledge, and according to the deeds done in the body, whether good or evil.

“And again, we saw the terrestrial world, and behold and lo, these are they who are of the terrestrial, whose glory differs from that of the church of the Firstborn who have received the fullness of the Father, even as that of the moon differs from that of the sun in the firmament. Behold, these are they who died without law; And also they who are the spirits of men kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the gospel unto them, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh; Who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it. These are they who are honorable men of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men. These are they who receive of his glory, but not of his fullness. These are they who receive of the presence of the Son, but not of the fullness of the Father. Wherefore, they are bodies terrestrial, and not bodies celestial, and differ in glory as the moon differs from the sun. These are they who are not valiant in the testimony of Jesus; wherefore, they obtain not the crown over the kingdom of our God.”

In opening this Conference it would be well for us individually to ask ourselves, Have we received the first principles of the Gospel of Christ, and have we continued in those principles which were first taught unto us; or is it necessary for us again to lay the foundation of repentance from dead works? It is very singular that when the principles of the Gospel, as I have stated them, were presented to the different sects, they were disposed to reject them and to persecute those who preached them in their fullness. Such, however, was the fact, and it is owing to this that the Latter-day Saints are now in the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains, in the heart of the American continent, in the enjoyment of political and religious liberty and freedom, for which they have sacrificed more perhaps than any other people on the face of the earth. And we have the greatest reason of all people to be thankful to God for these blessings.

Then let us ask ourselves, Are we prepared for the great blessings which God has bestowed upon us? Are we living up to our callings and magnifying the same? Do we observe the duties which are imposed upon us by our holy religion? Or are we foolish enough, while recognizing its truth, and professing to be Latter-day Saints, to treat it with carelessness and neglect, and failing to live up to our high and holy calling?

From the earliest days of the preaching of the Gospel by Joseph Smith men were tried and tempted and led astray by false spirits and doctrines of devils. We find at the commencement of Joseph’s mission that many who entered into covenant turned away, and some became very bitter enemies. It was necessary from the very beginning that there should be a sifting, for the Lord declared unto His people that He would sift them as with a sieve. This sifting had to continue, and hence every time the Latter-day Saints were driven, scattered, or otherwise persecuted, it caused those who could not abide in the faith to pass quietly away, or to make their wickedness manifest unto the church and unto the world. But while this was going on, the strength of Zion was increasing. It is said, and I presume correctly, that Oliver Cowdery remarked at one time to Joseph Smith, “If I should apostatize and leave the Church, the Church would be broken up.” The answer of the Prophet was, “What and who are you? This is the work of God, and if you turn against it and withdraw from it, it will still roll on and you will not be missed.” It was not long until Oliver turned away, but the work continued. God raised up men from obscurity to step forth and shoulder the burdens, and it was hardly known when and where he went. In about ten years he came back again, came before a local Conference at Mosquito Creek, Pottawatomie Co., Iowa, Oct., 1848, and acknowledged his faults. He bore testimony of the mission of the Prophet, Joseph Smith, and of the truth of the Book of Mormon; he exhorted the Saints to follow the authority of the Holy Priesthood, which he assured them was with the Twelve Apostles. He said, “When the Saints follow the main channel of the stream, they find themselves in deep water and always right, pursuing their journey with safety; but when they turned aside into sloughs and bayous, they are left to flounder in the mud and are lost, for the Angel of God said unto Joseph in my hearing that this Priesthood shall remain on the earth until the end.”

Oliver declared he took pleasure in bearing this testimony to the largest congregation of Saints he had ever seen together. He was rebaptized and made arrangements to come to the mountains, but died soon after, while on a visit to the Whitmers, in Missouri.

This circumstance shows how little God depends upon man to carry on His work. He does it by His own power, His own majesty, by His own mighty hand and for the accomplishment of His own glorious purposes.

It was thought and felt throughout the world, about the year 1844, that if Joseph Smith, the Prophet, could be destroyed, that would be the end of the Latter-day Saints. Men conspired together to shed his blood; they sought occasion against him; they made him an offender for a word; they swore falsely against him, and some who had been his friends turned traitors and conspired with the wicked and shed his blood. It was generally believed by the enemies of the Saints that that was the end of the work of the Lord. The pulpit resounded with thanks to God that the great arch-impostor, Joseph Smith, was slain. The priests rejoiced over it; and though there was a feeling, tolerably widespread, that it was barbarous to kill him, under the plighted faith of Illinois, yet the general feeling was that it was a good thing that he was dead. But God had a work to perform, and it did not depend upon the life of one or two individuals. It was His work, His kingdom, His Church, His plan of salvation, and He, by His own wisdom and His own mighty hand bore it off.

These were the facts, and these continue to be the facts; and all that the Latter-day Saints have to do is to live within the confines of God’s holy law and up to their privileges. Are we doing so? Are we walking in accordance with these principles? Let us ask ourselves these questions, and if any of us are remiss, let us immediately commence to reform, humble ourselves before God, and be ready to sacrifice ourselves and all we have, if necessary, for the building up and redemption of Zion and for our salvation.

We have come together as a Conference to compare notes with each other, to rejoice together and to receive instruction; and let every man and woman that has come or that may yet come, lift their hearts to God in solemn prayer that His blessing may rest upon His servants, that they may be inspired with a double portion of His holy Spirit, that the Priesthood, in all its life, power and glory, may speak forth the words of truth, light and intelligence that shall pour comfort into the hearts of the Saints, and guide and strengthen them, and illuminate their path, that we, one and all, may continue in the great and glorious work which we have commenced.

May the Lord God of Hosts bless you, and peace be and abide in your hearts, that you may appreciate these things, and exercise faith, union, knowledge, power, and wisdom in your walk and conduct henceforth, and that these meetings may be a blessing to all who attend them, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Discourse by Elder Orson Pratt, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 5, 1870.

