Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Ogden City, June 4, 1871.

It is a great work to instruct ourselves and each other; and to bring ourselves into perfect subjection and to an understanding of principle. We know what it is to meet with obstructions, difficulties and contradictions of various kinds; and this people know pretty well what it is to have to contend with the influences of the wicked world; but we have reason to rejoice and be exceeding glad that we are not in the same circumstances now that we have been heretofore. We have peace here in these mountains, and since we arrived in these valleys we have been free from those obstructions with which our pathway was constantly strewn before. It is frequently asked me why we left the States and the society of our Christian brethren. My reply has invariably been, “We stayed with you just as long as you would let us, and when you would let us stay no longer we had to hunt up some other place, and we came to the valleys not out of choice but out of necessity.” It is true that we have had some little things to contend with here, but it amounts to no more than a war of words. Our religion will bear investigation, and we invite the Christian world to investigate and to exchange ideas concerning faith and principles.

Brother Wells has been telling you about some of the influences that we had to contend with in Illinois. This gentleman was not a “Mormon” when we went from Missouri to Illinois, neither was he when we left that State, and he was in a position to know what the feelings of the people were; his neighbors composed the band that slew Joseph and Hyrum in the jail at Carthage. He is acquainted with the circumstances. He says he has put them from his mind as much as possible, and does not think of them. I am happy to hear it. I wish we may never be under the necessity of again referring to what we have passed through; but we shall be, there is no question; and if we have to meet with influences of another character now, all that we have to do is to be prepared for them; and if the Lord brings us into circumstances in which we shall be as willing to live our religion and pray as some are to fight, it will be much better for us. We have many Elders in Israel who would much rather fight for their religion than pray. As for a person being saved in the celestial kingdom of God without being prepared to dwell in a pure and holy place, it is all nonsense and ridiculous; and if there be any who think they can gain the presence of the Father and the Son by fighting for instead of living their religion, they will be mistaken, consequently the quicker we make up our minds to live our religion the better it will be for us. If we live so as to enjoy the spirit of the faith that we have embraced there is no danger of our being deceived.

To those of our Christian brethren who have come here, not to join a mob to kill or persecute the Saints, but to see how many of those who have obeyed the Gospel they can induce to forsake the holy commandments of the Lord Jesus and to follow after phantoms, I say the quicker this war of words commences and the fiercer it is carried on the better it will be for the Saints. So we say come, brethren, come with your big tents, your meetinghouses, your arguments and all the philosophy you are in possession of, for we have a religion that we would like the inhabitants of the earth to understand. We have nothing in the dark, nothing but what is good for man; and we would say to all try our religion. We have tried and we understand the religions of the world; and in some remarks I made yesterday I ventured to say that our youth know more of heavenly things than old men do in the Christian world. If any doubt this, just take our children and question them, and if they have the courage and boldness, see how quickly they will lead members of the sectarian world into waters so deep that they cannot see the shore. But if a war of argument is desired or intended, I do not mean contention, but an exchange of ideas, we are willing to give to all who want them the principles of the Gospel of life and salvation, and they can give to us all they know of the Gospel as they have embraced it, which is no more nor less than a system of morals or ethics, and is excellent as far as it goes. But the Gospel that we have embraced includes every principle of morality and virtue that is taught by any person on the earth, whether he does or does not know or profess to know Christ.

If we are brought into circumstances where we have the privilege of telling strangers what we believe in we are very willing to do so; but the first thing with them is, “Oh, your strange doctrine, your peculiar doctrine!” How often this is said to me in my office. I say to them, “What peculiar doctrine? Will you please to name it?” The reply is, “Well, you know you have a peculiar doctrine;” and the ladies stand anxiously waiting for somebody or other to give it a name. I sometimes say, “Is it plurality of wives you mean?” “Yes, yes, that is the doctrine.” If I were to answer my own feelings to such parties, I would answer them and say, “That is nothing; so far as a plurality of women goes, you men, if you will allow me this vulgar expression, ‘knock the hind sights off the Mormons.’” But that is vulgar, and so let it pass.

“But,” say they, “what of your peculiar doctrine? What did you come to the mountains for? What did you leave us for? We suppose it was on account of your peculiar doctrine.” I reply, “Pause! Wait a moment! When we left the confines of what is called civilization the doctrine of plurality of wives was not known by the world, and was not taught by us, and was known only to a very few members of our Church; but since we have declared this revelation we have dwelt in peace and safety, so we were not persecuted for that, sure. We did not leave Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, or any other State or neighborhood within the confines of civilization for believing in the doctrine of a plurality of wives.” I say this to all who hear me. I want our young folks to understand this, or they may perhaps grow up with the idea that we were driven from our homes in consequence of our belief in celestial marriage. I want all our young, and all who believe the Gospel and all who do not believe it, to know that we were driven for believing in the Old and New Testament; not for believing in the Book of Mormon, but in the Bible, and then practicing it in our lives. This, and this only, is what we were driven for. It is now called the “one-man power;” then it was “the ‘Mormons’ clan together;” and this was the rock of offense or seemingly so; but in reality it was the same then as now and now as then—we as a people believe in the Scriptures of divine truth, and we are united in endeavoring to live according to the precepts thereof.

When Brother Wells was speaking he said the Christian religion had failed. I will say just what he meant to say—namely, that professing the Christian religion has failed to bring the world into subjection to moral laws. I would not say that Christianity has failed; the religion of Christ has not failed, but those professing this religion have failed to bring the world into subjection to good and wholesome laws. You may take up politics, for instance, and in our own country there are a great many parties who differ in their views and opinions with regard to governing a nation, and on every hand they are contending against each other. This division exists even among the professing Christians. The Catholics and Quakers are probably less divided than others, but they are far from being one in politics; and the same is true to a greater extent of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and so on. When we see a religion, and one which is claimed to be the religion of Christ, and it will not govern men in their politics, it is a very poor religion, it is very feeble, very taint in its effects, hardly perceptible in the life of a person. The religion that the Lord has revealed from heaven unites the hearts of the people, and when they gather together, no matter where they are from, they are of one heart and one mind. Those who have no idea of the effects of the Gospel attribute the oneness it produces to the influence of individuals now living on the earth, instead of giving God the glory, praise and honor.

The religion of heaven unites the hearts of the people and makes them one. You may gather a people together, and no matter how widely they differ in politics, the Gospel of Jesus Christ will make them one, even if among them were found members of all the political parties in the country, I do not know how many different political parties now exist in the country. There used to be only Federals and Democrats, then Whigs, Republicans, Locofocos, Barn-burners, and Free-soilers. Then the “Know Nothings” sprang into existence. I believe the Ku-Klux is a new political organization; and I have heard that, in the City of Washington, the Anti-Ku-Klux, another political party, has recently been organized. If members of all these various organizations were to obey the Gospel and gather together, the religion of heaven would clear their hearts of all political rubbish and make them one in voting for principles and measures, instead of men, and I think that any religion that will not do this is very feeble in its effects. The Christian religion, or what is called so, has failed to subdue the world; but what will the Gospel of Jesus Christ do? If the Gospel that we preach, and which we are trying to set before priest and people—for we want all to know and understand it—if it does not have the effect of convincing men and women of the truth sufficiently to induce them to yield obedience to its ordinances and to embrace the doctrine of life and salvation, and accept the overtures of mercy, learn Christ and obey him, it will drive them to the wall of infidelity. Do we believe this? It must be so. Do others believe it? No, they do not. The Christian world do not know that they are infidels in their belief in regard to the character of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Priesthood and its laws and requirements. If a man does not believe that he ought to be baptized for the remission of his sins, he is an infidel to baptism. My definition of the term infidel is that if any principle or doctrine is set before me, and I say I disbelieve it, I am neither more nor less than an infidel to that principle or doctrine. Are the sectarian world infidels according to this definition? Yes, and if we had time we would take some passages of Scripture and prove it. Take, for instance, the character of the Savior, and the sectarian world are infidel on this point. What do they believe about it? I do not know what they believe, and they do not know themselves. Many of them do not know that they believe anything. They would he glad to believe if they knew what to believe. But not knowing what to believe, they say, “We do not know, we do not understand, we cannot tell. We understand some things by reading the Scriptures; but the ministers tell us they have a spiritual meaning.” Now what does this favorite saying of the ministers—“a spiritual meaning”—convey to the mind? Something or other that you and I do not understand, that is all. Well, then, partially, I will say, to a certain degree, it leaves us in infidelity. This is the situation of the sectarian world today—they do not know what to believe, and consequently they are full of unbelief and doubt, and we say that our children ought to know enough to teach the whole world with regard to these things. The divines of the day, when, they have graduated from the schools, seminaries and colleges, so far as their knowledge of heavenly things goes, are a bundle of trash and ignorance. I meet with some occasionally, however, who are very religious. I met with a gentleman in my office last Friday evening, who was very tenacious on some points touching morality. He put me in mind of a great many I have met in my travels—strong, staunch Christians. What did the religion of that individual consist of? I told you yesterday—ignorance and impudence—that is about the amount of it. Such men would be Christians if they knew how, they would like to be. But will they receive the truth? Our doctrine and practice is, and I have made it mine through life—to receive truth no matter where it comes from. Is there truth in heaven? Yes, it dwells there, it is the foundation of the heavens. Is there truth on earth and beneath the earth? There is. Is there truth in the words of a good man? Yes. In the words of a wicked man? Yes, sometimes; and there is truth in the words of an angel, and in the words of the devil, and when the devil speaks the truth I should have the spirit to discriminate between the truth and the error, and should receive the former and reject the latter. For example, you read in Genesis about the formation of the earth and the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden. By and by the devil comes along and tempts Eve, by offering her the fruit of a certain tree, assuring her at the same time that the very day she ate of it her eyes would be open and she would see like the Gods. Did the devil tell the truth? He did. Did he tell a lie? Yes, and how many of them he told to one truth I have not taken pains to examine. You take a wicked person, an opposer of the truth, one of our apostates, for instance, and he will tell you a little truth and mix it up with a great deal of error; but we should know enough to understand and receive the truth; that will do us good, and if we reject the error it will do us no harm.

This is our position, and we say to all Christians come and investigate our religion. Do we understand Methodism, Presbyterianism, Quakerism, Shakerism and the various other isms of the Christian world? Yes. I learned these, as far as their creeds go, many years ago. That which they could not tell and did not understand, I never did learn. My objection to their creeds and systems was that they talked about things they did not understand and could not tell a word about; consequently I was called an infidel. We say, give us the truth; but when strangers come to see me their first reflection is, “I would like to ask him a question if I dare.” What is it? It is all about wives. My conscience! What a generation of gentlemen and ladies we have! Their thoughts and reflections are continually about wives and husbands. Why the mind of a pure Saint and Christian is above such things. If it is necessary to take a wife, take one; if it is necessary to have a husband, have one. If it is necessary to have two wives, take them. If it is right, reasonable and proper and the Lord permits a man to take half a dozen wives, take them; but if the Lord says let them alone, let them alone. How long? Until we go down to the grave, if the Lord demand it. If he require an Elder or Elders to take their valise and travel and preach the Gospel until the day of their death, they should do it; and if they are not happy in so doing, it would prove that they do not possess the spirit of their religion.

This gentleman to whom I was speaking on Friday was tenacious with regard to the Sabbath; that was his whole theme. He commenced about our running cars here on the Sabbath Day. I told him in as few words as I could, that my feelings were not to do it, and if I had the management of railroads I would stop it. Why? Because the Lord has said that it is not good for us to work the seven days; it is good to work six and rest the seventh. Our system requires rest after six days’ labor, and consequently he has set the seventh apart for that purpose. But I told him I could not control that matter; the people want to run from Salt Lake to Ogden and back again to Salt Lake on Sundays, and consequently, as it is a matter of necessity, we run the cars on the Sabbath. Said he, “How can you reconcile this?” Said I, “It ought to be done, that is how I reconcile it.” Know whether you ought to do a thing or not, and if you ought to do it, do it; and if you ought not, let it alone. That is the way to live. You cannot read anything in the Bible about a railroad from Salt Lake City to Ogden, nor from the Atlantic to the Pacific; you cannot read anything about telegraph wires, nor whether they should work on a Sunday or lie still; nor anything about running a railroad, or a stage, or about the labor of the people who live now. By reading the Bible we can learn something about the way the ancients regulated their labors as far as the Lord told them what to do. It is one of the most simple things in the world for people to understand what course they should take; what a pity they do not all understand it! If men would live and humble themselves like children God could dwell within them and could dictate every heart. But to enjoy this we must live before the Lord, so that our minds would be like a sheet of white paper such as our reporters here are writing on, then the Lord could and would dictate all our movements. Live with a conscience void of offense towards God and man and the spirit of inspiration would indite matter on every such well regulated conscience. But our consciences are made by our parents and teachers; and just as we are taught by others are our consciences dictated. But we should all live so that the spirit of revelation could dictate and write on the heart and tell us what we should do, instead of the traditions of our parents and teachers. But to do this we must become like little children; and Jesus says if we do not we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. How simple it is! Live free from envy, malice, wrath, strife, bitter feelings, and evil speaking in our families and about our neighbors and friends, and all the inhabitants of the earth, wherever we meet them. Live so that our consciences are free, clean and clear. This is as simple as anything can be, and yet it is one of the hardest things to get people to understand, or rather to practice; for you may get them to understand it, but the great difficulty is to get them to practice it. If we, both priest and people, will practice this, the Spirit of the Lord can dictate and tell us our duty, and when that is presented before us we will go and do it.

But, instead of such principles as these occupying people’s minds now-a-days, it is, “How many wives have you, Mr. Young? Oh, I do want to ask Mr. Young how many wives he has.” Ladies who come into my office very frequently say, “I wonder if it would hurt his feelings if I were to ask him how many wives he has?” Let me say to all creation that I would as lief they should ask me that question as any other; but I would rather see them anxious to learn about the Gospel. Having wives is a secondary consideration; it is within the pale of duty, and consequently, it is all right. But to preach the Gospel, save the children of men, build up the kingdom of God, produce righteousness in the midst of the people; govern and control ourselves and our families and all we have influence over; make us of one heart and one mind; to clear the world from wickedness—this fighting and slaying, this mischievous spirit now so general, and to subdue and drive it from the face of the earth, and to usher in and establish the reign of universal peace, is our business, no matter how many wives a man has got, that makes no difference here or there. I want to say, and I wish you to publish it, that I would as soon be asked how many wives I have got as any other question, just as soon; but I would rather see something else in their minds, instead of all the time thinking “How many wives have you; or I wonder whom he slept with last night.” I can tell those who are curious on this point. I slept with all that slept, and we slept on one universal bed—the bosom of our mother earth, and we slept together. “Did you have anybody in bed with you?” “Yes.” “Who was it?” It was my wife, it was not your wife, nor your daughter nor sister, unless she was my wife, and that too legally. I can say that to all creation, and every honest man can say the same; but it is not all who are professed Christians who can say it, and I will say, and I am sorry to say it, not all professed “Mormons” can say this. Live so that your heart is pure and holy, and if the Lord Almighty gives you a wife take good care of her, and do not be like many of our brethren. I heard a contention this morning between an old man and his family, I am ashamed to say it; as I said to the brethren, “It is bad enough to see young fools, but worse to see old fools.” You only meet with a man occasionally who knows enough about human nature to govern his own family. Men, as a general thing, do not know the dispositions of their wives and children, nor how to govern and control them; and it is certainly a pretty close, intricate point. I have had some people ask me how I manage and control the people. I do it by telling them the truth and letting them do just as they have a mind to. I control my wives by telling them the truth and letting them do as they like. Will I quarrel with them? No, I will not. Some of them may have felt a little discouraged at this. I do not know, however, that they had a disposition to quarrel; if they have had, they are sick of it, for they have found out that they cannot raise the breeze. Devils, pigs, dogs and the brute creation quarrel. Do intelligent men quarrel? Yes, and men and women will quarrel, and sometimes they quarrel with their neighbors. I meet with some occasionally who need chastening, but as for quarrelling I do not think that I am guilty of it.

With these few remarks it is about time to close. We shall meet again, this afternoon. To satisfy my feelings I should have to say a good deal. I say to you who want to govern your wives, set them an example, continually, that is good. Let them say, “There is my husband, does he do anything that he should not do? No, he does not. He prays, he is faithful, humble, meek, full of kindness and of good words and works, I see nothing wrong in him.” If a man lives like this his wife will say, “I should be ashamed to get up a quarrel, I think I had better do as he says, I think he knows better than I do, I will yield my spirit to his.” If a man pursue this straightforward, manly, godlike course he will find woman in her place by his side following him. He is leading her, she is not leading him. When we find an Elder of Israel do this we find plenty of women who will go along with him. And this is the principle on which to govern a neighborhood or nation as well as a wife or children. When a king, ruler, president, governor or legislative assembly take this course, the people knew they are looking after the welfare of the governed instead of their own aggrandizement, and they will always be glad to have them in office, and they will not wish for a change. When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people mourn. This is the secret of it; if we govern ourselves we can govern others.

May the Lord bless us. Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Ogden City, June 3, 1871.

I am aware that Brother Franklin D. Richards’ request to the children to come to meeting this afternoon has produced a little excitement; but we are very happy to see the people together. My remarks will be to parents as well as to children. I will commence by saying that if each and every one of us who are parents will reflect upon the responsibilities devolving upon us we shall come to the conclusion that we should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do. We should set them an example that we wish them to imitate. Do we realize this? How often we see parents demand obedience, good behavior, kind words, pleasant looks, a sweet voice and a bright eye from a child or children when they themselves are full of bitterness and scolding! How inconsistent and unreasonable this is! If we wish our children to look pleasant we should look pleasant at them; and if we wish them to speak kind words to each other, let us speak kind words to them. We need not go into detail, but we should carry out this principle from year to year in our whole lives, and do as we wish our children to do. I say this with regard to our morals and our faith in our religion.

Now let me call the attention of parents to another subject worthy of their notice—that is, the use of proper language. Take us as a people and we are not overstocked with language; there are very few highly educated men in the Church to which we belong. We have a few learned men and a few good scholars among the women, but they are scarce. Now, parents, and I wish you to remember this, should never permit themselves to speak improperly before a child, or to use language that would not be commendable in an orator. If you have not such language at your command, then use the best you have. It is true that to use that which we are in possession of to advantage is a peculiar gift. We see some who can use language, apparently, to their entire satisfaction, and yet they have no great store of language at their command; but still they have the happy faculty of conveying their ideas with greater propriety than others who are literary in their tastes and have been highly educated. There is considerable in making choice of words. For instance, if we were to address a man who had been disobedient and needed chastisement we would use very different language from that which would be used if addressing a child or a lady. If you wish to impress on the minds of individuals or an audience anything that you desire them to remember, you will have to use language accordingly. I have heard it observed that language should be used according to the merits or demerits of the case under consideration; this will do under some circumstances. I wish to impress upon myself, as well as upon my brethren and sisters, the propriety of never using language to a child that we should dislike to hear them use in refined society. If we have a choice set of words at our command we should always use them when speaking to our children, even from the time they commence to talk. If we do this, the effect will be very pleasing in after years, for when our children enter into polite and refined society, instead of being mortified and having to call them to one side to correct their unrefined language, the elegance and propriety of their mode of expression will be a source of gratification and pleasure. If a child has to be corrected for the use of improper or inelegant language, it might reply, “Mother, or father, I am using words that you taught me.”

Carry out this principle, not only in language, but in all the affairs of life; and let us always set an example before our children that is worthy of their imitation and highest admiration. If we do this, we shall have occasion to rejoice and be exceeding glad, for we shall have influence over them and they will not forsake us.

