April 1866
Two Days’ Meetings.
The two days’ meetings announced to precede the Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference, commenced in the Tabernacle, G. S. L. City, at 10 a.m., April 4th, 1866.
There were on the stand Presidents Heber C. Kimball and Daniel H. Wells; Elders Orson Hyde, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards and Geo. Q. Cannon, of the Quorum of the Twelve; Bishop Hunter, and a number of influential officers of the priesthood.
Choir sang a hymn.
Prayer by Elder W. Woodruff.
Singing by the choir.
The two days’ meetings announced to precede the Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference, commenced in the Tabernacle, G. S. L. City, at 10 a.m., April 4th, 1866.
There were on the stand Presidents Heber C. Kimball and Daniel H. Wells; Elders Orson Hyde, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards and Geo. Q. Cannon, of the Quorum of the Twelve; Bishop Hunter, and a number of influential officers of the priesthood.
Choir sang a hymn.
Prayer by Elder W. Woodruff.
Singing by the choir.
President H. C. Kimball
spoke on the necessity of order being maintained in meetings, that attention might be paid to the speaker and the thoughts of the people be concentrated upon his remarks. We are so constituted that we can do but one thing at a time, whether the action be mental or physical; hence, if our thoughts are distracted, and wander, our capability to acquire knowledge or to do good is proportionately lessened. He touched upon the attributes of God, and reasoned on the power that is in the principles of truth. The same principles which bring life and salvation when obeyed, will bring death and condemnation if rejected. He exhorted the people to practice purity and righteousness, showing that a course of wickedness will bring misery, while righteousness will bring peace and happiness.
spoke on the necessity of order being maintained in meetings, that attention might be paid to the speaker and the thoughts of the people be concentrated upon his remarks. We are so constituted that we can do but one thing at a time, whether the action be mental or physical; hence, if our thoughts are distracted, and wander, our capability to acquire knowledge or to do good is proportionately lessened. He touched upon the attributes of God, and reasoned on the power that is in the principles of truth. The same principles which bring life and salvation when obeyed, will bring death and condemnation if rejected. He exhorted the people to practice purity and righteousness, showing that a course of wickedness will bring misery, while righteousness will bring peace and happiness.
Blessings Secured By Faithfulness
Remarks by President Heber C. Kimball, in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 4, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
Self-preservation is the first great law of nature. It is true, whether it be applied to temporal or spiritual salvation. If a man does not try to save himself through the means which are provided in the Gospel, he cannot be saved. If people will not stop committing sin and learn to do better, my doing so will not benefit them. It would be just as reasonable to argue that I can eat, drink, breathe, and reflect for them.
When a minister of the truth arises to address a congregation it aids him much when the people give their undivided attention to him; but when their attention is drawn off by some trifling interference that may occur in the house, their minds are closed to the effects of truth, and the spirit of the preacher is grieved, and so is the Spirit of the Lord. Paul says, “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.” “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.”
No one man knoweth everything, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal;” “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit,” “dividing to every man severally as he will.” If we exercise upon the gifts we possess in simplicity as little children, striving to do good to one another, and to build up the kingdom of God upon the earth, then we shall be entitled to greater gifts and greater blessings. Let no man lay a snare for his neighbor because of the simplicity of his words, and because he reproves in the gate. If the truth, simply told, is unwelcome to people, it is because they are themselves guilty of sin unrepented of; and by this ye may know that ye need repentance.
The faithful love the truth, though it may be told in the most simple manner; it is sweeter to them than honey or the honeycomb; they are no more afraid of it than they would be afraid of eating a piece of good honey. And to the same extent that they love the truth plainly and simply told, do they hate a lie, and the more so when it is dressed up in the garb of truth to deceive the unwary. Truth is the sanctifier of those who love it and are guided by it, and will exalt them to the presence of God; while falsehood corrupts and destroys, or, to use a common scriptural figure, it lays the axe at the root of the tree. As the axe cuts down and destroys the fruitless trees that cumber the ground, so do wicked acts destroy and overthrow all who persist in them.
Truth is an attribute of the nature of God. By it he is sanctified and glorified. Jesus Christ proceeded from his Father. He is called “His only begotten Son,” and inherited germs of his Father's perfections and the attributes of his Father's nature, so that he sinned not. So with us; if the attributes of our nature become refined and regenerated by the truth, our offspring must inherit those perfections, more or less. Then, how essential it is that parents should, by living their religion, improve themselves for the improvement of their race. We, too, are the children of God, but we are the offspring in the flesh of fallen and degenerate parents, and we are prone to sin as the sparks fly upward; but by observing the truth, and by following the direction of the Holy Priesthood which has been restored in our day, we may overcome the evil that is within us and that is in the world, begin to improve and perfect the attributes of our nature, which are like the attributes of the nature of God, and lay the foundation of goodness and truth in our offspring.
The devil was a liar from the beginning. Truth has no place in him; but it being a principle of power associated with all goodness, he hates it, and so do all his faithful followers. It is written, “And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn; And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the church of the Firstborn.” “Truth is a knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning.” “He that keepeth the commandments of God receiveth truth and light until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.” “Truth” is a principle of power, and “is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as well as intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.”
Under President Young I have presided over the giving of endowments for the last fifteen years. Last Saturday there were over twenty persons in the house to receive their endowments. They came well recommended by their bishops as being worthy, good, and faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had previously had an impression that many of the people were becoming lukewarm, and even cold, in the performance of some of their duties. After the company had gone through I gave them a lecture, and it came to me by the Spirit of God to try if my impression was correct or not. After instructing them that they must not lie, steal, nor bear false witness, etc., I asked them how many of them prayed in their families, and it transpired that there were many who neglected their duties in this respect; yet they were all recommended by their bishops as good, faithful members of the Church of Christ. It made me think of the parable of the ten virgins, five foolish and five wise. Shall we thus cease to perform our duties, while the wicked are striving with all their power to introduce their wickedness in our community and into our families; while they are seeking to influence our wives and children to be disobedient to us and to God? Should we not rather be more faithful in the performance of every known duty, that God may hear us when we pray to him for strength to aid us to resist the encroachment of evil?
The revelations which Joseph Smith has given to this people were given to him by Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world; and this people cannot be blessed if they lightly esteem any of them, but they will lose the Spirit, and sorrow and vexation will come into their families. The Lord designs that we shall be separate and distinct from every other people, and wishes to make us His peculiar people, and to raise up for himself a pure seed who will keep His law and walk in His statutes. For this purpose did He give the revelation on plurality of wives, as sacred a revelation as was ever given to any people, and fraught with greater blessings to us than we can possibly conceive of, if we do not abuse our privileges and commit sin. This doctrine is a holy and pure principle, in which the power of God for the regeneration of mankind is made manifest; but while it offers immense blessings, and is a source of immense power to God's people, it will bring sure and certain damnation to those who seek through its means to defile themselves with the daughters of Eve. All those who take wives from any other motive than to subserve the great purpose which God had in view in commanding his servants to take unto themselves many wives, will not be able to retain them. Wives are sealed to men by an everlasting covenant that cannot be broken, if the parties live faithfully before God, and perform with a single eye to his glory the duties of that sacred contract. Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees, when they tempted him upon the subject of a man putting away his wife, “For the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to give a bill of divorcement, but from the beginning of the creation it was not so.” “What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”
I speak of plurality of wives as one of the most holy principles that God ever revealed to man, and all those who exercise an influence against it, unto whom it is taught, man or woman, will be damned, and they, and all who will be influenced by them, will suffer the buffetings of Satan in the flesh; for the curse of God will be upon them, and poverty, and distress, and vexation of spirit will be their portion; while those who honor this and every sacred institution of heaven will shine forth as the stars in the firmament of heaven, and of the increase of their kingdom and glory there shall be no end. This will equally apply to Jew, Gentile, and Mormon, male and female, old and young.
The words of the Lord to the Church, through Joseph the Prophet, in Sep., 1832, will apply very well to many now—“And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—Which vanity and unbelief hath brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all. And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which I have given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written—That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father's kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and a judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion. For shall the children of the kingdom pollute my holy land?” Unless we keep our families in order, and instruct our children to be faithful in keeping the commandments of God, not suffering our wives and children to speak lightly of the Priesthood of the Almighty, and of the holy order of marriage which He has revealed for a great purpose—I say, unless we do this, God will visit our families with a scourge, and if they continue in their disobedience they will be removed out of their place, and their names will not be found on the record of the faithful. But, on the contrary, if we are righteous and keep faithfully all the commandments of God, we, with all that portion of our wives and children who also have been faithful, will go into the celestial inheritance prepared for us in the presence of our God. Will the unfaithful, disobedient, and unbelieving of our families enter with us into the celestial kingdom? They will not. The Lord said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, the house of Israel to me has become dross.” So with the unbelieving and disobedient of our families, and of this people; they will be separated from the pure silver, to occupy a place in the mansions of our Father according to their worth.
If our wives would remember and keep faithfully the covenant they have made, they would observe the laws of their husbands, and teach their children to honor every law of God, and to love, honor, and obey their earthly father. If I keep my covenants, I shall be saved in the presence of God; if I violate them, I shall be damned; and so it will be with my family; and what applies to me in this respect will apply to all.
Let us carry out the great purposes of God, and be separate from the ungodly. “Wo unto him that has the law given, yea, that has all the commandments of God, like unto us, and that transgresseth them, and that wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!” “And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish. Wo unto the blind that will not see; for they shall perish also. Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell. Wo unto the murderer who deliberately killeth, for he shall die. Wo unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down to hell. And wo unto them who die in their sins; for they shall go to their place, and suffer the wrath of God.”
May God bless the righteous; but the men or women who raise their voices or use their influence against that holy order of plural marriage will be cursed, and they will wither away, for they have undertaken to fight against God. “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall leave them neither root nor branch.”
Remarks by President Heber C. Kimball, in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 4, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
Self-preservation is the first great law of nature. It is true, whether it be applied to temporal or spiritual salvation. If a man does not try to save himself through the means which are provided in the Gospel, he cannot be saved. If people will not stop committing sin and learn to do better, my doing so will not benefit them. It would be just as reasonable to argue that I can eat, drink, breathe, and reflect for them.
When a minister of the truth arises to address a congregation it aids him much when the people give their undivided attention to him; but when their attention is drawn off by some trifling interference that may occur in the house, their minds are closed to the effects of truth, and the spirit of the preacher is grieved, and so is the Spirit of the Lord. Paul says, “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.” “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.”
No one man knoweth everything, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal;” “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit,” “dividing to every man severally as he will.” If we exercise upon the gifts we possess in simplicity as little children, striving to do good to one another, and to build up the kingdom of God upon the earth, then we shall be entitled to greater gifts and greater blessings. Let no man lay a snare for his neighbor because of the simplicity of his words, and because he reproves in the gate. If the truth, simply told, is unwelcome to people, it is because they are themselves guilty of sin unrepented of; and by this ye may know that ye need repentance.
The faithful love the truth, though it may be told in the most simple manner; it is sweeter to them than honey or the honeycomb; they are no more afraid of it than they would be afraid of eating a piece of good honey. And to the same extent that they love the truth plainly and simply told, do they hate a lie, and the more so when it is dressed up in the garb of truth to deceive the unwary. Truth is the sanctifier of those who love it and are guided by it, and will exalt them to the presence of God; while falsehood corrupts and destroys, or, to use a common scriptural figure, it lays the axe at the root of the tree. As the axe cuts down and destroys the fruitless trees that cumber the ground, so do wicked acts destroy and overthrow all who persist in them.
Truth is an attribute of the nature of God. By it he is sanctified and glorified. Jesus Christ proceeded from his Father. He is called “His only begotten Son,” and inherited germs of his Father's perfections and the attributes of his Father's nature, so that he sinned not. So with us; if the attributes of our nature become refined and regenerated by the truth, our offspring must inherit those perfections, more or less. Then, how essential it is that parents should, by living their religion, improve themselves for the improvement of their race. We, too, are the children of God, but we are the offspring in the flesh of fallen and degenerate parents, and we are prone to sin as the sparks fly upward; but by observing the truth, and by following the direction of the Holy Priesthood which has been restored in our day, we may overcome the evil that is within us and that is in the world, begin to improve and perfect the attributes of our nature, which are like the attributes of the nature of God, and lay the foundation of goodness and truth in our offspring.
The devil was a liar from the beginning. Truth has no place in him; but it being a principle of power associated with all goodness, he hates it, and so do all his faithful followers. It is written, “And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn; And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the church of the Firstborn.” “Truth is a knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning.” “He that keepeth the commandments of God receiveth truth and light until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.” “Truth” is a principle of power, and “is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as well as intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.”
Under President Young I have presided over the giving of endowments for the last fifteen years. Last Saturday there were over twenty persons in the house to receive their endowments. They came well recommended by their bishops as being worthy, good, and faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had previously had an impression that many of the people were becoming lukewarm, and even cold, in the performance of some of their duties. After the company had gone through I gave them a lecture, and it came to me by the Spirit of God to try if my impression was correct or not. After instructing them that they must not lie, steal, nor bear false witness, etc., I asked them how many of them prayed in their families, and it transpired that there were many who neglected their duties in this respect; yet they were all recommended by their bishops as good, faithful members of the Church of Christ. It made me think of the parable of the ten virgins, five foolish and five wise. Shall we thus cease to perform our duties, while the wicked are striving with all their power to introduce their wickedness in our community and into our families; while they are seeking to influence our wives and children to be disobedient to us and to God? Should we not rather be more faithful in the performance of every known duty, that God may hear us when we pray to him for strength to aid us to resist the encroachment of evil?
The revelations which Joseph Smith has given to this people were given to him by Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world; and this people cannot be blessed if they lightly esteem any of them, but they will lose the Spirit, and sorrow and vexation will come into their families. The Lord designs that we shall be separate and distinct from every other people, and wishes to make us His peculiar people, and to raise up for himself a pure seed who will keep His law and walk in His statutes. For this purpose did He give the revelation on plurality of wives, as sacred a revelation as was ever given to any people, and fraught with greater blessings to us than we can possibly conceive of, if we do not abuse our privileges and commit sin. This doctrine is a holy and pure principle, in which the power of God for the regeneration of mankind is made manifest; but while it offers immense blessings, and is a source of immense power to God's people, it will bring sure and certain damnation to those who seek through its means to defile themselves with the daughters of Eve. All those who take wives from any other motive than to subserve the great purpose which God had in view in commanding his servants to take unto themselves many wives, will not be able to retain them. Wives are sealed to men by an everlasting covenant that cannot be broken, if the parties live faithfully before God, and perform with a single eye to his glory the duties of that sacred contract. Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees, when they tempted him upon the subject of a man putting away his wife, “For the hardness of your heart Moses allowed you to give a bill of divorcement, but from the beginning of the creation it was not so.” “What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”
I speak of plurality of wives as one of the most holy principles that God ever revealed to man, and all those who exercise an influence against it, unto whom it is taught, man or woman, will be damned, and they, and all who will be influenced by them, will suffer the buffetings of Satan in the flesh; for the curse of God will be upon them, and poverty, and distress, and vexation of spirit will be their portion; while those who honor this and every sacred institution of heaven will shine forth as the stars in the firmament of heaven, and of the increase of their kingdom and glory there shall be no end. This will equally apply to Jew, Gentile, and Mormon, male and female, old and young.
The words of the Lord to the Church, through Joseph the Prophet, in Sep., 1832, will apply very well to many now—“And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—Which vanity and unbelief hath brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all. And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which I have given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written—That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father's kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and a judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion. For shall the children of the kingdom pollute my holy land?” Unless we keep our families in order, and instruct our children to be faithful in keeping the commandments of God, not suffering our wives and children to speak lightly of the Priesthood of the Almighty, and of the holy order of marriage which He has revealed for a great purpose—I say, unless we do this, God will visit our families with a scourge, and if they continue in their disobedience they will be removed out of their place, and their names will not be found on the record of the faithful. But, on the contrary, if we are righteous and keep faithfully all the commandments of God, we, with all that portion of our wives and children who also have been faithful, will go into the celestial inheritance prepared for us in the presence of our God. Will the unfaithful, disobedient, and unbelieving of our families enter with us into the celestial kingdom? They will not. The Lord said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, the house of Israel to me has become dross.” So with the unbelieving and disobedient of our families, and of this people; they will be separated from the pure silver, to occupy a place in the mansions of our Father according to their worth.
If our wives would remember and keep faithfully the covenant they have made, they would observe the laws of their husbands, and teach their children to honor every law of God, and to love, honor, and obey their earthly father. If I keep my covenants, I shall be saved in the presence of God; if I violate them, I shall be damned; and so it will be with my family; and what applies to me in this respect will apply to all.
Let us carry out the great purposes of God, and be separate from the ungodly. “Wo unto him that has the law given, yea, that has all the commandments of God, like unto us, and that transgresseth them, and that wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!” “And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish. Wo unto the blind that will not see; for they shall perish also. Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell. Wo unto the murderer who deliberately killeth, for he shall die. Wo unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down to hell. And wo unto them who die in their sins; for they shall go to their place, and suffer the wrath of God.”
May God bless the righteous; but the men or women who raise their voices or use their influence against that holy order of plural marriage will be cursed, and they will wither away, for they have undertaken to fight against God. “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall leave them neither root nor branch.”
Elder Geo. Q. Cannon
spoke briefly on the power and importance of prayer; of its efficacy in securing to the Saints the aid of the Spirit of God; and of the joy and happiness possessed by the Saints who live their religion faithfully and truly. When we live close to God, which we have the privilege of doing, we gain power that enables us to overcome temptation and resist evil.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Elder Geo. A. Smith.
spoke briefly on the power and importance of prayer; of its efficacy in securing to the Saints the aid of the Spirit of God; and of the joy and happiness possessed by the Saints who live their religion faithfully and truly. When we live close to God, which we have the privilege of doing, we gain power that enables us to overcome temptation and resist evil.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Elder Geo. A. Smith.
2 p.m.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Elder Amasa M. Lyman.
Singing by the choir.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Elder Amasa M. Lyman.
Singing by the choir.
Elder Lorenzo Snow
enjoined the importance of living our religion in simplicity of purpose and honesty of heart, patterning after and seeking to have the same mind as the Lord Jesus, “who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” He reasoned on the indestructibility of the Kingdom of God; and treated on the principle that our actions will produce good and evil results according to their character. If we depart from the principles of truth we will become corrupt like the nations of the earth; if we continue and increase in righteousness the blessings and power of God will abide with and be multiplied upon us.
enjoined the importance of living our religion in simplicity of purpose and honesty of heart, patterning after and seeking to have the same mind as the Lord Jesus, “who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” He reasoned on the indestructibility of the Kingdom of God; and treated on the principle that our actions will produce good and evil results according to their character. If we depart from the principles of truth we will become corrupt like the nations of the earth; if we continue and increase in righteousness the blessings and power of God will abide with and be multiplied upon us.
Elder Geo. A. Smith
asked the important questions,--Are we living our religion? Are we what we profess to be, Latter-day Saints? And exhorted that we should seriously reflect upon our duties, realizing that we have engaged in the work of God, not for a few months or years, but for all time, and seek to become worthy of the trust reposed in us.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Pres. D. H. Wells.
asked the important questions,--Are we living our religion? Are we what we profess to be, Latter-day Saints? And exhorted that we should seriously reflect upon our duties, realizing that we have engaged in the work of God, not for a few months or years, but for all time, and seek to become worthy of the trust reposed in us.
Singing by the choir.
Prayer by Pres. D. H. Wells.
Thursday Morning, 10 a.m.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder C. C. Rich.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder C. C. Rich.