It is with great pleasure and satisfaction that I arise before so large an assembly of people this afternoon, in the capacity of a General Conference. It is truly wonderful to me that God has begun so great and important a work in the day in which I am permitted to live. I do not read in history of any other work of a similar character since the creation of the world. We behold before us, in these interior wilds of North America, a great people called the Latter-day Saints—a people whose faith and doctrine are one, who believe in the same God, and in the same great plan of salvation; who believe that God has established His kingdom on the earth for the last time. It has been a manifestation of faith on the part of this people to gather here; they have exhibited to one another and before all mankind that they have faith in the doctrines which they have received. What other purpose could have gathered out so great a people? If we had gathered into a healthy, rich country where there was an expectation of bettering our condition, temporarily; where there were prospects of our becoming exceedingly rich in the goods of this world, it might have been supposed that we had some selfish motive in view in thus assembling ourselves together. But there were no such prospects before us. We came here, some 1,200 miles, from the Eastern settlements to this isolated region, almost naked and barefoot, having been despoiled by our enemies—having suffered the loss of property to the extent of millions—having been reduced to the last degree of poverty. We came here—not into the midst of a land of cities and villages, not into the midst of a country where all was prepared for us beforehand; but we came into the heart of a desert, since, in some measure, reclaimed from its barrenness and sterility. We came because we had faith in our religion, because we not only believed, but most of us knew with a certainty, that God had spoken from on high and had commanded us to gather together. In this we have manifested a sincerity that ought to be convincing to all the world that we have embraced a religion in all of the depths of the sincerity of our hearts. We did not care for the riches and honors of the world; we did not care for the pleasures of our native countries, nor for the luxuries with which those countries abounded; but we came because we verily believed in our hearts that it was our duty to do so in obedience to the voice of the Lord through His servants. It is true that some of this people came to this land because they were forced hither by persecution; but whether obliged to come or not we, many of us, clearly understood from the spirit of prophecy and revelation, as manifested through our prophet and leader before his martyrdom, that we should be required to locate ourselves in the heart of this continent. We came here then to fulfil the commandments of the Lord our God, and to be free, in a measure, from the persecutions of our enemies, that we might have none to mob or molest us as they had done from the time of the rise of the Church until our flight to these mountains. We came here because we loved God, because we loved His laws—we loved the plan of salvation, we loved the principles that He had revealed, and because we knew that in process of time, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy respecting the Latter-day Zion and the Church of the Most High God, we should become a great and powerful people.

We are taught in the Jewish record, the Bible, that a little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation. We believe these prophecies, we know this to be the kingdom of God. We well understood by the spirit of revelation that God intended to fulfil all that was spoken by the mouths of His ancient prophets, as well as that which had been delivered in our day in regard to the future glory and prosperity of Zion, or the Church of the living God. We understood that Zion was to be located in the mountains; we understood, as I have often repeated, from the 40th chapter of Isaiah, that the time would come when the Lord would command His people, saying unto Zion, “Get up into the high mountains.” These things had not been fulfilled in former ages, consequently we know that they were yet in the future. We knew that the Zion of the latter days must be located in the mountains. We could read the ancient prophecies of that great prophet—Isaiah, in the 18th chapter, that a great work should be performed in the mountains, a work that should attract the attention of all the nations of the earth, so much so that the prophet, when gazing upon the work as shown to him by the spirit of prophecy, calls upon all the inhabitants of the world and the dwellers on the earth to see when the Lord should lift up an ensign upon the mountains. That ensign we knew must be reared, that great work must be accomplished, and all people—not only those on the American continent but all dwelling in the four quarters of the globe, however obscure, and however distant they might be from the place where the ensign was to be reared, would be required by the power of the Lord, and by the marvelous work that He should perform, to open their eyes and contemplate that ensign, understand its nature and comprehend, in some measure, its purpose.

We came here to fulfil these ancient prophecies. God has lifted up this Church—this kingdom, as a standard—as an ensign to which the nations are invited, and the ambassadors of the Most High are sent forth from these mountains carrying the glad tidings of salvation in their mouths—carrying forth the great and glorious principles that God has revealed in establishing his latter-day kingdom on the earth. Beautiful indeed are the feet of those who are sent forth from the mountains of Zion to publish glad tidings of great joy among the various nations and kingdoms of the earth; God is with them in very deed. His power is over them, and His arm encircles them round about. Their voice is lifted up to the nations; their hands are pointed to the West, to the heart of the American continent—to the everlasting hills, saying to mankind, “Yonder, in those mountains, is a kingdom that is never to be destroyed, a kingdom that must exist forever; while all earthly kingdoms and governments will crumble to the dust and will be blown away, like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, to the four winds of heaven.”

Jesus said on a certain occasion to his disciples, and to the multitudes, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” There are tens of thousands, yes, hundreds of thousands, of people now upon our globe who profess to love Jesus Christ. Do they keep his commandments? Some of them no doubt strive to do so. But there are many things to be taken into consideration in connection with the keeping of the commandments of Jesus. In the first place it is very essential and necessary that we should know what his commandments are before we can keep them. In the second place it is very important and essential that we should give heed to all those commandments, whether they appear great or small in our estimation.

Do this people, called Latter-day Saints, really love the Lord their God, or is it a mere profession? When God raised up His servant Joseph Smith and inspired him from on high to give commandments and revelations and to organize His Church, forty years ago, we were but few in number. I well recollect when I was but a boy of nineteen visiting the place where this Church was organized, and visiting the Prophet Joseph, who resided at that time in Fayette, Seneca County, New York, at the house where the Church was organized. I became acquainted more fully with that man and with the revelations and commandments that God had given to him; also with the few people who had been organized into a Church capacity. I saw the spirit of the people, that is, I saw there was a desire to do good, to love the Lord, and to be obedient to the commandments which the Prophet Joseph had delivered unto them.

On the 2nd day of January, 1831, a Conference was held in the same house where this Church was organized, and the various Branches in the State of New York were there gathered together. By the solicitations of the Conference the Prophet Joseph enquired of the Lord to know what was His will concerning the few Latter-day Saints that were then in existence. The Lord hearkened to him, and gave on that occasion a revelation contained in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, in which certain commandments were given, one being that all the Elders, Priests, Teachers, and Deacons of the various Branches of the Church, instead of going out to preach, should go to with all their might and labor for the gathering up of the people from the State of New York to the State of Ohio; that is, they were to assist those in the various Branches who had property to dispose of the same, and in regulating all their affairs, and to arrange business in such a manner that they might be able to keep this commandment to gather together.