There is a passage in this good book (the Bible) said to have been written by a very wise man, which says—

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

To make a community thoroughly understand these words, a great deal of explanation would be necessary. To illustrate, I ask myself, am I capable of bringing up a child in the way that he should go? The answer is right here—I am not. Why not? Because I have not that light and intelligence in my possession and that command over myself to give to a child a suitable impression under every circumstance and in every place, when I address him or require anything of him. I would not speak discouragingly of myself or of my brethren and sisters. We know a great deal, but when we compare our knowledge with the fountain of knowledge it is very small; when our light is compared with the fountain of light it is very small, and consequently I can say that I am not prepared to bring up a child in the way he should go; and yet I probably come as near to it as any person that lives. How is it with my brethren and sisters? They are capable of bringing up their children a great deal better than they do, that is certain. If we do as well as we know how—use all the faith and intelligence in our possession, and seek to gain more, we will be able to bring up our children in such a way that very few of them will ever depart from the right path. I want you to remember this. If we will do just as well as we know how, never missing an opportunity of giving a word, a look or a principle that will do good to the rising generation, never permitting ourselves to be overtaken in fault, but preserving ourselves in the integrity and patience of our souls, there are very few of the rising generation with us that will depart from the words of life. As for those who are old amongst us, their traditions and prepossessed notions, imbibed in childhood, cling to them like a garment, or like something glued to them; and they govern them to a great extent, and it is almost an impossibility for old people to get rid of their traditions; but it will be very different with our children if we train them according to the will of God that has been revealed to us as a people. We have the Old and New Testaments; the Book of Mormon, giving an account of the aborigines of our country, the visit of the Savior to and the organization of his Church on this continent, the same as to his brethren on the land of Palestine. Then we have the Book of Doctrine and Covenants; in addition to these three books, we have the history, discourses and sayings of the Prophet Joseph, and the history, sayings and discourses of the Elders of Israel, and also the experience we have gained in this Church. Combine these, and I think we cannot come to the conclusion that we are ignorant and do not know anything; although I say that, in comparison with the fountain of all knowledge, our knowledge is small and trifling. But if we will do as well as we know how, we will be able to teach our children sufficient doctrine, truth and principle, that they will actually grow up into Christ, our living head.

Now let us say a few words with regard to human nature and its proneness to wander into evil. You go, for instance, to the river and commence to throw sticks and shavings into the water, and they will go downstream; and a great effort or a very powerful wind will be required to make a small boat, vessel, bark, or even a board that the children play with, go upstream. The same is true of small streams. Cast anything into them, and it goes downstream. We are taught in these books that, through the Fall, we have partaken so much of the nature of the enemy—he has so much influence in the flesh of every person, that we have to enter into a warfare, and we have to summon all our force and to use every effort to propel our bark upstream, or to put down iniquity in our own hearts and inclinations. I will pause right here, and refer to what brother George Q. Cannon was saying this morning to the children. Said he, “My boys, do not chew tobacco because you see others do it; do not smoke a cigar because you see others do it; my little girls, do not drink tea because you see mamma do it.” Now let me give you a comparison. Ask these little boys, if they saw two parties, one on the right hand praying to the Father in the name of Jesus, and the other on the left with a cigar in his mouth, puffing away as vigorously as possible, which they would be most inclined to imitate, and you will find they will instantly choose that which is evil. They are not inclined to pray; there seems to be a kind of a dread or terror about it, and they say, “We do not know how to ask the Father for blessings, and we do not think we could pray, but give us a cigar and we can puff as well as anybody.” This is only a comparison, but it furnishes a correct illustration of the facility with which evil habits are acquired, and how quick children as well as parents are to go astray, how quick their feet are to run into by and forbidden paths. But if parents will continually set before their children examples worthy of their imitation and the approval of our Father in heaven, they will turn the current, and the tide of feelings of their children, and they, eventually, will desire righteousness more than evil. This disposition will not be acquired in one day, week or year; but let parents spend their lives in teaching good, in good words and good looks and in the continual exercise of their faith in God, and their children will finally feel that they would rather be Christians than sinners.

Have we any proof of this? Yes. We have brethren here who have traveled a good deal, and who have been in the Church a good many years. If they could only think of them they could count over people by the hundred and the thousand who have left this Church; but you now see many of their children coming to Zion; and get into conversation with them and you will hear them say, “I have come to see what you, Latter-day Saints, are doing. My father was formerly a member of your Church; but he left and died in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or somewhere else. My parents taught me to believe the Gospel, and, although they were cut off from the Church, it has never left me. When I read the Bible I find that they taught me the truth. If I go to meeting among the sectarians, I gain neither light nor knowledge; but what my parents taught me has had an influence upon me through my life from my childhood up, and now I have come to see what you, Latter-day Saints, are doing.” And the children and grandchildren of those who apostatized years and years ago, will come up to Zion by hundreds and thousands, impelled by what their parents taught them in childhood.

This is another comparison. We are not quite all going to apostatize; a great many have died in the faith, and a great many have apostatized, but their posterity will come to Zion and believe the truth. Our children will have the love of the truth, if we but live our religion. Parents should take that course that their children can say, “I never knew my father to deceive or take advantage of a neighbor; I never knew my father take to himself that which did not belong to him, never, never! No, but he said, ‘Son, or daughter, be honest, true, virtuous, kind, industrious, prudent and full of good works.’” Such teachings from parents to their children will abide with them forever, unless they sin against the Holy Ghost, and some few, perhaps, will do this.

If you should have visits here from those professing to be Christians, and they intimate a desire to preach to you, by all means invite them to do so. Accord to every reputable person who may visit you, and who may wish to occupy the stands of your meetinghouses to preach to you, the privilege of doing so, no matter whether he be a Catholic, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Freewill Baptist, Methodist, or whatever he may be; and if he wishes to speak to your children let him do so. Of course you have the power to correct whatever false teachings or impressions, if any, your children may hear or receive. I say to parents, place your children, as far as you have an opportunity to do so, in a position or situation to learn everything in the world that is worth learning. You will probably have what is called a Christian Church here; they will not admit that we are Christians, but they cannot think us further from the plan of salvation as revealed from heaven than we know them to be, so we are even on that ground, as far as it goes. But, as I was saying, you may have professing Christians come here to take up their residences in your midst; and I want to say to parents and children, that, so far as the Christian nations are concerned, I will take America, for instance, and on the score of morals—honesty, integrity, truthfulness and virtue, you will find people by hundreds of thousands just as good as any Latter-day Saints, as far as they know. They are the ones we are after. The Lord told us to go and preach the Gospel without purse and scrip. What for? To hunt up the honest ones who are now mixed up with all the nations of the earth and gather them together; and we have done so, as far as we have had the opportunity and privilege. And after we are gathered we are none too honest, any more than the inhabitants of the world generally are, and they hardly know the meaning of the term. Still, according to the light they possess, I mean the Christian world, thousands and millions of them are honest, virtuous and true, and I fellowship them as far as they do right. Is this strange? No, it is not. I wish that all the Latter-day Saints were as good, according to the knowledge they possess, as thousands and millions of the sectarian world are; and I will not skip even the heathen world, for many of them are as good and honest, according to the light they possess, as men and women know how to be.

Now, then, if our brethren of the Presbyterians, Methodists or any others visit here and want to preach to you, certainly let them preach, and have your children hear them. They will tell you to keep the Sabbath and to love your father and mother; they will tell you to be true, honest, industrious, to be faithful to your studies, to read the Bible and all good books, to study the sciences, &c., which is all good, and as far as such teaching goes just as good as it can be. If they want to come and teach your children in the Sunday school, I say let them do so, most certainly. We have scores of thousands of their books distributed among the Sunday schools throughout our Territory. Some Latter-day Saints think they are not exactly what they ought to be; but we are using them in our schools Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from one year’s end to another.

I say, parents, do not be afraid of having your children learn everything that is worth learning. I can pick hundreds and thousands of children in this Church whom I could teach with greater ease, and so could a man from college, than their parents could be taught. I can get at their senses better; they are quick and apprehensive and can learn sooner. And if any of our Christian brethren want to go into our Sabbath schools to teach our children, let them do so. They will not teach them anything immoral in the presence of those who are in charge of the schools; they wait until they get behind the door in the dark before they commit immoral acts, and very few of them will, even then. But in their Sunday schools they teach as good morals as you and I can teach.

I want to say that we are for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; we are pursuing the path of truth, and by and by we expect to possess a great deal more than we do now; but to say that we shall ever possess all truth, I pause, I do not know when. We receive light and truth from the fountain of light and truth, but I am not at liberty to say, and do not know that we shall ever see the time when we shall possess all truth. But we will receive truth from any source, wherever we can obtain it.

Next week the great camp meeting that has been so long contemplated is to commence in the city of Salt Lake, where, I have heard it whispered, there are so many of the “Mormons” to be converted. I am going to permit every one of my children to go and hear what they have to say. When we come to the sciences of the day the knowledge of the sectarian world is very extensive; the same is true of their morality; but when we come to read out of the Book of Life the words of the Almighty to the people, and compare them with the knowledge of the sectarian world, I am reminded of the words of Geo. Francis Train concerning a certain gentleman. Said he, “I want you to sit down and tell me all you know in five minutes.” They can tell all they know about God, godliness, heaven, earth, and the exaltation of man to the Godhead in five minutes, for they do not know anything. Our children can see this, and I want them to see it. If there is any man among them that does know anything about the plan of the Almighty for the redemption and exaltation of man, I hope and pray that I may have the privilege of seeing him. I recollect when I was young going to hear Lorenzo Dow preach. He was esteemed a very great man by the religious folks. I, although young in years and lacking experience, had thought a great many times that I would like to hear some man who could tell me something, when he opened the Bible, about the Son of God, the will of God, what the ancients did and received, saw and heard and knew pertaining to God and heaven. So I went to hear Lorenzo Dow. He stood up some of the time, and he sat down some of the time; he was in this position and in that position, and talked two or three hours, and when he got through I asked myself, “What have you learned from Lorenzo Dow?” and my answer was, “Nothing, nothing but morals.” He could tell the people they should not work on the Sabbath day; they should not lie, swear, steal, commit adultery, &c., but when he came to teaching the things of God he was as dark as midnight. And so I lived until, finally, I made a profession of religion. I thought to myself I would try to break off my sins and lead a better life and be as moral as I possibly could; for I was pretty sure that I should not stay here always. Where I was going to I did not know, but I would like to be as good as I know how while here, rather than run the risk of being full of evil. I had heard a good deal about religion, and what a good nice place heaven was, and how good the Lord was, and I thought I would try to live a pretty good life. But when I reached the years of, I will say, courage, I think that is the best term, I would ask questions. I would say, “Elder, or Minister, I read so and so in the Bible, how do you understand it?” Then I would go and hear them preach on the divinity of the Son, and the character of the Father and the Holy Ghost and their divinity, and, I will say, the divinity of the soul of man; what we are here for, and various kindred topics. But after asking questions and going to hear them preach year after year, What did I learn? Nothing. I would as lief go into a swamp at midnight to learn how to paint a picture and then define its colors when there is neither moon nor stars visible and profound darkness prevails, as to go to the religious world to learn about God, heaven, hell or the faith of a Christian. But they can explain our duty as rational, moral beings, and that is good, excellent as far as it goes.

This has been my experience in the Christian world, and I want our children to go and hear all there is to hear, for the whole sum of it will be wound up as I once heard one of the finest speakers America has ever produced say, when speaking on the soul of man. After laboring long on the subject, he straightened himself up—he was a fine looking man—and said he, “My brethren and sisters, I must come to the conclusion that the soul of man is an immaterial substance.” Said I, “Bah!” There was no more sense in his discourse than in the bleating of a sheep or the grunting of a pig. I palliated the facts partially, however, so far as he was concerned, by attributing my lack of comprehension to my own ignorance. This reminds me that I once heard Mr. Lansing preach a most elaborate discourse. It was in the morning, and when the meeting was dismissed and the people had come out, Deacon Brown says to Deacon Taylor, “What a sermon we have had!” Deacon Taylor says, “Yes, yes!” Deacon Brown says, “That is one of the most profound discourses I ever heard Mr. Lansing deliver;” and so they continued talking until one of them said at last, “I did not understand a word of it.” The other Deacon replied, “Neither did I.” Their verdict was a just one, for the discourse consisted of fine, beautiful words and nothing else, I saw and heard nothing to give me the least clue to anything pertaining to God, heaven, or the designs of the Creator with regard to the earth and its inhabitants. But as I did not understand a word of it, I supposed that was on account of my ignorance, until I heard the Deacons say that they did not, and then I concluded that I knew as much as they did. For this reason I say, go and learn all they know. Their catechisms are good; but if you come to the things of God I will be bound that we have children who, if they dare open their mouths and converse, would place them in water they could not fathom. Yet I say, go and see and hear them and learn what they know, then you can discriminate and discern, and will be able to understand why the Lord called upon Joseph Smith to come out and declare his will, and why he bestowed upon Joseph the Priesthood and its keys and powers. You will then learn, my little boys and girls, that the world of mankind scarcely know anything about the Bible. Ask them concerning the character of the Savior and they will expatiate and expound hour after hour, but they will tell absolutely nothing. I presume that there are sisters here who have asked ministers what a certain Scripture meant, and in reply they have talked, talked, talked, and wound up by saying, “Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. Sister, I cannot tell you.” Have you ever heard sisters and children ask questions of this kind? Yes, and so have I many times, but they have failed to obtain one particle of knowledge from their religious teachers. Why? Because they did not possess it. They did not know that Jesus was the express image of his Father, although they had read it in the Bible; they did not know that man was made in the image of his God, although they have read it hundreds of times in the book they profess to reverence and believe in so much. They cannot realize it. When and how will they realize it? When they submit themselves to the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus to give them revelation by the Holy Ghost. No man can call Jesus the Christ except it be revealed from heaven to him.

I will say to my young friends, my little brothers and sisters, go and learn everything you can. I say to parents, do not be afraid one particle! These children will learn something that we as parents know and understand already, and it is very grievous for us to realize that it is the truth. Joseph, our Prophet, was hunted and driven, arrested and persecuted, and although no law was ever made in these United States that would bear against him, for he never broke a law, yet to my certain knowledge he was defendant in forty-six lawsuits, and every time Mr. Priest was at the head of and led the band or mob who hunted and persecuted him. And when Joseph and Hyrum were slain in Carthage jail the mob, painted like Indians, was led by a preacher. And now they follow us up and want us to learn of them, when, so far as the characters of God and Jesus are concerned and the errand of Jesus into the world, our youth know better than the whole sectarian world. In coming to Utah to teach the “Mormons” the way of life, the Christians are but carrying coals to Newcastle. What is the use of going to “Mormon” settlements to teach the people temperance and sobriety, or to teach them the Bible? No more use than in going to Newcastle to sell coal. There is no other people in the world that believe in and practice the Bible as strictly as the Latter-day Saints. None but the Latter-day Saints properly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; no other people acknowledge him and keep his commandments; and yet they follow us up, their object, professedly, being to convert us to Christianity, but in reality it is to induce us to apostatize until they get the upper hand, that the Priesthood may again be destroyed from the earth. But never mind, let them go ahead, we shall see whether Christ or Baal will be king of the earth, and whether Baal will reign several thousand years longer. We shall find it out by and by.

I am saying this to parents, to those who have been in the midst of Christendom and have seen its workings; to women who have sat up night after night, for hundreds of nights, to watch their houses and keep the mob, led by priests, from slaughtering their husbands and families and destroying their property. Perhaps I ought to keep silent rather than say these things, but that would not be justice. Facts are facts and we cannot help it. I hope they will prove a little different in time to come. But with the exception of the infidel portion of it, the sectarian world has hewn out to itself broken cisterns that will hold no water; the priests have got their creeds, systems, and organizations, they live on the people, and they are afraid that, if truth be proclaimed, their craft will fall. Go to the infidel portion of the world and we are all right; for if they refuse to receive our doctrines they will talk and reason like men of intelligence. But with many of those professing to be Christian teachers it is very different, and in my secret estimate of the characters and attainments of many of them I have come to the conclusion that their forte is ignorance and impudence.

I will take another turn in my remarks, and will say if we were known by the world as we are, truly and honestly, I will not except the Christians nor their priests; if we were known by them as we know them, there is not a priest but would pray for the Latter-day Saints. The infidel world would also pray for us, and so would the political and moral world. But they do not know what the Lord is doing through us; they are ignorant, and in their ignorance they lift themselves up against God and his Anointed, for they have no eyes to see, ears to hear, nor hearts to understand. But some are becoming acquainted with us, and this has its influence. What is the object of the Lord Almighty in calling this people as he has done? This question may be answered in a very few words—it is nothing short of restoring to the midst of the children of men every truth, every good, all knowledge and everything lovely and beautiful for time and eternity, saving all that will or can be saved and exalting his children to thrones, and to crown them with crowns of glory, immortality and eternal lives. Do you see what is going to be the result of the course the Lord is pursuing with this people and with the world? You see some who formerly obeyed the Gospel leaving us occasionally. Where are they going? Is there anything else that will satisfy them? Not on this earth; they either remain faithful to the Gospel or go to infidelity. This is the fact. When men go from this Church they become infidels. They can say they believe in this, that or the other; they may turn to Spiritualism, bogusism, Emmaism or anything else; no matter what, but they must be infidels or else acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ.

The doctrine that we preach is the doctrine of the Bible, it is the doctrine the Lord has revealed for the salvation of the children of God, and when men, who have once obeyed it, deny it, they deny it with their eyes wide open, and knowing that they deny the truth and set at naught the counsels of the Almighty.

I have spoken quite awhile to you, my brethren and sisters. I have been teaching parents some things with regard to their children; now I wish to say to the children, obey your parents, be good, never suffer yourselves to do that which will mortify you through life, and that will cause you to look back with regret. While you are pure and spotless preserve yourselves in the integrity of your souls. Although you are young you know good from evil, and live so that you can look back on your lives and thank the Lord that he has preserved you, or has enabled you to preserve yourselves, so that you have no misconduct to regret or mourn over. Take this course and you will secure to yourselves an honorable name on earth among the good and the pure; you will maintain your integrity before heaven, and prove yourselves worthy of a high state of glory when you get through with this world.

God bless you. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 21, 1871.

If my friends will have patience with me I will say a few words. To the Latter-day Saints I say, I do pray you to prove the words of Brother Cannon true with regard to being obedient to your President in all things, and doing as he tells you. I pray you to hearken to this counsel; if you do, contention and sin will cease, and we shall not see men going to the canyon or riding out for pleasure on the Sabbath day, instead of coming here to meeting; we shall hear no more of their taking advantage of each other, stirring up strife, going to law, bearing false witness, or pilfering a little the one from the other. I pray you to take this counsel, and cease your wickedness, Latter-day Saints, and do as your President tells you. I feel to say this; and if you will be patient with me I will say a little more.

There are strangers here, and to them I will say we have traveled the earth over, and where we could not go we have sent by Elders and by proclamation. We have asked the inhabitants of the earth to become acquainted with our doctrine. Would they read it? No. Would they go to hear an Elder preach? No, as a general thing they would not. If we had been let alone while with the Christians we would have been there now proclaiming the Gospel. But I wish to say to strangers that we were not persecuted because we believed in having many wives, for that principle was not known to our persecutors until we came to these mountains, although the revelation was received by Joseph Smith and written a year before his death. Since this doctrine has been proclaimed we have lived in peace.