Elder C. C. Rich
spoke of the means by which the will of God shall be done on the earth as it is done in heaven. We expect a Millennium and the question is often asked when will it commence? When the people adopt and practice principles of righteousness, truth and peace, which will make a Millennium. The principles of truth are eternal, and are the only things, on which value can be placed, that we can take with us beyond the vail, when this probation is brought to a close.
Tabernacle choir sang “Know then that every soul is free.”
Clerk of meeting read the 8th par. of sec. IV, book of Doctrine and Covenants, page 86.
spoke of the means by which the will of God shall be done on the earth as it is done in heaven. We expect a Millennium and the question is often asked when will it commence? When the people adopt and practice principles of righteousness, truth and peace, which will make a Millennium. The principles of truth are eternal, and are the only things, on which value can be placed, that we can take with us beyond the vail, when this probation is brought to a close.
Tabernacle choir sang “Know then that every soul is free.”
Clerk of meeting read the 8th par. of sec. IV, book of Doctrine and Covenants, page 86.
Elder Erastus Snow,
who had arrived, spoke briefly on studying the written word of God, contained in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the book of Doctrine and Covenants and not neglecting to do so because we have the living oracles of God in our midst. They who study and reflect upon the principles of truth, who read the written work of God, and hearken to the Holy Priesthood, have the spirit of revelation within them.
who had arrived, spoke briefly on studying the written word of God, contained in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the book of Doctrine and Covenants and not neglecting to do so because we have the living oracles of God in our midst. They who study and reflect upon the principles of truth, who read the written work of God, and hearken to the Holy Priesthood, have the spirit of revelation within them.
Prest. H. C. Kimball
spoke on teaching the principles of truth in plain and simple language; and exhorted the people to increased righteousness. Unless those who are guilty of breaking their covenants and transgressing the laws of God will repent, they will be damned.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer Elder Geo. A. Smith.
spoke on teaching the principles of truth in plain and simple language; and exhorted the people to increased righteousness. Unless those who are guilty of breaking their covenants and transgressing the laws of God will repent, they will be damned.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer Elder Geo. A. Smith.
2 p.m.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Wilford Woodruff.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
President B. Young was in the stand; Elder Ezra T. Benson was also in the stand, having arrived from Cache Valley.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Wilford Woodruff.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
President B. Young was in the stand; Elder Ezra T. Benson was also in the stand, having arrived from Cache Valley.
Elder Orson Hyde
urged the importance, efficacy and power of prayer. Not only should men pray when at home, with their families, but when they are absent from home attending to any duty; and the wife should have prayers in the household, morning and evening, in the absence of the husband and father. They who do so are strong in the strength of the Lord and have power to resist and overcome evil. The day is near at hand when the devil will have power over his own dominion and the Lord will have power of His Saints. Prayer—honest, sincere and simple prayer, will bring power to subject our will to God and our actions will be regulated in righteousness continually. He referred to the Indian difficulties in Sanpete and elsewhere and to those who furnished powder, caps and lead to the Indians, condemning their course.
urged the importance, efficacy and power of prayer. Not only should men pray when at home, with their families, but when they are absent from home attending to any duty; and the wife should have prayers in the household, morning and evening, in the absence of the husband and father. They who do so are strong in the strength of the Lord and have power to resist and overcome evil. The day is near at hand when the devil will have power over his own dominion and the Lord will have power of His Saints. Prayer—honest, sincere and simple prayer, will bring power to subject our will to God and our actions will be regulated in righteousness continually. He referred to the Indian difficulties in Sanpete and elsewhere and to those who furnished powder, caps and lead to the Indians, condemning their course.
Elder A. M. Lyman
reasoned at length on the principle of plural marriage; showing the objects for which marriage was instituted; depleting the misery, degradation and corruption to which women are subjected under the dominant social system in the world; demonstrating that honorable marriage would save them from those evils and declaring that he did not speak in support of the principles of plural marriage, for it was true and did not need his support, but simply that it might be more generally understood.
reasoned at length on the principle of plural marriage; showing the objects for which marriage was instituted; depleting the misery, degradation and corruption to which women are subjected under the dominant social system in the world; demonstrating that honorable marriage would save them from those evils and declaring that he did not speak in support of the principles of plural marriage, for it was true and did not need his support, but simply that it might be more generally understood.
Marriage: Its Benefits
Remarks by Elder Amasa M. Lyman, delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 5, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
I am glad to enjoy the privileges that are extended to us on this occasion, and to meet with my friends, and to unite with my brethren in the ministry to render the occasion instructive and profitable. Whether we have much or little to say with regard to the great good there is to be secured and enjoyed, I would hope that in our efforts we might be blessed and favored in making some suggestions to the audience that will be calculated to awaken in their minds good thoughts that will lead them to God, and to a knowledge of the principles that are involved in its work.
From all I have been able to gather from observing the course taken by ministers in their labors for the enlightenment of the people, I have come to the conclusion that, perhaps, there are not very many who will be able of themselves, and within the limited circle of their personal labors and exertions, to tell everything, even if they should know it, and communicate all that may be communicated for the benefit of the people. I believe that the servants of God, in their efforts generally, reveal to the people the workings of their own minds, under the influences of the Spirit of God, and are able to bestow upon them for their comfort, encouragement, and aid in the great work in which they are engaged, the results of their experience, of their reflection and thought. The Gospel that we have received is something that, as I view it, bears a direct relationship to our condition here and hereafter, and that it proposes to so direct our actions and our conduct in life, that they may all be made to assume a proper character. When our actions are right they have the character of virtues, and virtues commend us to God and to one another. Virtue, when practiced by us, is the surest and best foundation that we can have for confidence, not only in God, but in ourselves, and in one another, a degree of which is necessary to our happiness, to our comfort and joy. It appears to me that the man or woman, whose course of life is such that he or she has no confidence in his or herself, properly can have but very little in God. As Brother Hyde has remarked, the time is near when we are to encounter the realities of our religion. I believe it is so. We have professed to receive the Gospel and have adopted our faith years ago. We have received more or less of a series of lessons that have been given to the Saints, from time to time, through the revelations of God, as they have been communicated to His people.
There is a feature in our religion that I have thought was but little understood; it is like many other things that would be of much more value to us if they were well understood; our understanding of it is limited as a people, and about that very feature in our religion I feel disposed to make a few suggestions, as the results of my own thoughts and reflections, and of all that has been opened up of the matter in my mind with regard to it. As this feature of our religion is now receiving considerable attention from the people of the United States, who have become deeply concerned in regard to it, probably it would be well if we talk a little about it ourselves, that they may not be the first to learn, the first to know that which we ought to know.
The question arises here, what is it that they have become concerned about? Not about our sins; but they have given us credit for a great many good things. They can but acknowledge that we have been brave in conquering the dangers of pioneering our way into an untried land and country; a land that was barren of comfort, barren of these things that were necessary to the sustaining of human life. They will compliment us today for our persevering industry, for the toil that we have endured, and for the perseverance that we have evinced in working our way, not to where we expected to find hidden treasures of gold and silver, but to the desert, to find a place so poor, so barren, and so forbidding in its aspect that none others would desire it, but that we might, in its desolation and isolation from the rest of the world, enjoy the poor privilege of living there without having our right questioned. They say we were brave. So we were: we had good reason to be so; we could not well be anything else. We encountered the desert with all its worthlessness and with all its unproductiveness, and we not only made bridges and roads, but we actually conquered the desert.
“Why do you not say that the Lord did it?” If I were to say the Lord did it, then would you not ask me how the Lord did it? I know how he did it, because I saw it done. The Lord led us out here, but I know that he walked us on our own feet all the weary miles of our journeyings until we reached our destination. I know that since all this our friends from the States have come out here, and can now partake of our hospitality and feast on the fruits of our labor, industry, and enterprise. They are pleased at finding a comfortable halfway house between the Atlantic and the Pacific, where they can rest, eat our fruit, and enjoy themselves; yet they smooth down the wrinkles upon their visages (the fruits of indwelling hate), look very grave, and returning home lie about us, and represent the people of Utah different from what they are.
We would suppose that they are blind with a holy horror, excited in them by the contemplation of a phantom which haunts their imaginations continually; they are afraid that the people in Utah will do wrong; they have got so far from the confines of Christian civilization and refinement that they are fearful, if they do not take some action in relation to the Saints, that they will go widely astray and perpetrate some great wrong. We have been asking them for years to admit us into the Union. Would they listen to us? No. Does our constant begging and praying for admittance into the Union ever awaken a feeling of sympathy in them towards us? It does not. Yet they make out to be so alarmed for our moral safety that they seem to have forgotten all the festering corruptions of the great cities of the east.
When the great nation with which we are connected politically begin to make our faith the subject of special legislation, is it not time that we should know and say something about it? They do not complain of any dishonesty and corruption among us; they do not tell us that the land is sowed broadcast with iniquity; they are not alarmed about this, but they are alarmed because men out here in Utah dare marry a wife honorably and fearlessly, and then publicly own her as his wife. This is all they complain of. If we will only ignore this, I do not know but they will admit us into the Union. Do you think we had better ignore this little bit of our religion, or have we really determined within ourselves, soundly and sentimentally, whether it is actually necessary, proper, right, and just. If we could only slip it off and get admitted into the Union, it might be an advantage to us; but if it is worth enough to cling to, even if we have to live out of the Union, we ought to know it, that we may be the better able to make a good trade when we do trade. It is simply plural marriage that they complain of. They corrupt themselves elsewhere all over the world; but out in Utah men actually presume to marry women honestly; they presume to consider this the best course to be pursued to maintain the purity of man and woman.
How shall we determine anything about the value of plural marriage, so that we may know whether it is worth anything or not? I do not know any way better than by determining first whether single marriage is of value or not—whether it extends any advantages or not to those who are parties to this relationship. Were we to ask the multitudes of the earth what the institution of marriage is worth, what the amount of blessing and salvation that accrues from it, to those who are parties to it, we should, no doubt, receive for a reply, “We do not know.” A man marries a wife to keep his house, to do the drudgery, to become a slave who shall do the labor about his place, and become the creature of his wants and wishes. Does he entertain any ideas of any value that pertains to the institution of marriage beyond this; if he does, it is but little. A great many men live in the world, and throughout all their lives they never appreciate the value of marriage in such a way as to ever induce them to marry; they think they can get along better in single life.
How can we be led to an understanding, in a limited degree, of the many advantages that result to men and women who are honorably married? Why, look at the evil and the corruption, and consequent wretchedness that curse the condition of that broad margin of women that never are made to feel the responsibility, comforts and blessings resulting from a pure, and healthy, and virtuous marriage. Where is this state of things to be found? In every Christian community that I know anything about. It is the root of that festering corruption that is eating out the core and vital energies, and sapping the foundation of life in the race of man. It is found in every community where it is declared that a man shall marry one wife only, and it shall be considered a virtue; but to marry a second wife while the first wife is alive, is considered a crime and punishable by confinement in prison, or the payment of a fine, because it is a sin. What, this in a Christian land? Yes, this in a Christian land! Christianity of the most approved kind is advocated where it exists. In the same thoroughfare the victims of corruption and vicious passion, and the devotees of Christianity jostle against each other. In the same locality edifices, whose lofty towers point to heaven, and wherein are held sacred the paraphernalia of Christian worship casts its lengthening shadows over the dens of corruption and crime, where the victims of passion and unhallowed lust live to drag out a miserable existence; in the reeking corruption which is the result of their own sins. The religious sanctuary and the brothel flourish together; they have their development there; in that land we see woman in her most wretched condition. We first see her in the morning of her life, innocent and pure—innocent as innocence itself, pure as the spirit that comes from God. In this condition we see her enter upon her life's journey. We meet with her when she has progressed, when she has trod far in the path of folly, degradation, wretchedness, and sin; but she is innocent no more. Are the blessings of home extended around her any more? No. Has she the blessings of the warm sympathy of kind friends any more? No; they are frigid and cold; the warm heart gushing out the blessings of friendship is closed against her; she is not fit to be associated with any more; she is unfit to be welcomed to the society of her more fortunate sisters; and, consequently, she is not welcome to return to a pure and better life, could a disposition be awakened in her to do so, and she seeks for the means of prolonging that worthless life as best she can find them. If she carries personal charms, they are to feed the wishes and satiate the appetite of the gloating libertine; for he will give her money. When those charms have faded from her form—when youth is passed and followed by decrepit old age, she becomes the loathsome thing that no one claims or desires, for which none manifests any warm sympathy and affectionate regard. This is the fate of a class of women who were born pure and innocent as you, my sisters, were born, situated as you were, bearing the same relationship to high heaven by creation as you bear, yet she drags out her miserable existence to her resting place, the grave, when death terminates her suffering and wretched existence; no father was there, no mother was there, no kind sister to weep over her departure, no brother had regard for her, no kindred relationship to pay so much as the tribute of a single tear on the spot where her frail dust found its last resting place.
This is the unwept, friendless fate of an extensive class of our erring sisters. What do we call them? Oh, she is merely “a common woman on the street,” “prostitute,” which means a woman, created by and bearing the image of God our Heavenly Father—a woman prostituted to become the victim of passion—passion unhallowed, impure passion in man who should have guarded her virtue with the most scrupulous care, with the most vigilant watchfulness—man who should ever have recognized in her his sister, who should have regarded her as the personification of the purity and innocence of heaven itself, and who should never have made her the victim of his unholy passion. But she has fallen, and this terminates her wretched career. If she leaves an offspring, the vile stain of bastardy is attached to it, and her children are cast out of society, like their disgraced mother; they are discarded and shunned by what is called refined and Christian society; no paternal provisions are made for them, no paternal care and anxiety is cherished in relation to them. The state only sees in them, if males, prospective soldiers, who for a little pay are marshaled to fight its battles, and bleed and die upon the battlefield. If any of them happened to be brave, can venture further and kill more than his associates, the probability is that he will gather to himself the honor, and the glory, and respect which his frail mother failed to secure.
This is the most favorable termination of the earthly career of that class of unfortunate women and their children. I appeal to you, who are honorable wives and mothers, if you do not think there is real, unmitigated misery in this? Or do you think that it is merely something of my picturing? I am not here to treat you to empty romance. The tithing of all the misery, wretchedness, and crime that exist among the female sex, or our race, in the great Christian cities and heathen cities of the world, cannot be told; it would be vain for me to undertake to tell it all. I have instanced what I have, that you who are wives and mothers may see something of what you have been saved from, by being blessed with the opportunity of becoming honorably married. You are saved from all the wretchedness which characterizes the life and death of your unfortunate sisters.
Does marriage possess any value, then? Would it not be a very good thing if the blessings arising from it, which you enjoy, could be extended to all? Why is it not so? Because monogamic Christianity says it shall not be extended to all. This Christianity is like the prophet's bed, “shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” I do not know that the prophet thought anything of Christianity as it now exists in the world, although this figure is very apt in its fitness to it. Comparing monogamic Christianity with the prophet's covering, it may be of a fine texture and good, as far as it goes, but it is decidedly too small. This is unquestionably the fault with a Christianity that does not extend the mantle of salvation to all who should be the recipients of its blessings. If all men and all women in a community were honorably married, you can readily understand one thing, that there would be no prostitution of women in that community, there would be an end of the corruption of man in that community, there would be no illegitimacy there. You can see, then, that it is only a question of advantages resulting from a pure marriage to all the inhabitants of any community, who can be blessed by such an institution of marriage; only introduce this, and the cause of all this sin and moral and physical degeneracy would have an end.
“But then,” says one, “is it right?” “We should have no objections to a plural marriage if we could only believe that it was right.” How in heaven's name you would have to feel, to feel that it is wrong, I cannot imagine. You say that when one wife is married to a man, there is in that transaction nothing but what is religious; nothing but what is godly, healthy, pure, and good; it is good enough to go to church with; it is something you can pray about; you can have it sanctified by the presence of the priest. It is sacred; it is so commendable that the most fastidious will hardly blush at the idea of a man marrying one wife. He who marries one wife is considered an honorable man, and his wife finds a place among honorable women, and their children are honored upon the same plane that is secured to them by the character and standing of their honored parents in the community. They have their entry into society; it smiles upon them and extends to them its patronage, and their path is the path of honor from the time they open their infant eyes and gaze upon the surrounding objects in the midst of which life to them has a beginning, and through all the subsequent stages of the lengthened way. These blessings come to them because their parents were honorably married and kept sacredly the vows that made them husband and wife. Their marriage was virtuous and just. What a pity it is that this state of things could not be extended to all. I allude to this single marriage because I want you, Latter-day Saints, that are before me today, to begin to think, if you never have, to begin to reason, if you never have, that you may know and understand, if it is only to a limited extent, the reasons that exist why marriage is a pure, holy, and saving institution.
Says one, “The Bible says it is.” But suppose the Bible did not say so, would that make any difference? If a woman were associated in the relationship of wife with an honorable man who kept his marriage vow, would it change the fact that there would be purity, innocence, truthfulness, and virtue in this that could not be found elsewhere—that could not occur without the same intimate relationship between man and woman—aside from the covenant that makes them man and wife.
We say, then, if this is the reason why in Heaven's wisdom it was ordained that man and woman should be married, it was simply to regulate the actions of man and woman in the most sacred, holy, high, and responsible relationships that exist between them, to preserve in man and woman the fountain of life in purity, that there might be given to earth a people in purity, and free from the taint of inherent corruption. How do I know that? Because that it only requires the careful and continued observance of the law of marriage, as God has revealed it, to preserve man and woman in purity.
Then what bearing has a pure marriage upon the interest of the world that it should be necessary to introduce it as one of the leading features in the great work of God, developed and established in this our day for the prosecution of his will and purposes in the salvation of mankind?
Has it any bearing at all upon the purity of man and upon the race? From the little reflection that I have bestowed upon the matter, I have learned to regard it as the world's great necessity—the great necessity of the race today, and it is God's greatest necessity in reference to the salvation of the world, and to the development of His universal empire of peace and righteousness over all the earth. Why? Because I have learned that there has been, and that there is still in existence, operating and producing its deadly effects, a system of physical degeneracy that is telling fearfully upon the history of the race.
The Bible tells us that men used to reach a longevity that extended to near a thousand years; this was near six thousand years ago. To say that this is not true would be to question the validity of the Bible, and I would not dare to do that, however presumptuous I may be in a thousand other things. We are descendants of that same race who enjoyed the blessing, if it was a blessing, of an extended longevity; yet the statistics of today relating to the average life of the human race show that it extends to a fraction over a quarter of a century. Should anybody be alarmed at this? If they do not know the causes which have led to it they will not be; but if they have a knowledge sufficient to understand that if the race has so degenerated, physically, in five thousand years that the term of a man's life is reduced from near a thousand years to a quarter of a century, the question would be awakened in their minds as to how narrow a margin of time is left for the continuation of our race on the earth before it becomes entirely extinct—that there will not be a man, woman, or child to awaken the cheerless condition of the desolate earth with the music of their voices and the light of their smiles. They have ceased to be.
It used to be told us when we were children that the world was coming to an end. We thought it was coming to an end; that something was about to be revealed from somewhere that would burn it up. We see that the world is actually approaching desolation, to a point beyond which it would not be possible for human life to be extended. Is there nothing alarming in this? To me there is. I pore over, in my own mind, what my prospects are as a servant of God. I have entered upon this work, which we denominate the work of God, and which comprises the building up of the kingdom of God and the extension of the government of God over all the earth, carrying with it the blessings of the rule of righteousness and peace, and it promises that I am going to be a prince and a ruler over countless millions of intelligent beings like myself. Where are they all coming from? Why, they will be your children. That cannot be; for as the human race is fast wearing to an end, there would not any of my children be left in a few generations more. You are, no doubt, mathematicians enough to see this. I give the Lord credit in my feelings for having known this long before I did; and hence I say that plural marriage is the great necessity of the age, because it is a means that God has introduced to check the physical corruption and decline of our race; to stop further contributions to the already fearful aggregate of corruption that has been developed as the result of sin in man and woman. What will that do? It will take off a great tax from the recuperative energies of the race by relieving them from the necessity of contending with increasing corruption beyond its present limits; that man may begin to live until he attain to the age of a tree, as he lived before he first began to sin and violate the laws of his being. It is to effect this that the Lord has introduced plural marriage. “But,” says one, “why do you not prove it from the Bible?” You can read the Bible yourselves. I want to know, see, read, and understand, as it is evinced in the physical condition of the race that these are truths, whether the books refer to them or not. If there was no revelation to reach us from foreign quarters, it is a revelation that is before our eyes; its truth is demonstrated within the circle of our own being—within the narrow limits of our own observation it is made plain, and we should understand and comprehend. When we know this, then we know what the Bible may say with regard to polygamy being true, because we find the evidence of it in truth itself. That is what polygamy is worth. It is simply an extension of pure marriage to all the social elements in the community, man and woman, that is all.