Now, suppose the people had refused to comply with this commandment; suppose that the Elders, Priests, Teachers and Deacons had considered the physical labor which the carrying out of this command entailed upon them beneath their notice, and had refused to make preparations to flee from the State of New York and to gather up some six hundred miles to the State of Ohio, what would have been the result? Would the love of God have dwelt in their hearts? No. Would they have manifested before the heavens that they loved God with all their hearts? No. Would they have manifested to the Prophet, to the Priesthood and to one another that they really were sincere in their religion? No. There was no possible way for these Latter-day Saints to show their love to God, only by obeying His command that was given and written for their instruction on that occasion. If there were any who refused to do that, I will venture to say that they are not members of the Church today. If there were any who had so much means or property that they did not feel disposed to leave their pleasant homes and make a sacrifice of their wealth, in some measure, in order to fulfil the commandment of Jehovah, I will venture to say that they are not in the Church today. Why? Because God would withdraw His Holy Spirit from them. They might make great profession, and say how much they loved the Lord and His ways; how much they loved Jesus, who was crucified for the sins of the world, yet all this would be foolish and vain if they refused to keep his commandments, for, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” saith the Savior. Again, it is written, “This is the love of God, that ye do keep His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous.” His commandments to most of the people of the Latter-day Saints were not grievous in the winter and spring of 1831. They rejoiced in having the privilege of obeying the Lord’s commandments, through His servant, the Prophet. Hence they gathered up all the various Branches of the Church, with some few exceptions, to Kirtland, in the State of Ohio.

This is the right way to keep the Lord’s commandments; but it is, in the first place, necessary to find what His commandments are. You might have taken this big book, the Jewish record, or Bible, and searched it from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation to find out your duties as Saints, and you never could have found within it what the Lord required of His Saints at that time—namely, to remove from the State of New York to the State of Ohio. No such Scripture as that was given. That was the duty required of individuals in the nineteenth century. No other people were ever required to do that; it cannot be found within the lids of the Bible. That commandment was specially adapted to the circumstances of the few Latter-day Saints then existing, and they were the ones required to keep it. The ancients were not required to do that, neither are we; it was a commandment having relation to the time then being, and it was fulfilled. With that commandment we have nothing further to do, provided that we, or as many of us as were included among those to whom it was given, kept it. If we have not kept it we have something further to do with it—we shall have to meet it in the great judgment day.

When we came to Kirtland the Lord gave us further commandments, and He revealed a great many things through His servant Joseph. Among others, He gave one that the Latter-day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, should go to with their might and build a house to His name, wherein He promised to bestow great and choice blessings upon His people. He revealed the pattern according to which that house should be built, pointing out the various courts and apartments, telling the size of the house, the order of the pulpits, and in fact everything pertaining to it was clearly pointed out by revelation. God gave a vision of these things, not only to Joseph, but to several others, and they were strictly commanded to build according to the pattern revealed from the heavens.

Now, then, no other people was ever commanded to do that work in Kirt– land, Ohio, but the people then living there, called Latter-day Saints. It was not a work required of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, nor of any other man that ever existed on the earth, nor of any people but those to whom it was given, then living in the State of Ohio. Supposing they had said, “We will not build the house; we can meet in a common meetinghouse, after the order of the Gentiles, and we will take their forms of building, it does not matter, we do not think it necessary to be at all this expense, and we can hire a house.” Would that have been sufficient? No, the only way we could witness to one another and before the Lord of hosts that we loved Him with all our hearts was to go to and build a house just according to the pattern.

Well, when we did build it, did the Lord accept it, according to promise? He did, and He revealed great and important things in that house through His servant, Joseph the Prophet; and not only did Joseph have the privilege of seeing and understanding the mind and will of the Lord, but after the house was built many others had this great privilege given to them. For instance, the Lord had promised to reveal Himself unto many of His people and His Priesthood in that house. He did so. Among other great revelations and visions given there, was the revelation, which you will find recorded in our Church history, of Elijah, the Prophet, of him who was translated to heaven in a chariot of fire. That same personage came and stood in that temple and manifested certain keys, gave these keys to the servant of the Lord, the Prophet Joseph, and said unto him that that was the fulfillment of that which was spoken by the Prophet Malachi. What has Malachi said? He has told us of the great day of the Lord that should come, when it should burn as an oven, and when all the proud and they that do wickedly shall become as stubble and shall be burned up, leaving them neither root nor branch. He has told us that before that great and terrible day the Lord would send Elijah the Prophet. Or, to quote the words of Scripture, “Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord shall come.” What great object had the Lord in view in sending His ancient prophet as a ministering angel to His people on the earth? It is expressed in one sentence—“He shall turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children and the hearts of the children unto the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” In other words, there will be no flesh prepared to escape the day appointed—no flesh but what will become as stubble, no flesh will be able to abide the presence of the Lord until Elijah comes. He did come in that Kirtland Temple; he appeared in his glorious majesty, and there revealed the keys unto the servants of the Lord which should restore this union between the fathers and the children—something that we did not understand anything about, until the angel Elijah revealed it unto us. This was a great work to be accomplished in the latter days, in order that the fathers, from the days of the ancient Priesthood, or those who were in the spirit world—millions and millions of them, might be redeemed through the ordinance of baptism for the dead, turning the minds and thoughts and affections of the children, living on the earth, to search after their ancient fathers and to be baptized for them according to that which is contained in the New Testament about baptism for the dead. Moreover it turned the hearts of those ancient fathers to their children, for they looked to us, their children, to accomplish a work that is needful to be accomplished in their behalf, for God’s house is a house of order; God’s kingdom is a kingdom of order; and His ordinances were instituted from before the foundation of the world, and they are adapted to the condition of the living and the dead; and God revealed these things that our fathers, in all past generations, might rejoice with their children in the latter days, by being united in the same bonds, in the same New and Everlasting Covenants. They died without the Gospel, without understanding the plan of salvation. They were brought up in the midst of the sectarian world, where all was confusion and darkness; where no voice of God was heard; no voice of living prophets or Apostles to direct them, or to teach them in the mysteries of the kingdom of God. They went down to their graves as sincere, many of them, as you and I are. Must they be forever cast off? Must they always remain in prison and be forever deprived of the society of their children that should live on the earth in the latter days, when God should again open the heavens and send His angels to minister to His people? No; they without us cannot be made perfect; for there is no way for them to receive the Gospel only through their children. We have the work to do for them, and that work we could not commence until Elijah the Prophet was sent from heaven, holding the keys that were to be committed to the children in behalf of the fathers, in the last dispensation, before the great day of the Lord should come.