The inquiry among many, and especially among our political friends, is, “What are you going to do? Are you going to observe the law against plurality of wives, or are you going to obey the revelation?” We have obeyed the revelation thus far, and still live; that I can say, and perhaps that is enough. What do we say about the lawmakers? Go to, ye legislators, and make a law that every man in this government shall have one wife. You have just as good a right to do that as to say that we shall not have two. Let every man have his wife, raise his family, live virtuously and keep his vows, and our difficulty is at an end. We say to Congressmen and Presidents, have your wife; and we also say to every political and financial man the world over, marry the women and take care of them and save us the trouble. If you do not, we will gather them up, just as sure as the world. Many destroy life; we save it; and as we have said, years and years ago, we say now to all, the day that you will be virtuous and cease your unlawful connections with the sex and every man have his wife, and all the inhabitants of this government observe this rule, we shall have then but one wife apiece; but we shall save all we can save. The men are the lords of the earth, and they are more inclined to reject the Gospel than the women. The women are a great deal more inclined to believe the truth than the men; they comprehend it more quickly, and they are submissive and easy to teach, and if we cannot save the men, let us save the women for God’s sake, and do not find fault with us.

Again, a gentleman said to me, the other day, “What are you going to do with the anti-polygamy law?” I replied, “Nothing at all, we mind our own business, and I hope everybody else will. We have not meddled with it, and do not expect to; but we expect to live.”

I want to say a word with regard to what are called our former persecutions; though I, for one, will acknowledge that I have never been persecuted. As for what people do with my name, I do not know nor care; they use it for good or for evil, just as they please. The Lord gave a revelation through his servant to me, that my name should be had for good and for evil before the nations of the earth, and if that is the way they use it, all right—either one or both, no matter. Hands off is all I ask, and let us have the privilege of living in peace. But will you hearken to the truth? Will you listen to the words of eternal life? We have traveled the earth over, and have read to the people out of the book of life; but as a general thing they have refused to receive it. It is true that a few have received it in the past, and I hope that many will in the future. We shall gather and save all we can. The rise and cause of our persecutions have been just the same as it has ever been in the experience of the Saints of God. Who were the leaders and foremost in the ranks of the Savior’s persecutors? The Scribes and the Pharisees. Who were foremost in the ranks in persecuting Joseph Smith, even when he had the pledge of the governor of the State of Illinois that he should be preserved, and when not one scratch or law could be found against him? Who led the blackened crew who said that if the law could not reach him, powder and ball should? The priests; they have always led the van, and always will. It is Baal against Christ now, as it always was.

When we were in Missouri the order was issued, “You ‘Mormons’ must leave the State,” and thirty-five hundred men were paraded for battle against about three hundred of the Elders of Israel, but they did not happen to kill us all. They took Joseph, or rather they sent for him and Hyrum, and, they went down to their camp, and General Clark called the brethren together, and, said he, “Give up your arms and every weapon you have;” and the brethren gave them up. I stood there and heard the General declare, “Gentlemen, you are the best and most peaceable community there is in this State; but,” said he, “as for your prophets, bishops, high councils, &c., we shall not permit you to have them any longer. Forsake your religion and abandon your Prophet! We have him, and you will never see him again; forsake this banding together and being one, and live with us and become as we are. You are the very mechanics and farmers we want. You have shown us how to build mills, set out orchards, raise wheat, rear comfortable habitations, school the children, build meetinghouses, and, in short, you have done more to make the country in three years than we have in fifteen. You are good citizens, but you must not clan together, you must disperse among the people; if you do not, remember the militia will be upon you.” We bid them goodbye and left our property; we would not forsake our prophets then, and we are of the same mind yet.

Here we are, though we did not come here because we chose to get out of the way of the Christians. We wanted to stay with our former brethren, to induce them if possible to receive the truth; but they would not hear it. The world of mankind is sunk in ignorance and darkness; but the Lord Almighty has revealed his will from heaven, and we shall declare it to the people, and give them a chance to receive or reject it. The Lord invites all to come, and partake of the benefits of his Gospel, which, we are told in the Scriptures, is the power of God unto salvation; and our experience has proved that it is so, whether taken in a moral, social, political, or financial point of view. We have gathered the poorest class of men to be found on the continent of America, and I was one of them; and we have gathered the same class from Europe, for very few indeed of those who have obeyed the Gospel have ever been the possessors of any wealth. We have taken the poor and the ignorant from the dens and caves of the earth and brought them here, and we have labored day and night, week after week, and year after year, to make ourselves comfortable, and to obtain all the knowledge there is in the world, and the knowledge that comes from God, and we shall continue to do so. We shall take the weak and the feeble and bring them up to the standard that God requires. The Gospel of life and salvation does not reduce those who obey it to beggary; but it takes the poor and the ignorant, makes them wise and happy, and surrounds them with the comforts of life and everything de– sirable, and teaches them to serve God with all their hearts.

This, gentlemen, is our doctrine, faith, and practice; and we wish strangers to understand that we did not come here out of choice, but because we were obliged to go somewhere, and this was the best place we could find. It was impossible for any person to live here unless he labored hard and battled and fought against the elements, but it was a first-rate place to raise Latter-day Saints, and we shall be blessed in living here, and shall yet make it like the Garden of Eden; and the Lord Almighty will hedge about his Saints and will defend and preserve them if they will do his will. The only fear I have is that we will not do right; if we do we will be like a city set on a hill, our light will not be hid. I trust that the time will soon come when, in all things, our conduct will be such that all the world might pattern after us with advantage. I can say that at the present time we are far from that. It is sometimes said by strangers, “We suppose you Latter-day Saints consider yourselves perfect, don’t you?” I answer, not by any means; we are as imperfect as a people ought to be, and a little more so.

I wish that what Brother George Q. said of you was true—that you were all obedient to your President. If you all will be, you will cease sinning, tattling, lying, backbiting, and strife; all will be industrious, prudent, faithful and full of wisdom and good works, and the power of God will be upon us more and more, and we will be able to do more good to the inhabitants of the earth. We have no quarrel with anybody. We exchange ideas, but we will not contend. As I used to say to the ministers, when traveling and preaching, “I will not dispute. If you want the truth I will give it you; and if you have a truth that I have not, I want all you have; but contention is not my calling; it is no part of the Gospel of Christ; that is peace, life, light, and salvation. The Lord has given that to me and you, and you are welcome to it.”

I wanted to say these few words to you. I thank you for your patience. God bless you. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sunday Morning, May 21, 1871.

I feel to bear my testimony to the truth as far as we have heard it today, and to all truth. We have been hearing of the Gospel of life and salvation, a subject which should interest the whole human family as soon as they can become acquainted with it. The subject of salvation should occupy the thoughts and reflections of every intelligent being. The salvation and redemption wrought out by the Savior is for us—it was purchased for us. The character we have been hearing of is our Savior and Redeemer—the Savior of the whole world of mankind, and of all creatures pertaining to the earth, and the earth itself, for all will be redeemed by the blood of the Son of God. We should have a part in this, and we can say truly that we have a part in it. Whether it will benefit us as it might, depends upon our own thoughts, reflections and actions—upon our obedience to the requirements of our Father in heaven to secure to us life everlasting. The Father has done all he can do on his part: He has given his only begotten Son; he has sent light into the world; he bestows his Spirit upon the children of men; he lights up the understanding of every person that lives, that ever did or ever will live upon the earth. Christ is the light that lights every man that comes into the world. We have this light, will we improve on it?

In my reflections on the Gospel of life and salvation and the theories of the children of men I have contrasted the various beliefs, faiths, ordinances and operations of the people who profess to worship a Supreme Being. Not only the Christians; for I do not know of any nation on the earth but what has some object which it worships as supreme, and to which it renders adoration. This is the case even with the heathen, although they worship gods which their own hands make. No matter about this, they are ignorant; but that spirit that dwells in the children of men prompts them to worship, adore, to seek after that which will better their condition and make themselves happy. This is the condition of all the inhabitants of the earth, whether Christian or Pagan; although the innate disposition to render homage to some invisible power as the Supreme Ruler is modified and diversified according to their varied traditions. The effects of tradition are as visible among Christians as among heathens; and these traditions, as well as our own superior intelligence, lead us to regard the worship of the heathen as nonsensical, and we may say ridiculous. We can have no faith in this; we see no propriety in bowing down to gods made with our own hands, whether they be gods of gold, silver, wood or stone. This would be folly in the extreme to persons who believe in the New Testament; we say we will worship the Being who has redeemed us, him who created us and all things and who rules and governs all things according to his good pleasure, whether in heaven or on earth. But will we worship according to the directions that He has given? Will we believe the doctrine that Jesus has left on record in the New Testament, or will we believe in something that varies from this?

We see that Christendom is full of religion; in fact the world is full of it, no matter where we go. I have been brought up to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; I am taught to believe in him. Perhaps if I, my parents before me, and the nation in which I was born and brought up had never heard of his name, I would treat it with as much indifference as the heathen do when they hear of it; and yet if men did but understand the light of Christ that is within them it would prompt them, universally, to adore and admire, we will say, the God of nature—him who has created and formed the earth and all things it contains, including us, who, in the image of our Creator, dwell upon and inhabit it. I say that, did we all understand this light of Christ, possessed by every human being when born into the world, it would prompt us to worship the God of nature; and did we heed it as we ought we would not be likely to come to the conclusion that there is no personal God.

Among the remarks made here this morning was one worthy the notice of every intelligent being, and that was that if we do not understand the mysteries of the being of our Creator, shall we deny it? Shall we deny the existence of that which we do not understand? If we do, we would want to keep an iron bedstead to measure every person according to our own measurement and dimensions; and if persons were too long we would cut them off, and if too short draw them out. But we should discard this principle, and our motto should be, we will let every one believe as he pleases and follow out the convictions of his own mind, for all are free to choose or refuse; they are free to serve God or to deny him. We have the Scriptures of divine truth, and we are free to believe or deny them. But we shall be brought to judgment before God for all these things, and shall have to give an account to him who has the right to call us to an account for the deeds done in the body.

What shall we believe, then, when we reflect upon and consider all these things? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Who can object to him? When his character is set forth in its true light what fault can be found with him? I have no question, as an individual, but that the Jews believed they saw a great many defects in the Savior. I would just as soon believe that the ignorant wicked can see no defects in the character of a modern prophet as to believe that the Jews could see none in the Savior. I have had the privilege, in my lifetime, of reading some of the writings which have been preserved and handed down by the Jews, which contained their description of the Savior’s character, and certainly, nothing could be more ridiculous; and I remember that, on one occasion, when talking to the Prophet Joseph about these things, I said to him, “No matter what they say about you, I will defy mortal man to say worse about a modern prophet than the Jews have said about the Savior;” and that the character of the Redeemer presented no defects whatever to the eyes of those among whom he lived, is what I would not say. I may say, however, that men who did not believe in him looked through prejudiced eyes, and hence they were unable to view him in his true light; and no man who has ever lived on the earth was more ridiculed and traduced than he was. But when we, that is, the Christian world, read an account of his character and doings, not the least blemish or defect is seen; it might be different, however, if he were here in our midst. Suppose that he or his Apostles were to walk through Christendom, preaching the Gospel without purse or scrip, do you think that if they tried to gain admission to the pulpits in the churches or places of worship which have been erected in their honor, and called the churches of the Savior, or of St. Matthew, John, Paul, Peter, Bartholomew and so on, that they could gain admittance? Let reason, guided and enlightened by the conduct of the people, answer, and it will give the negative at once to every building of this kind erected in Christendom; so far as my knowledge extends, this would be the result except among the Latter-day Saints. Perhaps some may say that I have too much faith in the prophecies of God, in the latter-day work, and in the administration of individuals that now live and have lived on the earth in our day. Be it so, no matter to me. I am here to testify in the name of the God of Israel that for many years past there have been men traveling through the length and breadth of the earth who possess the same power and authority as that with which Jesus endowed his Apostles when he told them to go into all the world and “preach the Gospel to every creature, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned, and these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name they shall cast out devils, heal the sick, speak with new tongues,” &c.

I am a witness here, today, that these sayings and promises have been fulfilled in these latter days as much as they were in the days of the Savior. Have the dead been brought to life? Yes, or those who, to all appearance, were dead, and this is so to my certain knowledge. But were they dead? No, they were not. What did Jesus say to his disciples and those who followed him to the grave of Lazarus, when they were mourning and bewailing, and beseeching him to say the word only and it should be done? Jesus said, “He is not dead, but sleepeth.” So it has been in these latter days. To all appearance life and breath had departed, but they yet lived, and some who, under such circumstances, were restored by the power of God, are still living. The eyes of the blind have been opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame have been made to leap, and foul spirits have been cast out. Has this been the case in every instance? Not by any means, neither was it in the days of the Savior. They who have faith receive these blessings if they live according to the spirit of the holy Gospel.

Is there any harm in preaching and believing in such doctrines, and realizing the blessings? I often ask myself this question, but I fail to see harm or impropriety therein. I know that some say we can be saved without a Savior. If parties like to believe this, all right; but if we can be saved without, we certainly can with. Some will say we can be saved without believing in baptism; very well, we surely can be then if we do believe in it. Some say we can be saved just as well without having hands laid on for the reception of the Holy Ghost as with; if we can be saved without we certainly can be with. If an Elder of Israel lay his hands upon us and say, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” there is not the least harm in it; it is conferring a blessing. “I desire to bless you,” says the Elder, “and if I had power I would bless you; and according to the faith in me I do dispense the Holy Spirit to you.” It is a blessing pure as the angels in heaven. If I say to the sick, “Be healed and blessed,” or bid foul spirits, pain, fever or any disease whatever, “Depart,” it is a blessing to the patient, and there is not the least harm in it in the world. And now, suppose the Elders of this Church have power to say, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and the Holy Ghost is given, is there any harm in it? Not the least in the world; and if we can be saved without these things we certainly can with, so we are on sure ground. Suppose that we can be saved without doing precisely as the Savior has told us, we most certainly shall be by observing what he has left on record for our salvation. But he has said that not one jot or tittle of his word or of the law shall pass without being fulfilled; and it is no matter whether he speaks by his own voice, by the voice of an angel, or through his faithful servants here on the earth, all the words of the Lord Almighty will certainly be fulfilled; then if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and comply with all the requirements of his Gospel we are on safe ground.

If it is acceptable in the sight of Heaven for a minister to dip his finger in water contained in a gold, silver or marble vase, and then wet the forehead of the child or the adult, and call this baptism, where can be the harm in going down into the waters of baptism as Jesus did, and as the eunuch did? I say where is the harm in being buried with Christ in baptism? I cannot see the least harm in it. Then if we are safe without baptism for the remission of sins, we are certainly safe with it. If we are safe without having hands laid upon us for the reception of the Holy Ghost, we are certainly safe with it; if we are saved without having the gift of faith to heal the sick or cast out devils, we are assuredly saved with. Then where is the danger of those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and keep his commandments?

The cry of the Christian world is “The Bible, the Bible,” but who will believe it? Who will believe that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Son of God and the express image of his Father? But a few will believe these things, and yet the salvation that Jesus has purchased will reach the whole human family and save, in a kingdom or in some place where they will enjoy to the extent of their capacity, those who reject not the Gospel and despise not the Savior. Those who set at naught the counsels of God are the only ones the Gospel will not reach and save in a kingdom. But who will go into the celestial kingdom? Those who obey the Gospel of the Son of God, and then walk in all humility before the Lord and keep his commandments in all things. They are the ones who will enter in at the strait gate. Jesus said, “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life”—that is our translation; the original is, “that leads to the lives”—“and few there be that find it; while broad is the gate and wide is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.” Many will there be who will miss receiving the blessings and being caught up with Christ in the air, and being saved in the presence of the Father and the Son, that now anticipate enjoying the glory, excellency and exaltation which God has prepared for the faithful.

The inquiry arises with a great many, “What are you going to do with all the rest of the human family, are you going to send them to hell?” I will answer the question as Joseph once did when a person asked him, “Will everybody be damned except the Latter-day Saints?” “Yes,” said Joseph, “and many of them, unless they take a different course from what they are now taking.” Who will be saved in the celestial kingdom, and go into the presence of the Father and Son? Those only who observe the whole law, who keep the commandments of God—those who walk in newness of life, observe all his precepts and do his will. Are we going to send all the rest to hell? Not the sectarian hell, pardon the expression. The wicked, we are told, will be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God, and that is very true. But where is hell? Read for yourselves. What is hell? Read for yourselves. You may call it hell, Hades, or the world of spirits. It is where Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison. All who have not received the Gospel, who have not had the advantages resulting from strict obedience to the ordinances, are there subject to the evil power, to the principle of death. There they will reside who have denied the Lord Jesus Christ; but they will be resurrected and will receive their bodies again; but blessed and holy is he on whom the second death hath no power. On many it will have power; but what proportion of the whole human family from the days of Adam to the last born on the earth will become angels of the devil and will reap the wrath of God and endure it forever and ever, it is not for me to say; but none will, save those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost. Who is able to do this? That is the question. I will tell you of one man who could have committed this sin.

We read in the days of the Apostles of a certain man named Cornelius, a devout man and one who worshipped the Lord according to the light he possessed. As he was once praying in his house, the Holy Ghost fell upon him, and he and his household rejoiced exceedingly. What was the word of the Lord to Cornelius under these circumstances? Was it “You are saved, you are just right, you can build up churches, you can show the people that they can be saved, and can receive the Holy Ghost without the laying on of hands?” No, the word of the Lord to Cornelius was, “Send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter; he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside; he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.” Cornelius sent to Joppa, and just before his messengers reached the house at which Simon lodged, he had had a vision in which a sheet descended from heaven, in which were all manner of beasts and creeping things of the earth; and a voice said, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” But Peter said, “Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” And the voice said unto him, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” At that time the Gospel had been given to the Jews only, and Peter and his brethren had the idea that it was not for the Gentiles; but this vision was as much as to say, “I want to open your eyes and show you that the Gentiles as well as the Jews are to receive and participate in the blessings of the Gospel. Just as Peter awoke from his vision there came a rap at the door and the messengers of Cornelius inquired for him, and made known to him their errand, and he and some of his brethren went down and conversed with Cornelius, and while doing so the Spirit of God rested on them so powerfully that they glorified God. The Jews who were with Peter commenced, “Take care, Peter, we do not like this; we do not understand that the Gentiles are to have the Gospel. The Savior is the Savior of the Jews; Jesus was the king of the Jews only and not the king of the Gentiles.” Peter commanded them to be still. Said he, “Do you not see the pouring out of the Spirit just as on the Day of Pentecost, these people speaking with new tongues and prophesying;” and said he, seeing that this is the case, “Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we.” Cornelius, if he had rejected the testimony of Peter, would have been led to reject the Holy Ghost, which had fallen upon him, and been lost.

This was an instance in which the Holy Ghost was given before baptism; there may be other cases in these days, but if parties are thus favored of the Lord, the outpouring of his Spirit prompts them to send for an Elder of Israel that they may be baptized for the remission of their sins. I do not know that it is recorded that Cornelius received a remission of sins before baptism. The quotation has been read here from the Scriptures that except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God; and unless he be born of the water and of the Spirit he cannot enter it; that is, no man can see and understand the kingdom of God unless the Spirit reveal it to him. When a person receives the Holy Ghost he begins to read the Bible understandingly. It is a new book to him. Is this fortunate or unfortunate for him? I will say it is fortunate for those who receive the Gospel as preached by the Latter-day Saints, when the Spirit of the Lord rests upon them. Such an individual will say, “The Bible is a new book to me, bless me; I never read the principles understandingly in my life before; I could not understand them. I never read the New Testament, nor comprehended the character of the Savior and his teachings to his disciples as now; although I have read the Scriptures hundreds of times they never were plain before.” The Spirit may rest upon many and reveal to them the wonderful things of God; but when it does it will prompt them to obey the commands of the Lord Jesus. Is this the fact? It is. Well, we will say it is very fortunate for those who receive this Gospel and the spirit of it in their hearts, for it awakes within them a desire to know and understand the things of God more than they ever did before in their lives, and they begin to inquire, read and search, and when they go to the Father in the name of Jesus he will not leave them without a witness.