Who is it that says there is licentiousness connected with plural marriage? It is the libertine; that man that is corrupt himself; who has worshipped at the shrine of passion; whose passion clamors in his corrupt soul for victims. He dreams of it and talks of it; and because the Saints believe in a plurality of wives, he thinks there must certainly be a lack of moral purity there—virtue must be easy with the people that have more than one wife.
What do you think they have found out? After making experiments that have turned out rather futile, they have found out that with all their mistaken notions of their deluded fellow citizens in the mountains, the virtue of woman and the sanctity of the marriage relationship cannot be invaded with impunity—it is guarded with jealousy. The same men that were brave in coming over the plains, and energetic in making the roads and in building the bridges, etc., are still here, and continue to be brave. They have not dared so much in the past that they will stop daring now.
Are you going to say something in support of plural marriage? No. I do not wish anybody to tell that I have said a word by way of supporting and sustaining plural marriage. Are you ashamed of it? No. Do you love it? Yes, I love it because it is true, and stands alone, without my aid. “What are you talking about it for, then?” That you may understand the truth and know its value, and secure to yourselves the blessings that only can accrue from the knowledge of the truth. That doctrine is safe and can take care of itself; and if you make an application of the truth to yourselves, it will take care of you; it will secure you from corruption, wretchedness, and death, and give you life and immortality; while others will still sink under the accumulating weight of corruption, until they go down to hell.
“But,” says one, “I have been looking, but I have not seen much change that has taken place in consequence of the introduction of polygamy.” You are not a very close observer, perhaps. When the first edition of Federal officers came out here, we had hardly made a beginning in practical plurality of wives; however, it was awful times for them; they could only once in a while see a woman, and when they did see one, they inquired who she was. “O, she is Elder such a one's wife.” “Who is that woman over yonder?” “She is brother so and so's wife.” “Who is that woman that is crossing the street?” “She is Bishop such a one's wife.” “O, the devil, the women are all married out here.” They begin to look round for a peculiar kind of institution that flourishes so well in Christendom, where such prevail, where they make ample provisions for the gratification of lustful passion; no odds how foul, black, and damning in its consequences, still it can find its gratification at those favored institutions. Those Federal gentlemen began to look for similar accommodations in Utah; but instead of finding them they found schoolhouses and houses for the public worship of God, dedicated to the best interests of humanity, for the improvement of the condition of our race. Their peculiar institutions they could not find here, and they could not stay; they went to Washington, and there they began to send up awful howls about the sins of Utah, and the necessity of active measures by the general government to chastise the Mormons in Utah.
How far they have succeeded is evident. The great Buchanan war brought the flower of the army of the United States out here; the bran and shorts were left behind. They came to correct the poor misguided Mormons. For making prostitutes of the women? No. There are plenty of them at home; but the Mormons make wives of them, and this awakened all their sense of horror. It is this that excites our friends in the east—because we think more and better of women than they do. That is the foundation of all the difficulty; they do not complain of us for anything else now. When the C. V.'s from the west came out here they did not succeed any better. Then they thought they would try the negro. He got part way out here, got tired, and they turned him out. What they will do next to correct our morals is not for me to say. They may tell us that we ought to demolish our schoolhouses and put up houses of assignation, and keep houses of accommodation, such as travelers can find in other countries. They are well pleased with our potatoes and johnny cake, but they would be still better pleased if we would have the other luxury.
We fought our way to this country against all the hardships and obstacles that stood in our path, and, through God's blessing, we have overcome them; we have cultivated the land and done the best that we could under the circumstances, and we have provided for ourselves and for our wives and children as well as we could, and we have been contented. If the husbands of Utah were poor, their wives were willing to share that poverty with them; they were willing to nibble a living from the same dry crust, out of the same stinted fare that we partook of, because they were our wives, and we regarded them as honorable and as good as ourselves, if they behaved as well. This our friends do not like. Our business here in the mountains is to develop a community in which man and woman shall find, through the extension of honorable, pure, just, and virtuous marriage, the legitimate position that Heaven ordained them to occupy as wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, and a response to every requirement of nature, without stepping aside from the path of virtue and honor.
That is what God designed when he commenced this work—“Why did He not introduce it at the very commencement of this work?” Because He could not—because our ears were not open to hear it—our prejudices would not allow us to receive it. If I had been talked to about plurality of wives when I was baptized into the Church, the Lord may know, but I do not know what I would have done. I had to go wandering over the world preaching the Gospel years after, had to work longer than Jacob did for a wife to get myself in that state of mind that the Lord dare name the doctrine to me. We were not aware that any such a thing as plural marriage had to be introduced into the world; but the Lord said it after a while, and we obeyed the best we knew how, and, no doubt, made many crooked paths in our ignorance. We were only children, and the Lord was preparing us for an introduction to the principles of salvation. “What, the principles of salvation connected with marriage?” Yes; because they are nowhere else. “Will not our preaching save us, our going to Church, and our paying tithing?” People have been preaching, praying, paying tithes, building cathedrals and churches, and the deadly work of physical degeneracy is still going on until the race is nearly upon the brink of extinction. Christianity, as it now is, and has been for centuries, has proved entirely insufficient to stop the great evil—to check it in its fearful growth.
The Lord understood this when he talked to the people of Nephi: He told them they should have but one wife, and concubines they should have none. Why would He not allow them to have concubines? I suppose it was because He delighted in the chastity of women. This was simply avowing His feeling with regard to that matter. Concubinage was displeasing in His sight. He left them at liberty to have a wife, but concubines they should have none; informing them that when He wanted His people to raise up seed unto Him, and if it was necessary they should have many wives He would command them. That is simply what He has done. He has commanded us. It is well enough now for the brethren and sisters who have been in practical polygamy for many years to begin to understand something of the nature and object of the institution, that they may not trade it off simply for admittance into the Union, or for anything whatever that may be offered for its exchange. However their enemies may plead to the contrary, the Saints are gathered together from all the world, that the provisions of a virtuous marriage may be extended to all the social element in the community, and that by this there should cease to be developed in that community the curse of woman's prostitution or man's corruption, and where mothers in Zion can make it their business to teach their children the way in which they should go; to implant in early childhood principles of truth; to lead them to God; to grow around the hearth like plants of righteousness, that the saying of the old preacher may be verified, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
We are not a numerous people, but we are more numerous than when the Lord told Adam and Eve to be fruitful, and multiply and fill this their earthly inheritance with intellectual beings like themselves. How well that first pair succeeded is evidenced here today. We need not be discouraged, for we can count thousands that are pledged to this work, which is established to re-people the world, to fill the earth with virtuous, pure, and holy men and women. That is the work that devolves upon us. Should every woman be married? Every woman should be married for the same reasons that one woman is married, namely, to subserve the same high, healthy, and Godlike objects of our being. And for the same high purpose should every man be married.
There are certain facts of our existence which we cannot escape from. We are men and women. The very reason why I have spoken here today is that we are men and women; we have come here with men's and women's natures, passions, and appetites; and if we are ever saved in heaven, we shall be saved as men and women. Our business here is to save men and women by teaching them to live lives of purity. These are self-evident truths. When we count up the men and women that are in the world, we shall find a broad margin more of women than men; and there is a numerical difference in the sexes, as they are developed in our community and every other community. Women must be saved, if the task should devolve on a man to marry two or three of them, and treat them as honorable wives, bless them, and bless their children, provide for them, and teach them principles of purity. When we who made this feeble beginning in that matter can bear the struggle no longer, we will call around us our stalwart sons and daughters, and pledge them before high heaven to devote themselves forever, and their children after them, to the great work of man's regeneration.
Let us get the body improved first, that the spirit may live and dwell in a pure tabernacle. When this is done, we can go and cultivate the spirit as much as is needful. The world wants a religion that will address itself to this task, because it will enter into the relationship that exists between man and woman, that will purify them and establish within them the seed of eternal life. Let us pray always and never faint, and ask God to bless us in all that we do, and never do anything that is not sufficiently holy that we can ask God to bless; carrying the purity of Heaven's religion and ordained principles of salvation into every relationship of our lives, and let the Zion of our God extend forth upon all the earth from this point. What will become of the world? They will live in their corruption until they sink and die in it. Our blessings are to build up the kingdom of God in purity and in its perfection in these mountains. This is our work, and may God help us, is my prayer, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir. Meeting dismissed with prayer by Elder Ezra T. Benson.
Remarks by Elder Amasa M. Lyman, delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 5, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
I am glad to enjoy the privileges that are extended to us on this occasion, and to meet with my friends, and to unite with my brethren in the ministry to render the occasion instructive and profitable. Whether we have much or little to say with regard to the great good there is to be secured and enjoyed, I would hope that in our efforts we might be blessed and favored in making some suggestions to the audience that will be calculated to awaken in their minds good thoughts that will lead them to God, and to a knowledge of the principles that are involved in its work.
From all I have been able to gather from observing the course taken by ministers in their labors for the enlightenment of the people, I have come to the conclusion that, perhaps, there are not very many who will be able of themselves, and within the limited circle of their personal labors and exertions, to tell everything, even if they should know it, and communicate all that may be communicated for the benefit of the people. I believe that the servants of God, in their efforts generally, reveal to the people the workings of their own minds, under the influences of the Spirit of God, and are able to bestow upon them for their comfort, encouragement, and aid in the great work in which they are engaged, the results of their experience, of their reflection and thought. The Gospel that we have received is something that, as I view it, bears a direct relationship to our condition here and hereafter, and that it proposes to so direct our actions and our conduct in life, that they may all be made to assume a proper character. When our actions are right they have the character of virtues, and virtues commend us to God and to one another. Virtue, when practiced by us, is the surest and best foundation that we can have for confidence, not only in God, but in ourselves, and in one another, a degree of which is necessary to our happiness, to our comfort and joy. It appears to me that the man or woman, whose course of life is such that he or she has no confidence in his or herself, properly can have but very little in God. As Brother Hyde has remarked, the time is near when we are to encounter the realities of our religion. I believe it is so. We have professed to receive the Gospel and have adopted our faith years ago. We have received more or less of a series of lessons that have been given to the Saints, from time to time, through the revelations of God, as they have been communicated to His people.
There is a feature in our religion that I have thought was but little understood; it is like many other things that would be of much more value to us if they were well understood; our understanding of it is limited as a people, and about that very feature in our religion I feel disposed to make a few suggestions, as the results of my own thoughts and reflections, and of all that has been opened up of the matter in my mind with regard to it. As this feature of our religion is now receiving considerable attention from the people of the United States, who have become deeply concerned in regard to it, probably it would be well if we talk a little about it ourselves, that they may not be the first to learn, the first to know that which we ought to know.
The question arises here, what is it that they have become concerned about? Not about our sins; but they have given us credit for a great many good things. They can but acknowledge that we have been brave in conquering the dangers of pioneering our way into an untried land and country; a land that was barren of comfort, barren of these things that were necessary to the sustaining of human life. They will compliment us today for our persevering industry, for the toil that we have endured, and for the perseverance that we have evinced in working our way, not to where we expected to find hidden treasures of gold and silver, but to the desert, to find a place so poor, so barren, and so forbidding in its aspect that none others would desire it, but that we might, in its desolation and isolation from the rest of the world, enjoy the poor privilege of living there without having our right questioned. They say we were brave. So we were: we had good reason to be so; we could not well be anything else. We encountered the desert with all its worthlessness and with all its unproductiveness, and we not only made bridges and roads, but we actually conquered the desert.
“Why do you not say that the Lord did it?” If I were to say the Lord did it, then would you not ask me how the Lord did it? I know how he did it, because I saw it done. The Lord led us out here, but I know that he walked us on our own feet all the weary miles of our journeyings until we reached our destination. I know that since all this our friends from the States have come out here, and can now partake of our hospitality and feast on the fruits of our labor, industry, and enterprise. They are pleased at finding a comfortable halfway house between the Atlantic and the Pacific, where they can rest, eat our fruit, and enjoy themselves; yet they smooth down the wrinkles upon their visages (the fruits of indwelling hate), look very grave, and returning home lie about us, and represent the people of Utah different from what they are.
We would suppose that they are blind with a holy horror, excited in them by the contemplation of a phantom which haunts their imaginations continually; they are afraid that the people in Utah will do wrong; they have got so far from the confines of Christian civilization and refinement that they are fearful, if they do not take some action in relation to the Saints, that they will go widely astray and perpetrate some great wrong. We have been asking them for years to admit us into the Union. Would they listen to us? No. Does our constant begging and praying for admittance into the Union ever awaken a feeling of sympathy in them towards us? It does not. Yet they make out to be so alarmed for our moral safety that they seem to have forgotten all the festering corruptions of the great cities of the east.
When the great nation with which we are connected politically begin to make our faith the subject of special legislation, is it not time that we should know and say something about it? They do not complain of any dishonesty and corruption among us; they do not tell us that the land is sowed broadcast with iniquity; they are not alarmed about this, but they are alarmed because men out here in Utah dare marry a wife honorably and fearlessly, and then publicly own her as his wife. This is all they complain of. If we will only ignore this, I do not know but they will admit us into the Union. Do you think we had better ignore this little bit of our religion, or have we really determined within ourselves, soundly and sentimentally, whether it is actually necessary, proper, right, and just. If we could only slip it off and get admitted into the Union, it might be an advantage to us; but if it is worth enough to cling to, even if we have to live out of the Union, we ought to know it, that we may be the better able to make a good trade when we do trade. It is simply plural marriage that they complain of. They corrupt themselves elsewhere all over the world; but out in Utah men actually presume to marry women honestly; they presume to consider this the best course to be pursued to maintain the purity of man and woman.
How shall we determine anything about the value of plural marriage, so that we may know whether it is worth anything or not? I do not know any way better than by determining first whether single marriage is of value or not—whether it extends any advantages or not to those who are parties to this relationship. Were we to ask the multitudes of the earth what the institution of marriage is worth, what the amount of blessing and salvation that accrues from it, to those who are parties to it, we should, no doubt, receive for a reply, “We do not know.” A man marries a wife to keep his house, to do the drudgery, to become a slave who shall do the labor about his place, and become the creature of his wants and wishes. Does he entertain any ideas of any value that pertains to the institution of marriage beyond this; if he does, it is but little. A great many men live in the world, and throughout all their lives they never appreciate the value of marriage in such a way as to ever induce them to marry; they think they can get along better in single life.
How can we be led to an understanding, in a limited degree, of the many advantages that result to men and women who are honorably married? Why, look at the evil and the corruption, and consequent wretchedness that curse the condition of that broad margin of women that never are made to feel the responsibility, comforts and blessings resulting from a pure, and healthy, and virtuous marriage. Where is this state of things to be found? In every Christian community that I know anything about. It is the root of that festering corruption that is eating out the core and vital energies, and sapping the foundation of life in the race of man. It is found in every community where it is declared that a man shall marry one wife only, and it shall be considered a virtue; but to marry a second wife while the first wife is alive, is considered a crime and punishable by confinement in prison, or the payment of a fine, because it is a sin. What, this in a Christian land? Yes, this in a Christian land! Christianity of the most approved kind is advocated where it exists. In the same thoroughfare the victims of corruption and vicious passion, and the devotees of Christianity jostle against each other. In the same locality edifices, whose lofty towers point to heaven, and wherein are held sacred the paraphernalia of Christian worship casts its lengthening shadows over the dens of corruption and crime, where the victims of passion and unhallowed lust live to drag out a miserable existence; in the reeking corruption which is the result of their own sins. The religious sanctuary and the brothel flourish together; they have their development there; in that land we see woman in her most wretched condition. We first see her in the morning of her life, innocent and pure—innocent as innocence itself, pure as the spirit that comes from God. In this condition we see her enter upon her life's journey. We meet with her when she has progressed, when she has trod far in the path of folly, degradation, wretchedness, and sin; but she is innocent no more. Are the blessings of home extended around her any more? No. Has she the blessings of the warm sympathy of kind friends any more? No; they are frigid and cold; the warm heart gushing out the blessings of friendship is closed against her; she is not fit to be associated with any more; she is unfit to be welcomed to the society of her more fortunate sisters; and, consequently, she is not welcome to return to a pure and better life, could a disposition be awakened in her to do so, and she seeks for the means of prolonging that worthless life as best she can find them. If she carries personal charms, they are to feed the wishes and satiate the appetite of the gloating libertine; for he will give her money. When those charms have faded from her form—when youth is passed and followed by decrepit old age, she becomes the loathsome thing that no one claims or desires, for which none manifests any warm sympathy and affectionate regard. This is the fate of a class of women who were born pure and innocent as you, my sisters, were born, situated as you were, bearing the same relationship to high heaven by creation as you bear, yet she drags out her miserable existence to her resting place, the grave, when death terminates her suffering and wretched existence; no father was there, no mother was there, no kind sister to weep over her departure, no brother had regard for her, no kindred relationship to pay so much as the tribute of a single tear on the spot where her frail dust found its last resting place.
This is the unwept, friendless fate of an extensive class of our erring sisters. What do we call them? Oh, she is merely “a common woman on the street,” “prostitute,” which means a woman, created by and bearing the image of God our Heavenly Father—a woman prostituted to become the victim of passion—passion unhallowed, impure passion in man who should have guarded her virtue with the most scrupulous care, with the most vigilant watchfulness—man who should ever have recognized in her his sister, who should have regarded her as the personification of the purity and innocence of heaven itself, and who should never have made her the victim of his unholy passion. But she has fallen, and this terminates her wretched career. If she leaves an offspring, the vile stain of bastardy is attached to it, and her children are cast out of society, like their disgraced mother; they are discarded and shunned by what is called refined and Christian society; no paternal provisions are made for them, no paternal care and anxiety is cherished in relation to them. The state only sees in them, if males, prospective soldiers, who for a little pay are marshaled to fight its battles, and bleed and die upon the battlefield. If any of them happened to be brave, can venture further and kill more than his associates, the probability is that he will gather to himself the honor, and the glory, and respect which his frail mother failed to secure.
This is the most favorable termination of the earthly career of that class of unfortunate women and their children. I appeal to you, who are honorable wives and mothers, if you do not think there is real, unmitigated misery in this? Or do you think that it is merely something of my picturing? I am not here to treat you to empty romance. The tithing of all the misery, wretchedness, and crime that exist among the female sex, or our race, in the great Christian cities and heathen cities of the world, cannot be told; it would be vain for me to undertake to tell it all. I have instanced what I have, that you who are wives and mothers may see something of what you have been saved from, by being blessed with the opportunity of becoming honorably married. You are saved from all the wretchedness which characterizes the life and death of your unfortunate sisters.