Then you see that even this one revelation, which God gave in that Temple, paid the people for the toil they had endured in erecting it. What a satisfaction it was to them to know that angels administered in that Temple! What a satisfaction it was for them to go into that Temple and have the heavens opened to them so that they could gaze on the glory of God! What a satisfaction it was for them to know that the Lord accepted, as His own, the house which they had built according to the pattern which He had given! And what a satisfaction it was for them to know that they loved God by keeping His commandments!

Elijah was not the only angel that administered in that house. Others holding keys pertaining to the last dispensation of the fullness of times came forth and manifested those keys and bestowed the authority upon the servants of God living in the flesh to carry out certain great and important purposes pertaining to this dispensation. These keys are still on the earth. Here are the servants of the living God, sitting on my right hand and on my left, who have had these keys committed into their hands by authority from the proper source, from those who received them from the heavenly messengers. These keys, being now in the hands of the Priesthood, never will be taken from them while the earth shall stand or eternal duration shall roll on. There may be apostates, those who fight against the anointed of the Lord and lift up their heel against those holding these keys; yet be it known to the Latter-day Saints and to all the ends of the earth that the almighty hand of the Great Jehovah is stretched out and He will accomplish the purposes ordained by Him in regard to this great and important work of the latter days.

Are these the only commandments that God has given for us to keep wherein we have manifested our love towards Him? No. God gave commandment to His people in the summer of 1831 that they should gather up from the Eastern lands, New York, the New England States, Pennsylvania and the Middle States, from Ohio and various parts of the United States, upon the western frontiers of Missouri; that is, that they should continue to gather, but not let their flight be in haste, and let all things be prepared before them. God led forth the Prophet that He had raised up to the western part of Missouri, and pointed out, by His own finger, where the great city of Zion should stand in the latter days, the great city of the New Jerusalem that should be built up on the American continent. I say He pointed out these things and gave direction to His people to gather to that land, and commanded them to lay the corner stone of a great and magnificent temple that was to be built during the generation in which the people then lived. The corner stone was laid in the summer of 1831, in Jackson County, State of Missouri. All these things were done by the people of God by commandment and revelation, and in this way they still further showed, one to another and to all people as well as to the heavens, that they did love the Lord their God.

Many commandments were given to the people about affairs there in Jackson County—how they should regulate their property and how they should become one—revelations that were intended to produce the greatest possible union that could exist among the people of God, if they had been complied with. The people complied with them in part, but yet, through inexperience, for the want of understanding, because of the weakness of mortality, and because of the wicked and corrupt traditions that they had imbibed in regard to property, they did not fully carry out the mind and will of God in relation to their con– secrations and inheritances. It is true that they purchased the land from the American Government, or much of it, and paid their money into the land office in that county; but yet, not carrying out the command of God to the very letter, the Lord was not pleased, and before they had been located there fourteen months He threatened them very severely. Said He, “If you do not remember my commandments to keep them, and not only my commandments, but the Book of Mormon, which I have caused to come forth and to be written for your edification, as the New and Everlasting Covenant; if you do not give heed to the words of instruction and counsel, and the commandments written in that book, behold, saith the Lord, there remains a scourge and judgment to be poured out upon the inhabitants of Zion.”

We did not know what the judgment or scourging was. We had only been about fourteen months on the land, and we did not understand the nature of it. The Lord told us in another revelation, which is published in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, that, inasmuch as we did not do just precisely as He told us to do in regard to obtaining our lands, we should be driven by our enemies—“Behold and lo, your enemies shall be upon you; you shall be persecuted and driven from city to city, and but few of you shall stand to receive an inheritance.” We could not comprehend all this. We thought perhaps we should be faithful enough that this prophecy might not be fulfilled upon our heads. Although they were the very best people on the earth, yet there was a lack among them, through want of experience or through the former traditions of the Gentiles which they had imbibed from their childhood; but the Lord required us to be very good and to give heed to every word that proceeded out of His mouth, and never disobey the least thing; and consequently when He found that we lacked in some of these things, He told us He would not suffer that land to be polluted by those who were called by His name; for it was a choice land—a holy land, and those who were called by His name, and professed to be His disciples, should not pollute it, and if they did they should be scourged and driven away and persecuted, and there would be few left who would receive their inheritance there.

In the year 1833, in the month of November, we began to feel this scourge that the Lord had forewarned us of. Yet so anxious was the Prophet Joseph that the scourge might be averted that he took a journey, in connection with some of the prominent Elders of the Church, from the State of Ohio, about one thousand miles, to the western frontiers of Missouri, to warn the people of the terrible judgment that would overtake them, if they were not more obedient. But, alas! their repentance was not sufficient, though they were such a good people—far better than any other people or Church on the face of the earth; but yet they did not come up to the letter of the law which God had revealed, consequently they did not manifest before Him that they loved Him with all their hearts, souls, might, mind and strength, and judgment came upon them and they were driven. Two hundred houses were burned, our haystacks were burned, our cattle were shot down by the mob, our merchandise were strewn in the streets, our household furniture broken up and scattered, and the people were driven forth on the bleak prairies in the cold month of November. Then they remembered the prophecies which the Lord had delivered by His servant Joseph; they remembered what had been written and published, which they had been warned of time and time again, both by letter and by the personal ministry of the servants of God in their midst.