When we go to the nations we say, “Receive ye the Gospel, treasure it up in your hearts; the Spirit is ready to testify to you at any moment; are you ready to receive the Spirit?” No person need wait; whenever the spirit within him yields obedience to the still small voice that whispers, “This is the way, walk ye in it,” that Spirit is ready in a moment to teach, guide and direct him in the way of life and salvation. If there is darkness, it is the result of our own organization and intelligence being beclouded and far from the things of God. We listen to the continual promptings of the Man of Sin, when he says, “Do not you submit to the Lord, do not inquire of the Lord; do not ask for the Spirit of the Lord; do not go to the Father in the name of Jesus, or if you do go, be very careful how you go. Let reason take the stand with you, let the words of your petitions be dictated by the reason that is within you, then you will be very sure not to ask in the spirit of meekness! No, you should not yield your manhood to any spirit to ask for things you need, or that you may be led, guided and preserved in the way of truth.”

These are the promptings of the devil; but when the spirit in man yields obedience and brings the flesh into subjection the Spirit of the Lord is then ready to whisper to the individual, “This is the way, walk ye in it;” and such individuals can go on their way rejoicing, regardless of those who cry, “Lo! here is Christ,” or “Lo! there is Christ;” for the Spirit will teach them that Jesus is the Christ and that the Bible is true. It may not all have been translated aright, and many precious things may have been rejected in the compilation and translation of the Bible; but we understand, from the writings of one of the Apostles, that if all the sayings and doings of the Savior, had been written, the world could not contain them. I will say that the world could not understand them. They do not understand what we have on record, nor the character of the Savior, as delineated in the Scriptures; and yet it is one of the simplest things in the world, and the Bible, when it is understood, is one of the simplest books in the world, for, as far as it is translated correctly, it is nothing but truth, and in truth there is no mystery save to the ignorant. The revelations of the Lord to his creatures are adapted to the lowest capacity, and they bring life and salvation to all who are willing to receive them. They are so simple that the high-minded and those lifted up in their own estimation will say, “I cannot get down so low as that.” If they pray, they dare not ask for the things they want. I have known a great many individuals who dare not ask God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ if the doctrine we preach is true. They have a conviction within them that it is true, and they say, “If we ask we shall receive the witness we ask for, and then we shall have no excuse whatever for not obeying it.” I have had it said to me, “I am sorry I have learned so much, sorry I have had so much revealed. I wish I was as ignorant as I was a few years ago.” What will be the condition of such individuals? Ignorance will be their portion. Let him that is ignorant remain ignorant still. The Gospel will do them no good; but they who are honest before the Lord, and ask in the name of Jesus, will receive a testimony, and know that Jesus is the Christ. Flesh and blood will not reveal this to them, neither will the sciences of the day; it can only be known by the spirit of revelation. The kingdom of God and its mysteries are and can be known only to him to whom God reveals them, and I hope and pray that we are or may be among that number. It is very customary to pray to the Lord, but in my petitions I pray a great deal to the Latter-day Saints, or those who profess to be. When traveling and preaching I frequently pray the people, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God, I pray you, my hearers, to ask the Father, in the name of Jesus, whether these things be true or not. I cannot pray the Father that he will compel you to know; it would be no use for the Father to compel you to know the truth. All must be willing to ask for and receive it. The fountain is open, truth is ready, its streams are waiting and desirous to come and testify to every individual on the earth who is willing to be taught that Jesus is the Christ, the Gospel is true, God is true, life and salvation are true. We are here upon this earth—upon this little dark, opaque body; if we were in some of the celestial kingdoms and were to look at this earth it would not appear larger, probably, than just a little speck, a black marble! Who can notice such an insignificant affair? God notices this world. He organized it, and brought forth the inhabitants upon it. We are his children, literally, spiritually, naturally, and in every respect. We are the children of our Father; Jesus is our elder brother, ready to save all who will come to him. By and by the Lord will purify the earth, and it will become pure and holy, like a sea of glass; then it will take its place in the rank of the celestial ones, and be recognized as celestial; but at the present time it is a dark, little speck in space.

I pray the people and all who hear me, be ye reconciled to God, and ask for the things that you want. If you want life and salvation, ask for it in faith, humility and meekness. Be willing to receive the truth let it come from whom it may; no difference, not a particle. Just as soon receive the Gospel from Joseph Smith as from Peter, who lived in the days of Jesus. Receive it from one man as soon as another. If God has called an individual and sent him to preach the Gospel that is enough for me to know; it is no matter who it is, all I want is to know the truth. This should be the feelings and the heartbeatings of every individual that lives on the earth. If we are endowed with intelligence we can know and understand things for ourselves.

You have received the truth, Latter-day Saints; live it. You know it perfectly well. When a Latter-day Saint says, I have sinned, will you forgive me? Did you sin knowingly? Tell the truth and say “Yes,” you sinned, with your eyes wide open. When you commit a wrong, after having been enlightened, you violate your own judgment, and the convictions of the spirit that is within you. Why not live as we should? We should be the best people on the earth; we have more knowledge of the things of God and of his purposes than the rest of the inhabitants of the earth that we have any knowledge of. Then what manner of persons should we be? I do pray you to live your religion, and pray God to bless you. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 14, 1871.

I sometimes ask the Saints a question with regard to our meetings, but I have not done so lately. We come here on Sabbath mornings to this large hall, which will contain a great many people, but only a few, in pro– portion to the number there is in the city who should be here, attend; and I ask myself and have heretofore asked the people why they do not attend? Do they love their meetings, do they love their religion, and do they love to hear the servants of the Lord bear testimony to the truth? How is it? Perhaps many of the brethren and sisters think we are not as interesting in our conversation as we should be. I will say to such, we will give the ground to you at any time you will take the stand, and we will sit and hear. But when we talk to you we give you such ideas as we have, and we clothe them in the best language that is in our possession, according to the ability and the gift and grace that we possess. Whether they are interesting to you or not is not for me to say. It is true the Saints may ask me why I do not attend meetings more strictly than I do. I will say that, in my life, I have been very strict in attending meetings, and when I attend now I feel that the Saints require me to speak to them; that is their desire and their faith; but I have met with and talked to them and the inhabitants of the earth so much that I very frequently feel that my talk is almost finished, it is pretty much gone out of me; not the subjects to talk upon or the ideas, but the strength of my human existence, and in consequence of this during the winter just passed I have stayed at home. I have not asked the Saints to excuse me on this account, for I think that I know my own duty and what I should or should not do better than anybody else; but as I am feeling much better with regard to my stomach and lungs, though I have no complaint to make of my lungs as to the wind chest—I have plenty of strength there; but the organs of speech in this tabernacle are actually worn; but as I am feeling better I expect to meet with you more frequently.

It is my highest delight and pleasure to serve God and keep his commandments; there is great delight in the law of the Lord to me, for the simple reason—it is pure, holy, just, and true; and those principles which the Lord has revealed are the only correct principles that man possesses on the earth. We may imagine to ourselves that we possess a great deal of human wisdom independent of the Lord, but this is a mistake, for every truth that is in the possession of the children of men upon the earth came from God. The sciences understood by man came from God, and when we demonstrate a truth, we demonstrate a portion of the faith, law, or power by which all intelligent beings exist, whether in heaven or on earth, consequently when we have truth in our possession we have so much of the knowledge of God. I delight in this, because truth is calculated to sustain itself; it is based upon eternal facts and will endure, while all else will sooner or later perish.

It was observed here just now that we differ from the Christian world in our religious faith and belief; and so we do very materially. I am not astonished that infidelity prevails to a great extent among the inhabitants of the earth, for the religious teachers of the people advance many ideas and notions for truth which are in opposition to and contradict facts demonstrated by science, and which are generally understood. Says the scientific man, “I do not see your religion to be true; I do not understand the law, light, rules, religion, or whatever you call it, which you say God has revealed; it is confusion to me, and if I submit to and embrace your views and theories I must reject the facts which science demonstrates to me.” This is the position, and the line of demarcation has been plainly drawn, by those who profess Christianity, between the sciences and revealed religion. You take, for instance, our geologists, and they tell us that this earth has been in existence for thousands and millions of years. They think, and they have good reason for their faith, that their researches and investigations enable them to demonstrate that this earth has been in existence as long as they assert it has; and they say, “If the Lord, as religionists declare, made the earth out of nothing in six days, six thousand years ago, our studies are all vain; but by what we can learn from nature and the immutable laws of the Creator as revealed therein, we know that your theories are incorrect and consequently we must reject your religions as false and vain; we must be what you call infidels, with the demonstrated truths of science in our possession; or, rejecting those truths, become enthusiasts in, what you call, Christianity.”

In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular. You may take geology, for instance, and it is a true science; not that I would say for a moment that all the conclusions and deductions of its professors are true, but its leading principles are; they are facts—they are eternal; and to assert that the Lord made this earth out of nothing is preposterous and impossible. God never made something out of nothing; it is not in the economy or law by which the worlds were, are, or will exist. There is an eternity before us, and it is full of matter; and if we but understand enough of the Lord and his ways, we would say that he took of this matter and organized this earth from it. How long it has been organized it is not for me to say, and I do not care anything about it. As for the Bible account of the creation we may say that the Lord gave it to Moses, or rather Moses obtained the history and traditions of the fathers, and from these picked out what he considered necessary, and that account has been handed down from age to age, and we have got it, no matter whether it is correct or not, and whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject. If we understood the process of creation there would be no mystery about it, it would be all reasonable and plain, for there is no mystery except to the ignorant. This we know by what we have learned naturally since we have had a being on the earth. We can now take a hymn book and read its contents; but if we had never learned our letters and knew nothing about type or paper or their uses, and should take up a book and look at it, it would be a great mystery; and still more so would it be to see a person read line after line, and give expression therefrom to the sentiments of himself or others. But this is no mystery to us now, because we have learned our letters, and then learned to place those letters into syllables, the syllables into words, and the words into sentences.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, if anyone had told the people of the East Indies that water could be congealed, and form ice so thick and hard that you could walk on and drive teams over it, they would probably have said, “We do not believe a word of it.” Why? Because they did not know anything about it. A proper reply for all mankind to make under similar circumstances would be, “We do not know anything about what you say, and do not know whether we should have faith in it or not. Perhaps we should, but we have no evidence at present on which to found such a belief.” You go down south here among some of our native Indian tribes, where some of the very best of blankets are made, and you will find them twisting their yarn with their fingers and little sticks, and their loom attached to the limbs of trees for weaving purposes. Show them a loom such as white people use, and it would be a perfect mystery to them. Sixty or seventy years ago a loom worked by water power would have been a mystery to an American, but, there is no mystery in that today, because the process is understood. So it is with the East Indians and ice, for the chemist now, by a chemical process, will congeal the water and make ice of it before their eyes, and it is in this way, by testimony, evidence, and demonstration that ignorance and prejudice are removed, faith implanted and knowledge acquired. It is so with regard to all the facts in existence that we do not understand.

We differ very much with Christendom in regard to the sciences of religion. Our religion embraces all truth and every fact in existence, no matter whether in heaven, earth, or hell. A fact is a fact, all truth issues forth from the Fountain of truth, and the sciences are facts as far as men have proved them. In talking to a gentleman not long ago, I said, “The Lord is one of the most scientific men that ever lived; you have no idea of the knowledge that he has with regard to the sciences. If you did but know it, every truth that you and all men have acquired a knowledge of through study and research, has come from him—he is the fountain whence all truth and wisdom flow; he is the fountain of all knowledge, and of every true principle that exists in heaven or on earth.” The gentleman said that such ideas conflicted with his traditions; but said he, “I like to hear such talk and such principles taught, for we do know, from scientific research and investigation, that certain facts exist in nature which those called Christians discard or throw away; they do not want anything to do with them; they say this has nothing to do with religion; but you talk very different to this.”

Yes, we do differ in these respects from the Christian world; with them it is “glory, hallelujah,” shouting “Praise the Lord,” singing, praying and preaching; and when they are out of meeting they are too apt to enter into the spirit of the world. The religion that we have embraced must last a man from Monday morning until Monday morning, and from Saturday night until Saturday night, and from one new year until another; it must be in all our thoughts and words, in all our ways and dealings. We come here to tell the people how to be saved; we know how, consequently we can tell others. Suppose our calling, tomorrow, is to conduct a railroad, to go into some philosophical business, or no matter what, our minds, our faith or religion, our God and his Spirit are with us; and if we should happen to be found in a room dedicated for purposes of amusement and an accident should occur, and an Elder engaged in the dance is called upon to go and lay hands on the sick, if he is not prepared to exercise his calling and his faith in God as much there as at any other time and in any other place, he never should be found there, for none have a legal right to the amusements which the Lord has ordained for his children except those who acknowledge his hand in all things and keep his commandments. You see from this that our religion differs very much from others.

A gentleman said to me not long since, “You ‘Mormons’ don’t seem to be very religious; I do not make any pretensions to be religious; and I like you very well.” I replied, “That is a mistake, we are the most religious people on the face of the earth. We do not allow ourselves to go into a field to plough without taking our religion with us; we do not go into an office, behind the counter to deal out goods, into a counting house with the books, or anywhere to attend to or transact any business without taking our religion with us. If we are railroading or on a pleasure trip our God and our religion must be with us. We are the most religious people in the world; but we are not so enthusiastic as some are. We have seen plenty of enthusiasm, but we do not care about it.” Said I, “This shouting and singing one’s self away to everlasting bliss, may be all very well in its place; but this alone is folly to me; my religion is to know the will of God and do it.

I will say a few words to the Saints now. Shall I come right out plain to you? I think I will. Suppose I were to get up a party here and say, “You are welcome, I will find music and a good dinner,” do you not think this room would be crowded? Yes, to overflowing, it would not be large enough; but when it is opened for the worship of God how different! O, Saints, all the fear that I have with regard to us as a people, is that we may neglect our God and our religion! We have passed through the narrows, and have run the gauntlet for forty years now and have come out unscathed, and what do you say? Will we serve God?

Latter-day Saints, have your chil– dren come to meeting. Sisters, let your little girls go to Sunday school or come to meeting! Brethren, let your children go to Sunday school, or to meeting, and advise your neighbors to do the same, and let this hall be crowded; and when more want to gain admittance than it will accommodate we will resort to the New Tabernacle, as we intend to do this afternoon. Some of the sisters say it is so warm in here; but let me ask them whether they would go without breakfast rather than cook it because the stove is hot. If there were a breakfast or dinner here, I expect you would come notwithstanding the warmth. I do not fear the scoffs of the world; but, as I have already said, if I fear anything with regard to this people, it is that they will neglect God and their religion.

We have heard something about Joseph Smith this morning. Brother Woodruff has been talking about the Prophet. I can say that if the whole world of mankind had known Joseph Smith and this people as well as we know them, the biggest infidel in the world, or the wickedest man living, if he had not passed the day of redemption and grace, so that the Spirit of the Lord had ceased to operate on his mind, that man would thank God for the Latter-day Saints, for we are for the salvation of all who can be saved, and we calculate to continue until the work is done. Jesus is our captain and leader; Jesus, the Savior of the world—the Christ that we believe in, is the “one-man power” so much talked about; and we calculate to do his will as far as we know it. May God help us to do it! Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, May 7, 1871.

I have a few words to offer to my brethren and sisters, and all who hear me, concerning the experience of the minds of the children of men, especially in their transit from evil to good. We vary very materially in our dispositions, reflections, in the impulses of our minds, and in our perceptive faculties. There is a great variety of operations upon the minds of the inhabitants of the earth, and the people are unacquainted with them, for they do not lay them to heart, contemplate and realize them, consequently they cannot look upon them as they are. These remarks of mine are the result of reflections upon the sayings of our brother who has been speaking to us, and telling his experience when he received the Gospel. He told us that, though his perceptive faculties were so quickened that he could read the Bible understandingly, this did not satisfy him; he must have a storm. I make use of this term to express my idea of what he desired and so earnestly sought for. He must have an experience like a rushing, mighty wind, or he could not be satisfied. In reading the sayings of the ancients, we find that they looked sometimes for the Lord to come in a storm. Sometimes you will see the storm pass, and the Lord is not there. The winds blow terribly, but the Lord is not there. A terrible tempest comes along, in which the lightnings flash and the thunders bellow almost enough to shake the mountains down. Is the Lord there? No, he is not there. But by and by you hear a small, still voice saying, “Peace, peace.” The Lord is there, and this is his voice. It will satisfy some, but others, like our brother, want a testimony like a rushing, mighty wind.

I will give you a little of my experience, not merely at the time that I concluded to forsake sin and embrace peace, and righteousness, but since then. My experience in this kingdom as a man, as an intelligent being, concerning the philosophy of this world and mankind, and all things pertaining to the earth, teaches me a great many little items that are passed over unnoticed by most of the people. My conclusion with regard to a sound religious experience is simply this: If I am convicted of sin I am made sensible of wrong. If this wrong exists within me, my good judgment teaches me that I should take that and put it away from me; turn it out of doors; it would teach me to say, “I do not want you, you are not good for me; you produce sorrow, mourning, affliction, and all manner of grief and pain. Go out of doors, I do not want you, you are evil. I will adopt truth and correct principles and plant them within me instead of that which will destroy me.” Being convinced of all this, what course shall I pursue, if I desire to procure a sound experience—one that is genuine and will endure, and prove to God and all the heavenly host, also to my family and neighbors, that I am sorry for sin? I will forsake it, and will not let it dwell within me, but will do all I can to banish it from me. Would this be a proof? Yes. Then let my actions correspond with the confession of my mouth; and if I have discovered this fountain of evil within me, I must lay a foundation to be free from it. Do I wish to wait until the Lord speaks from heaven to me? No, the Lord has planted within me knowledge and wisdom to distinguish between right and wrong, and if I wait until his voice comes from heaven to tell me that I am a sinner, or until he gives me some particular manifestation of approval on my attempting to forsake evil, I may wait a great while. I do not know how much he thinks of me, nor whether, if I sought such a manifestation, he would come the first night I knelt down to pray, or the second, third, or fourth, or whether I should have to continue a week, two weeks, or for months. I do not know anything about this; but my judgment having convinced me that I am wrong, I do not want the Lord to speak from the heavens. I will ask any intelligent being that dwells on the face of the earth if it is necessary to wait until the Lord comes like a rushing, mighty wind, or like an earthquake or tornado? I do not see any necessity for it. If I find an evil in me today I must try and get rid of it; and if I find another tomorrow I must get rid of it; and how long must I continue to do so? Just as long as God gives me intelligence; not for a day, week, or year, but for my whole life; and if I exist for ninety-nine years, or for nine hundred and ninety-nine, I do not expect there will be an hour in which I will not be under the necessity of endeavoring to put evil from me if I find it within me, and to grow and increase in the principles of truth and righteousness. By taking this course I know, in and of myself, that I am forsaking my sins, and do not want the Lord to manifest it unto me. I know that if the plants of sin and death are permitted to grow within me they will prove my utter destruction, unless I tear them up root and branch, and throw them away. The Lord has bestowed upon me and upon every intelligent being on the earth, wisdom sufficient to comprehend this, and I do not want the Lord to come in the storm, the thunder, lightning, or whirlwind to tell it to me. I know that I must uproot the plants of evil that are within me, and in their place engraft plants of truth and virtue, and these will grow up within me to eternal life. Is not this reasonable? Is this not a true principle? Yes, and the whole of man’s experience, science, and wisdom proves it. I may take, for instance, the beautiful machinery of my watch, and neglect to clean it or wind it up; I may take out the mainspring, the hairspring or the main cog-wheel, and then say, “Keep time for me,” and it would be no more inconsistent than to say, “I have naturally within me, through the fall, the principles of death, and they reign within me, and I seek not to put those principles away from me, but wait for the Lord to manifest to me that I am born of him and he is delighted with me.” I do not care if I live my whole lifetime without a testimony from the Lord; not that he leaves his children thus; he has never been so hardhearted, so austere a master as to leave one of his children with full purpose of heart to serve him and do his will without a witness of his approval. But, suppose he were disposed to do so, I am under obligations, on the principles of right and wrong, to forsake evil, and to plant within me every principle of purity and holiness, whether or not the Lord manifests unto me that I am his son and that he is pleased with me. I am not pleased with myself if I imbibe and cherish death and destruction; but let me cherish life and salvation, that that promotes the happiness of mankind, and life, peace, and tranquility within myself and all around me, and I shall have my own approval and the ap– proval and blessing of the Lord whether he tells me so, in so many words, or not.