Does marriage possess any value, then? Would it not be a very good thing if the blessings arising from it, which you enjoy, could be extended to all? Why is it not so? Because monogamic Christianity says it shall not be extended to all. This Christianity is like the prophet's bed, “shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” I do not know that the prophet thought anything of Christianity as it now exists in the world, although this figure is very apt in its fitness to it. Comparing monogamic Christianity with the prophet's covering, it may be of a fine texture and good, as far as it goes, but it is decidedly too small. This is unquestionably the fault with a Christianity that does not extend the mantle of salvation to all who should be the recipients of its blessings. If all men and all women in a community were honorably married, you can readily understand one thing, that there would be no prostitution of women in that community, there would be an end of the corruption of man in that community, there would be no illegitimacy there. You can see, then, that it is only a question of advantages resulting from a pure marriage to all the inhabitants of any community, who can be blessed by such an institution of marriage; only introduce this, and the cause of all this sin and moral and physical degeneracy would have an end.
“But then,” says one, “is it right?” “We should have no objections to a plural marriage if we could only believe that it was right.” How in heaven's name you would have to feel, to feel that it is wrong, I cannot imagine. You say that when one wife is married to a man, there is in that transaction nothing but what is religious; nothing but what is godly, healthy, pure, and good; it is good enough to go to church with; it is something you can pray about; you can have it sanctified by the presence of the priest. It is sacred; it is so commendable that the most fastidious will hardly blush at the idea of a man marrying one wife. He who marries one wife is considered an honorable man, and his wife finds a place among honorable women, and their children are honored upon the same plane that is secured to them by the character and standing of their honored parents in the community. They have their entry into society; it smiles upon them and extends to them its patronage, and their path is the path of honor from the time they open their infant eyes and gaze upon the surrounding objects in the midst of which life to them has a beginning, and through all the subsequent stages of the lengthened way. These blessings come to them because their parents were honorably married and kept sacredly the vows that made them husband and wife. Their marriage was virtuous and just. What a pity it is that this state of things could not be extended to all. I allude to this single marriage because I want you, Latter-day Saints, that are before me today, to begin to think, if you never have, to begin to reason, if you never have, that you may know and understand, if it is only to a limited extent, the reasons that exist why marriage is a pure, holy, and saving institution.
Says one, “The Bible says it is.” But suppose the Bible did not say so, would that make any difference? If a woman were associated in the relationship of wife with an honorable man who kept his marriage vow, would it change the fact that there would be purity, innocence, truthfulness, and virtue in this that could not be found elsewhere—that could not occur without the same intimate relationship between man and woman—aside from the covenant that makes them man and wife.
We say, then, if this is the reason why in Heaven's wisdom it was ordained that man and woman should be married, it was simply to regulate the actions of man and woman in the most sacred, holy, high, and responsible relationships that exist between them, to preserve in man and woman the fountain of life in purity, that there might be given to earth a people in purity, and free from the taint of inherent corruption. How do I know that? Because that it only requires the careful and continued observance of the law of marriage, as God has revealed it, to preserve man and woman in purity.
Then what bearing has a pure marriage upon the interest of the world that it should be necessary to introduce it as one of the leading features in the great work of God, developed and established in this our day for the prosecution of his will and purposes in the salvation of mankind?
Has it any bearing at all upon the purity of man and upon the race? From the little reflection that I have bestowed upon the matter, I have learned to regard it as the world's great necessity—the great necessity of the race today, and it is God's greatest necessity in reference to the salvation of the world, and to the development of His universal empire of peace and righteousness over all the earth. Why? Because I have learned that there has been, and that there is still in existence, operating and producing its deadly effects, a system of physical degeneracy that is telling fearfully upon the history of the race.
The Bible tells us that men used to reach a longevity that extended to near a thousand years; this was near six thousand years ago. To say that this is not true would be to question the validity of the Bible, and I would not dare to do that, however presumptuous I may be in a thousand other things. We are descendants of that same race who enjoyed the blessing, if it was a blessing, of an extended longevity; yet the statistics of today relating to the average life of the human race show that it extends to a fraction over a quarter of a century. Should anybody be alarmed at this? If they do not know the causes which have led to it they will not be; but if they have a knowledge sufficient to understand that if the race has so degenerated, physically, in five thousand years that the term of a man's life is reduced from near a thousand years to a quarter of a century, the question would be awakened in their minds as to how narrow a margin of time is left for the continuation of our race on the earth before it becomes entirely extinct—that there will not be a man, woman, or child to awaken the cheerless condition of the desolate earth with the music of their voices and the light of their smiles. They have ceased to be.
It used to be told us when we were children that the world was coming to an end. We thought it was coming to an end; that something was about to be revealed from somewhere that would burn it up. We see that the world is actually approaching desolation, to a point beyond which it would not be possible for human life to be extended. Is there nothing alarming in this? To me there is. I pore over, in my own mind, what my prospects are as a servant of God. I have entered upon this work, which we denominate the work of God, and which comprises the building up of the kingdom of God and the extension of the government of God over all the earth, carrying with it the blessings of the rule of righteousness and peace, and it promises that I am going to be a prince and a ruler over countless millions of intelligent beings like myself. Where are they all coming from? Why, they will be your children. That cannot be; for as the human race is fast wearing to an end, there would not any of my children be left in a few generations more. You are, no doubt, mathematicians enough to see this. I give the Lord credit in my feelings for having known this long before I did; and hence I say that plural marriage is the great necessity of the age, because it is a means that God has introduced to check the physical corruption and decline of our race; to stop further contributions to the already fearful aggregate of corruption that has been developed as the result of sin in man and woman. What will that do? It will take off a great tax from the recuperative energies of the race by relieving them from the necessity of contending with increasing corruption beyond its present limits; that man may begin to live until he attain to the age of a tree, as he lived before he first began to sin and violate the laws of his being. It is to effect this that the Lord has introduced plural marriage. “But,” says one, “why do you not prove it from the Bible?” You can read the Bible yourselves. I want to know, see, read, and understand, as it is evinced in the physical condition of the race that these are truths, whether the books refer to them or not. If there was no revelation to reach us from foreign quarters, it is a revelation that is before our eyes; its truth is demonstrated within the circle of our own being—within the narrow limits of our own observation it is made plain, and we should understand and comprehend. When we know this, then we know what the Bible may say with regard to polygamy being true, because we find the evidence of it in truth itself. That is what polygamy is worth. It is simply an extension of pure marriage to all the social elements in the community, man and woman, that is all.
Who is it that says there is licentiousness connected with plural marriage? It is the libertine; that man that is corrupt himself; who has worshipped at the shrine of passion; whose passion clamors in his corrupt soul for victims. He dreams of it and talks of it; and because the Saints believe in a plurality of wives, he thinks there must certainly be a lack of moral purity there—virtue must be easy with the people that have more than one wife.
What do you think they have found out? After making experiments that have turned out rather futile, they have found out that with all their mistaken notions of their deluded fellow citizens in the mountains, the virtue of woman and the sanctity of the marriage relationship cannot be invaded with impunity—it is guarded with jealousy. The same men that were brave in coming over the plains, and energetic in making the roads and in building the bridges, etc., are still here, and continue to be brave. They have not dared so much in the past that they will stop daring now.
Are you going to say something in support of plural marriage? No. I do not wish anybody to tell that I have said a word by way of supporting and sustaining plural marriage. Are you ashamed of it? No. Do you love it? Yes, I love it because it is true, and stands alone, without my aid. “What are you talking about it for, then?” That you may understand the truth and know its value, and secure to yourselves the blessings that only can accrue from the knowledge of the truth. That doctrine is safe and can take care of itself; and if you make an application of the truth to yourselves, it will take care of you; it will secure you from corruption, wretchedness, and death, and give you life and immortality; while others will still sink under the accumulating weight of corruption, until they go down to hell.
“But,” says one, “I have been looking, but I have not seen much change that has taken place in consequence of the introduction of polygamy.” You are not a very close observer, perhaps. When the first edition of Federal officers came out here, we had hardly made a beginning in practical plurality of wives; however, it was awful times for them; they could only once in a while see a woman, and when they did see one, they inquired who she was. “O, she is Elder such a one's wife.” “Who is that woman over yonder?” “She is brother so and so's wife.” “Who is that woman that is crossing the street?” “She is Bishop such a one's wife.” “O, the devil, the women are all married out here.” They begin to look round for a peculiar kind of institution that flourishes so well in Christendom, where such prevail, where they make ample provisions for the gratification of lustful passion; no odds how foul, black, and damning in its consequences, still it can find its gratification at those favored institutions. Those Federal gentlemen began to look for similar accommodations in Utah; but instead of finding them they found schoolhouses and houses for the public worship of God, dedicated to the best interests of humanity, for the improvement of the condition of our race. Their peculiar institutions they could not find here, and they could not stay; they went to Washington, and there they began to send up awful howls about the sins of Utah, and the necessity of active measures by the general government to chastise the Mormons in Utah.
How far they have succeeded is evident. The great Buchanan war brought the flower of the army of the United States out here; the bran and shorts were left behind. They came to correct the poor misguided Mormons. For making prostitutes of the women? No. There are plenty of them at home; but the Mormons make wives of them, and this awakened all their sense of horror. It is this that excites our friends in the east—because we think more and better of women than they do. That is the foundation of all the difficulty; they do not complain of us for anything else now. When the C. V.'s from the west came out here they did not succeed any better. Then they thought they would try the negro. He got part way out here, got tired, and they turned him out. What they will do next to correct our morals is not for me to say. They may tell us that we ought to demolish our schoolhouses and put up houses of assignation, and keep houses of accommodation, such as travelers can find in other countries. They are well pleased with our potatoes and johnny cake, but they would be still better pleased if we would have the other luxury.
We fought our way to this country against all the hardships and obstacles that stood in our path, and, through God's blessing, we have overcome them; we have cultivated the land and done the best that we could under the circumstances, and we have provided for ourselves and for our wives and children as well as we could, and we have been contented. If the husbands of Utah were poor, their wives were willing to share that poverty with them; they were willing to nibble a living from the same dry crust, out of the same stinted fare that we partook of, because they were our wives, and we regarded them as honorable and as good as ourselves, if they behaved as well. This our friends do not like. Our business here in the mountains is to develop a community in which man and woman shall find, through the extension of honorable, pure, just, and virtuous marriage, the legitimate position that Heaven ordained them to occupy as wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, and a response to every requirement of nature, without stepping aside from the path of virtue and honor.
That is what God designed when he commenced this work—“Why did He not introduce it at the very commencement of this work?” Because He could not—because our ears were not open to hear it—our prejudices would not allow us to receive it. If I had been talked to about plurality of wives when I was baptized into the Church, the Lord may know, but I do not know what I would have done. I had to go wandering over the world preaching the Gospel years after, had to work longer than Jacob did for a wife to get myself in that state of mind that the Lord dare name the doctrine to me. We were not aware that any such a thing as plural marriage had to be introduced into the world; but the Lord said it after a while, and we obeyed the best we knew how, and, no doubt, made many crooked paths in our ignorance. We were only children, and the Lord was preparing us for an introduction to the principles of salvation. “What, the principles of salvation connected with marriage?” Yes; because they are nowhere else. “Will not our preaching save us, our going to Church, and our paying tithing?” People have been preaching, praying, paying tithes, building cathedrals and churches, and the deadly work of physical degeneracy is still going on until the race is nearly upon the brink of extinction. Christianity, as it now is, and has been for centuries, has proved entirely insufficient to stop the great evil—to check it in its fearful growth.
The Lord understood this when he talked to the people of Nephi: He told them they should have but one wife, and concubines they should have none. Why would He not allow them to have concubines? I suppose it was because He delighted in the chastity of women. This was simply avowing His feeling with regard to that matter. Concubinage was displeasing in His sight. He left them at liberty to have a wife, but concubines they should have none; informing them that when He wanted His people to raise up seed unto Him, and if it was necessary they should have many wives He would command them. That is simply what He has done. He has commanded us. It is well enough now for the brethren and sisters who have been in practical polygamy for many years to begin to understand something of the nature and object of the institution, that they may not trade it off simply for admittance into the Union, or for anything whatever that may be offered for its exchange. However their enemies may plead to the contrary, the Saints are gathered together from all the world, that the provisions of a virtuous marriage may be extended to all the social element in the community, and that by this there should cease to be developed in that community the curse of woman's prostitution or man's corruption, and where mothers in Zion can make it their business to teach their children the way in which they should go; to implant in early childhood principles of truth; to lead them to God; to grow around the hearth like plants of righteousness, that the saying of the old preacher may be verified, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
We are not a numerous people, but we are more numerous than when the Lord told Adam and Eve to be fruitful, and multiply and fill this their earthly inheritance with intellectual beings like themselves. How well that first pair succeeded is evidenced here today. We need not be discouraged, for we can count thousands that are pledged to this work, which is established to re-people the world, to fill the earth with virtuous, pure, and holy men and women. That is the work that devolves upon us. Should every woman be married? Every woman should be married for the same reasons that one woman is married, namely, to subserve the same high, healthy, and Godlike objects of our being. And for the same high purpose should every man be married.
There are certain facts of our existence which we cannot escape from. We are men and women. The very reason why I have spoken here today is that we are men and women; we have come here with men's and women's natures, passions, and appetites; and if we are ever saved in heaven, we shall be saved as men and women. Our business here is to save men and women by teaching them to live lives of purity. These are self-evident truths. When we count up the men and women that are in the world, we shall find a broad margin more of women than men; and there is a numerical difference in the sexes, as they are developed in our community and every other community. Women must be saved, if the task should devolve on a man to marry two or three of them, and treat them as honorable wives, bless them, and bless their children, provide for them, and teach them principles of purity. When we who made this feeble beginning in that matter can bear the struggle no longer, we will call around us our stalwart sons and daughters, and pledge them before high heaven to devote themselves forever, and their children after them, to the great work of man's regeneration.
Let us get the body improved first, that the spirit may live and dwell in a pure tabernacle. When this is done, we can go and cultivate the spirit as much as is needful. The world wants a religion that will address itself to this task, because it will enter into the relationship that exists between man and woman, that will purify them and establish within them the seed of eternal life. Let us pray always and never faint, and ask God to bless us in all that we do, and never do anything that is not sufficiently holy that we can ask God to bless; carrying the purity of Heaven's religion and ordained principles of salvation into every relationship of our lives, and let the Zion of our God extend forth upon all the earth from this point. What will become of the world? They will live in their corruption until they sink and die in it. Our blessings are to build up the kingdom of God in purity and in its perfection in these mountains. This is our work, and may God help us, is my prayer, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir. Meeting dismissed with prayer by Elder Ezra T. Benson.
CONFERENCE
During the thirty-sixth annual Conference, which closed on Sunday afternoon, and the two days' meeting which preceded it, the Holy Spirit was poured out in much abundance on both speakers and people. The instructions were excellent, seasonable, and characterized by a plainness and power which the inspiration of Heaven alone could bestow. Many principles were treated upon to the edification of the Saints; and the people were greatly blessed before the Lord in assembling in Conference capacity.
The dense masses that filled the Tabernacle, crowded the aisles and blocked up the windows and doorways, with the crowds that were compelled to remain outside or go away, urged, in an unmistakable manner, the necessity of soon having the new Tabernacle in a fit condition to meet in. We hope that the desire of our Presidency may be realized, that our semi-annual Conference, in October next, will be held in it. But we expect that however large the place may be that is built for the Saints to assemble in, it will be found, before it is long constructed, that it is too small to accommodate the gathering thousands of Zion. The work of God in the last days is onward and upward, growing and spreading with increasing vigor and rapidity.
THIRTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE.
Conference convened in the Tabernacle, G. S. L. City, on Friday, April 6th, 1866, at 10 a.m., President Brigham Young presiding.
There were on the stand, Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Daniel H. Wells, the First Presidency;
Orson Hyde, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards and George Q. Cannon, of the Twelve Apostles;
John Smith, Patriarch;
Joseph Young, Levi W. Hancock, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge and John Van Cott, of the First Presidency of the Seventies;
Edwin D. Wooley and Samuel W. Richards, of the Presidency of the High Priests Quorum;
Daniel Spencer, David Fullmer and George B. Wallace, the Presidency of this Stake of Zion;
Edward Hunter, Leonard W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, the Presidency of the Bishopric;
George D. Watt and Edward L. Sloan, Reporters;
with a great many Bishops and Elders.
The Tabernacle choir led by Elder Robert Sands, occupied the usual place; the American Fork choir was in front of the stand and directly under it, led by Elder E. Hunter.
Singing "Sweet is the work my God, my king," by the Tabernacle choir.
President H. C. Kimball prayed.
American Fork choir sang "Wake the song of jubilee."
During the thirty-sixth annual Conference, which closed on Sunday afternoon, and the two days' meeting which preceded it, the Holy Spirit was poured out in much abundance on both speakers and people. The instructions were excellent, seasonable, and characterized by a plainness and power which the inspiration of Heaven alone could bestow. Many principles were treated upon to the edification of the Saints; and the people were greatly blessed before the Lord in assembling in Conference capacity.
The dense masses that filled the Tabernacle, crowded the aisles and blocked up the windows and doorways, with the crowds that were compelled to remain outside or go away, urged, in an unmistakable manner, the necessity of soon having the new Tabernacle in a fit condition to meet in. We hope that the desire of our Presidency may be realized, that our semi-annual Conference, in October next, will be held in it. But we expect that however large the place may be that is built for the Saints to assemble in, it will be found, before it is long constructed, that it is too small to accommodate the gathering thousands of Zion. The work of God in the last days is onward and upward, growing and spreading with increasing vigor and rapidity.
THIRTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE.
Conference convened in the Tabernacle, G. S. L. City, on Friday, April 6th, 1866, at 10 a.m., President Brigham Young presiding.
There were on the stand, Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Daniel H. Wells, the First Presidency;
Orson Hyde, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards and George Q. Cannon, of the Twelve Apostles;
John Smith, Patriarch;
Joseph Young, Levi W. Hancock, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge and John Van Cott, of the First Presidency of the Seventies;
Edwin D. Wooley and Samuel W. Richards, of the Presidency of the High Priests Quorum;
Daniel Spencer, David Fullmer and George B. Wallace, the Presidency of this Stake of Zion;
Edward Hunter, Leonard W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, the Presidency of the Bishopric;
George D. Watt and Edward L. Sloan, Reporters;
with a great many Bishops and Elders.
The Tabernacle choir led by Elder Robert Sands, occupied the usual place; the American Fork choir was in front of the stand and directly under it, led by Elder E. Hunter.
Singing "Sweet is the work my God, my king," by the Tabernacle choir.
President H. C. Kimball prayed.
American Fork choir sang "Wake the song of jubilee."
Elder Ezra T. Benson
was called upon to speak and said the present was an important time, not alone for the Saints but for all mankind. The kingdom of God is established upon the earth, not by the passions, ideas or notions of men, but by the power of God, and the revelations of Jesus Christ. Man is not carrying on this work, nor doing what is done; it is God who directs the destinies of His own work upon the earth; and He gives visions, revelations, wisdom and knowledge to His servants, and who can help it. He referred to the arrival of the Pioneers in this Valley, and to the condition of the country at that time. We did not come here in our own name and strength, but in the name of the Lord and in the strength of the God of Israel. And if men come here and desire to do wickedly, they will find that this people are opposed to it mentally and physically. The work is onward; and though we have opposition to encounter, if we exercise patience and be humble before God, keeping His commandments, we will see the work of God overcoming every opposition, and extending righteousness over the whole earth. He bore testimony to the Divine Mission of the Prophet Joseph, to President Young being his successor, to the purity and divinity of plural marriage; and to the ultimate triumph of the principles of truth.