They fled to Clay County and were driven thence in a few months, when they fled still further north into other unsettled portions of the State of Missouri, and again purchased lands of the Government, and entered them and continued there a few years; but by and by we were again driven, thus fulfilling the word of the Lord through His servant Joseph—that we should be persecuted and driven from place to place and from city to city unless we did as He told us. Finally, we were driven into the State of Illinois, where we purchased a beautiful spot of ground on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, called Commerce, which we afterwards called Nauvoo, a Hebrew word which means beautiful for location.

After we had worked in Nauvoo for a few years, and had gathered together our people from various parts of the United States and some from Great Britain, to the number of some fifteen or twenty thousand souls, in Nauvoo and the regions round about, behold the mob was again upon us and we were driven again, thus fulfilling more fully the prophecies that had been made, and we were driven here to these mountains. We came here by the direction of the servant of God, being led by him on whom the Lord had placed the great responsibility of leading this people. He brought us here, and established us in the heart of this country. Here we have extended our settlements south, north, east and west, until the country is now populated with, as I suppose, some hundred thousand inhabitants. I do not know how many, it may be a hundred and fifty thousand for aught I know. Suffice it to say, we have over a hundred towns, cities and villages built up in the various portions of this great Basin, this desert country. We have beautified our inheritances; we have planted fruit trees in abundance and ornamental shade trees, so as to make our residences cheering and beautiful in the midst of a desert. God has been with us from the time that we came to this land, and I hope that the days of our tribulation are past. I hope this, because God promised in the year 1832 that we should, before the generation then living had passed away, return and build up the City of Zion in Jackson County; that we should return and build up the temple of the Most High where we formerly laid the corner stone. He promised us that He would manifest Himself on that temple, that the glory of God should be upon it; and not only upon the temple, but within it, even a cloud by day and a flaming fire by night.

We believe in these promises as much as we believe in any promise ever uttered by the mouth of Jehovah. The Latter-day Saints just as much expect to receive a fulfillment of that promise during the generation that was in existence in 1832 as they expect that the sun will rise and set tomorrow. Why? Because God cannot lie. He will fulfil all His promises. He has spoken, it must come to pass. This is our faith. It will depend upon the conduct of the Latter-day Saints whether we suffer more tribulation. We may suffer tribulation although we are righteous in every respect, though there were no sin found in the midst of the people. Why? Because the wicked always did persecute the righteous, they always did hate the principles and plan of salvation; still we have greater claim upon the arm of Jehovah for protection and assistance when we keep His commandments and love and serve Him.

Did you ever hear of the Elders of this Church getting up like the sectarian world and speaking about the love of God dwelling in their bosoms, and saying how much they loved Jesus, and at the same time transgressing his laws? No, we have no right to make any such declaration as this; hence we show to the heavens that we are determined to do the will of God. Then we may say that we love God; then we can say that we love His ways, and His Priesthood, and His Church, and His kingdom, and His Gospel which He has sent forth by His angels in the latter day.

I feel truly grateful to the Most High God that such a great improvement has been made among the Latter-day Saints in these mountains. I think I am able to judge. I have been with this people from my youth up. Forty years have almost expired since I was baptized into this Church and kingdom. I have known the former history of the Saints; and I know and understand, in some measure, their present condition, and I can contrast the two, and I see a decided improvement. Is there more union amongst them? Yes; far more than there was in the lifetime of Joseph; and all that the great mass of the people want is to know what God requires, and, with one heart and mind, they will do it. If God requires them to be baptized for their dead, as far as they can search and find out their ancestors’ names, they will do it with all their hearts and souls. If He requires them to receive the sacred ordinance of the endowments, by which they may attain to greater blessings and glory in His presence, they will go to with one heart and mind to receive those ordinances. If God requires His people to take a plurality of wives and have them sealed to them for time and eternity, behold they will do these things. If God requires the young, middle-aged, or even the aged, Elders to start from their farms or from their various occupations and leave this Territory on a journey across the Plains or across the great ocean and to the different nations of the earth and study their language and preach to the people, behold they will do it. If God calls upon this people to go forth into the South country, which is still more barren and desolate than the northern portion of the Territory, behold they are willing to go and do it. If God requires anything at their hands there is a union, oneness and willingness to go forward and carry out His great designs and purposes in regard to the rolling forth of His kingdom in the last days. By all these acts, by all these manifestations, by the good feeling that exists in the bosoms of this people, we know that they have made great improvement and advancement in the things of the kingdom of God since our Prophet was called upon to offer his great and last testimony by the shedding of his blood.

This union will increase and become stronger and stronger; it will continue until this people shall be prepared and sanctified before the heavens, and be permitted to return and build up the waste places of Zion in the western frontiers of the United States. This people will wax stronger in faith, in love towards God, in the power of the Priesthood and in the demonstration of the Spirit, until they are able to build the city wherein God shall reveal Himself, as He did in ancient times before the flood, among the people of ancient Zion—the Zion built up by Enoch. This people will increase in union, faith, greatness and glory, until the heavens shall come down and embrace us, and we shall embrace them, and all the heavenly host shall be united together in one with the hosts of the Saints of God here on earth, and a union will be created such as exists nowhere but in the celestial kingdom of our God, for the Saints themselves will ere long become celestial. Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday, April 24, 1870.

We delight in the spirit manifested by our young friend who has just spoken. He advocates the use of the sword of the Spirit, or the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, backed by the spirit of that Gospel, to convince people of the error of their ways. We, as a people, or the Elders of this Church, have carried that over the face of the earth; we have offered it to the people in nearly all parts of the earth, without money and without price.