I am under obligation to take a course which will sustain life within myself and others, on rational principles, without any special manifestation from God. You can all see this; but some think if they do not receive some special manifestation from God that he has accepted them, they are rejected of him. Do you not all know that you are the sons and daughters of the Almighty? If you do not I will inform you this morning that there is not a man or woman on the earth that is not a son or daughter of Adam and Eve. We all belong to the races which have sprung from father Adam and mother Eve; and every son and daughter of Adam and Eve is a son and daughter of that God we serve, who organized this earth and millions of others, and who holds them in existence by law. Now suppose he does not tell us that he particularly loves us and thinks so much of us; or that he delights in Brother James or William, or in Sister Susan or Nancy more than in any other being on the earth, what of it? I do not know that I shall inquire of the Lord whether he loves me or not. I do not know that I have ever taken pains to ask him. I have professed religion somewhere near fifty years, and I do not know that I ever asked the Lord whether he loved me or not. I want to take a course that I can love purity and holiness. If I do this, then I love the Lord and keep his commandments, and that is enough for me. If he is not disposed to like me as well as he did John, “the beloved disciple,” who leaned upon his breast on a certain occasion, and tells me to sit yonder instead of here, it is all right, I am as satisfied to sit there as here. I want to preserve my identity and to increase in intelligence, and if I can do this I do not know that I care, particularly, with regard to how much, in weight or measure, the Lord loves me or does not love me. There is one fact that I do know, he will love me all he should. If I take a course to love him and keep his commandments I am for life and duration, I am for eternity, for I take that course which will preserve myself.

Many men and women who have obeyed the Gospel, and have not received from the Lord these striking testimonies, will say, “Well, I really do not know that I can tell whether the Gospel is true or not.” To all such I say, then you are no philosopher at all, for upon the rational principles of common philosophy you can tell whether it is true or not. Does it contain the seeds of life? Does it promote the plants and yield the fruits of life, or does it produce the plants and yield the fruits of death? You can ask these questions and readily answer them for yourselves. Not that I wish to make a mere historical convert, or a people who believe historically, mathematically, or philosophically; but I know and understand that the Lord never leaves his children without a witness. Now I will tell you a witness which would be enough for me—I read the Bible, diligently and faithfully, and if I could have found a church and people organized according to the pattern contained in its pages I should have been satisfied that that was God’s Church and people, and that would have been witness enough for me. But I will give you a little of my experience in my early days with regard to the religious sects. From my youth up their cry was, “Lo here is Christ, lo there is Christ;” no, “Yonder is Christ;” “Christ is not there, he is here,” and so on, each claiming that it had the Savior, and that others were wrong. I used to think to myself, “Some one of you may be right, but hold on, wait awhile! When I reach the years of judgment and discretion I can judge for myself; and in the meanwhile take no course either with one party or the other.” When I would make known my views and feelings with regard to their confused state they would call me an infidel. I would say to them, “All right, I am an infidel in a great many things.” I read the Bible, and especially the New Testament, which was given as a pattern for the life of Christians, whether as a church or individuals, and this was my inward inquiry, “Is there a church on the earth organized according to the pattern Jesus left?” No. Is there an Apostle left on the earth? Not one. Is there a prophet, which the Scriptures inform us were placed in the Church for its edification? Not one. Is there an evangelist? No. Is there the gift of healing? We cannot find any such thing, with all their cries of “Lo here, lo there, and lo yonder.” “Are there any who speak with tongues?” No. Any that prophesy? No, we do not believe in prophecy. anyone who has received the Holy Ghost, and speaks and preaches by its influence? “Why the Holy Ghost is not given in these days,” say all those who say, “Lo, here is Christ,” and “Lo, there is Christ!” Well, I used to say, “I am an infidel, for I do not believe anything of this; when you bring me a people built up and believing according to the New Testament I will believe that they are right. When you find such a people you will find the people and Church of God, with all the gifts and graces of the Gospel in their midst; and you will find the kingdom of God on the earth.” They labored with me, but finally declared that I was an infidel, for I could not believe in their doctrines and principles. Yet I have been at many of their meetings and seen their modes of conversion. As I have said to my friends here, in speaking about Spiritualism, I have seen the effects of animal magnetism, or some anomalous sleep, or whatever it may be called, many a time in my youth. I have seen persons lie on the benches, on the floor of the meetinghouse, or on the ground at their camp meetings, for ten, twenty, and thirty minutes, and I do not know but an hour, and not a particle of pulse about them. That was the effect of what I call animal magnetism; they called it the power of God, but no matter what it was. I used to think that I should like to ask such persons what they had seen in their trance or vision; and when I got old enough and dared ask them, I did so. I have said to such persons: “Brother, What have you experienced?” “Nothing.” “What do you know more than before you had this; what do you call it—trance, sleep or dream? Do you know any more now than before you fell to the earth?” “Nothing more.” “Have you seen any person?” “No.” “Then what is the use or utility of your falling down here in the dirt?” I could not see it, and consequently I was an infidel to this. But I said then as I say now—“Show me a church that God has organized, and you will find Apostles to rule, govern, control, dictate, and give counsel. You will find prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, governments, helps, and diversities of tongues. When the Church and kingdom of God is upon the earth you will find all these things and you will also hear prophesying therein.

I will now return again to our experience here. In Christendom the people are taught by the priest, by father, by mother, by president, prince and king, that the Bible is true and that Jesus is the Christ; and they inherit this belief, and if it is a true principle to believe in Jesus, they inherit it without the use of their judgment and reasoning faculties. And when you find a church organized according to the New Testament pattern it does not require any particular manifestation to prove its truth, for we are taught from our youth up to acknowledge the New Testament and we cannot help it. It is interwoven into our very natures; I do not know but it is the warp and the filling, both. In consequence of this we have a holy reverence for and a belief in the Bible, though we may not believe in the actions of all those who profess to believe in it. As it was observed by my brother, “He loved religion;” and for myself I can say that I have always had a holy reverence for the truth. I have had a divine reverence for it from my youth, but, not for the conduct of all those who profess to be Christians.

Well, how can you know when you have passed from death unto life? You had the witness right here from our brother, according to the testimony of the Apostles, “By this ye shall know ye have passed from death unto life, if ye love the brethren.” Our brother said he loved that poor Elder who preached the Gospel to him, although he could not gain admittance into a decent house. Nobody would receive an Elder of Israel, nobody would receive a messenger bearing the words and keys of eternal life and salvation to the nations, but a poor widow on a back street where our brother was ashamed to go. It put me in mind of the harlot Rahab. She alone would receive the spies sent out by Joshua, the servant of God. Do you not think she was blessed? I think so; and I think the poor widow who received and gave an asylum to the Elder referred to by our brother was blessed also, for his words were life, light, and peace; and he said that he loved him, and by this he might have known that he had passed from death unto life.

Now, to our experience again. Suppose you obey the ordinances of the Gospel, and do not speak in tongues today, never mind that. Suppose you do not have the spirit of prophecy, no matter. Suppose you do not receive any particular gift attended by the rushing of a mighty wind, as on the day of Pentecost, there is no particular necessity that you should. On the day of Pentecost there was special need for it, it was a peculiarly trying time. Who believed on Jesus? Look at his poor disciples! When Jesus was on trial, Peter, the chief of the Apostles, dare not own him, and denied him through fear. There was not a man or woman to stand up and say, “This is the Christ; don’t you crucify him. He is Christ, the Savior of the world, be cautious how you handle that man.” There was not one to say anything of this kind. It was a very peculiar time, and some special and powerful manifestation of the power of the Almighty was necessary to open the eyes of the people and let them know that Jesus had paid the debt, and that they had actually crucified him who, by his death, had become the Savior of the world. It required this at that time to convince the people; but when the doctrines of Christianity became popular it was no longer necessary. I do not need this; do you? No. Do you believe the truth? If you do, embrace it in your lives. What next? Prove to the Lord, to all the heavenly host, and to the inhabitants of the earth, that you live according to the law of the holy Gospel that God has revealed for the salvation of the children of men. This will show that you are honest and sincere, and that you are worthy of life eternal in the celestial kingdom of God.

God bless you. Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, April 9, 1871.

I have a few sermons to preach, and as the time is short I do not know that I shall be able to deliver as many as I wish to. I want your attention, and you will have to be quiet. I find that my voice is a little broken, and it will be pretty hard for me to speak so that you can hear me. I shall not try to talk down the crying of children, the whispering of the congregation, or the shuffling of feet, as I have often done. I want your attention to the various subjects I wish to lay before you; for I shall have but a few minutes to speak on each one.

In the first place, I want to say to the Elders who go forth to preach the Gospel—no matter who may apply to you for baptism, even if you have good reason to believe they are unworthy, if they require it forbid them not, but perform that duty and administer the ordinance for them; it clears the skirts of your garments, and the responsibility is upon them.

A few words now with regard to gathering. I will say that if unworthy people are gathered in the future, it is nothing new or strange, nothing more than we expect. If this net does not gather the good and the bad we should have no idea that it is the net that Jesus spoke about when he said that it should gather of all kinds. Furthermore, there are a great many who come into the Church because they know the work is true. Their judgment, and every reasoning faculty and power of their minds tells them it is true; consequently they embrace the truth. But do they receive the love of it? That is the question. I will tell you that very few of those who receive the love of the truth, but many of those who fall away, though they know the Gospel is true, do not possess the love of the truth, and they will not apostatize while scattered. We try to get them to do so in the old country, but they will not. Bring them over to New York and they will not apostatize. They will labor there year after year, and struggle and toil until they can get to the gathering place, they must come to headquarters, then they can apostatize, forsake the faith, and turn away from the holy commandments of the Lord Jesus. This is not our business. Our duty is to preach the Gospel and to receive all that wish to have the ordinances administered to them, and leave the result in the hands of God. This is his work, not ours. He has called us to be co-laborers with him.

I want to say for the consolation of the Elders of Israel and those who go forth to preside, you need have no trouble with regard to the building up of this kingdom, only do your duty in the sphere to which you are assigned. I think there is more responsibility on myself than any other one man on this earth pertaining to the salvation of the human family; yet my path is a pleasant path to walk in, my labors are very agreeable, for I take no thought what I shall say; I trouble not myself with regard to my duties. All I have to do is to live, as I have often made the comparison, and keep my spirit, feelings and conscience like a sheet of blank paper, and let the Spirit and power of God write upon it what he pleases. When he writes I will read; but if I read before he writes, I am very likely to be wrong. If you will take the same course you will not have the least trouble.

Brother Carrington was telling us about the way in which money turned up to clear the ship after sending off more Saints than he had means to pay for. Was this a miracle any more than many other things in our lives and in the work of God? No, the providences of God are all a miracle to the human family until they understand them. There are no miracles only to those who are ignorant. A miracle is supposed to be a result without a cause, but there is no such thing. There is a cause for every result we see; and if we see a result without understanding the cause we call it a miracle. This is what we have been taught; but there is no miracle to those who understand.

While Brother Carrington was speaking about getting twenty pounds, I thought of a few circumstances which have transpired here. I will refer to one that came along in 1856. In that year our agents in England loaded up the Saints, brought them over the ocean, up the rivers and railroads, and fitted them out with ox teams, wagons, and provisions, and then sent on their drafts to me, and within thirty days I had piled upon me $78,000 that I had to pay. I never was apprized of any draft being drawn upon me, or one word sent from the Liverpool office, until I saw the drafts as they commenced to come in for five, ten, or fifteen thousand dollars. I did not know where I was going to get the first dollar; but I did just as I always do—my duty and trusted in God. I had not a draft protested, and I do not think that any man went without his pay. But let me have done the business, I should have done it differently. When I have the privilege of acting, I act a little more by works than altogether by faith. I dare not trust my faith quite so far, but others dare, and they have not swamped me yet; they have not fettered my feet so that I cannot walk, nor tied my hands so that I cannot handle; nor my tongue so that I cannot speak; and the Lord has delivered me every time with the help of my brethren.

We do not care anything about these things, they are but trifles. We could stand here and talk until tomorrow morning, telling remarkable instances of the providences of God towards his servants and people, and then only have just commenced. Who put flour into the barrels here when we were destitute and had nothing to eat? The women would go and scrape the precious barrel and take out the last half ounce of meal and make up a little cake to divide among the children; and perhaps the next time they would go to the barrel they would find it half full of flour. Who put it in? Their neighbors? No, they had none to put in. Was it from the States? If it was, they who brought it must have flown through the air, for they could not have brought it with ox teams quite so quickly. But without stopping to inquire further about how this replenishing of the flour barrels was effected, I know now, and knew then, that these elements that we live in are full of all that we produce from the earth, air, and water. I told the people when we settled here that we had all the facilities here that we could ask for, all we had to do was to go to work and organize the elements. How far Jesus went to get the wine that was put into the pots which we read about in the account of the marriage at Cana of Galilee I do not know; but I know that he had power to call the elements that enter into the grape into those pots of water, unperceived by anybody in the room. He had power to pass through a congregation unseen by them; he had power to step through a wall and no person be able to see him; he had power to walk on the water, and none of those with whom he associated could tell how; he had power to call the elements together and they were made into bread, but it was done by invisible hands.

Well, I will change the subject a little, and I say to the brethren, do not be discouraged; bring on all who wish to obey the Gospel, that they may apostatize. We want them to apostatize as quickly as possible. How long will the people continue to apostatize? Until the Master comes. When he comes the word will go forth, “Gather my wheat into my garner, and bind the tares in bundles, that they may be burned.” The wheat and the tares will grow together until harvest, and we cannot help it, and we need not worry about it neither.

We want the brethren and sisters to feel around and see if they can find a sixpence, a dollar or five dollars to help out the poor. Talk about the people over yonder being hungry, why I have known them eat not more than a third of a meal for a whole week in order to save enough to feed two or three of us Elders. I was always ashamed to take it; and I will tell you what else I am ashamed of. I am ashamed that any man calling himself an Elder of Israel should go to any country to preach the Gospel and then commence begging. Such a course is disgraceful. I have no fellowship for those who do it; and those who will borrow and not repay ought to be cut off the Church. I will give you a little of my experience when on my English mission. When I landed in Liverpool I had six bits, and with that I bought me a hat. I had worn, on my journey to England, a little cap that my wife had made me out of a pair of pantaloons that I could not wear any longer. We stayed in Liverpool one year and sixteen days, and during that time we baptized between eight and nine thousand persons, printed five thousand Books of Mormon, three thousand hymn books, over sixty thousand tracts that we gave to the people, and the Millennial Star; established a mission in London, Edinburgh, and I do not know but in a hundred other places, and we sustained ourselves. Who was there on that mission, I mean among the missionaries, that had a coat or cloak that I didn’t pay for? I transacted the business myself, and we paid every dime. We got money from the brethren and sisters and paid them up. Besides doing this, we fed family after family; and I never allowed myself to go down to the printing office without putting my hand in the drawer and taking out as many coppers as I could hold, so that I might throw them to beggars without being stopped by them on the road. Did we borrow that which we did not pay? No. Did we beg? No. The brethren and sisters, and especially the sisters, would urge us to come and eat with them. I would try to beg off; but that would not do, it would hurt their feelings, we must go and eat their food, while they would starve to procure it. I was always ashamed of this; but I invariably had a sixpence to give them. How much had I given to me? One sister, who now lives in Payson, gave me a sovereign and a pair of stockings; and when I came away a hatter, by the name of Miller, sent two hats by me to my little boys. The sisters, when I first went to Liverpool, made a little contribution and got me a pair of pantaloons. I was not in the habit of begging, but I said to them, “When my trousers are a little ridiculous, I guess you will know it, won’t you?” and they gave me a pair of pantaloons, otherwise I do not think I received one farthing. I might have received a shilling or two from others, but I do not recollect. When we left we sent over a shipload of the brethren and sisters, a good many of whose fares we paid. When I went into Liverpool I do not think I could have got trusted a sixpence if I had gone into every store and shop in the place. When we came away a certain Captain wanted to bring us over, and said he, “Are you ready?” “No.” “How long must I wait for you? “Eight days;” and they tied up one of the finest vessels in the harbor of Liverpool in order to bring us over. I thought, this was a miracle, don’t you? I am sure there are some sisters now here who came with us in that vessel. I received that as a miracle. It was the hand of God. Was it our ability? No. Is it our ability that has accomplished what we see here in building up a colony in the wilderness? Is it the doings of man? No. To be sure we assist in it, and we do as we are directed. But God is our Captain; he is our master. He is the “ONE MAN” that we serve. In him is our light, in him is our life; in him is our hope, and we serve him with an undivided heart, or we should do so.

What do you suppose I think when I hear people say, “O, see what the Mormons have done in the mountains. It is Brigham Young. What a head he has got! What power he has got! How well he controls the people!” The people are ignorant of our true character. It is the Lord that has done this. It is not any one man or set of men; only as we are led and guided by the spirit of truth. It is the oneness, wisdom, power, knowledge and providences of God; and all that we can say is, we are his servants and handmaids, and let us serve him with an undivided heart.

Let us gather the poor. Look up your sixpences, dimes, and dollars. Just think what your feelings would be, if your children had to go to bed tonight crying for bread and you had none to give them! Think of it, families, you who profess to be Saints! Fathers, think of getting up in the morning and not a mouthful to feed your families with. I have seen them totter along, although it was good times when I was there to what it is now, so they say; but I have seen them totter along the streets when they could hardly stand up, for want. But I never failed to give such persons sixpence, a shilling, or a penny, when I realized that such was their position before they passed me. The Lord gave it to me and I dealt it out freely, and am doing so still, and I calculate to do so.

Now, let us help the poor, bring them here, place them in good, comfortable circumstances, so that they can strut up and say, “I guess I am somebody, and I ask no odds of the Lord.” O, fools! When I hear such expressions, or see such a disposition manifested, I think, “O, foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you? Who has turned your brain and made you believe that you are independent of that Being who brought you and all the human family on the earth? Who has instructed you to believe that God has nothing to do with us, that everything that is is by the providence of chance, or no providence at all, and that man is all there is?” Who has taught the people this? Not the wise, not the true philosopher. Find a true philosopher and you find one who has the true principles of Christianity. He delights in them; and sees and understands the hand of Providence guiding and directing in all the affairs of this life. Though men are severed far from God, and though they have hewn out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that will hold no water, the true philosopher recognizes the hand of the Supreme, guiding and controlling the affairs of the children of men.