Elder Wm. Willes sang "There is a place in Utah, that I remember well."
was called upon to speak and said the present was an important time, not alone for the Saints but for all mankind. The kingdom of God is established upon the earth, not by the passions, ideas or notions of men, but by the power of God, and the revelations of Jesus Christ. Man is not carrying on this work, nor doing what is done; it is God who directs the destinies of His own work upon the earth; and He gives visions, revelations, wisdom and knowledge to His servants, and who can help it. He referred to the arrival of the Pioneers in this Valley, and to the condition of the country at that time. We did not come here in our own name and strength, but in the name of the Lord and in the strength of the God of Israel. And if men come here and desire to do wickedly, they will find that this people are opposed to it mentally and physically. The work is onward; and though we have opposition to encounter, if we exercise patience and be humble before God, keeping His commandments, we will see the work of God overcoming every opposition, and extending righteousness over the whole earth. He bore testimony to the Divine Mission of the Prophet Joseph, to President Young being his successor, to the purity and divinity of plural marriage; and to the ultimate triumph of the principles of truth.
Elder Wm. Willes sang "There is a place in Utah, that I remember well."
Elder Geo. Q. Cannon
spoke on the fulfillment of the promises which God has made to His people; and the assurance that those yet in the future will be as certainly fulfilled. Referred to the blessing of peace enjoyed by the Saints under the most peculiar and adverse circumstances, when there were the least prospects of its continuation; and to the perpetuation of this and other blessings among the Saints if they are faithful.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Lorenzo Snow.
spoke on the fulfillment of the promises which God has made to His people; and the assurance that those yet in the future will be as certainly fulfilled. Referred to the blessing of peace enjoyed by the Saints under the most peculiar and adverse circumstances, when there were the least prospects of its continuation; and to the perpetuation of this and other blessings among the Saints if they are faithful.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Lorenzo Snow.
2 p.m.
Before the appointed time for opening the meeting had arrived, the Tabernacle was densely crowded; every niche of available standing room being occupied, the door-ways blocked up, and crowds being compelled to remain outside.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder George Q. Cannon.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Before the appointed time for opening the meeting had arrived, the Tabernacle was densely crowded; every niche of available standing room being occupied, the door-ways blocked up, and crowds being compelled to remain outside.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder George Q. Cannon.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
President Joseph Young
addressed the Saints on the peaceful and holy feeling which accompanies the possession of the Holy Spirit, and on the blessings which are obtained through obedience to the gospel. He exhorted them to continued and increased faithfulness, bore testimony to the truth, and prayed for the blessings of God to rest upon and abide with His people.
addressed the Saints on the peaceful and holy feeling which accompanies the possession of the Holy Spirit, and on the blessings which are obtained through obedience to the gospel. He exhorted them to continued and increased faithfulness, bore testimony to the truth, and prayed for the blessings of God to rest upon and abide with His people.
Prest. D. H. Wells
touched upon our constitutional rights as citizens and as members of a religious organization. He showed that the Lord required this generation to put away evil, corruption and wickedness, and practice righteousness. God will save us by our obedience to His laws; and if any come to this Territory or into this Church for any object, or from any motives other than pure and holy ones, they are deceiving themselves, and had better have remained where they were in the world. It is our right, as it is the right of all, to worship God according to our own views and faith, without our religion being in any way interfered with. This right will be guaranteed to all men when the Kingdom of God bears rule, wherever that rule extends.
He referred to the charge of "disloyalty" brought against the Saints, showing that the Elders of the church have ever inculcated obedience to the laws in every place where they labor, and in this Territory faithful adherence to the Constitution of our country, without their being the first instance in the history of the church of our having opposed any provision or refused to accede to anything that did not seek to rob us of our Constitutional rights. When we preach our principles, before those whom they are laid can please themselves whether they receive or reject them; but Congress sitting in session has no right to decide whether any part or all of them are true or false. The Constitution throws its broad folds in protection over all religions in the nation, yet some of the contradictory principles taught by opposing sects must of necessity be false. He cautioned the Saints against being led away by the influences of evil which are seeking to seduce them from the path of righteousness, virtue and holiness; and urged them to be constantly on guard against such corrupting spirits.
Elder Wm. Willes sang an original song written by himself,--"I'm a merry hearted Mormon."
touched upon our constitutional rights as citizens and as members of a religious organization. He showed that the Lord required this generation to put away evil, corruption and wickedness, and practice righteousness. God will save us by our obedience to His laws; and if any come to this Territory or into this Church for any object, or from any motives other than pure and holy ones, they are deceiving themselves, and had better have remained where they were in the world. It is our right, as it is the right of all, to worship God according to our own views and faith, without our religion being in any way interfered with. This right will be guaranteed to all men when the Kingdom of God bears rule, wherever that rule extends.
He referred to the charge of "disloyalty" brought against the Saints, showing that the Elders of the church have ever inculcated obedience to the laws in every place where they labor, and in this Territory faithful adherence to the Constitution of our country, without their being the first instance in the history of the church of our having opposed any provision or refused to accede to anything that did not seek to rob us of our Constitutional rights. When we preach our principles, before those whom they are laid can please themselves whether they receive or reject them; but Congress sitting in session has no right to decide whether any part or all of them are true or false. The Constitution throws its broad folds in protection over all religions in the nation, yet some of the contradictory principles taught by opposing sects must of necessity be false. He cautioned the Saints against being led away by the influences of evil which are seeking to seduce them from the path of righteousness, virtue and holiness; and urged them to be constantly on guard against such corrupting spirits.
Elder Wm. Willes sang an original song written by himself,--"I'm a merry hearted Mormon."
Elder Geo. A. Smith
spoke briefly of his travels lately through Tooele, and Utah counties; and of the great increase of children that he saw everywhere on his travels. He strongly recommended the Juvenile Instructor to be placed in the hands of the rising generation, as a means of supplying them with knowledge in an attractive manner.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder Edward L. Sloan.
spoke briefly of his travels lately through Tooele, and Utah counties; and of the great increase of children that he saw everywhere on his travels. He strongly recommended the Juvenile Instructor to be placed in the hands of the rising generation, as a means of supplying them with knowledge in an attractive manner.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder Edward L. Sloan.
Saturday 7th, 10 a.m.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder John Taylor.
American Fork choir sang "May we who know the joyful sound."
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder John Taylor.
American Fork choir sang "May we who know the joyful sound."
Elder Geo. Q. Cannon
then presented the authorities of the Church to the Conference who were unanimously sustained by vote in the following order:
Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Heber C. Kimball his first, and Daniel H. Wells his second counselor.
Orson Hyde, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Orson Pratt, sen., John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards and George Q. Cannon, members of said Quorum.
John Smith, Patriarch of the Church.
Daniel Spencer, President of this Stake of Zion, and George B. Wallace and Joseph W. Young, his counselors. Elder David Fullmer, who was First Counselor to Prest. D. Spencer, being released at his own request, on account of his failing health.
William Eddington, John L. Blythe, John T. Caine, Howard O. Spencer, Claudius V. Spencer, John Squires, William H. Folsom, Emanuel M. Murphy, Thomas E. Jeremy, Geo. W. Thatcher, Joseph F. Smith, Peter Nebeker, members of the High Council.
John Young, President of the High Priests' Quorum, Edwin D. Woolley and Samuel W. Richards, his counselors.
Joseph Young, President of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies, and Levi W. Hancock, Henry Harriman, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge, Jacob Gates and John Van Cott, members of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies.
William Squires, President of the Elders' Quorum; James Smith and Peter Latter, his counselors.
Edward Hunter, Presiding Bishop; Leonard W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, his counselors.
Samuel G. Ladd, President of the Priests' Quorum; William Carmichael and Robert Price, his counselors.
Adam Spiers, President of the Teacher's Quorum; Henry I. Doremus and Martin Lenzi, his counselors.
James Leach, President of the Deacon's Quorum; Warren Hardie, his counselor.
Brigham Young, Trustee in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Daniel H. Wells, Superintendent of Public Works; John Sharp, his assistant.
William H. Folsom, Architect for the Church.
Brigham Young, President of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund to gather the poor; Heber C. Kimball, Daniel H. Wells and Edward Hunter, his assistants and agents for said Fund.
George A. Smith, Historian and general Church Recorder, and Wilford Woodruff, his assistant.
Elder Wm. Willes sang a song.
then presented the authorities of the Church to the Conference who were unanimously sustained by vote in the following order:
Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Heber C. Kimball his first, and Daniel H. Wells his second counselor.
Orson Hyde, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Orson Pratt, sen., John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Amasa M. Lyman, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards and George Q. Cannon, members of said Quorum.
John Smith, Patriarch of the Church.
Daniel Spencer, President of this Stake of Zion, and George B. Wallace and Joseph W. Young, his counselors. Elder David Fullmer, who was First Counselor to Prest. D. Spencer, being released at his own request, on account of his failing health.
William Eddington, John L. Blythe, John T. Caine, Howard O. Spencer, Claudius V. Spencer, John Squires, William H. Folsom, Emanuel M. Murphy, Thomas E. Jeremy, Geo. W. Thatcher, Joseph F. Smith, Peter Nebeker, members of the High Council.
John Young, President of the High Priests' Quorum, Edwin D. Woolley and Samuel W. Richards, his counselors.
Joseph Young, President of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies, and Levi W. Hancock, Henry Harriman, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge, Jacob Gates and John Van Cott, members of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies.
William Squires, President of the Elders' Quorum; James Smith and Peter Latter, his counselors.
Edward Hunter, Presiding Bishop; Leonard W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, his counselors.
Samuel G. Ladd, President of the Priests' Quorum; William Carmichael and Robert Price, his counselors.
Adam Spiers, President of the Teacher's Quorum; Henry I. Doremus and Martin Lenzi, his counselors.
James Leach, President of the Deacon's Quorum; Warren Hardie, his counselor.
Brigham Young, Trustee in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Daniel H. Wells, Superintendent of Public Works; John Sharp, his assistant.
William H. Folsom, Architect for the Church.
Brigham Young, President of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund to gather the poor; Heber C. Kimball, Daniel H. Wells and Edward Hunter, his assistants and agents for said Fund.
George A. Smith, Historian and general Church Recorder, and Wilford Woodruff, his assistant.
Elder Wm. Willes sang a song.
Elder P. H. Young
referred to the gospel being brought to his father's house, and his father, his brothers, Presidents Brigham and Joseph Young, and himself being baptized thirty-four years ago. He pointed out that persecution has invariably attended obedience to the gospel, yet the church has continued to grow and prosper exceedingly.
Elder John D. T. McAllister sang "We'll plow, we'll sow and joyful reap."
referred to the gospel being brought to his father's house, and his father, his brothers, Presidents Brigham and Joseph Young, and himself being baptized thirty-four years ago. He pointed out that persecution has invariably attended obedience to the gospel, yet the church has continued to grow and prosper exceedingly.
Elder John D. T. McAllister sang "We'll plow, we'll sow and joyful reap."
Elder John Taylor
showed that we do not found our claim to have authority from God upon having received it from any other organization or through any church upon the earth; but that the authority of the priesthood comes from God and we know it. He put the question direct, Is your religion true, and do you know it? when the congregation responded with a perfect shout of "ayes." With this knowledge, we are the only people in the world who have the courage to preach and practice truth and righteousness and reprove iniquity. Took up the subject of marriage and plurality of wives, quoting the Constitutional provision with reference to religion, and showing that marriage is recognized in the Greek, Catholic and Anglican churches as a religious ceremony, and a vital part of religion. In proving that the doctrine is a necessary part of our faith he said, "Joseph Smith told others and he told me, that if this principle was not sustained this Church could not continue to advance. It involved not only our happiness in time but in eternity; and every man or woman claiming to be in the Church who opposes this principle is on the high road to apostacy, if not already apostate. God will maintain His work and the miserable, corrupt beings who seek to bring evil upon Zion and practice wickedness among her people will fail in every attempt to accomplish their hellish purposes if we remain faithful to God."
showed that we do not found our claim to have authority from God upon having received it from any other organization or through any church upon the earth; but that the authority of the priesthood comes from God and we know it. He put the question direct, Is your religion true, and do you know it? when the congregation responded with a perfect shout of "ayes." With this knowledge, we are the only people in the world who have the courage to preach and practice truth and righteousness and reprove iniquity. Took up the subject of marriage and plurality of wives, quoting the Constitutional provision with reference to religion, and showing that marriage is recognized in the Greek, Catholic and Anglican churches as a religious ceremony, and a vital part of religion. In proving that the doctrine is a necessary part of our faith he said, "Joseph Smith told others and he told me, that if this principle was not sustained this Church could not continue to advance. It involved not only our happiness in time but in eternity; and every man or woman claiming to be in the Church who opposes this principle is on the high road to apostacy, if not already apostate. God will maintain His work and the miserable, corrupt beings who seek to bring evil upon Zion and practice wickedness among her people will fail in every attempt to accomplish their hellish purposes if we remain faithful to God."
Our Religion is From God
Remarks by Elder John Taylor, made in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 7, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
It is good for the Saints to meet together; it is good to reflect upon the work of God; it is good to be in possession of His blessings; it is a great privilege to enjoy the light of eternal truth, and to be delivered from the darkness, the error, the confusion, and the iniquity that prevails generally throughout the world. There are but very few men in the world who can realize the blessings which we enjoy unless their minds are enlightened by the Spirit of the living God. There are, in fact, comparatively few among the Saints who realize their true position, and who can comprehend correctly the blessings and privileges that they are in possession of; for men can only grasp these things as they are enlightened by the spirit of truth, by the spirit of revelation—by the Holy Ghost—which has been imparted to the Saints by the laying on of hands, and through their obedience to the principles of the everlasting Gospel. If men are in the dark in relation to any of these principles, it is because they do not live their religion; because they do not walk according to that light which has been given to them; because, as we have heard here, they do not pray sufficiently, they do not deny themselves of evil, and cleave close enough to the principles of eternal truth. The Gospel is calculated to lead us on from truth to truth, and from intelligence to intelligence, until that Scripture will be fulfilled which declares that we shall see as we are seen and know as we are known, until one will not have to say to another, know ye the Lord, but all shall know Him from the least unto the greatest, until the light and intelligence of God shall beam forth upon all, and all shall bask in the sunlight of eternal truth.
It is a blessing to have the privilege of meeting together in our general Conference, where the Authorities of the Church can assemble from different parts of the Territory, and of the earth, to learn the law of God, to transact business pertaining to His Church and kingdom, and to build up and establish righteousness on the earth. We cannot realize the extent of the blessings that we enjoy. We are situated differently from any other people under the face of the heavens. There is no people, no government, no kingdom, no nation, no assembly of people, civil, religious, political, or otherwise, that enjoy the blessings that we are in possession of this day; for whilst others are groping in the dark and laboring in a state of uncertainty in relation to the position that they occupy, whether political or religious, we are free from any surmises or doubts concerning these matters.
As it regards our political status, we are well acquainted with that; we know the destiny of this Church and kingdom; we know the position that we occupy towards God and towards the world; we know that the Lord will accomplish His own purposes; and having this knowledge, we rest perfectly easy in relation to the result. We know that the kingdom of God, which is established among us, will continue to spread, increase, and extend, until it covers the earth; and we know that all the plotting, and machinations, and designs, and combinations of men and devils will not be able to stop it in its progress; but as it has begun to roll forth, its speed will continue to accelerate until it has accomplished all for which it is designed of God, and until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, and He shall reign with universal empire over this earth, and to Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Therefore, we have no trembling, no feeling of fear, no anxiety or care as to the result. All that we have to care about in relation to these matters is, that we, individually and collectively, do our duty; that we maintain our integrity before God; that we honor our Priesthood and our calling; that we pursue a course that shall at all times receive the smiles and approbation of the Most High, and then as to the result we care not for we know what the result will be.
As it regards our religious status, we feel just the same in relation to that, for everything is connected with our religion and our God. We are not indebted to any church in existence for the position which we occupy, nor for the intelligence we are in possession of. We have no need to trace our authority through the Popes, or through any other medium, we care nothing about them. We do not need either to go to the Roman or to the Greek Church to find out whether we are right or wrong, where our religion commenced, and whether we are placed on the right or on the wrong foundation. We are not under the necessity of searching the Jewish records, or any other records, in relation to these matters. We are not indebted to any of the schools, academies, or systems of divinity, or theology, or any of the religious systems extant, nor to any of the heathen nations. There is no nation, people, kingdom, government; no religious or political authority of any kind that is of an earthly nature, that we have to go to in relation to this matter. We disclaim the whole of them; claim no affinity to any of them; are not of them nor from them; and, consequently, so far as they are concerned, we are perfectly independent of them. Our religion came from God; it is a revelation from the Most High; it is that everlasting Gospel which John saw an angel bring to be preached in all the earth, and to every people, nation, kindred, and tongue, crying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come.
Then God is the author of our religion; He has revealed it from the heavens; He has sent His holy angels for that purpose, who communicated it to Joseph Smith and others. Having restored the everlasting Gospel, He has sent it forth to all the world, and those men who have delivered that Gospel to us have received it by revelation directly from God, and have been ordained by that authority. If God has not spoken, if the heavens have not been opened, if the angels of God have not appeared, then we have no religion—it is all a farce; for, as I have said before, we claim no kindred, no affinity, or relationship with them—God forbid that we should, we do not want it. This, then, is the platform we stand upon; this is the position that we occupy before God; for this is God's work that we are engaged in. If He has given any authority in the last days to mankind, we are in possession of that authority; and if He has not, then we have no authority, nor any true religion, nor any true hope. I shall not this morning enter into all the arguments concerning these matters. All that I can say to you is what Paul said in his day, “Ye are his witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.”
Brethren, is your religion true, and do you know it? (Voices, yes). Yes, you know and realize it; it is written in living, indelible characters on your hearts, which nothing can remove. We are living witnesses of the truth of God and the revelations which He has given to His people in these last days. Well, then, we are not concerned about what the nations of the world can do against it, for they will crumble and totter, and thrones will be cast down, as it is written in the Scriptures. The empires of the earth may be dissolved, and all the nations may crumble to pieces, and wars, and pestilence, and famine may stalk through the earth; this is not our affair; they are not our nations; they are not God's nations. Religionists may squabble, and contend, and quarrel, and live in difficulty, doubt, and uncertainty in relation to their affairs; but that is none of our business, it is entirely their own affair. There may be written upon the whole world, religious and political, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” (Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.) What is that to us? It is none of our affair. We are not associated with them; our interest is not bound up with them; they have nothing which we can sustain. In relation to all these matters we feel perfectly easy. If war goes forth and desolates the nations; if confusion exist among religious denominations; and if they should continue to act as they are doing, like perfect fools, it is their own business. The Pope may tremble on his throne, and be afraid that France or some other power will not sustain him; it is not our affair; we feel perfectly easy and tranquil; all is right with us, for we are in the hands of God, and it is his business to take care of his Saints; therefore, we feel perfectly easy, quiet, and peaceable in relation to all these matters.
Would they try to injure us? Yes. They never tried anything else, and we are not indebted to them for anything which we enjoy. Did any of them help us along in our religious matters? Who are we indebted to in this world? Is there a religious society under the heavens that we are indebted to for any ideas or intelligence which we possess? Not one. Is there any priest in Christendom that has helped us forward in the least in our religious career? Not one. You cannot find one. Are we indebted to anybody for our political status? We are not. Who is there that helps us? There has never been a man yet who dared, at any time, to advocate our principles and rights in the legislative halls of this or any other nation; there has never been a man who has had the honesty, and truthfulness, and integrity to do it; they dare not do it, because it is unpopular. We dare advocate our principles, and God dare help us; and if we enjoy any rights, and privileges, and peace—if there are any blessings of any kind that we enjoy—we derive them from our Heavenly Father, and we are not indebted to any power, government, rule, or authority, religious, political, or otherwise, throughout the whole of this habitable globe, for any blessings or privileges we enjoy, excepting sometimes, by a little persecution they help us to be a little more united, that's all; and we do not thank them for this, for it does not come with their good will. If their lies shall make the truth of God abound to his glory, all right; they will lie on, because they are of their father the devil, and his work they will do. He was a liar from the beginning; he is the father of lies, and they are his children. Therefore, in relation to all of these matters we feel perfectly easy.