We delight to meet together to worship God; we delight to have our brethren and sisters come together for this purpose, and we also esteem it a pleasure to have strangers of age and experience, who have the spirit to discern, meet with and preach to us. In our community we have very few from the heathen world; but from the Christian world thousands have gathered here. They understand and know the effects of what is called Christianity. But it is otherwise with our children. They have been brought up here; and, except in a few instances, they have heard nothing but the Gospel as taught by the Latter-day Saints. They are not capable of judging what the outside world is until they have had it exhibited before them, which has been their privilege occasionally; and I always feel to urge our youth to attend meetings when strangers preach, that they may be able to understand that which is and that which is not of God, and learn the difference between the doctrine taught by us and others. We believe a great many things that the Christian world cannot believe. If their eyes were open and they had the spirit to see things as they are, they could understand them. There is not a man or woman on the earth but what, if they understood God and the things of God, would yield obedience to His requirements. Those who set themselves up against the truth do it in consequence of not seeing things as they are—in consequence of ignorance, and were it not for this ignorance with regard to God and His Gospel they would be able to believe in the Gospel. The Latter-day Saints believe in the Gospel of the Son of God, simply because it is true. They believe in baptism for the remission of sins, personal and by proxy; they believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world; they believe that all who attain to any glory whatever, in any kingdom, will do so because Jesus has purchased it by his atonement.

The Christian world says, “We are going to the kingdom of Heaven;” but what is to become of those who have died, not believing as they do, or who have died without hearing the Gospel? Millions of them have passed away, both in the Christian and in the heathen worlds, just as honest, virtuous and upright as any now living. The Christian world say they are lost; but the Lord will save them, or, at least, all who will receive the Gospel. The plan of salvation which Jesus has revealed, and which we preach, reaches to the lowest and most degraded of Adam’s lost race. Is He going to save all in the same glory and bring all to the same state of felicity? Will they who refuse to obey the Gospel of the Son of God be saved and exalted in the same kingdom and glory as they who have obeyed? No, never, never! It is impossible. Do you suppose that a person can see the kingdom of heaven without being born of the Spirit? Jesus said not. Shall we say to the contrary, and maintain that we can see the kingdom of God without being born of the Spirit, and say that Jesus is a liar? Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Except a man is born of the spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Shall we admit that Jesus spoke the truth, or shall man say that his doctrine is true and Jesus spoke that which is not true? Which shall we do? There is no alternative but to admit that Jesus is true, and will save on no other condition than that laid down in the Scriptures, and that all who preach any other doctrine take the testimony of men instead of the testimony of Jesus, or that the Christian world with their varied opinions and creeds are true and that Jesus is untrue.

This is plain talk, my friends. Can you mistake it? Can you gain any idea from what I say except what I mean—let God be true, if it makes every man a liar. I think my words are so pointed and emphatic that no person can mistake them. Did Jesus say, “Except a man is born of the water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God?” Yes, all Christians will admit that. Then do you think there was one plan of salvation for Nicodemus and another for you and me? It is all folly for any person to expect any such thing! Come with the sword of the Spirit! Let the whole world of Christendom come with their arguments and Scriptures, and let us argue these things together! Let us lay them before the people and see who is right and who is wrong.

Let me say to you, if it is true that no man can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of the water and of the Spirit, God must provide a plan by which those who have died ignorant of the Gospel may have the privilege of doing so, or he would appear to be a partial being. Has He provided that way? He has. The Christian world have taught, preached, contemplated, meditated, sung about and prayed for the Millennium. What are you going to do during that period, Christians? Do you know what the Millennium is for, and what work will have to be done during that period? Suppose the Christian world were now one in heart, faith, sentiment and works, so that the Lord could commence the Millennium in power and glory, do you know what would be done? Would you sit and sing yourselves away to everlasting bliss? No, I reckon not. I think there is a work to be done then which the whole world seems determined we shall not do. What is it? To build temples. We never yet commenced to lay the foundation of a temple but what all hell was in arms against us. That is the difficulty now: we have commenced the foundation of this temple. What are we going to do in these temples? Anything to be done there? Yes, and we will not wait for the Millennium and the fullness of the glory of God on the earth; we will commence, as soon as we have a temple, and work for the salvation of our forefathers; we will get their genealogies as far as we can. By and by, we shall get them perfect. In these temples we will officiate in the ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for our friends, for no man can enter the kingdom of God without being born of the water and of the Spirit. We will officiate for them who are in the spirit world, where Jesus went to preach to the spirits, as Peter has written in the third chapter, verses 18, 19, and 20, of his first epistle:

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing,” etc.

In the next chapter, Peter, alluding to this same subject, says—

“For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”

What will we do for and in behalf of the dead? We will be baptized for the remission of sins, as Paul has said, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, 15th chapter and 29th verse:

“Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?”

We will also have hands laid on us for the reception of the Holy Ghost; and then we will receive the washings and anointings for and in their behalf, preparatory to their becoming heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Are you going to do this, Latter-day Saints? Yes. What will the Christian world do with their dead? Let them sleep an eternal sleep, for there are no provisions made for them in the gospel they believe in and have taught to them.

This is one item of doctrine believed in by the Latter-day Saints that the inhabitants of the earth are opposed to. Why? Because they are governed and controlled by the spirit of darkness. This may seem harsh, but it is true. They are opposed to Jesus, to God, and to the salvation of the children of men, and are controlled by this evil spirit, and they know it not. They say:

“Latter-day Saints, let your dead and ordinances for their benefit alone, we will pass laws forbidding you the observance and practice of the ordinances of the house of God.”

We trust in God. I reckon He will fight our battles and we will be baptized for and in behalf of the human family during a thousand years; and we will have hundreds of temples and thousands of men and women officiating therein for those who have fallen asleep, without having had the privilege of hearing and obeying the Gospel, that they may be brought forth and have a glorious resurrection, and enjoy the kingdom which God has prepared for them. The devil will fight hard to hinder us, and we shall not take an inch of ground except by obedience to the power of, and faith in, the Gospel of the Son of God. The whole world is opposed to this doctrine. But is there any harm in it? If they could only see it as it is in the Lord, they would rejoice in it, and instead of fighting it, they would praise God for having revealed so glorious a doctrine. Suppose that the notion entertained by some is true, that after the death of our bodies our spirits sleep an eternal sleep, and I am baptized for my father, grandfather, and so on, does it injure them? Answer, all ye intelligences on the face of the earth, above, beneath, or around about the earth! All will admit that no harm would be done in practicing these ordinances. Then let us alone if our practices will do no harm, why oppose us in their observance? The result might possibly affect beneficially our progenitors, and then you who oppose would be found fighting against God. Better let the Gospel have its course.