I have a short discourse to preach now to my friends who may be here today, who are engaged in, or who may contemplate commencing operations in, the mining business. It is the general belief now, that there is a great deal of mineral wealth in these mountains. The reports that have gone abroad concerning this are causing great excitement; and I will preach a short discourse now to miners, merchants, lawyers, doctors, priests, people, everybody. I want to talk to you a little and give you some counsel; and I want the Saints to take this counsel. But they take it all the time, and I expect they will continue to do so. This counsel is with regard to lawing with one another. I want to say to you miners: Do not go to law at all; it does you no good, and only wastes your substance. It causes idleness, waste, wickedness, vice, and immorality. Do not go to law. You cannot find a courtroom without a great number of spectators in it; what are they doing? Idling away their time to no profit whatever. As for lawyers, if they will put their brains to work and learn how to raise potatoes, wheat, cattle, build factories, be merchants or tradesmen, it will be a great deal better for them than trying to take the property of others from them through litigation.

We have got to a state in our nation when there is quite a portion of the young and middle-aged men who calculate to live, as the saying is, by their wits. I would like to have a man look philosophically into his own heart, by the spirit of truth, and examine himself, and see what he is, what he was made for, and what use he is on the earth if he never did a thing to produce a morsel of bread. Such a man eats the bread of the laborer, he wears the clothing of the laborer; every time he lies down on his bed he lies on that which the labor of another produced; he never took the pains to raise a goose, duck, lamb, or sheep. He never sheared a sheep or tried to make cloth of the wool; he never took the pains to plough the ground and sow a little wheat, to plant a few potatoes, to raise a calf, a pig, or a chicken. No, he never did anything useful; but still he eats, drinks, and wears, and lives in luxury. In the name of common sense, what use is such a man on this earth? The question may arise, “Must we not have law?” We have plenty of it, and sometimes we have a little too much. Legislators make too many laws; they make so many that the people do not know anything about them. Wise legislators will never make more laws than the people can understand. But by reason of the wealth of our country, young men are sent to schools and colleges, and after receiving their education they calculate to live by it. Will education feed and clothe you, keep you warm on a cold day, or enable you to build a house? Not at all. Should we cry down education on this account? No. What is it for? The improvement of the mind; to instruct us in all arts and sciences, in the history of the world, in the laws of nations; to enable us to understand the laws and principles of life, and how to be useful while we live. But the idler is of no use to himself or to the world in which he dwells.

In all nations, or at least in all civilized nations, there are distinctions among the people created by rank, titles, and property. How does God look upon these distinctions? How do Truth, Justice, and Mercy look upon them? They are all alike in their eyes. The king upon the throne and the beggar in the street are the same before the Heavens—the same in the eyes of Truth, Justice, Love, and Mercy. Find a true philosopher and he will look at the children of men as they are. I do not care whether he says so or not, he regards the poorest of the poor as human beings—men and women, and the kings and great ones, no matter how they are clothed, if they wear crowns, diadems, and diamonds, and ride in gilded coaches, are but human beings.

Our education should be such as to improve our minds and fit us for increased usefulness; to make us of greater service to the human family; to enable us to stop our rude methods of living, speaking, and thinking. But you take those who bear the sway among men, those who hold the affairs of the nations in their hands, catch them in the dark, and they are the lowest of the creations of God. Many of them descend to the lowest gutters they can find, and there, in darkness and in private, wallow in filth and wickedness. This is a waste of their lives, a prostitution of their knowledge and of the blessings Providence has bestowed upon them. Many of them will sit and gamble all night, to see who shall have the pile; and such men are called gentlemen! And in the day time they seem the most perfect gentlemen imaginable. They are accomplished to the highest degree; they understand languages, and amongst them are to be found lawyers, doctors, statesmen and members of the highest classes of society. I heard of one in New York. A young man went there from Boston, and a gentleman wished to show him around, and initiate him into the mysteries of high life in New York. He took him to one of the finest houses on Fifth Avenue, I think it was. The young man supposed it was the residence of a private family. He was led into a long hall, so richly adorned and ornamented that his eyes were dazzled. There was table after table, table after table, surrounded by gentlemen who were gambling, and the furniture and the room throughout were gorgeous in the extreme. Here was hall after hall, side rooms, refreshment rooms, etc., and the young man found out that he was in a fashionable gambling hell. He had not believed in such things before; but he sat there all night watching, for he wanted to find out something pertaining to fashionable life in the metropolis. About 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning there was a gentleman sat back from one of the tables. He had played, played, played at one of the tables until he had played himself perfectly out, his money and estate all gone. He entered the place the night before a wealthy man, and by 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning he was not worth a penny in the world. He threw himself back from the table, and saying, “Gentlemen, I am played out,” he took a derringer pistol from his pocket, put it to his ear, and put a ball through his brains. He was one of the wisest of that class of men I ever heard of. If each and every one of them would do like this one, before commencing to game, and leave their substance to men and women who would labor, they would prove themselves wise, for their wealth would benefit the earth. “O,” say they, “we have plenty.” If you have, go and build up another city or town; go into the wilderness, take the poor with you, teach them how to farm, how to raise cattle, how to gather around them the comforts of life, and prove yourselves worthy of an existence. If you have money to gamble with, you have money to buy a farm and set the poor to work. In doing this, you are helping to elevate the human family; but in gambling and otherwise abusing the blessings, power and influence you possess, you do no good to anybody, and work out your own destruction. When you have bought a farm and set the poor to work, get a school on your farm, and begin and teach those who never had the privilege of going to school. There are hundreds and thousands in the City of New York who never went to school a day in their lives; they are wallowing in the gutter, ragged, dirty, and filthy. They learn sharpness, it is true; but where do they sleep? By the wayside, or crawl into some old building—girls and boys, and live there by the thousand. They have not a shelter to place their heads under, but when night comes their only refuge is old buildings, hovels, and corners of streets forsaken by the police, and there they must spend the night. Why not take such characters and bring them out to this country, or take them to California, Oregon, or to the plains of Illinois, Wisconsin, &c., and make a town, settle up the country, and make these poor, miserable creatures better off? You would prove yourselves worthy of existence on the earth if you would. But no, “We will gamble.” Now gamblers, stop your gambling here and go to work; that is my advice. “Well, but,” say some, “we are not going to be instructed by Brigham Young.” Who cares for that? If you will not receive my instructions, instruct yourselves. I want you to see, in and of yourselves, that your life is a poor miserable life of waste, a disgrace to the human family. Go to work, improve the country, build towns and cities, set out shade trees, build schoolhouses and meetinghouses and worship what you please, we do not care what. Be civil, honest in your deal, be upright, do not take that which belongs to your neighbor; and miners do not go to law, and lawyers go to work. If you have difficulties that you cannot settle among yourselves, have recourse to arbitration. Select your men, three, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, or what number you please, men without prejudice for this or that side, place them in possession of the facts of the case; and when they say, “Mr. James Munroe, you do so much;” or, “Mr. John Jones, you do so and so, this is our decision,” abide by it. This course will cost you nothing, you go about your business, the country is quiet, and the community is not running after these infernal courts. Excuse me for the expression; but the whole nation think we must have courts, and the courts adjudicate; and some courts take the liberty of legislating as well as adjudicating, when, the fact is, if all difficulties now taken into courts were submitted to men’s honor, honesty, brains, and hearts, they could be adjudicated without the least trouble in the world. What would we do with our judges in such a state of society? Let them go to farming, get a factory, or go into business and improve the country.

I cannot say that this counsel is especially for the Latter-day Saints. Why? For this simple reason—you take out of these mountains the whole of the community except the Latter-day Saints, and I might include a good many who do not belong to the Church, and we would not have a lawsuit in our midst from one year’s end to another for five hundred miles square. And if the counsel I have just given be adopted, we shall have the most stable mining districts through our settlements that have ever been found in the western country. You will never see the excitement that you have seen in other mining localities. Of course there may be some who will crawl up into the mountains, build up little towns, and have their games and a little rowdyism, but not much; you will see a steadfast community.

We say to the Latter-day Saints, work for these capitalists, and work honestly and faithfully, and they will pay you faithfully. I am acquainted with a good many of them, and as far as I know them, I do not know but every one is an honorable man. They are capitalists, they want to make money, and they want to make it honestly and according to the principles of honest dealing. If they have means and are determined to risk it in opening mines you work for them by the day. Haul their ores, build their furnaces, and take your pay for it, and enter your lands, build houses, improve your farms, buy your stock, and make yourselves better off; but, no lawing in the case. I have had an experience in this. I never lawed it much in my life; but from my youth my study has been to avoid law, and to take a course that no man could get the advantage of me.

The esteem in which I hold law prompts me to keep out of it. You recollect the story of the lawyer and the two farmers. The farmers had quarreled about a cow, and they went to law, and the result was the farmers held the cow and the lawyer milked her. I never see law going on much without the lawyer getting the milk and the cream, while those who go to law hold the cow for him to milk. I know you think my esteem is not very high for lawyers. I will say it is not for their evil practices; but as men and gentlemen I have known many who never dabbled in dishonesty. I have marveled many times at the oath that is required of a lawyer with regard to his client; it gives him license to make white black, and black white. If I were to fix up an oath for a lawyer to take when he entered upon business, I would make him swear to tell the truth, and to show the right of the case, for or against, every time, that is what I would do. But they are licensed from the very oath they take to justify their client, let him be ever so wrong; this, however, does not compel them to be dishonest. Now, I do beseech you, I pray you, for your own sakes, you capitalists, to have no law. I have heard it said that a mine is good for nothing until there has been two or three lawsuits over it, but I say that will make your claims no better whatever.

I will say still further with regard to our rich country here. Suppose there was no railroad across this continent, could you do anything with these mines? Not the least in the world. All this galena would not bear transportation were it not for that; and, take the mines from first to last, there is not enough silver and gold in the galena ore to pay for shipping were it not for the railroad. And then, were it not for this little railroad from Ogden to this city these Cottonwood mines would not pay, for you could not cart the ore. Well, they want a little more help, and we want to build them a railroad direct to Cottonwood, so that they can make money. We want them to do it and to do it on business principles, so that they can keep it, and when you get it, make good use of it and we will help you. There is enough for all. We do not want any quarreling or contention; and I believe that, if dishonest capitalists were to come here and commence a dishonest course with our citizens in hiring them, there are men of honor sufficient to say, “You had better get out of this place; we are an honest and industrious community, and we wish to deal on honest principles and make this community substantial. We will furnish you with all your supplies that we can produce here, and take our pay for it; you take your capital and add to it, and then when you leave you will feel well about us and yourselves.”

I do not want you to think that I have ever counseled this. Do it, in and of yourselves, for you know it would be ridiculous in the eyes of some to take counsel of Brigham Young; it would be preposterous to suppose he can give good counsel. I leave that, however, to every man or woman to decide whether or not it is good counsel. There has been but little of this contention and lawing here, and I do hope and pray there will be less; it only creates bad feelings and distress in any society in the world.

We are here as a human family. Bless your hearts, there is not one of us but what is a son or daughter of Adam and Eve, not any but what are just as much brothers and sisters as we should be if born of the same parents, right in the same family, with only ten children in the family. It is the same blood precisely. I do not care where we come from, we are all of this family, and the blood has not been changed. It is true that a curse came upon certain portions of the human family—those who turned away from the holy commandments of the Lord our God. What did they do? In ancient days old Israel was the chosen people in whom the Lord delighted, and whom he blessed and did so much for. Yet they transgressed every law that he gave them, changed every ordinance that he delivered to them, broke every covenant made with the fathers, and turned away entirely from his holy commandments, and the Lord cursed them. Cain was cursed for this, with this black skin that there is so much said about. Do you think that we could make laws to change the color of the skin of Cain’s descendants? If we can, we can change the leopard’s spots; but we cannot do this, neither can we change their blood.

There is a curse on these aborigines of our country who roam the plains, and are so wild that you cannot tame them. They are of the house of Israel; they once had the Gospel delivered to them, they had the oracles of truth; Jesus came and administered to them after his resurrection, and they received and delighted in the Gospel until the fourth generation, when they turned away and became so wicked that God cursed them with this dark and benighted and loathsome condition; and they want to sit on the ground in the dirt, and to live by hunting, and they cannot be civilized. And right upon this, I will say to our government if they could hear me, “You need never fight the Indians, but if you want to get rid of them try to civilize them.” How many were here when we came? At the Warm Springs, at this little grove where they would pitch their tents, we found perhaps three hundred Indians; but I do not suppose that there are three of that band left alive now. There was another band a little south, another north, another further east; but I do not suppose there is one in ten, perhaps not one in a hundred, now alive of those who were here when we came. Did we kill them? No, we fed them. They would say, “We want just as fine flour as you have.” To Walker, the chief, whom all California and New Mexico dreaded, I said, “It will just as sure kill as the world, if you live as we live.” Said he, “I want as good as Brigham, I want to eat as he does.” Said I, “Eat then, but it will kill you.” I told the same to Arapeen, Walker’s brother; but they must eat and drink as the whites did, and I do not suppose that one in a hundred of those bands are alive. We brought their children into our families, and nursed and did everything for them it was possible to do for human beings, but die they would. Do not fight them, but treat them kindly. There will then be no stain on the Government, and it will get rid of them much quicker than by fighting them. They have got to be civilized, and there will be a remnant of them saved. I have said enough on this subject.

I want to say a little now with regard to tithing. Some of this people think they pay their tithing. I expect they do; but I can make the same comparison that Jesus did when in Jerusalem. Here came the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, &c., and put their substance in the Lord’s storehouse; and there came along a poor widow with nothing, to all appearance. She had not clothing to make her comfortable, but she had two mites, which she had saved probably by her labor, and she placed them in the storehouse of the Lord. Jesus lifted himself up, and, seeing what they were doing, said, “Of a truth I say unto you that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all; for all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God; but she of her penny hath cast in all her living that she had.” Now there are a few of just this same kind of characters here who do pay their tithing. But do we rich men pay ours? Not by considerable. I can inform the Elders of Israel and everybody else that since we have been raising grain in these valleys the deposits paid in on tithing have not amounted to one-hundredth part of all that has been raised, whereas one-tenth was due the storehouse of the Lord. You may say, “Brother Brigham, have you paid in yours?” No, I have not. There is a number of the brethren who have paid in considerable, but I expect I have paid more tithing than any other man in this Church. I expect I have done more for the poor than any other man in the Church; yet I have hardly commenced to pay my tithing. How is it with you? I know how it is. There are a few poor who pay their tithing, and who are pretty strict; but take the masses of the people, and they have not paid one-twentieth of their tithing. Do you believe it? I know it. If I were to reason over this and attempt to show the Latter-day Saints the inconsistency of their course in the matter, I would plant my feet on this ground: We are not our own, we are bought with a price, we are the Lord’s; our time, our talents, our gold and silver, our wheat and fine flour, our wine and our oil, our cattle, and all there is on this earth that we have in our possession is the Lord’s and he requires one-tenth of this for the building up of his kingdom. Whether we have much or little, one-tenth should be paid in for tithing. What for? I can tell you what for in a hundred instances, but I will only tell you just a few, and will commence with the poor. You count me out fifty, a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand of the poorest men and women you can find in this community; with the means that I have in my possession, I will take these ten, fifty, hundred, five hundred, or a thousand people, and put them to labor; but only enough to benefit their health and to make their food and sleep sweet unto them, and in ten years I will make that community wealthy. In ten years I will put six, a hundred, or a thousand individuals, whom we have to support now by donations, in a position not only to support themselves, but they shall be wealthy, shall ride in their carriages, have fine houses to live in, orchards to go to, flocks and herds and everything to make them comfortable. But it is not every man that can do this. The Bishops cannot do it; not that I would speak lightly of the wisdom of our Bishops, but we have hardly a Bishop in the Church who knows A with regard to the duties of his office. Still we have good men, but our hearts are somewhere else, and we are not studying the kingdom, the welfare of the human family, nor what our office calls upon us to perform. We do not seek after the poor and have every man and woman put to usury. This ought to be, for our time is the Lord’s. All we want is to direct this time and use it profitably. There is abundance of labor before us. We have the earth to subdue, and to make it like the Garden to Eden. Do you believe it? I know it. But how do we live? Very much like the rest of the world. We are ready to run over all creation. Just as I have said to some of the brethren, and to some that I have known in the world; they get their eye on a dime; they see it roll away and they go after it. By and by they stub their toe against an eagle; soon they come to another one, a doubloon or a slug, and they will stub their toe against it, and down they go; but they are up again, for their eye is on that dime, and, in their eagerness to obtain it, they stumble over the eagles they might pick up if they had wisdom to do it. Is this so? O yes, they who have eyes to see can see. Take things calm and easy, pick up everything, let nothing go to waste.

You, sisters, know I have sometimes told you what my office is. Does it make you ashamed of me when you hear some of the brethren say, “Well, I do not believe that Brother Brigham has anything to do with my farm or household matters, or with temporal things; I do not think the First Presidency has anything to do with my temporal affairs.” O, yes, we have; and to come right down to the point, it is my privilege, if I were capable, to teach every woman in this Church and kingdom how to keep house, and how to sweep house, cook meat, wash dishes, make bread without any waste, &c. I may go to a house and what do I see? Perhaps the bottom or top of the bread is burnt to a coal. Why did you not do different? “O, these are accidents.” Yes, because we never think of the business on our hands. Mother gets up and it is: “O, Sally, where is the dishcloth, I want it in a minute?” “Susan, where in the world have you put that broom?” or, “Where is the iron holder?” and Susan knows nothing about either dishcloth or broom, and says, “We have no iron holder except some waste paper.” If I had nothing but a piece of an old newspaper folded for a holder I would have it where I could put my hand on it in a moment, in the dark if I wanted it. And so with the dishcloth, the broom, the chairs, tables, sofas, and everything about the house, so that if you had to get up in the night you could lay your hand on whatever you wanted instantly. Have a place for everything and everything in its place.

If I only had time I would teach you how to knit stockings, for there are very few women now-a-days who know how many stitches to set on to knit stockings for their husbands or for themselves; or what size yarn or needles they require; and when their stockings are finished they are like some of these knitted by machinery—a leg six inches long while the foot is a foot or a foot and a half long; or the leg only big enough for a boy ten years old, while the foot is big enough for any miner in the country. You know this is extravagant, but it is a fact that the art of knitting stockings is not near so generally understood among the ladies as it should be. I could tell you how it should be done had I time and knew how myself.

I will ask the whole human family is there any harm in teaching people how to be mechanics and artists, and what their life is for? Is there any harm in teaching them the laws of life and how to live, so that when they go down to the grave they can say, “There is my life, and it has been one of honor; look at it and do as much better than I have as God will give you ability to do. This is the duty of the human family, instead of wasting their lives and the lives of their fellow beings, and the precious time God has given us to improve our minds and bodies by observing the laws of life, so that the longevity of the human family may begin to return. By and by, according to the Scriptures, the days of a man shall be like the days of a tree. But in those days people will not eat and drink as they do now; if they do their days will not be like a tree, unless it be a very short-lived tree. This is our business.