I was asked the other day if I would like to go and bear testimony before the court in relation to whether polygamy was a religious ordinance or not. I answered yes, if they subpoena me. They have not done it yet, and I do not know whether they will or not. I am quite willing to go and testify to that matter at any time. I think I will testify to you here. To begin with, there is nothing that I know of, or am acquainted with in this world, but what is a part of my religion and mixed up with it. It is all religion with me. I was told that the parties desired to know whether or not I believed that polygamy was a religious ordinance or institution. If this question had been put to me, I should have been inclined to ask the parties what they understood by the word religion; because, if I could not find out what their view of religion was, of course I could not tell whether I, in their estimation, had any or not.
This consideration led me to a few reflections in relation to this matter.
I had recourse to some of our dictionaries, to find out what popular lexicographers said about it. I referred to the standard works of several different nations, which I find to be as follows--
Webster (American), “Religion includes a belief in the revelation of his (God's) will to man, and in man's obligation to obey his command.”
Worcester (a prominent American). “1. An acknowledgement of our obligation to God as our creator. 2. A particular system of faith or worship. We speak of the Greek, Hindoo, Jewish, Christian, and Mahomedan religion.”
Johnson (English), “Religion, a system of faith and worship.”
Dictionary of the French Academy, “La croyance que l'on a de la divinité et le culte qu'on lue rend en consequence.”
Foi croyance.
The belief we have in God and his worship.
Faith—belief.
German Dictionary of Wörterbuch, by Dr. N. N. W. Meissner, a standard work in Germany.
“Religion, Glaube, faith, persuasion.”
Here, then we have the opinion of four of the great leading nations of the earth, as expressed by their acknowledged standard works, on what they consider to be the meaning of the word religion.
The German has it—faith, persuasion. The French—faith, belief; faith in God and his worship. The English—a system of faith and worship. These three are very similar.
Next we have Webster, American, which is our acknowledged standard, and he says, “Religion includes a belief in the revelations of God's will to man, and in man's obligation to obey his commands.”
This is, indeed, very pointed; and if this definition be correct, it would necessarily lead us to inquire, as did Paul of old. “Whether it is better to obey man or God, judge ye.”
Worcester, another prominent American lexicographer, speaks of “Religion as an acknowledgement of God as our creator, and a particular system of faith or worship.” Here he agrees with the French, German, and English. He then quotes from a prominent work—“We speak of the Greek, Hindoo, Jewish, Christian, and Mahomedan religions.” He might very properly have added Mormon.
Faith, belief, and worship seem to be the prominent idea advanced, with the addition of our popular lexicographer Walker, who adds to the faith in God, that it must be in the revelations of His will to man, and in man's obligations to obey His commands.
Having now found out what the meaning of religion is, we shall be the better prepared to inquire whether a plurality of wives, or, as it is sometimes called, polygamy, is a part of our religious faith or not.
The Constitution of the United States says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” I have thought of the law which Congress has made in relation to polygamy. The question, however, necessarily arises, is it constitutional for Congress to interfere with religious matters—with the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof? The Constitution says no. Then is polygamy a religious question or is it not? Is it a marriage ceremony or is it not? Marriage is received by the Greek church as a solemn sacrament of the church; the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England also admit marriage to be a religious sacrament; and so it is admitted by the great mass of religious sects now in the world. These are facts that need no proof; everybody is acquainted with them. It is true that in France and in the United States magistrates are authorized to officiate in solemnizing marriages. But in France, to this day, unless they are married by a minister of religion, many of the more conscientious feel that they are living in a state of adultery.
Now, in relation to the position that we occupy concerning plurality, or, as it is termed, polygamy, it differs from that of others. I have noticed the usage of several nations regarding marriage; but, as I have said, we are not indebted to any of them for our religion, nor for our ideas of marriage, they came from God. Where did this commandment come from in relation to polygamy? It also came from God. It was a revelation given unto Joseph Smith from God, and was made binding upon His servants. When this system was first introduced among this people, it was one of the greatest crosses that ever was taken up by any set of men since the world stood. Joseph Smith told others; he told me, and I can bear witness of it, “that if this principle was not introduced, this Church and kingdom could not proceed.” When this commandment was given, it was so far religious, and so far binding upon the Elders of this Church, that it was told them if they were not prepared to enter into it, and to stem the torrent of opposition that would come in consequence of it, the keys of the kingdom would be taken from them. When I see any of our people, men or women, opposing a principle of this kind, I have years ago set them down as on the high road to apostasy, and I do today; I consider them apostates, and not interested in this Church and kingdom. It is so far, then, a religious institution, that it affects my conscience and the consciences of all good men—it is so far religious that it connects itself with time and with eternity. What are the covenants we enter into, and why is it that Joseph Smith said that unless this principle was entered into this kingdom could not proceed? We ought to know the whys and the wherefores in relation to these matters, and understand something about the principle enunciated. These are simply words; we wish to know their signification.
Where is there in the world a people that make any pretensions to have any claim upon their wives in eternity? Where is there a priest in all Christendom that teaches anything of this kind? You cannot find them. Marriage is solemnized until death do them part, and when death comes to either party, then there is an end to the whole matter, and what comes after death is in the dark to them. It was so with us up to the time of the giving of that revelation; we had no claim upon one wife in eternity. They had obeyed the Gospel as we had; they had been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins as we had; we had been married to them according to the laws of the land, and were living as other Gentiles were, but we had no claim upon them in eternity. It was necessary that one grand truth should be unlocked, which is, that man and woman are destined to live together and have a claim upon each other in eternity. The Priesthood being restored, the key was turned in relation to this matter, and the privilege was placed not only within the reach of the Elders of this Church, but within the reach of all who should be considered worthy of it, to make covenants with their partners that should be binding in the eternal worlds; that in this respect, as well as in other respects, we might stand as a distinguished people, separate and apart from the rest of the earth, depending upon God for our religion.
Previous to this revelation, who in all the world had any claim upon their wives in the eternal world, or what wife had a claim upon her husband? Who ever taught them any such principle? Nobody. Some of the novel writers have noticed it, but they did not claim authority from heaven; they merely wrote their own opinions and followed the promptings of their own instincts, which led them to hope that such a thing might be the case; but there was no certainty about it. Our position was just as Joseph said: if we could not receive the Gospel which is an everlasting Gospel; if we could not receive the dictum of a Priesthood that administers in time and eternity; if we could not receive a principle that would save us in the eternal world, and our wives and children with us, we were not fit to hold this kingdom, and could not hold it, for it would be taken from us and given to others. This is reasonable, proper, consistent, and recommends itself to the minds of all intelligence when it is reflected upon in the light of truth. Then, what did this principle open up to our view? That our wives, who have been associated with us in time—who had borne with us the heat and burden of the day, who had shared in our afflictions, trials, troubles, and difficulties, that they could reign with us in the eternal kingdoms of God, and that they should be sealed to us not only for time, but for all eternity. This unfolded to us the eternal fitness and relationship of things as they exist on the earth, of man to man, and of husband to wife; it unfolds the relationship they should occupy in time to each other, and the relationship that will continue to exist in eternity. Hence it is emphatically a religious subject so deep, sacred, and profound, so extensive and far-reaching, that it is one of the greatest principles that was ever revealed to man. Did we know anything about it before? No. How did we get a knowledge of it? By revelation. And shall we treat lightly these things? No. The Lord says that his servants may take to themselves more wives than one. Who gives to them one wife? The Lord. And has he not a right to give to them another, and another, and another? I think he has that right. Who has a right to dispute it, and prohibit a union of that kind, if God shall ordain it? Has not God as much right today to give to me, or you, or any other person two, three, four, five, ten, or twenty wives, as he had anciently to give them to Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon, etc.? Has not the Lord a right to do what he pleases in this matter, and in all other matters, without the dictation of man? I think He has. Every principle associated with the Gospel which we have received is eternal, hence our marriage covenant is an eternal covenant given unto us of God. Then, when poor, miserable, corrupt men would endeavor to trample us under their feet because of the principles of truth which we have received from God, shall we falter in the least? No, never. Its opposers may croak against it until they go down to the dust of death; God will defend his work which he has introduced in the latter days; and, the Lord being our helper, we will help him to sustain it.
Associated with this is another important principle—the baptism for the dead. One of the prophets has said that, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord: And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” This Elias signifies a restorer. Jesus said of John the Baptist, in his day, “And if ye will receive it, this is the Elias (or restorer), which was for to come.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” But they would not hear: they did not receive it. They beheaded John, crucified Jesus, killed his apostles, and persecuted his followers; and their temple, nation, and polity were destroyed. But the times of restitution spoken of by the prophets must take place; the restorer must come “before that great and terrible day of the Lord.” The hearts of the fathers must be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, or the earth will be cursed. This great eternal marriage covenant lays at the foundation of the whole; when this was revealed, then followed the other. Then, and not till then, could the hearts of the fathers be turned to their children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers; then, and not till then, could the restoration be effectually commenced, time and eternity be connected, the past, present, and future harmonize, and the eternal justice of God be vindicated. “Saviors come upon mount Zion” to save the living, redeem the dead, unite man to woman and woman to man, in eternal, indissoluble ties; impart blessings to the dead, redeem the living, and pour eternal blessings upon posterity.
Let us now go back to the action of Congress in relation to plural marriage, of which these eternal covenants are the foundation. The Lord says, “I will introduce the times of the restitution of all things; I will show you my eternal covenants, and call upon you to abide in them; I will show you how to save yourselves, your wives and children, your progenitors and posterity, and to save the earth from a curse.” Congress says, “if you fulfill that law we will inflict upon you pains and penalties, fines and imprisonments; in effect, we will not allow you to follow God's commands.” Now, if Congress possessed the constitutional right to do so, it would still be a high-handed outrage upon the rights of man; but when we consider that they cannot make such a law without violating the Constitution, and thus nullifying the act, what are we to think of it? Where are we drifting to? After having, with uplifted hands to heaven, sworn that they will “make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” to thus sacrilegiously stand between a whole community and their God, and deliberately debar them, so far as they have the power, from observing his law, do they realize what they are doing? Whence came this law on our statute books? Who constituted them our conscience keepers? Who appointed them the judge of our religious faith, or authorized them to coerce us to transgress a law that is binding and imperative on our consciences? We do not expect that Congress is acquainted with our religious faith; but, as members of the body politic, we do claim the guarantees of the Constitution and immunity from persecution on merely religious grounds.
What are we to think of a United States judge who would marry a man to another man's wife. He certainly ought to know better. We are told that she was a second wife, and, therefore, not acknowledged. Indeed, this is singular logic. If she was not a wife, then polygamy is no crime in the eyes of the law; for Congress have passed no law against whoredom. A man may have as many mistresses as he please, without transgressing any law of Congress. The act in relation to polygamy contemplates punishing a man for having more wives, not mistresses. If she was simply his mistress, then the law is of no effect; and the very fact of Congress passing such a law is the strongest possible proof, in law, of the existence of a marriage covenant, which, until that law was passed, was by them considered valid. If, then, she was not his wife, no person could be punished under that law for polygamy. If she was his wife, then the judge transgressed the law which he professionally came to maintain.
In relation to all these matters, the safe path for the Saints to take is, to do right, and, by the help of God, seek diligently and honorably to maintain the position which they hold. Are we ashamed of anything we have done in marrying wives? No. We shall not be ashamed before God and the holy angels, much less before a number of corrupt, miserable scoundrels, who are the very dregs of hell. We care nothing for their opinions, their ideas, or notions; for they do not know God, nor the principles which he has revealed. They wallow in the sink of corruption, as they would have us do; but, the Lord being our helper, we will not do it, but we will try to do right and keep the commandments of God, live our religion, and pursue a course that will secure to us the smiles and approbation of God our Father. Inasmuch as we do this He will take care of us, maintain His own cause, and sustain His people. We have a right to keep His commandments. But what would you do if the United States were to bring up an army against you on account of polygamy, or on account of any other religious subject? We would trust in God, as we always have done. Would you have no fears? None. All the fears that I am troubled with is that this people will not do right—that they will not keep the commandments of God. If we will only faithfully live our religion, we fear no earthly power. Our safety is in God. Our religion is an eternal religion. Our covenants are eternal covenants, and we expect to maintain the principles of our religion on the earth, and to possess them in the heavens. And if our wives and children do right, and we as fathers and husbands do right in this world, we expect to have our wives and children in eternity. Let us live in that way which will secure the approbation of God, that we, his representatives on the earth, may magnify our calling, honor Him, and maintain our integrity to the end; that we may be saved in His celestial kingdom, with our wives, and children, and brethren, from generation to generation, worlds without end. Amen.
Anthem by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder F. D. Richards.
Remarks by Elder John Taylor, made in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 7, 1866.
Reported by G. D. Watt.
It is good for the Saints to meet together; it is good to reflect upon the work of God; it is good to be in possession of His blessings; it is a great privilege to enjoy the light of eternal truth, and to be delivered from the darkness, the error, the confusion, and the iniquity that prevails generally throughout the world. There are but very few men in the world who can realize the blessings which we enjoy unless their minds are enlightened by the Spirit of the living God. There are, in fact, comparatively few among the Saints who realize their true position, and who can comprehend correctly the blessings and privileges that they are in possession of; for men can only grasp these things as they are enlightened by the spirit of truth, by the spirit of revelation—by the Holy Ghost—which has been imparted to the Saints by the laying on of hands, and through their obedience to the principles of the everlasting Gospel. If men are in the dark in relation to any of these principles, it is because they do not live their religion; because they do not walk according to that light which has been given to them; because, as we have heard here, they do not pray sufficiently, they do not deny themselves of evil, and cleave close enough to the principles of eternal truth. The Gospel is calculated to lead us on from truth to truth, and from intelligence to intelligence, until that Scripture will be fulfilled which declares that we shall see as we are seen and know as we are known, until one will not have to say to another, know ye the Lord, but all shall know Him from the least unto the greatest, until the light and intelligence of God shall beam forth upon all, and all shall bask in the sunlight of eternal truth.
It is a blessing to have the privilege of meeting together in our general Conference, where the Authorities of the Church can assemble from different parts of the Territory, and of the earth, to learn the law of God, to transact business pertaining to His Church and kingdom, and to build up and establish righteousness on the earth. We cannot realize the extent of the blessings that we enjoy. We are situated differently from any other people under the face of the heavens. There is no people, no government, no kingdom, no nation, no assembly of people, civil, religious, political, or otherwise, that enjoy the blessings that we are in possession of this day; for whilst others are groping in the dark and laboring in a state of uncertainty in relation to the position that they occupy, whether political or religious, we are free from any surmises or doubts concerning these matters.
As it regards our political status, we are well acquainted with that; we know the destiny of this Church and kingdom; we know the position that we occupy towards God and towards the world; we know that the Lord will accomplish His own purposes; and having this knowledge, we rest perfectly easy in relation to the result. We know that the kingdom of God, which is established among us, will continue to spread, increase, and extend, until it covers the earth; and we know that all the plotting, and machinations, and designs, and combinations of men and devils will not be able to stop it in its progress; but as it has begun to roll forth, its speed will continue to accelerate until it has accomplished all for which it is designed of God, and until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ, and He shall reign with universal empire over this earth, and to Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Therefore, we have no trembling, no feeling of fear, no anxiety or care as to the result. All that we have to care about in relation to these matters is, that we, individually and collectively, do our duty; that we maintain our integrity before God; that we honor our Priesthood and our calling; that we pursue a course that shall at all times receive the smiles and approbation of the Most High, and then as to the result we care not for we know what the result will be.
As it regards our religious status, we feel just the same in relation to that, for everything is connected with our religion and our God. We are not indebted to any church in existence for the position which we occupy, nor for the intelligence we are in possession of. We have no need to trace our authority through the Popes, or through any other medium, we care nothing about them. We do not need either to go to the Roman or to the Greek Church to find out whether we are right or wrong, where our religion commenced, and whether we are placed on the right or on the wrong foundation. We are not under the necessity of searching the Jewish records, or any other records, in relation to these matters. We are not indebted to any of the schools, academies, or systems of divinity, or theology, or any of the religious systems extant, nor to any of the heathen nations. There is no nation, people, kingdom, government; no religious or political authority of any kind that is of an earthly nature, that we have to go to in relation to this matter. We disclaim the whole of them; claim no affinity to any of them; are not of them nor from them; and, consequently, so far as they are concerned, we are perfectly independent of them. Our religion came from God; it is a revelation from the Most High; it is that everlasting Gospel which John saw an angel bring to be preached in all the earth, and to every people, nation, kindred, and tongue, crying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come.
Then God is the author of our religion; He has revealed it from the heavens; He has sent His holy angels for that purpose, who communicated it to Joseph Smith and others. Having restored the everlasting Gospel, He has sent it forth to all the world, and those men who have delivered that Gospel to us have received it by revelation directly from God, and have been ordained by that authority. If God has not spoken, if the heavens have not been opened, if the angels of God have not appeared, then we have no religion—it is all a farce; for, as I have said before, we claim no kindred, no affinity, or relationship with them—God forbid that we should, we do not want it. This, then, is the platform we stand upon; this is the position that we occupy before God; for this is God's work that we are engaged in. If He has given any authority in the last days to mankind, we are in possession of that authority; and if He has not, then we have no authority, nor any true religion, nor any true hope. I shall not this morning enter into all the arguments concerning these matters. All that I can say to you is what Paul said in his day, “Ye are his witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.”
Brethren, is your religion true, and do you know it? (Voices, yes). Yes, you know and realize it; it is written in living, indelible characters on your hearts, which nothing can remove. We are living witnesses of the truth of God and the revelations which He has given to His people in these last days. Well, then, we are not concerned about what the nations of the world can do against it, for they will crumble and totter, and thrones will be cast down, as it is written in the Scriptures. The empires of the earth may be dissolved, and all the nations may crumble to pieces, and wars, and pestilence, and famine may stalk through the earth; this is not our affair; they are not our nations; they are not God's nations. Religionists may squabble, and contend, and quarrel, and live in difficulty, doubt, and uncertainty in relation to their affairs; but that is none of our business, it is entirely their own affair. There may be written upon the whole world, religious and political, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” (Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.) What is that to us? It is none of our affair. We are not associated with them; our interest is not bound up with them; they have nothing which we can sustain. In relation to all these matters we feel perfectly easy. If war goes forth and desolates the nations; if confusion exist among religious denominations; and if they should continue to act as they are doing, like perfect fools, it is their own business. The Pope may tremble on his throne, and be afraid that France or some other power will not sustain him; it is not our affair; we feel perfectly easy and tranquil; all is right with us, for we are in the hands of God, and it is his business to take care of his Saints; therefore, we feel perfectly easy, quiet, and peaceable in relation to all these matters.
Would they try to injure us? Yes. They never tried anything else, and we are not indebted to them for anything which we enjoy. Did any of them help us along in our religious matters? Who are we indebted to in this world? Is there a religious society under the heavens that we are indebted to for any ideas or intelligence which we possess? Not one. Is there any priest in Christendom that has helped us forward in the least in our religious career? Not one. You cannot find one. Are we indebted to anybody for our political status? We are not. Who is there that helps us? There has never been a man yet who dared, at any time, to advocate our principles and rights in the legislative halls of this or any other nation; there has never been a man who has had the honesty, and truthfulness, and integrity to do it; they dare not do it, because it is unpopular. We dare advocate our principles, and God dare help us; and if we enjoy any rights, and privileges, and peace—if there are any blessings of any kind that we enjoy—we derive them from our Heavenly Father, and we are not indebted to any power, government, rule, or authority, religious, political, or otherwise, throughout the whole of this habitable globe, for any blessings or privileges we enjoy, excepting sometimes, by a little persecution they help us to be a little more united, that's all; and we do not thank them for this, for it does not come with their good will. If their lies shall make the truth of God abound to his glory, all right; they will lie on, because they are of their father the devil, and his work they will do. He was a liar from the beginning; he is the father of lies, and they are his children. Therefore, in relation to all of these matters we feel perfectly easy.