We have had a nice discourse this morning from the Rev. Mr. Andrews, exhorting all to believe in Jesus. His text was as good a one as ever a man quoted, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation unto all them that believe; to the Jew first, and then to the Greek,” or to the rest of the world. Jesus says, pointedly, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” This is the test? Are there any commandments? Yes, plenty of them, and the only way to prove our belief in and love for the Lord Jesus is by observing the sayings that he has left on record.

They are coming from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South to sit down in our Father’s kingdom; but no man can sit down there unless he gain admittance through the faithful observance of the commands of God, and obedience to the ordinances of His house. Then why not repent and obey the ordinances and commandments? Why not be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ? Is there any harm in it? I say to every being on the face of the earth, Christian, Pagan, or Jew, supposing my doctrine is not true, and that there is no necessity for believing in Jesus, being baptized for the remission of sins and having hands laid upon you for the Holy Ghost, will it do you any harm? Pagan, will it do you any harm? Believers or unbelievers, will it do you any harm? Universalian, will it do you any harm? Apostates, will it do you any harm? Wise man, will it do you any harm? Fools, will it do you any harm? What is your answer? ‘”No; it will not.” Well, then, let me alone. I may be right, and you wrong; and if I should be right, you are cut off, and I have the advantage of you; but if you are right, and I am wrong, I am with you and will share in all the blessings that you can get.

This Gospel will save the whole human family; the blood of Jesus will atone for our sins, if we accept the terms he has laid down; but we must accept those terms or else it will avail nothing in our behalf.

I have talked long enough. I bid you all welcome to the Gospel. Jesus Christ has commissioned me to say to the whole human family, “You can have this Gospel without money and without price.” We have traversed the world over and offered it to the human family and asked them to receive it. We are still saying to them, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, keep his commandments, and obey his ordinances, that it may be well with you. God bless you. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday Afternoon, April 24, 1870.

I am sure that, to strangers, such a meeting as this must be very novel. I might say to those who have been here today that our meetings are conducted very much like the meetings of the Presbyterians, the Baptists and Methodists in England and in the United States. It is true that we continue our discourses longer than they usually do, and sometimes two or three speak; but such a meeting as this is today is a novel thing to me. I might almost say it is equal to a theater; but there is good here, and I would not permit evil in my theater. If I were to learn of any unbecoming conduct there, in looks, words or actions, those guilty of it would have to leave that stage. I would not allow them to remain there.

I want to say to my friends that we believe in all good. If you can find a truth in heaven, earth or hell, it belongs to our doctrine. We believe it; it is ours; we claim it. Is that right? If you find an error here, I ask you to leave it, pass it by, let it alone; do not embrace it in your faith, do not practice it in your lives. I say to all, to my brethren and sisters and to strangers, if we teach anything that is good, receive it, I beseech you. If we have any good in our doctrine, believe it and embrace it, it will do you good. If we have errors, do not embrace them. I have been trying, for almost forty years, to tell the people how to be saved. I have always made this proposition to every man I have conversed with on the subject of truth and error, “If I have errors, I will give ten errors for a truth. Do you want to trade?”

Do not embrace error! Christians, search the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, for in them you think you have eternal life, and they are they that testify of the doctrine that we preach; and if we can get you to believe what is written there concerning God the Father and Jesus the Mediator, and to render obedience to what is required there of the children of men, we ask no more.

Here is the Book of Mormon. We believe it contains the history of the Aborigines of our continent, just as the Old Testament contains the history of the Jewish nation. In that book we learn that Jesus visited this continent, delivered his Gospel and ordained Twelve Apostles. We believe all this, but we do not ask you to believe it. What we do ask is that you will believe what is recorded in the Holy Bible concerning God and His revelations to the children of men. Do this in all honesty and sincerity, then you will know that the Book of Mormon is true. Your minds will be opened and you will know by the visions of the Spirit of God that we teach the truth. For this we are persecuted; for this we have been driven; for this we have left our homes and all many times; for this we came to these mountains, comparatively naked and barefoot, and here you can see what we have done. And now they are seeking again to break up this people. God will hold them in derision. (Amen, from the congregation.)

Now, I say, honestly, if the inhabitants of the earth will read this book called the Old and New Testament (though it contains the words of God and the words of men; the words of Jesus and the words of the devil), and believe the truth that is there, just as it is portrayed and written and given to us without any new translation, it will be good for them in time and eternity. The Bible, or part of it, has been retranslated by Joseph Smith. Many precious parts were taken out by men in former days. But believe it as it is and we are one—if we practice it. I will put that in. But if we believe the truth, we will practice it. We may say we believe it, and practice it not. But this is no proof to God, angels, or to one another. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” is a scriptural saying, and is as true now as when it was spoken.

I have a little item which, if I had time, I would like to read, portraying our feelings towards the inhabitants of the earth. It is called the “Vision”—a vision Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had while they were translating the New Testament. I would like to read this because it is our faith. But we also believe the Bible. Do you, my friends? I would to God you did. I am like Moses when a messenger came to him saying, “The people are prophesying in their tents.” Said Moses, Well, what of that? I would to God that the Lord’s people were all prophets! I would to God that they all had revelation! When they receive revelation from heaven the story is told, they know for themselves.

Now, my friends, brethren and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, how do you know anything? Can you be deceived by the eye? You can; you have proved this; you all know that there are men who can deceive the sight of the eye, no matter how closely you observe their movements. Can you be deceived in hearing? Yes; you may hear sounds but not understand their import or whence they come. Can you be deceived by the touch of the finger? You can. The nervous system will not detect everything. What will? The revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spirit of truth will detect everything, and enable all who possess it to understand truth from error, light from darkness, the things of God from the things not of God. It is the only thing that will enable us to understand the Gospel of the Son of God, the will of God, and how we can be saved. Follow it, and it will lead to God, the fountain of light, where the gate will be open, and the mind will be enlightened so that we shall see, know and understand things as they are.

God bless you, and help us all to do what He requires of us. Amen.

Remarks by President George A. Smith, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday, April 24, 1870.