Then pay your tithing, just because you like to, not unless you want to. They say we cut people off the Church for not paying tithing; we never have yet, but they ought to be. God does not fellowship them. The law of tithing is an eternal law. The Lord Almighty never had his kingdom on the earth without the law of tithing being in the midst of his people, and he never will. It is an eternal law that God has instituted for the benefit of the human family, for their salvation and exaltation. This law is in the Priesthood, but we do not want any to observe it unless they are willing to do so. If I ask my brethren, “Are you willing to pay tithing?” Many of them would say, “Yes, we are not only willing to pay tithing, but all that we have, for we are the Lord’s, and all that he has given us is his.” That would be the reply of thousands here today. If the law of the land would permit us we would show whether we are willing to deed our property to the kingdom of God or not. Mine has been deeded; and now I will tell you that the insurance company that I have taken stock in is up yonder, and the Lord of Hosts is President of that company. I do not want to insure my life in any other; and if we want to insure property, let us insure each others’ and our own. I say, my brethren and sisters, that if we had the privilege, we would show to the world whether we would deed everything to the kingdom of God or not. But can we do it here? The Government has passed a law to the effect:

“That it shall not be lawful for any corporation or association for religious or charitable purposes to acquire or hold real estate in any Territory of the United States during the existence of the territorial government of a greater value than fifty thousand dollars; and all real estate acquired or held by any such corporation or association contrary to the provisions of this act shall be forfeited and escheat to the United States: Provided, that existing vested rights in real estate shall not be impaired by the provisions of this section.”

That is how the Government binds us up. Never mind, we can build temples, pay our tithing and our freewill offerings; we can raise our bread, hire our school teachers and teach our children without help. We came here stripped of everything, and men in high places sat and laughed at us, and said we should perish; but we have not perished. Many of them have gone down to their graves and their spirits have gone into the spirit world, where they will not have the comforting influences of the angels of God as the Saints will. Hades, the grave and the world of spirits are called hell in the original language. Now I don’t expect them to go down, down, down to the bottom of the bottomless pit, where they will be pitched over with pitchforks. I do not have reference to anything of this kind when I speak of hell, or the world of spirits. I do not wish to frighten people to the anxious seat, and then say, “O, my beloved sister, how did you feel when your dear little infant died?” and, “O, my beloved brother, did not your heart bleed for your dear companion when you laid her in the silent bourne from whence no traveler returns.” This is not our religion; our religion does not consist of sensation or animal magnetism, as that of the sectarian world does. I have seen it from my youth up, working on the passions of the people, making them crazy. About what? Nothing at all. I have seen them lie, when under their religious excitement, from ten minutes to probably an hour without the least sign of life in their systems; not a pulse about them, and lay the slightest feather in the world to their nose and not the least sign of breathing could be discerned there, any more than anywhere else. After lying awhile they would get up all right. “What have you seen, sister or brother? What have you learned more than before you had this fit?” I do not know what kind of a fit it would be, whether a falling sickness or fainting fit, or a fit of animal magnetism. “What do you know, sister?” “Nothing.” “What have you seen, brother?” “Nothing nor nobody.” “What have you to tell us that you have learned while in this vision?” “Nothing at all.” It always wound up like the old song, “All about nothing at all.”

That is not the faith of the Latter-day Saints. Their religion consists of the knowledge that comes from God; a knowledge of the law of heaven, the power of the eternal Priesthood of the Son of God; and by obeying this law and these ordinances we, in a business manner, philo– sophically, in a manner that can be demonstrated as clearly as a mathematical problem, gain the right to eternal life; and though we do not see the Lord in the flesh we can see him in vision, and we have a right to visions, administration of angels, the power of the eternal Priesthood with the keys and blessings thereof. And by and through the labors of his faithful servants the Lord offers salvation to the human family; and though they will not save themselves we calculate to do all we can for them.

God bless you. Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, April 8, 1871.

I have a few words to say to the congregation and I wish perfect silence. This is a very large room, and for any person to fill the space within these walls with his voice, he needs strength of lungs and stomach and the attention of the congregation.

We have been witnessing, this afternoon, the world’s great objection to “Mormonism,” for we have had the privilege of beholding the unanimous vote of the people when the names of the officers of the Church were presented for election or rejection. We have seen the same oneness and unanimity this afternoon which characterize the Latter-day Saints on all occasions, and this is objectionable to the world. They say it is anti-democratic, though we think not. I looked over the congregation pretty diligently to discover a contrary vote; but I could not see such a thing. When the vote was called all hands were up. I thought, while witnessing this spectacle, “What harm is there in a people being of one heart and one mind?” but, to use a common phrase, I could not see the point. I cannot discover any iniquity in a people’s being one. If they are disposed to chose evil instead of good, sin instead of righteousness, darkness instead of light, falsehood instead of truth, where is the utility in being divided and quarrelling about it? And if they have embraced, believe in and love the truth; or if they desire and are seeking for it, I ask, where can be the harm in being one in this? This is the “one-man power” that there is so much said about.

Now, ask yourselves, and let me ask you, who has been to you, individually, and told you to vote just as you have voted here today? Has any man visited your habitations to tell you that when you came to this house you must all vote precisely alike? I will pause right here and will request that, if any person present has been so instructed, he or she will let us know it. I do not see any person rise, and I need not look for anyone to do so, from the simple fact that not a word on this subject has been said to the Latter-day Saints. Our doctrine is true and we like it; our faith is one and we are one in it, our object is one and we unitedly pursue the straight and narrow path that leads to it.

This is for those who have only one ear, half an ear, or no ear at all for the truth; or for those who wish to leave the truth. Though I do not suppose there are any here this afternoon that wish to leave the truth for error, that wish to forsake righteousness, holiness and truth for unrighteousness, corruption, disorder, confusion and death. People do, however, leave this Church, but they leave it because they get into darkness, and the very day they conclude that there should be a democratic vote, or in other words, that we should have two candidates for the presiding Priesthood in the midst of the Latter-day Saints, they conclude to be apostates. There is no such thing as confusion, division, strife, animosity, hatred, malice, or two sides to the question in the house of God; there is but one side to the question there.

You ask the kingdoms of the world if they have such an organization as the kingdom of God, and they will tell you they have not. They have no organization amongst them so perfect and complete. Well, is it right for the people of the world to elect their presidents and rulers? Yes, if they wish to. For four years? Yes, or for one year, or for six months or one month, if they wish to; but when the Lord appoints presidents, he does not change them every month or year, or every four years. Should they be changed? No, they should not. Should they be changed in human governments? No, they should not; and the nation that would delight in a good government, the best possible for its preservation and strength, should pattern, in its organization, after the kingdom of God on the earth. Here are our tribunals and courts; and our courts are courts of error, to judge every matter and cause according to its merits and demerits.

Well, where is the harm in this? I wish the world, or any scientific men in it, would detail the error in a people being one; and I will go still further, and say, being one in the Lord, as we are commanded and recommended to be. Even in the wicked world, where there is so much confusion, where is the good that arises from contention and opposition? I have not seen it, and, as I have said, I cannot see the point. But here in Utah that “one-man power” is such a terrible thing. I would ask: Who is that man, and where is the power, and what is the power? It is the power of him who brought us into existence, and he is the MAN who wields it, and he is the Father of us all, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Maker and Possessor of this earth that we inhabit, and is the Producer of all things upon it. Is he one? Yes. Is his trinity one? Yes. Is his organization one? Are the heavens one? Yes. Although we have a short account, in what are called the Scriptures of truth, that on a certain occasion there was a little confusion in heaven. The Lord has revealed something of this in these latter days. What was the result? One-third part of the hosts of heaven walked out. I do not think the election lasted a great while, if they had two candidates, and it appears they had; and I do not think they stopped very long at the polls, or were very long counting the votes to find out who would be president or who would not, for they turned them out. Was there any reason for this? Would it be democratic to get up an election in heaven and have opposition? Why, yes, according to the feelings and understandings of the political world it would be very democratic; but I would say to the political world, if they were before me, that the opposition they are so anxious to promote contains the seeds of the destruction of the government that we live in. This is the plant or tree from which schism springs; and every government lays the foundation of its own downfall when it permits what are called democratic elections. If a party spirit is developed, the formation of one party will be speedily followed by another; and furthermore, the very moment that we admit this, we admit the existence of error and corruption somewhere. Where is it? Right points out its hiding place, and says that truth, and truth only, will endure, and that falsehood and corruption and error of every description are from beneath—are of the enemy; and the Lord Almighty suffered this schism in heaven to see what his subjects would do preparatory to their coming to this earth, which we need not talk about today. But the division did not take place in those who were redeemed from the earth and exalted and brought up into the presence of the Father and the Son, to live in their presence and in their glory, and be partakers of their power. But it was among another class, and we are now in the midst of them. There is but one thread that can be followed that can endure forever, but one path that we can walk in that is eternal—and that path is the path of perfection, purity and holiness. By this, and this only, have the Gods been exalted, the angels live and the heavenly hosts bask in purity. We are trying to prepare for it.

Can error live? No, it is the very plant of destruction, it destroys itself; it withers, it fades, it falls and decays and returns to its native element. Every untruth, all error, everything that is unholy, unlike God, will, in its time, perish. Every government not ordained of God, as we have just been hearing, will, in its time, crumble to the dust and be lost in the fog of forgetfulness, and will leave no history of its doings. Why, with all the knowledge and learning now in the world we have the history of only a very scanty portion of those who have peopled our earth from the days of Adam until now. And we, in our turn, should go into the land of forgetfulness were it not for our organization and the oneness which prevail in our midst. Says Jesus, “Unless ye are one, ye are not mine.” The counsel contained in this saying is the best that could be given. Who could have given better advice to his friends than Jesus gave to his disciples? Be one, for union is strength, is it not? Yes. Go into the political world, and you will find that union is strength; it is the same in the mechanical world; and if we take every art and science, and all the pursuits of the human family, in oneness there is strength. Said Jesus, “Be ye one, as I and my Father are one, he in me and I in him; I in you,” &c. Now, I finish this by saying if there is a person on the face of this earth that can give a true and philosophical reason why we should not be one, I wish he would bring it forth, for the Latter-day Saints want to have the best organization that can be formed, and they want the best of everything that can be got. We want the truth, and the whole truth; and we look forward with gladness to the time when we can say we have nothing but the truth. We cannot say that now; we have an immense amount of error, and we are very far from being perfect; but we hope to see the time that we can say that we have truth only, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I want to say a few words for the benefit of my brethren the Elders, and of all the Latter-day Saints, male and female, old and young; and then for the benefit of strangers, Christians and ministers of the different religious sects, if they could all hear me today. I can tell you the difference in one grand principle, between your religion and ours. It is this: we would not make everybody bow down to our religion, if we had the power; for this would not be Godlike; but other religionists would. It is not discovered by the world, and it is not perceived enough by the Elders of Israel. The reasons why we do not prosper and travel faster and further than we do, we have not time to talk about, perhaps, today; but I will say this: our religion, the religion of heaven, differs very much from man’s religion. It has just been told us that the divines are in the habit of taking a text from the Scriptures, but when they do so they almost invariably preach from it. I hardly ever heard a man in my life, when in the Christian world, preach to his text, but directly from it. This makes confusion.

Now, suppose that we were to issue our edicts to the whole world of mankind for them to obey the Gospel we preach, and had the power to compel them to obey, could we do it according to the dictates of our religion? We could not. We could invite them, and could tell them how, but we could not say, and maintain the faith that we have embraced, you must bow down and profess our religion and submit to the ordinances of the kingdom of God. I will give you a reason for this. If this were our duty, and it were legitimate, if we had the power, for us to make every person on the earth submit to the code of laws and ordinances that we have submitted to, it would prove that God is in fault in not making them do so. But if we become Godlike we will be just as full of charity as he is. We would let pagans worship as they please, and to the Christians and Mahommedans, and all sects and parties in the world we would say, “Do just as you please, for your volition is free, and you must act upon it for yourselves before the heavens.” Our religion will not permit us to command or force any man or woman to obey the Gospel we have embraced. And we are under no obligation to do this, for every creature has as good a right, according to his organization, to choose for himself as the Gods. To use a comparison, all have a right to eat bread or let it alone; they may make and eat unleavened cakes as the people did anciently, if they choose; and no person has a right to say to another, “Why do you eat wheat bread, corn bread, or no bread at all? Why do you eat potatoes, or why do you not eat them? Why do you walk, or why do you sit down? Why do you read this or that book? Or why do you go to the right or the left?” For everyone has a right to do as he likes in these respects, all being independent in their capacity and choice. Here is life for you, here is salvation for you, choose ye this day whom ye will serve. If the Lord be God, serve him, or you may serve Baal, just at your pleasure. If the Elders of Israel could understand this a little better, we would like it, for the simple reason that if they had power given them now they manifest the same weaknesses in the exercise thereof as any other people. They have not an eye to discern between the spirit, power, and principles by which the Gods live, and those which govern and control the children of men; and yet between the two there is an infinite difference.

Can you find a Christian denomination which would not make us bow down to their creeds if they had the power? Not one. We have plenty of evidence to prove this. We have history enough to prove that when they have the power their motto is, “You shall.” But there is no such thing in the economy of heaven. Life is before us, death is before us, we can choose for ourselves; and this is one of the differences between the religion of heaven and the religions of men. Do we profess to say that the various religious systems of the world are the religions of men? If they are not, what are they? If the sects and parties have not been formed by man and the wisdom of man, what power did form them?

I will now say a few words with regard to our faith. Our religion, in common with everything of which God is the Author, is a system of law and order. The earth on which we live hangs and floats in its own element, rotates upon its axis and moves at an immense velocity without our perceiving it either asleep or awake, it performs its revolutions, the atmosphere moving with it, so as not to injure, disturb, or molest any being on its face. But how long would it retain its position and move unwaveringly in the orbit assigned it without law? Can you tell us, you astronomers? How long would the moon and the members of our planetary system retain their positions, were it not for strict law? Who gave that law? He who had the right. The world do not know him, but he will call around one of these days and let them know that he is in being. I will say to Saint and sinner, that if we do not know him, he will call by and by, and let us know that he lives, and will bring us to judgment. If we do know him, happy are we if we obey his laws. He is not a phantom; he does not exist without law, order, rule, and strict regulation. And the laws by which he is governed are the laws of purity. He has instituted laws and ordinances for the government and benefit of the children of men, to see if they would obey them and prove themselves worthy of eternal life by the law of the celestial worlds; and it is of these laws that our religion is composed. This holy Priesthood that we talk about is a perfect system of government. The best way I can think of to express my idea of Priesthood of the Son of God is to call it a perfect system of laws and government. By obedience to these laws we expect to enter the celestial kingdom and be exalted.

We have had a few words with regard to temples. We are going to build temples. This law is given to the children of men. I will carry this a little further, and say to my brethren and sisters and all present, that the law of the celestial kingdom that is introduced here upon the earth in our day is for the salvation and exaltation of the human family. Previous to the coming forth of this Priesthood and code of laws, there was no law on the earth that we have any knowledge of whereby a man or woman could be sanctified and prepared to enter the presence of the Father and the Son. This may sound in the ears of many like strange doctrine. But pause a moment; do not let any of your hearts flutter, not for a moment. If you and the world generally knew all that we know, I do not believe that there is a wicked man on the earth, unless he be past the day of grace, but would say, “Thank you, Latter-day Saints, God bless you! I will help you to carry on your work, for you have the keys of life and salvation committed to you for this last dispensation.” We could enumerate a few of the laws that we have embraced in our faith pertaining to the building up of the kingdom of God on the earth. How is it with regard to the authority to proclaim the words of salvation to the children of men? According to the Scriptures of divine truth, and the revelations that God has given, “no man taketh this honor unto himself, except he be called of God, as was Aaron.” These are the words of the Apostle. Did Joseph Smith ever arrogate to himself this right? Never, never, never; and if God had not sent a messenger to ordain him to the Aaronic Priesthood and then other messengers to ordain him to the Apostleship, and told him to build up his kingdom on the earth, it would have remained in chaos to this day. There is no objection to people having the spirit of their calling, and having it even before they are called; but if they have the spirit of wisdom given to them they wait until a servant of God says, “My brother John,” or, “My brother William, the Lord Almighty has called thee to be a minister of salvation to the inhabitants of the earth, and I ordain thee to this office. This is the law of heaven. Is it observed in the Christian world? No, it is not; there man’s authority and notions prevail entirely, and this is the cause of their confusion and variety in their methods of expounding the Gospel as contained in the Scriptures; but when a man who is called and ordained of God goes forth he preaches the ordinances, faith in Christ and obedience to him as our Savior. He declares that the first step to be taken, after believing in the Father and the Son, is to go down into the waters of baptism and there be immersed in the water, and come up out of the water as Jesus did. Some may inquire why the Latter-day Saints are so strenuous on this point? We do it for the remission of sins; Jesus did this to fulfill all righteousness. John said to him, when he went and demanded baptism at his hands, “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me!” Jesus answered: I do this to fulfill all righteousness; I do this to set a pattern for my brethren, and for all who come after me and believe on my name; and this is why the Latter-day Saints are so strenuous with regard to baptism by immersion. What was the result of obedience to the ordinance of baptism in the case of the Savior? The Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, it is said, rested upon him. This is not exactly the fact, though a natural dove descended and rested on the head of the Lord Jesus, in witness that God had accepted the offering of his Son. But the dove was not the Holy Ghost, but the sign that the Holy Ghost was given to him. And after that, Jesus went forth and was tempted, as you read.

Obedience to the ordinance of baptism is required that people may receive the remission of their sins. After that, hands are laid upon them for the reception of the Holy Ghost; and this Holy Ghost teaches you and me to vote exactly alike; it teaches us to believe alike and to receive the ordinances of the house of God. No man or woman ever received the faith of this Gospel but what desired to be baptized by immersion for the remission of sins and to have hands laid upon them for the Holy Ghost. Then come the blessings of healing, faith, prophecy, tongues, and so forth.

I recollect when brothers Kimball and Hyde went to England the first man they baptized was George D. Watt. In the second or third meeting after his baptism, Brother Watt got up and said: “I have the spirit of prophecy upon me;” and said he, “We are all going to leave England, and are going to America, for America is the land of Zion.” Not a word had been said to Brother Watt about the gathering. Is not this so, Brother Hyde? (Brother O. Hyde: Yes, sir.) I wanted to say these few words on this subject.

And now, my brethren, the Elders of Israel, have compassion on all the inhabitants of the earth, for we shall never have the keys of authority committed to us to be rulers until we will rule just as God would rule if he were here himself. We have been persecuted, driven, smitten, cast out, robbed and hated; and I may say it was for our coldness and neglect of duty; and if we did not exactly deserve it, there have been times when we did deserve it. If we did not deserve it at the time, it was good for and gave us an experience, though I must say that one of the hardest lessons for me to learn on earth is to love a man who hates me and would put me to death if he had the power. I do not think I have got this lesson by heart, and I do not know how long I shall have to live to learn it. I am trying. I believe that if the reins of power were in my hands today, I never would ask a man to be a Saint if he did not want to be; and I do not think I would persecute him if he worshiped a white dog, the sun, moon, or a graven image. But let us alone; let the kingdom of God alone, that is all we want. If the principles of eternal life are not sufficient to win the hearts of the children of men, just take your course—the downward road. I will say if there be any here who were once Latter-day Saints, but have apostatized, do not persecute us; do not try to hinder the work we are engaged in. We are trying to save the living and the dead. The living can have their choice, the dead have not. Millions of them died without the Gospel, without the Priesthood, without the opportunities that we enjoy. We shall go forth in the name of Israel’s God and attend to the ordinances for them. And through the Millennium, the thousand years that the people will love and serve God, we will build temples and officiate therein for these who have slept for hundreds and thousands of years—those who would have received the truth if they had had the opportunity; and we will bring them up, and form the chain entire, back to Adam.