I was asked the other day if I would like to go and bear testimony before the court in relation to whether polygamy was a religious ordinance or not. I answered yes, if they subpoena me. They have not done it yet, and I do not know whether they will or not. I am quite willing to go and testify to that matter at any time. I think I will testify to you here. To begin with, there is nothing that I know of, or am acquainted with in this world, but what is a part of my religion and mixed up with it. It is all religion with me. I was told that the parties desired to know whether or not I believed that polygamy was a religious ordinance or institution. If this question had been put to me, I should have been inclined to ask the parties what they understood by the word religion; because, if I could not find out what their view of religion was, of course I could not tell whether I, in their estimation, had any or not.
This consideration led me to a few reflections in relation to this matter.
I had recourse to some of our dictionaries, to find out what popular lexicographers said about it. I referred to the standard works of several different nations, which I find to be as follows--
Webster (American), “Religion includes a belief in the revelation of his (God's) will to man, and in man's obligation to obey his command.”
Worcester (a prominent American). “1. An acknowledgement of our obligation to God as our creator. 2. A particular system of faith or worship. We speak of the Greek, Hindoo, Jewish, Christian, and Mahomedan religion.”
Johnson (English), “Religion, a system of faith and worship.”
Dictionary of the French Academy, “La croyance que l'on a de la divinité et le culte qu'on lue rend en consequence.”
Foi croyance.
The belief we have in God and his worship.
Faith—belief.
German Dictionary of Wörterbuch, by Dr. N. N. W. Meissner, a standard work in Germany.
“Religion, Glaube, faith, persuasion.”
Here, then we have the opinion of four of the great leading nations of the earth, as expressed by their acknowledged standard works, on what they consider to be the meaning of the word religion.
The German has it—faith, persuasion. The French—faith, belief; faith in God and his worship. The English—a system of faith and worship. These three are very similar.
Next we have Webster, American, which is our acknowledged standard, and he says, “Religion includes a belief in the revelations of God's will to man, and in man's obligation to obey his commands.”
This is, indeed, very pointed; and if this definition be correct, it would necessarily lead us to inquire, as did Paul of old. “Whether it is better to obey man or God, judge ye.”
Worcester, another prominent American lexicographer, speaks of “Religion as an acknowledgement of God as our creator, and a particular system of faith or worship.” Here he agrees with the French, German, and English. He then quotes from a prominent work—“We speak of the Greek, Hindoo, Jewish, Christian, and Mahomedan religions.” He might very properly have added Mormon.
Faith, belief, and worship seem to be the prominent idea advanced, with the addition of our popular lexicographer Walker, who adds to the faith in God, that it must be in the revelations of His will to man, and in man's obligations to obey His commands.
Having now found out what the meaning of religion is, we shall be the better prepared to inquire whether a plurality of wives, or, as it is sometimes called, polygamy, is a part of our religious faith or not.
The Constitution of the United States says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” I have thought of the law which Congress has made in relation to polygamy. The question, however, necessarily arises, is it constitutional for Congress to interfere with religious matters—with the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof? The Constitution says no. Then is polygamy a religious question or is it not? Is it a marriage ceremony or is it not? Marriage is received by the Greek church as a solemn sacrament of the church; the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England also admit marriage to be a religious sacrament; and so it is admitted by the great mass of religious sects now in the world. These are facts that need no proof; everybody is acquainted with them. It is true that in France and in the United States magistrates are authorized to officiate in solemnizing marriages. But in France, to this day, unless they are married by a minister of religion, many of the more conscientious feel that they are living in a state of adultery.
Now, in relation to the position that we occupy concerning plurality, or, as it is termed, polygamy, it differs from that of others. I have noticed the usage of several nations regarding marriage; but, as I have said, we are not indebted to any of them for our religion, nor for our ideas of marriage, they came from God. Where did this commandment come from in relation to polygamy? It also came from God. It was a revelation given unto Joseph Smith from God, and was made binding upon His servants. When this system was first introduced among this people, it was one of the greatest crosses that ever was taken up by any set of men since the world stood. Joseph Smith told others; he told me, and I can bear witness of it, “that if this principle was not introduced, this Church and kingdom could not proceed.” When this commandment was given, it was so far religious, and so far binding upon the Elders of this Church, that it was told them if they were not prepared to enter into it, and to stem the torrent of opposition that would come in consequence of it, the keys of the kingdom would be taken from them. When I see any of our people, men or women, opposing a principle of this kind, I have years ago set them down as on the high road to apostasy, and I do today; I consider them apostates, and not interested in this Church and kingdom. It is so far, then, a religious institution, that it affects my conscience and the consciences of all good men—it is so far religious that it connects itself with time and with eternity. What are the covenants we enter into, and why is it that Joseph Smith said that unless this principle was entered into this kingdom could not proceed? We ought to know the whys and the wherefores in relation to these matters, and understand something about the principle enunciated. These are simply words; we wish to know their signification.
Where is there in the world a people that make any pretensions to have any claim upon their wives in eternity? Where is there a priest in all Christendom that teaches anything of this kind? You cannot find them. Marriage is solemnized until death do them part, and when death comes to either party, then there is an end to the whole matter, and what comes after death is in the dark to them. It was so with us up to the time of the giving of that revelation; we had no claim upon one wife in eternity. They had obeyed the Gospel as we had; they had been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins as we had; we had been married to them according to the laws of the land, and were living as other Gentiles were, but we had no claim upon them in eternity. It was necessary that one grand truth should be unlocked, which is, that man and woman are destined to live together and have a claim upon each other in eternity. The Priesthood being restored, the key was turned in relation to this matter, and the privilege was placed not only within the reach of the Elders of this Church, but within the reach of all who should be considered worthy of it, to make covenants with their partners that should be binding in the eternal worlds; that in this respect, as well as in other respects, we might stand as a distinguished people, separate and apart from the rest of the earth, depending upon God for our religion.
Previous to this revelation, who in all the world had any claim upon their wives in the eternal world, or what wife had a claim upon her husband? Who ever taught them any such principle? Nobody. Some of the novel writers have noticed it, but they did not claim authority from heaven; they merely wrote their own opinions and followed the promptings of their own instincts, which led them to hope that such a thing might be the case; but there was no certainty about it. Our position was just as Joseph said: if we could not receive the Gospel which is an everlasting Gospel; if we could not receive the dictum of a Priesthood that administers in time and eternity; if we could not receive a principle that would save us in the eternal world, and our wives and children with us, we were not fit to hold this kingdom, and could not hold it, for it would be taken from us and given to others. This is reasonable, proper, consistent, and recommends itself to the minds of all intelligence when it is reflected upon in the light of truth. Then, what did this principle open up to our view? That our wives, who have been associated with us in time—who had borne with us the heat and burden of the day, who had shared in our afflictions, trials, troubles, and difficulties, that they could reign with us in the eternal kingdoms of God, and that they should be sealed to us not only for time, but for all eternity. This unfolded to us the eternal fitness and relationship of things as they exist on the earth, of man to man, and of husband to wife; it unfolds the relationship they should occupy in time to each other, and the relationship that will continue to exist in eternity. Hence it is emphatically a religious subject so deep, sacred, and profound, so extensive and far-reaching, that it is one of the greatest principles that was ever revealed to man. Did we know anything about it before? No. How did we get a knowledge of it? By revelation. And shall we treat lightly these things? No. The Lord says that his servants may take to themselves more wives than one. Who gives to them one wife? The Lord. And has he not a right to give to them another, and another, and another? I think he has that right. Who has a right to dispute it, and prohibit a union of that kind, if God shall ordain it? Has not God as much right today to give to me, or you, or any other person two, three, four, five, ten, or twenty wives, as he had anciently to give them to Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon, etc.? Has not the Lord a right to do what he pleases in this matter, and in all other matters, without the dictation of man? I think He has. Every principle associated with the Gospel which we have received is eternal, hence our marriage covenant is an eternal covenant given unto us of God. Then, when poor, miserable, corrupt men would endeavor to trample us under their feet because of the principles of truth which we have received from God, shall we falter in the least? No, never. Its opposers may croak against it until they go down to the dust of death; God will defend his work which he has introduced in the latter days; and, the Lord being our helper, we will help him to sustain it.
Associated with this is another important principle—the baptism for the dead. One of the prophets has said that, “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord: And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” This Elias signifies a restorer. Jesus said of John the Baptist, in his day, “And if ye will receive it, this is the Elias (or restorer), which was for to come.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” But they would not hear: they did not receive it. They beheaded John, crucified Jesus, killed his apostles, and persecuted his followers; and their temple, nation, and polity were destroyed. But the times of restitution spoken of by the prophets must take place; the restorer must come “before that great and terrible day of the Lord.” The hearts of the fathers must be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, or the earth will be cursed. This great eternal marriage covenant lays at the foundation of the whole; when this was revealed, then followed the other. Then, and not till then, could the hearts of the fathers be turned to their children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers; then, and not till then, could the restoration be effectually commenced, time and eternity be connected, the past, present, and future harmonize, and the eternal justice of God be vindicated. “Saviors come upon mount Zion” to save the living, redeem the dead, unite man to woman and woman to man, in eternal, indissoluble ties; impart blessings to the dead, redeem the living, and pour eternal blessings upon posterity.
Let us now go back to the action of Congress in relation to plural marriage, of which these eternal covenants are the foundation. The Lord says, “I will introduce the times of the restitution of all things; I will show you my eternal covenants, and call upon you to abide in them; I will show you how to save yourselves, your wives and children, your progenitors and posterity, and to save the earth from a curse.” Congress says, “if you fulfill that law we will inflict upon you pains and penalties, fines and imprisonments; in effect, we will not allow you to follow God's commands.” Now, if Congress possessed the constitutional right to do so, it would still be a high-handed outrage upon the rights of man; but when we consider that they cannot make such a law without violating the Constitution, and thus nullifying the act, what are we to think of it? Where are we drifting to? After having, with uplifted hands to heaven, sworn that they will “make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” to thus sacrilegiously stand between a whole community and their God, and deliberately debar them, so far as they have the power, from observing his law, do they realize what they are doing? Whence came this law on our statute books? Who constituted them our conscience keepers? Who appointed them the judge of our religious faith, or authorized them to coerce us to transgress a law that is binding and imperative on our consciences? We do not expect that Congress is acquainted with our religious faith; but, as members of the body politic, we do claim the guarantees of the Constitution and immunity from persecution on merely religious grounds.
What are we to think of a United States judge who would marry a man to another man's wife. He certainly ought to know better. We are told that she was a second wife, and, therefore, not acknowledged. Indeed, this is singular logic. If she was not a wife, then polygamy is no crime in the eyes of the law; for Congress have passed no law against whoredom. A man may have as many mistresses as he please, without transgressing any law of Congress. The act in relation to polygamy contemplates punishing a man for having more wives, not mistresses. If she was simply his mistress, then the law is of no effect; and the very fact of Congress passing such a law is the strongest possible proof, in law, of the existence of a marriage covenant, which, until that law was passed, was by them considered valid. If, then, she was not his wife, no person could be punished under that law for polygamy. If she was his wife, then the judge transgressed the law which he professionally came to maintain.
In relation to all these matters, the safe path for the Saints to take is, to do right, and, by the help of God, seek diligently and honorably to maintain the position which they hold. Are we ashamed of anything we have done in marrying wives? No. We shall not be ashamed before God and the holy angels, much less before a number of corrupt, miserable scoundrels, who are the very dregs of hell. We care nothing for their opinions, their ideas, or notions; for they do not know God, nor the principles which he has revealed. They wallow in the sink of corruption, as they would have us do; but, the Lord being our helper, we will not do it, but we will try to do right and keep the commandments of God, live our religion, and pursue a course that will secure to us the smiles and approbation of God our Father. Inasmuch as we do this He will take care of us, maintain His own cause, and sustain His people. We have a right to keep His commandments. But what would you do if the United States were to bring up an army against you on account of polygamy, or on account of any other religious subject? We would trust in God, as we always have done. Would you have no fears? None. All the fears that I am troubled with is that this people will not do right—that they will not keep the commandments of God. If we will only faithfully live our religion, we fear no earthly power. Our safety is in God. Our religion is an eternal religion. Our covenants are eternal covenants, and we expect to maintain the principles of our religion on the earth, and to possess them in the heavens. And if our wives and children do right, and we as fathers and husbands do right in this world, we expect to have our wives and children in eternity. Let us live in that way which will secure the approbation of God, that we, his representatives on the earth, may magnify our calling, honor Him, and maintain our integrity to the end; that we may be saved in His celestial kingdom, with our wives, and children, and brethren, from generation to generation, worlds without end. Amen.
Anthem by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder F. D. Richards.
Saturday, 2 p.m.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder Joseph F. Smith.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prayer by Elder Joseph F. Smith.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder George Q. Cannon
read the following names of elders selected to go on missions, and submitted them to the Conference, which sustained the selections:--
Wm. Grant, Edward Petty and Isaac Kimball, G. S. L. City;
John Rees and Wm. Gwin, Box Elder;
George Hunter and John Urie, Cedar City;
Moses Thatcher, Logan;
John Peter Wretburg, Sugar House Ward;
Elmer Taylor, Springville;
John Ezra Pace, Harmony;
Nephi Faucet, St. George;
Marius Ensign and C. P. Leston, Santa Clara;
Edwin Walker, Toquerville.
read the following names of elders selected to go on missions, and submitted them to the Conference, which sustained the selections:--
Wm. Grant, Edward Petty and Isaac Kimball, G. S. L. City;
John Rees and Wm. Gwin, Box Elder;
George Hunter and John Urie, Cedar City;
Moses Thatcher, Logan;
John Peter Wretburg, Sugar House Ward;
Elmer Taylor, Springville;
John Ezra Pace, Harmony;
Nephi Faucet, St. George;
Marius Ensign and C. P. Leston, Santa Clara;
Edwin Walker, Toquerville.
Elder Franklin D. Richards
reasoned on the uncharitable, illiberal and persecuting manner in which the Saints have continually been treated. Because they have dared to serve God and keep His commandments the wrath and enmity of the wicked have been ever directed against them. Yet could the world realize and understand our motives and objects, and the spirit of inspiration with which God blesses His servants, and would they study their best interests, they would know that we are their friends, and they would come and seek counsel from the servants of God.
Elder W. Willes sang "My own home Deseret."
reasoned on the uncharitable, illiberal and persecuting manner in which the Saints have continually been treated. Because they have dared to serve God and keep His commandments the wrath and enmity of the wicked have been ever directed against them. Yet could the world realize and understand our motives and objects, and the spirit of inspiration with which God blesses His servants, and would they study their best interests, they would know that we are their friends, and they would come and seek counsel from the servants of God.
Elder W. Willes sang "My own home Deseret."
Elder George A. Smith
noticed some of the predictions that have been uttered concerning the destruction of "Mormonism" and its annihilation; showing it has outlived them, and has prospered; while apostates, who sought to bring evil upon it, have sunk from sight and are forgotten except when an Elder of Israel alludes to them. By referring to the history of several persons, in the early days of the Church, who had become filled with pride and vanity and had given way to apostacy, he illustrated the danger of faultfindings, complainings, and giving way to evil and the spirit of apostacy. In a very interesting historical discourse, he showed that the way of the apostate is a hard one, and leads to all the suffering, misery and bitterness which render existence unendurable.
Anthem by the American Fork choir.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder E. D. Woolley.
noticed some of the predictions that have been uttered concerning the destruction of "Mormonism" and its annihilation; showing it has outlived them, and has prospered; while apostates, who sought to bring evil upon it, have sunk from sight and are forgotten except when an Elder of Israel alludes to them. By referring to the history of several persons, in the early days of the Church, who had become filled with pride and vanity and had given way to apostacy, he illustrated the danger of faultfindings, complainings, and giving way to evil and the spirit of apostacy. In a very interesting historical discourse, he showed that the way of the apostate is a hard one, and leads to all the suffering, misery and bitterness which render existence unendurable.
Anthem by the American Fork choir.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder E. D. Woolley.
Sunday, 8th, 10 a.m.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder A. M. Lyman prayed.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder A. M. Lyman prayed.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Prest. H. C. Kimball
spoke on several principles of the gospel, and on the sacred character of the covenants entered into by the Saints with the Lord, encouraging the people to keep them inviolate that the blessings of God may be with them.
Elder J. D. T. McAllister sang, "Let them talk of this earth."
spoke on several principles of the gospel, and on the sacred character of the covenants entered into by the Saints with the Lord, encouraging the people to keep them inviolate that the blessings of God may be with them.
Elder J. D. T. McAllister sang, "Let them talk of this earth."
President B. Young
made the following remarks, which were reported by Elder George D. Watt:--
It will give me great pleasure to speak a few words to the people, and I shall be happy if I can make myself heard by this vast assemblage of Saints.
Much has been said by our brethren since the commencement of our two days' meeting and during Conference, with regard to the social life and habits of the Latter-day Saints; and all that has been said is in conformity with that endless variety which we see in all the works of God; for no two men express themselves alike in describing circumstances or in teaching doctrine. The doctrines which we have embraced are exceedingly dear to the faithful believer, and I may also say, that doctrines, how erroneous soever they may be, are as sacred to the person who believes them as our doctrines are to us.
Our faith and our acts are known to each other, and also to the world, although they are held forth by many in an unfair light. However, when an untruth is told against the Latter-day Saints, a conviction that it is untrue comes to every person who hears it, and the Spirit of Christ, that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, teacheth the children of men true principles.
I will now give you, in short, my opinion with regard to plural marriage. It is of God, and He has revealed it from the Heavens and made it obligatory upon the Saints in the last days. I am as much a believer in plural marriage as any of my brethren who have spoken. It is embraced in the faith of the Latter-day Saints and practiced by many of them. If I have a wife who wishes to leave me, let her make it known to me and she is as free to go from me as she is to stay with me. This is my doctrine. Every wife I may possess is as free as the air; if they choose to stay with me they can stay; if they wish to leave me, they are equally free; but they must not intrude upon their most sacred covenants, nor suffer others to intrude upon them. But otherwise from this, they are as free to go as they are to stay; they can go to the east, or to the west, to the north or to the south. They are as free to go, if they so wish, as they are to drink the water of City Creek; but if they violate their covenants, the curse of God will rest upon them, and if others intrude upon our rights in our domestic relations, we mean them to suffer the penalty.
To ask any person to be a Latter-day Saint, unless he wishes to be, is a thing I never do. I teach the people the truth; they that receive it in the love of it, will abide in it; they have the same liberty to reject is that they have to receive it. It is not required of me to make people believe the truth, whether they will or not. It is obligatory upon me to tell them the truth, to teach them correct doctrine, and leave them to take their choice, whether they receive it and live by it, and be saved, or reject it and be damned.
I will now take the liberty of making a statement to this congregation, and to this community—to those who are Saints and to those who are not Saints—to the Jew and the Greek—to the Christian and the Gentile, the old, the middle aged, the youth and children—in regard to the circumstances which has occurred here in our city within a few days past. The question is asked by thousands, no doubt, "Is this according to Brother Brigham's counsel? Is this done by counsel, and does Brother Brigham justify such things?" Whether I justify that act or not is not the property of any other person living; it is my own.
"Brother Brigham, did you counsel any such thing as killing Mr. Brassfield?"
I did not. I know no more about it than you do. That which has transpired I have merely heard, and that which instigated the killing of that man is not known to me.
"Suppose a man should enter your house and decoy away from you a wife of yours, what would you do under the circumstance?"