The 16th verse of the 20th chapter of Exodus, one of the ten commandments, reads as follows: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” We, as a people, are situated in the Great Basin, among the mountains, and occupy the little valleys which form the backbone of the American continent. We have been here about 23 years, and we have had the privilege of contending with the fury of the elements, with a sterile country and with desolation itself, and by the magic wand of industry and the blessing of our heavenly Father upon our labors, and upon the waters and the land, we have been able to make for ourselves comfortable homes and to enjoy religious liberty—a blessing which had been denied to us in other localities where we had resided. No other community can be found on the face of the earth that has had more good order, peace and harmony. In all the settlements, protection, safety, and every necessary blessing have been extended to the traveler, to the stranger and the resident alike. I believe that for the forty or fifty thousand square miles we have occupied in spots, the desert of course intervening between the settlements, there have better police regulations and more safety to all parties than have existed in the streets of New York or Washington. And the protection which has existed and which does still exist has been the work of the Latter-day Saints. Of this we have every reason to be proud.

I have recently traveled more than 1,000 miles among the settlements, and have visited perhaps 30,000 people. During that journey I have not seen an idler, loafer, or heard an oath or blasphemous word; I have not seen a drinking saloon, dram shop, gambling hell, or brothel; but all has been perfect order and peace, the people worshipping God as they understand the Gospel and rejoicing in the same.

It was my lot, during the past season, to be present much of the time in this city, which was visited by great numbers of men, from nearly all parts of the earth. Many of them were clergymen of the various denominations—Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and others. Some of these men occupied our pulpits in this and the New Tabernacle. We were glad to hear them. We had many good reasons for wishing them to preach to us. Many of the younger members of our community have not been conversant with the religions of the age. The elder members of our body have been, for most of us were raised in some one or other of the religious denominations, and have felt and realized the effects of their principles, and are fully acquainted with their doctrines. Thousands of our Elders have traveled abroad in the earth preaching and have been observant of their workings and progress. But the young and rising generation among us have not had this opportunity. It is therefore very desirable to us, whenever ministers of standing in their own denominations visit us, to have them set forth their doctrines and sentiments before us, that the young persons among us may understand all other religions as well as ours, and be able to compare the doctrines that are taught or held in Christendom with those which we have been introducing under the revelations given to Joseph Smith. It was on this and other grounds that the general spiritual liberty, so marked among us in the days of Joseph Smith, had been constantly continued. We all remember, who lived in the days of Joseph, that every clergyman of any prominence who visited Nauvoo was invited to preach to our congregations. This has ever been our course. It was so at Kirtland. They preached in our Temple and in other localities, and it has been continued up to the present time. During the long years that we were in a manner isolated from the rest of the world, ministers passing across the continent by stage or in emigrant companies have spoken in our tabernacles.

It is true that when our Elders have been abroad preaching they have not met with similar courtesy. There was not long since, in the Vermont Journal, a little article in relation to Rev. John Todd, D.D., at Pittsfield, Mass., who, the Journal says, did not reciprocate the courtesies shown him at Salt Lake last summer. He preached in this building, and afterwards requested the privilege of preaching in the New Tabernacle. He did so, and was treated with due courtesy. He delivered us an address, showing us his faith and religion, which was what we desired him to do. We requested him to conduct the meeting as he chose, as we wished to see his manner of worship, or rather that our young people might see it. He went away and published a book in which he misrepresented us in many things and asserted that there was no liberty nor freedom here, that he felt bound, and he hoped that this plague spot of Sodom would be removed, and prayed that God might speed the day.

This course, pursued by Dr. Todd, put me in mind of the commandment—our text, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

A freer people do not exist on the earth, nor any who have greater opportunities for free thought and understanding. Elders are going forth to every nation, kindred, tongue and people, preaching the Gospel and gathering up the poor and needy; and their going and returning keep us posted thoroughly in relation to the progress and improvements made by and going on in the religious, scientific and mechanical world. These are the facts, and every man has the privilege of exercising his own will and freedom; and the privilege of preaching in our congregations is extended through all our settlements to ministers and men of standing in other religious bodies. I saw recently invitations published to the learned of all denominations, to occupy the halls of Brigham City; and the same is true of other settlements. All that we desire of our fellow men, when they visit us, is to tell the truth about us, and not to tell for truth the forecastle yarns they have heard spun at some street corner by some who, while manufacturing lies, were trying to imitate Dean Swift’s tales of Gulliver. Many men who have called here have done this.

I remember one particular instance which occurred last season. There were five gentlemen of the Baptist Church who came here, with whom I had a conversation. They said their people had never, under any circumstances, persecuted the Latter-day Saints. I told them that I did not know that they had as a church. But I told them that the Rev. I. McCoy, a Baptist minister, with his gun on his shoulder, at the head of forty men, drove women and children out of their houses and robbed them in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1833; that Levi Williams, a Baptist preacher, led the party of men who murdered Joseph Smith; and that the Rev. Thomas Brockman, of the Reformed Baptists, at the head of 1,800 men, drove forth to perish 500 or 600 Saints, men, women, and children, poor and helpless, who were left in Nauvoo, Ills., having previously cannonaded the town for three days. I did not know that, as a church, they had persecuted us, but certain individuals of their persuasion had taken part in the matter. They seemed considerably hurt to hear it. They wished to preach to us, and they had the opportunity to do so in the New Tabernacle. It was not long before an article appeared in the Baptist paper, describing the meeting. I presume most of the audience recollect the discourse of Dr. Backus. The description these gentlemen gave of the meeting was something like this. The Twelve Apostles were on the stand, and they looked around to see which was Judas; finally they came to the conclusion that they were all Judases, except Elder Taylor. The paper said it was desired and hoped that in a short time the Government would adopt efficient measures to put a stop to Mormonism.

Now I do really think that it is degrading to the religion, science and civilization of the age, where there are five hundred thousand ministers, editors and public teachers in the country, to ask the Government to interfere in any manner whatever to correct any moral or religious error. I think it is acknowledging a weakness in the civilization and religion of the age to do so.

I wish to say to our friends who have visited us, in conclusion, we are glad to see you; you are welcome among us; we like to hear you speak, but when you go away tell the truth about us, and remember the commandment of God, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”