I would lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, so help me God. I say that for myself and not for another. I am for defending the truth of God and the ordinances of His house. I have enlisted to be His servant, and a co-worker and fellow laborer with Him, and with my elder brother, Jesus Christ, and to sustain His laws, and the liberty to proclaim the doctrine of salvation to the world; and I am on hand to do so. We say that this is right, others say that it is wrong. As was observed by Elder Amasa M. Lyman in his remarks here, we dare do a great many things, and leave the result in the hands of God; for He rules and overrules, guides and dictates, and controls the acts of the children of men; and He does so in a very different way from what they wish at many times.
We dare defend ourselves against the attacks of thieves and robbers; we dare preach the truth; we dare baptize people into the Kingdom of God—into the household of faith; we dare teach them the principles of life and salvation, though all hell may growl and roar, and threaten and vomit forth its dark insinuations. God will exalt the just, and the wicked and the ungodly will fail to maintain themselves in their wickedness. We dare do all this; we dare tell the world that Joseph Smith was a man of God—a Prophet of the Lord—when he was here in the flesh—that he is now a man of God, and still a Prophet of the Most High. The Holy Priesthood was delivered to him, and he delivered it to others, in which Priesthood we have greatly rejoiced. That this is true, ye are my witnesses. This congregation known whether "Mormonism" is true or not; they know it by the power of God; they know it, not merely because some man has said so, but they know it by the revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have taken this opportunity on this occasion, to say what I have relating to the killing of Mr. Brassfield for entering the house of one of the Saints and stealing away his wife. Were I absent from my home, I would rejoice to know that I had friends there to protect and guard the virtue of my household; and I would thank God for such friends.
We are still in existence as a people; still living and doing. We are constantly being told that we shall not live; yet still we live. When Brother Kimball and myself were baptized, they gave six months for "Mormonism" to live; it lived out the six months and spread and grew, and prospered in our hands. They have given us thirty days and sixty days, and six months, and a year and two years, etc., to see the destruction of "Mormonism," still it grows and flourishes. It has been said in this city "in sixty days your leader, Brigham Young, will be in our hands." The sixty days passed. It was then said that in ninety days the "Arch Deceiver" would be sure to fall into their hands, be taken captive and be punished for his crimes.
That period also passed, and Brigham Young still lives, and through the blessing of the Lord he is going to live; and this people will live, and spread abroad, and inherit the valleys of the mountains, and they will go forth and inherit other valleys; and in a little while they will be crying out for more room; and again, in a little while, they will cry for more room, and thus Zion will spread abroad. The providences of God, our Heavenly Father, will lead and overrule the doings of the wicked to results favoring His purposes, and as they are led to destruction, and the earth is cleansed from its corruption, Zion will spread abroad and ultimately fill the whole earth.
We need have no fears. We have none. I have never feared but one thing with regard to this people called Latter-day Saints—for myself, for my brethren the Apostles, for my sisters and their children, and for all the household of faith—one fear only has rested upon me, and that is, that we will not live our religion as strictly and as truly as we should.
If I were able to talk to you longer, I would like to preach to you principles of life and salvation, to lead the people along, and for their guidance and direction, their comfort and consolation, their victory and ultimate conquest over sin in themselves, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in our country and throughout the world, that the kingdom of God may spread far and wide, gather up the remnants of Israel, until we shall see the Jews gather home to the land of Palestine to await the coming of their Lord and Master, for whom they have looked so long, until righteousness shall go forth like the morning light, spreading its genial influences over all the earth acknowledge the rule of Him whose right it is to reign.
I must be satisfied with what little I have said. May God bless you, and I bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Geo. A. Smith.
made the following remarks, which were reported by Elder George D. Watt:--
It will give me great pleasure to speak a few words to the people, and I shall be happy if I can make myself heard by this vast assemblage of Saints.
Much has been said by our brethren since the commencement of our two days' meeting and during Conference, with regard to the social life and habits of the Latter-day Saints; and all that has been said is in conformity with that endless variety which we see in all the works of God; for no two men express themselves alike in describing circumstances or in teaching doctrine. The doctrines which we have embraced are exceedingly dear to the faithful believer, and I may also say, that doctrines, how erroneous soever they may be, are as sacred to the person who believes them as our doctrines are to us.
Our faith and our acts are known to each other, and also to the world, although they are held forth by many in an unfair light. However, when an untruth is told against the Latter-day Saints, a conviction that it is untrue comes to every person who hears it, and the Spirit of Christ, that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, teacheth the children of men true principles.
I will now give you, in short, my opinion with regard to plural marriage. It is of God, and He has revealed it from the Heavens and made it obligatory upon the Saints in the last days. I am as much a believer in plural marriage as any of my brethren who have spoken. It is embraced in the faith of the Latter-day Saints and practiced by many of them. If I have a wife who wishes to leave me, let her make it known to me and she is as free to go from me as she is to stay with me. This is my doctrine. Every wife I may possess is as free as the air; if they choose to stay with me they can stay; if they wish to leave me, they are equally free; but they must not intrude upon their most sacred covenants, nor suffer others to intrude upon them. But otherwise from this, they are as free to go as they are to stay; they can go to the east, or to the west, to the north or to the south. They are as free to go, if they so wish, as they are to drink the water of City Creek; but if they violate their covenants, the curse of God will rest upon them, and if others intrude upon our rights in our domestic relations, we mean them to suffer the penalty.
To ask any person to be a Latter-day Saint, unless he wishes to be, is a thing I never do. I teach the people the truth; they that receive it in the love of it, will abide in it; they have the same liberty to reject is that they have to receive it. It is not required of me to make people believe the truth, whether they will or not. It is obligatory upon me to tell them the truth, to teach them correct doctrine, and leave them to take their choice, whether they receive it and live by it, and be saved, or reject it and be damned.
I will now take the liberty of making a statement to this congregation, and to this community—to those who are Saints and to those who are not Saints—to the Jew and the Greek—to the Christian and the Gentile, the old, the middle aged, the youth and children—in regard to the circumstances which has occurred here in our city within a few days past. The question is asked by thousands, no doubt, "Is this according to Brother Brigham's counsel? Is this done by counsel, and does Brother Brigham justify such things?" Whether I justify that act or not is not the property of any other person living; it is my own.
"Brother Brigham, did you counsel any such thing as killing Mr. Brassfield?"
I did not. I know no more about it than you do. That which has transpired I have merely heard, and that which instigated the killing of that man is not known to me.
"Suppose a man should enter your house and decoy away from you a wife of yours, what would you do under the circumstance?"
I would lay judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, so help me God. I say that for myself and not for another. I am for defending the truth of God and the ordinances of His house. I have enlisted to be His servant, and a co-worker and fellow laborer with Him, and with my elder brother, Jesus Christ, and to sustain His laws, and the liberty to proclaim the doctrine of salvation to the world; and I am on hand to do so. We say that this is right, others say that it is wrong. As was observed by Elder Amasa M. Lyman in his remarks here, we dare do a great many things, and leave the result in the hands of God; for He rules and overrules, guides and dictates, and controls the acts of the children of men; and He does so in a very different way from what they wish at many times.
We dare defend ourselves against the attacks of thieves and robbers; we dare preach the truth; we dare baptize people into the Kingdom of God—into the household of faith; we dare teach them the principles of life and salvation, though all hell may growl and roar, and threaten and vomit forth its dark insinuations. God will exalt the just, and the wicked and the ungodly will fail to maintain themselves in their wickedness. We dare do all this; we dare tell the world that Joseph Smith was a man of God—a Prophet of the Lord—when he was here in the flesh—that he is now a man of God, and still a Prophet of the Most High. The Holy Priesthood was delivered to him, and he delivered it to others, in which Priesthood we have greatly rejoiced. That this is true, ye are my witnesses. This congregation known whether "Mormonism" is true or not; they know it by the power of God; they know it, not merely because some man has said so, but they know it by the revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have taken this opportunity on this occasion, to say what I have relating to the killing of Mr. Brassfield for entering the house of one of the Saints and stealing away his wife. Were I absent from my home, I would rejoice to know that I had friends there to protect and guard the virtue of my household; and I would thank God for such friends.
We are still in existence as a people; still living and doing. We are constantly being told that we shall not live; yet still we live. When Brother Kimball and myself were baptized, they gave six months for "Mormonism" to live; it lived out the six months and spread and grew, and prospered in our hands. They have given us thirty days and sixty days, and six months, and a year and two years, etc., to see the destruction of "Mormonism," still it grows and flourishes. It has been said in this city "in sixty days your leader, Brigham Young, will be in our hands." The sixty days passed. It was then said that in ninety days the "Arch Deceiver" would be sure to fall into their hands, be taken captive and be punished for his crimes.
That period also passed, and Brigham Young still lives, and through the blessing of the Lord he is going to live; and this people will live, and spread abroad, and inherit the valleys of the mountains, and they will go forth and inherit other valleys; and in a little while they will be crying out for more room; and again, in a little while, they will cry for more room, and thus Zion will spread abroad. The providences of God, our Heavenly Father, will lead and overrule the doings of the wicked to results favoring His purposes, and as they are led to destruction, and the earth is cleansed from its corruption, Zion will spread abroad and ultimately fill the whole earth.
We need have no fears. We have none. I have never feared but one thing with regard to this people called Latter-day Saints—for myself, for my brethren the Apostles, for my sisters and their children, and for all the household of faith—one fear only has rested upon me, and that is, that we will not live our religion as strictly and as truly as we should.
If I were able to talk to you longer, I would like to preach to you principles of life and salvation, to lead the people along, and for their guidance and direction, their comfort and consolation, their victory and ultimate conquest over sin in themselves, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in our country and throughout the world, that the kingdom of God may spread far and wide, gather up the remnants of Israel, until we shall see the Jews gather home to the land of Palestine to await the coming of their Lord and Master, for whom they have looked so long, until righteousness shall go forth like the morning light, spreading its genial influences over all the earth acknowledge the rule of Him whose right it is to reign.
I must be satisfied with what little I have said. May God bless you, and I bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Geo. A. Smith.
2 p.m.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder George Q. Cannon prayed.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder George Q. Cannon prayed.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Elder David P. Kimball,
who had just arrived from Europe, gave a brief account of his labors while absent; testifying to the power of God made manifest in answer to his prayers; and spoke of the progress of the work in Europe under the direction of Pres. B. Young, Junr. He called at Nauvoo on his way home, and there met with part of the Prophet Joseph's family. Some of the buildings still stand as they did when the Saints were compelled to leave them; but where the Temple stood a vineyard was being made. He expressed his joy at returning home, and bore testimony to the work.
who had just arrived from Europe, gave a brief account of his labors while absent; testifying to the power of God made manifest in answer to his prayers; and spoke of the progress of the work in Europe under the direction of Pres. B. Young, Junr. He called at Nauvoo on his way home, and there met with part of the Prophet Joseph's family. Some of the buildings still stand as they did when the Saints were compelled to leave them; but where the Temple stood a vineyard was being made. He expressed his joy at returning home, and bore testimony to the work.
Elder Charles S. Kimball,
who had arrived with his brother David, also referred to his mission, and testified to the fulfillment of the blessings pronounced on his head by the servants of God before he left this city to go to Europe. He spoke of the power of God which he had experienced while absent; and testified to the truth of the gospel.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
who had arrived with his brother David, also referred to his mission, and testified to the fulfillment of the blessings pronounced on his head by the servants of God before he left this city to go to Europe. He spoke of the power of God which he had experienced while absent; and testified to the truth of the gospel.
Singing by the American Fork choir.
Pres. D. H. Wells
expressed his pleasure at seeing young men, who were born in the church, going forth in the power of God, and accomplishing good among the nations. He reasoned on the principle of government, showing that we must first learn to control and govern ourselves before we are capable of governing others. Touched upon the growth of the work, and the power and blessings that result from unity of purpose and action. Pointing to a lack of accommodation in the Tabernacle, for the vast congregation assembled, he urged the necessity of having the New Tabernacle ready to hold meetings in by next Conference; and said that carpenters and other workmen for that building might be called for through the bishops, and when called for he hoped they would respond cheerfully and promptly.
expressed his pleasure at seeing young men, who were born in the church, going forth in the power of God, and accomplishing good among the nations. He reasoned on the principle of government, showing that we must first learn to control and govern ourselves before we are capable of governing others. Touched upon the growth of the work, and the power and blessings that result from unity of purpose and action. Pointing to a lack of accommodation in the Tabernacle, for the vast congregation assembled, he urged the necessity of having the New Tabernacle ready to hold meetings in by next Conference; and said that carpenters and other workmen for that building might be called for through the bishops, and when called for he hoped they would respond cheerfully and promptly.
Elder Heber J. Richards,
who had arrived with Elder D. P. and C. S. Kimball, expressed his gratitude at returning from his mission. Had been able to do some good while absent and had acquired an experience and a knowledge which he appreciated.
who had arrived with Elder D. P. and C. S. Kimball, expressed his gratitude at returning from his mission. Had been able to do some good while absent and had acquired an experience and a knowledge which he appreciated.
Pres. H. C. Kimball
followed up the remarks of Pres. Wells on the importance of having the New Tabernacle finished to hold next Conference in. By doing so we will please God, and His holy angels who are around, working for our safety. He referred to the missionaries who have just returned, and showed that if a man takes a course to sustain himself in righteousness before the Lord, he will grow in the power of God continually. He blessed the people and the priesthood in the name of Israel's God, and all who labor for the welfare of Zion.
followed up the remarks of Pres. Wells on the importance of having the New Tabernacle finished to hold next Conference in. By doing so we will please God, and His holy angels who are around, working for our safety. He referred to the missionaries who have just returned, and showed that if a man takes a course to sustain himself in righteousness before the Lord, he will grow in the power of God continually. He blessed the people and the priesthood in the name of Israel's God, and all who labor for the welfare of Zion.
The following additional names, of Elders selected to go on missions, were presented to the Conference and unanimously sustained;--
Isaac Aldredge, Lehi;
James Smith, Provo;
Joseph Lawson, Ogden;
Theren H. Spencer, G. S. L. City;
Richard Benson, Parowan;
Edward A. Noble and Edgar Dalrymple, Bountiful, Davis County.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
Isaac Aldredge, Lehi;
James Smith, Provo;
Joseph Lawson, Ogden;
Theren H. Spencer, G. S. L. City;
Richard Benson, Parowan;
Edward A. Noble and Edgar Dalrymple, Bountiful, Davis County.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir.
President Brigham Young
instructed the bishops to select praying men for teamsters to go for the immigration,--good men, who use good language, and are of good habits; men who will be fathers to the people, kind to the Saints, and kind to their teams.
Conference adjourned until 10 o'clock on the 6th of October next, when it is hoped the New Tabernacle will be in a condition for Conference to assemble in it.
President B. Young pronounced the closing benediction in the following words:--
I bless my brethren of the Apostles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I bless the High Priests, and the Seventies and the Elders, and ask God my Father in Heaven to pour upon them the richest blessings of heaven and earth; to bless them with the things of the earth, the mysteries of the Kingdom, and the glories of the upper worlds; with wisdom, with knowledge and with understanding. I also bless the Bishops and the Lesser Priesthood with the same blessings; and I bless this congregation and the community of the Latter-day Saints, and all the honest in heart upon the face of the whole earth. I bless you as fathers, as mothers, as children, as brothers and as sisters. I bless our musicians; I bless our brethren and sisters who have come here from a distance to make melody in our hearts by their singing; and I bless our choir in this city; and each and every one in this congregation;--our friends, our brethren, our sisters, our houses, our barns, our fields, our flocks and our herds and everything that belongs to us. I feel to bless the mountains and the valleys and the land of Joseph—the land of Zion; and pray may the peace of God rest upon the Latter-day Saints, and all who wish well to Zion. Receive ye the blessings of the Lord, my brethren and sisters; go in peace to your homes; be faithful to your covenants and holy callings; be true to each other, to your God and to your country, that we may be worthy to enjoy the blessings of a land of freedom and equal rights, and those things which the Lord will give unto us. Be ye blessed; and I bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
instructed the bishops to select praying men for teamsters to go for the immigration,--good men, who use good language, and are of good habits; men who will be fathers to the people, kind to the Saints, and kind to their teams.
Conference adjourned until 10 o'clock on the 6th of October next, when it is hoped the New Tabernacle will be in a condition for Conference to assemble in it.
President B. Young pronounced the closing benediction in the following words:--
I bless my brethren of the Apostles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I bless the High Priests, and the Seventies and the Elders, and ask God my Father in Heaven to pour upon them the richest blessings of heaven and earth; to bless them with the things of the earth, the mysteries of the Kingdom, and the glories of the upper worlds; with wisdom, with knowledge and with understanding. I also bless the Bishops and the Lesser Priesthood with the same blessings; and I bless this congregation and the community of the Latter-day Saints, and all the honest in heart upon the face of the whole earth. I bless you as fathers, as mothers, as children, as brothers and as sisters. I bless our musicians; I bless our brethren and sisters who have come here from a distance to make melody in our hearts by their singing; and I bless our choir in this city; and each and every one in this congregation;--our friends, our brethren, our sisters, our houses, our barns, our fields, our flocks and our herds and everything that belongs to us. I feel to bless the mountains and the valleys and the land of Joseph—the land of Zion; and pray may the peace of God rest upon the Latter-day Saints, and all who wish well to Zion. Receive ye the blessings of the Lord, my brethren and sisters; go in peace to your homes; be faithful to your covenants and holy callings; be true to each other, to your God and to your country, that we may be worthy to enjoy the blessings of a land of freedom and equal rights, and those things which the Lord will give unto us. Be ye blessed; and I bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
7 p.m.
A meeting of the priesthood, appointed for 7 o'clock, was very numerously attended, the Tabernacle being crowded.
After singing and prayer,
A meeting of the priesthood, appointed for 7 o'clock, was very numerously attended, the Tabernacle being crowded.
After singing and prayer,
Bishop Edward Hunter
spoke of the encouraging character of the reports from the various Bishops throughout the Territory; and exhorted them, their counselors and the teachers to seek to be led by the Holy Spirit, so that they might decide in all matters brought before them in righteousness.
spoke of the encouraging character of the reports from the various Bishops throughout the Territory; and exhorted them, their counselors and the teachers to seek to be led by the Holy Spirit, so that they might decide in all matters brought before them in righteousness.
Elder Geo. A. Smith
again spoke in favor of the Juvenile Instructor, and strongly recommended it. He referred to his recent trip south, and pointed out the importance of strengthening the most southern settlements there; and spoke in favor of the telegraphic line.
again spoke in favor of the Juvenile Instructor, and strongly recommended it. He referred to his recent trip south, and pointed out the importance of strengthening the most southern settlements there; and spoke in favor of the telegraphic line.
Elder Erastus Snow
endorsed the remarks of Br. Smith with regard to the south, and spoke of the opening of the Colorado River for the transportation of freight from California.
endorsed the remarks of Br. Smith with regard to the south, and spoke of the opening of the Colorado River for the transportation of freight from California.
Pres. D. H. Wells
encouraged the brethren to pursue a self-sustaining course, and to carry out the counsel of President Young given last October Conference, to plant rye, and go to making our own hats and bonnets; and recommended those who will use tobacco to grow it themselves.
encouraged the brethren to pursue a self-sustaining course, and to carry out the counsel of President Young given last October Conference, to plant rye, and go to making our own hats and bonnets; and recommended those who will use tobacco to grow it themselves.
Elder O. Hyde
made a few remarks instructing the brethren who might be going south to be well provided with arms, and thus be prepared to defend themselves against Indians.
Meeting was dismissed with prayer.
made a few remarks instructing the brethren who might be going south to be well provided with arms, and thus be prepared to defend themselves against Indians.
Meeting was dismissed with prayer.