I will say that there is not a man on the face of the earth but, if he knew the objects the Saints have in view, and the work they are engaged in, would rather say, “I have a sixpence to help you,” sooner than he would persecute and slander this Priesthood or people. No, he would say, “I have a sixpence or thousands to help on this good work.” We will bring up all the inhabitants of the earth, except those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost, and save them in some kingdom where they will receive more glory and honor than ever the Methodist contemplated. This should be a comfort and a consolation to all the inhabitants of the earth. They will not save themselves, millions have not had a chance, and millions now living, through the strength of their traditions, will not do it; their consciences and feelings are bound up in their systems and creeds, whereas, if they felt as independent as they should feel, they would break loose and receive the truth; but they will live and die in bondage, and we calculate to officiate for them. Many a man I know of, who has fallen asleep, we have been baptized for since the Church was organized—good, honest, honorable men, charitable to all, living good, virtuous lives. We will not let them go down to hell; God will not. The plan of salvation is ample to bring them all up and to place them where they may enjoy all they could anticipate. Is there any harm in this? No. God bless you. Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the Tabernacle, Ogden City, Nov. 13, 1870.

While I attempt to speak to the people I would like their attention, and for them to keep quiet. I do not particularly object to the crying of children, but I do to the whispering of the people. I suppose that, if we were in the congregations of some of our Christian fellow countrymen, we would not hear any children crying. I believe they have none in some societies. I am very happy to hear the children crying when it is really necessary and they cannot be kept from it. One thing is certain, wherever we go there is a proof that the people are keeping the commandments of the Lord, especially the first one—to multiply and replenish the earth.

The first of my remarks this afternoon will consist of a petition. We are told to pray, and this is one of the practices that we consider absolutely necessary. We frequently offer prayers to kings, legislators, presidents, governors, etc.; but I am going to offer up a prayer to the Latter-day Saints and my prayer is simply—I beseech you, my brethren and sisters, in the name of the Lord, in the name of humanity, in the name of honor and for the sake of honor, justice and mercy, that you do listen and pay attention to the exhortation of my brother Joseph, delivered this morning, in behalf of our poor brethren in foreign lands. I might ask the Lord a thousand times over to deliver them from the oppression and poverty with which they are now surrounded, and He would not do it unless the means were provided; He will not do it without agents and agencies. He will not build balloons or come down with his chariots and pick up the poor in Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Scandinavia, the islands of the sea, or any other parts of the globe where they dwell, and load up with them and their baggage and bring them to this land while He has given us the ability to gather ourselves and the poor. If the Latter-day Saints do not understand this, it is time they did. And when we pray the Lord to open the way for the gathering of the poor, we merely mean that He will operate upon the hearts of those who have the means, that they will be reasonable with themselves, their faith and covenants and the requirements of God and toward those who are members of the same family with us.

You heard the statement of Brother Joseph this morning, and there are a great many witnesses here, to the truth of what he said. When people are in poverty and in their low estate, when they are pinched with hunger and destitute of the clothing necessary to make them comfortable, how deeply they can feel for their friends! But place those very ones where they can have all they need to eat, of food that relishes and suits their appetite, and clothing enough to keep them warm and comfortable, and many of them will sit down and fold their hands, and if you speak to them about the wants of their poor brethren in foreign lands, and mention their own situation in former days, their reply will be: “Oh, I had forgotten all about that! Yes, I believe, now you mention it, that I have seen the time when I had not sufficient food to satisfy the demands of hunger, nor clothing to make me comfortable and respectable. But, dear me, I had forgotten all that, that was in the past, and I have plenty now, and, what is that you are saying?” “’Why, your brethren and sisters in foreign lands are suffering.” “What! Did you say that some of our brethren and sisters are suffering? I have enough to eat, and all the clothing I need to make me comfortable, and a pretty good cabin that I built myself, and I am in debt to no one and quite happy and comfortable; and I wish you would not trouble me about other people.”

This is the story and these are the feelings of some of the Latter-day Saints that have been gathered from the depths of poverty. I do not wish to chide them for their well doing, and neither do I nor my brethren require of them things that are unreasonable; but we are under obligations to our families, connections and friends, and then to the whole human family. We are not independent of them; we are not here isolated and alone, differently formed and composed of different material from the rest of the human race. We belong to and are part of this family, consequently we are under obligations one to another, and the Latter-day Saints in these mountains are under obligations to their brethren and sisters scattered in the nations who, through indigent circumstances, are unable to gather to themselves the comforts of life. No matter what may be the cause of their poverty, they are helpless and destitute. Could I pick out any in this congregation who have been in these circumstances? I presume I could, a few score.

Sometimes I am inclined to be silent rather than speak of facts that have come under my own observation. I have seen people in districts of country, where they were so destitute of the comforts of life that if they gave a meal to a friend they had to pinch themselves, perhaps, for a week, having barely sufficient to keep body and spirit together; and yet when these very individuals get into circumstances in which they are well fed and well clothed they forget their former lives.

There are certain things connected with what we see and know to be facts, that actually form principles, and resolve themselves into eternal principles; and if people could see and understand them they would be a benefit to them. But we are on the surface, or outlines of the facts concerning the Latter-day Saints. There are many of our brethren who have been born and brought up in America, who have never been called to pass through the ordeals of poverty that some of our people have in the old countries. A few of these American Elders, wanting in faith, honesty and integrity, while on foreign missions, have borrowed money from these impoverished people, with a promise to pay when they returned home; but these promises have not been observed. I do not know whether there are any such Elders here this afternoon; but, whether there is or not, I want to say to them, wherever they may be, that I have no fellowship for a man that will make a promise and not fulfil it, and especially under such circumstances as I am talking about now; and if there is such an Elder in this congregation I say omit partaking of the sacrament here today, and never cease your efforts until you pay that honest debt. I do not offer this as a petition, but as counsel, to be observed by all such individuals in the Church on the penalty of being disfellowshipped by the Saints. But to myself and all of you who are free from such obligations I pray you to listen to the prayers of those who are asking for deliverance; and I have a few words to say with regard to this matter on this wise: We have nothing but what has been given or loaned us of the Lord; and if we have our hundreds or thousands we may foster the idea that we have nothing more than we need; but such a notion is entirely erroneous, for our real wants are very limited. What do we absolutely need? I possess everything on the face of the earth that I need, as I appear before you on this stand. I am not hungry, but I am well fed; I am not cold, but I am well clothed. I am not suffering for a hat, for I have hair on my head, and when I go outdoors I have my hat to put on; and with these and a shelter to protect me from the scorching heat or the piercing cold I have everything that a man needs or can enjoy if he owned the whole world. If I were the king of the earth I could enjoy no more. When you have what you wish to eat and sufficient clothing to make you comfortable you have all that you need, I have all that I need. Some persons, I know, will ask, “Why not give the rest to the poor?” I will answer this question, as far as I am concerned, by saying I do give to the poor and am willing to.

If the poor had all the surplus property of the rich many of them would waste it on the lusts of the flesh, and destroy themselves in using it. For this reason the Lord does not require the rich to give all their substance to the poor. It is true that when the young man came to Jesus to know what he must do to be saved, he told him, finally, “sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me;” and a great many think that he told the young man to give away all that he had, but Jesus did not require any such thing, neither did he say so, but simply, “distribute to the poor.” If the poor knew what to do with what they have many, yea very many, in this land would have all that is necessary to make them comfortable. But it is different with the great majority of our friends over the water—they are fettered and bound, and in the prison of poverty, and have not power to extricate themselves from the thralldom and wretchedness they are in, and hence it becomes our duty to lend a helping hand and send for them.

Many of us may think that we have nothing we can spare; but the providences of God might speedily make us think otherwise. If the Lord were to let loose our enemies upon us! Let Him hiss for the fly, and whisper for the locust, and they would come here by myriads and eat up every green thing there is in these mountains; and when they were destroyed, if the Lord so willed it, they could commence on the people and the cattle and devour every living creature on the land. Do we know this? We might know and realize it. Then, if we had a little bread to eat we should be happy and contented, and in our poverty we would be willing to divide with and assist our poor brethren and sisters, and help to save them from starvation. But now the cry is, “I have a house, and I want my furniture! I have a farm, I want my teams and my wagons, and then I want a carriage and time to ride,” until the whole world is swallowed up by the few.

You will excuse me if I say a few words with regard to myself in these charitable sermons. What is my feeling today? The same as it has been for years concerning houses, lands and possessions. I say to the people, “If you will give me for my property half what it has cost me I will devote that means for the gathering of the poor and the building of Zion upon the earth, and will start again with nothing. I have done it before, and I am willing to do it again if the people will take my property on these terms, and the means, to the last dollar, shall be used to send for the poor if they apostatize the next year. They will not apostatize where they are now; you could not hire them to do it, you could not whip them to it; you cannot starve their religion out of them; but bring them here and give them houses and lands, horses and chariots, make merchants and traders of them, and give them our means, then some of them will apostatize, but not all. Some of them will apostatize for very little, it takes but few dollars; but they will not do it where they are. I would bring them here if they would apostatize, for they must have a chance to prove themselves before God and angels with regard to their integrity to and faith in the religion that we believe in.

Now, brethren and sisters, I pray you to remember the poor, and every time you feel like spending twenty-five or fifty cents in tea or coffee, liquor or tobacco, stay your hand and put that money into a safety or charitable fund to help to gather the poor. Brother Joseph has been pleading for them; I am giving you the plan. If we will leave off tea, coffee, liquor and tobacco and devote the means as I have requested, we shall bring the blessings of heaven to ourselves and bestow the blessings of earth upon our brethren and sisters, and we shall feel that comfort and consolation that we could not feel otherwise. Our hearts will rejoice, our food will be sweet to us, our dreams will be pleasant and our reflections will be filled with peace, comfort and consolation in the power of God. But if we shut up our bowels of compassion our condition will be exactly the reverse.

If the people will take this course towards their poor brethren and sisters it will relieve our hands at once. I suppose that there is a million of money now due the Perpetual Emigration Fund; by those who have been gathered who have not paid their arrearage. But we cannot get it. If we were to send an agent through the Territory to collect this indebtedness from these brethren and sisters, it would probably cost more to sustain him than the amount he would collect, consequently we conclude to say nothing about it, and to use the means we have or that is contributed for this purpose.

As for our being comfortable, I will venture to say that we could pick out, in this congregation, needless articles of dress that have cost several hundred if not thousands of dollars. I do not like to charge the ladies with extravagance, but how many yards of cloth does it take now to make a dress? If Brother Heber C. Kimball were here he would tell you he used to buy six yards of calico for his wife Vilate, who was a tall woman. That used to make a dress, and it was a pretty large pattern; then it got up to seven since my recollection, then to eight, then to nine, then to eleven, and I have been called upon to buy sixteen, seventeen and eighteen yards for a dress. I know there is a cause for this. My wife will say, “Dear me! Sister so and so wears such and such a thing, and I want to look as well as she does; and you have plenty of means, Brigham; O, yes, you have plenty of means, and you can buy it as well as not.” Well, all that I have said, and my general reply is, “If I am pressed to the necessity of indulging my family in these needless articles the responsibility must be upon themselves, not upon me.” I will not take that responsibility. In the day of reckoning if we are in debt and found wanting in consequence of our extravagance I will not bear any more responsibility than I have incurred in my own person in the gratification of this taste for needless articles of dress, and that will not be much I reckon.

Now, brethren and sisters, do you indulge in this taste for fashion and frivolity in dress? Most assuredly you do, and circumstances right before my eyes furnish proof of this. I will venture to say that my mother wore the cloak and hood that her mother before her wore, and wore them until the day of her death when she had occasion to wear a cloak; and when she left this place for the next apartment she was forty-nine years old; and they went to her daughter. I do not know what has become of them. She did not take a cloak worth twenty-five, thirty, forty or fifty dollars and sit down in it with a child with a piece of meat in each hand to grease it all over. But, now, let some women get a silk or satin dress and they will, perhaps, while wearing it, take up a child that has a piece of chicken in one hand and a piece of pork in the other, or a cup of milk to drink, and as likely as not some of it is spilled on the dress, and then they say, “Well, I declare my dress is spoiled.”

I recollect very well, and so do others in this room, when our fathers and mothers raised the flax and the wool, and when it was carded with handcards, spun on handwheels, and woven into cloth on handlooms, and in this way the wants of the family had to be supplied or they had to go without. But now every woman wants a sewing machine. What, for? To do her sewing. Well, but she can do a hundred times as much sewing with a machine as she could by hand, and she does not need a machine more than one day in two or three weeks. “O yes,” she says, “I want my sewing machine every day of my life.” “What are you going to do with it?” “I am going to sew;” and when the sewing machine is procured they want a hundred times as much cloth as they used to have. Now, too, they want a hired girl for every child; and a hired man to every cow in the yard. I will admit that I am extravagant in these expressions; but they show the present condition of affairs. The improvements which have taken place during the last half century in matters pertaining to domestic life are wonderful, but has not the extravagance of the people kept pace with these improvements? It is true that the people are getting wiser in some respects, and some are getting wealthy; but there is only so much property in the world. There are the elements that belong to this globe, and no more. We do not go to the moon to borrow; neither send to the sun or any of the planets; all our commercial transactions must be confined to this little earth and its wealth cannot be increased or diminished; and though the improvements in the arts of life which have taken place within the memory of many now living are very wonderful, there is no question that extravagance has more than kept pace with them.

We talk to the Latter-day Saints a great deal, and we wish them to become a thinking people, a people that will reflect and begin to systematize their lives, and know the object of their existence here. This life is as precious and valuable as any life ever possessed, or that ever will be possessed by any intelligent being, and hence the necessity and propriety of understanding its object and using it to the best advantage in every respect, and of understanding principle in all things.

It was observed here by Brother Taylor, this morning, when speaking of the arts and sciences, they are from eternity to eternity. They can neither be increased nor diminished; and the Lord has had to teach the people all that they know, no matter whether it be the wicked who acknowledge Him not, or the righteous, both are alike in that respect—they receive their knowledge from the same source. The construction of the electric telegraph and the method of using it, enabling the people to send messages from one end of the earth to the other, is just as much a revelation from God as any ever given. The same is true with regard to making machinery, whether it be a steamboat, a carding machine, a sailing vessel, a rowing vessel, a plow, harrow, rake, sewing machine, threshing machine, or anything else, it makes no difference—these things have existed from all eternity and will continue to all eternity, and the Lord has revealed them to His children.

In the infancy of creation the human family commenced down at the bottom of the ladder, and had to make their way upward. How small and frail that commencement looks now; why it is considered almost beneath the notice of the wise of this day to talk of the intelligence of our First Parents. When they waked from their sleep and found themselves in a state of nudity, we are told that they hid themselves, because they were ashamed and mortified and did not wish to expose themselves when the Lord came along. And he picked some fig leaves—what a simple idea! He picked some fig leaves and sewed them together and made aprons of them. I do not know whether he used scissors or His penknife for the cutting out of the garments, or what kind of a needle and thread He used, but he made aprons for the whole human family—Adam and Eve! What a simple idea! It is beneath the notice of the mechanic or artist, or the science of the world now-a-days. Yet simple as it seems now, the Lord had to reveal to our first parents the modus operandi of the manufacture of an apron of fig leaves. And when they wanted a little copper made up, after having found the ore, the Lord had to come along and show them how to do it; and how to manufacture the iron. How simple this is! It is beneath the notice of the intelligence and science that are in the world now; the scientific men of the present time say those were the days of ignorance. Yes, that was in the period of the childhood of the human family; in the infancy of the world. But what does it manifest unto us? Why that there is a Being superior to man, and though we may not know the place where He resides, He has come along occasionally and shown His creatures how to make and work up brass, iron, copper, and in fact has revealed to them everything they know at various stages of their development and progress.

The people of this day think they know more than all who have preceded them—that this is the wisest generation that ever did live on the earth. Perhaps it is in worldly things, and in some of the arts and sciences it may be; but there is no question that many things of great worth known anciently have been lost. Archaeological developments and investigations bring to light facts in the mechanical arts which set at defiance the skill of the world in our day. For instance, where is the mechanic now, who can sharpen copper so that it would shave the beard from a man’s face, or chop timber like an axe made of steel? The skill to do that is not in existence now; yet it once was, and many other arts, revealed to man anciently, have been lost through the wickedness of the people.

I want to say a few words about our religion, but first I will ask you to remember this prayer which I offered at the commencement of my remarks with regard to the poor. If you will do that, they will be looked after and brought home. Now we will talk a little about our religion. Ask the scientific men of the world how many of the arts can be reduced to a science? When they are so reduced they become permanent; but until then they are uncertain. They go and come, appear and disappear. When they are reduced to science and system their permanency and stability are assured. It is so with government—until it is reduced to a science it is liable to be rent asunder by anarchy and confusion, and caprice, and scattered to the four winds. Government, to be stable and permanent and have any show for success, must be reduced to a science. It is the same with religion; but our traditions are such that it is one of the most difficult things in the world to make men believe that the revealed religion of heaven is a pure science, and all true science in the possession of men now is a part of the religion of heaven and has been revealed from that source. But it is hard to get the people to believe that God is a scientific character, that He lives by science or strict law, that by this He is, and by law He was made what He is; and will remain to all eternity because of His faithful adherence to law. It is a most difficult thing to make the people believe that every art and science and all wisdom comes from Him, and that He is their Author. Our spirits are His: He begot them. We are His children; He set the machine in motion to produce our tabernacles; and when men discard the principle of the existence of a Supreme Being, and treat it with lightness, as Brother Taylor says, they are fools. It is strange that scientific men do not realize that all they know is derived from Him; to suppose, or to foster the idea for one moment, that they are the originators of the wisdom they possess is folly in the highest! Such men do not know themselves. As for ignoring the principle of the existence of a Supreme Being, I would as soon ignore the idea that this house came into existence without the agency of intelligent beings.

Well, the Latter-day Saints are beginning to comprehend that true religion is a science; and their religion consists of principles, law and order, and they acknowledge God in all things; and the time will come when every knee will bow and every tongue confess to and acknowledge Him, and when they who have lived upon the earth and have spurned the idea of a Supreme Being and of revelations from Him, will fall with shamefacedness and humble themselves before Him, exclaiming, “There is a God! O, God, we once rejected Thee and disbelieved Thy word and set at naught Thy counsels, but now we bow down in shame and we do acknowledge that there is a God, and that Jesus is the Christ.” This time will come, most assuredly. We have the faith of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. It is not a frenzied, frantic idea, like the systems of religion invented by men. We have ceremonies, but there is life in those ceremonies; and our religion has organization, body and soul. The religious systems of men have a kind of organization, and seemingly they will build a body, but they have no soul, and some seem to have a soul without a body, but it is like their god, it cannot be found.

We reason with and try to convince the Latter-day Saints that they should live their religion so that God is in all their thoughts and reflections, and they should acknowledge Him in their daily walk and conversation and business transactions as well as in their prayers. Each of us should continually feel, and live so as to have it so. “God must be with me and I must have His Spirit with me under all circumstances.” How many are there of our Elders who carry out their religion in all the affairs of life? Set them to merchandising, for instance, and Brother John, William or Caleb will say, “You set me here at merchandising, and my mind is altogether occupied with my business. I have to lay my plans, and do my best to make my business successful, and I have not time to pray and seek unto the Lord; I have not got the spirit of preaching, and do not call upon me to preach, I cannot do it, I have to attend to this store.” I say it is almost impossible to get it into the mind of a business man that he needs God with him in carrying on his business. Says he, “I must do this by my natural ability; my business qualities must be brought into exercise, and that is all I want.” To persons who feel thus I say, Stop and think! Hold on! Do you know how to buy goods? “Yes,” Mr. Merchant says, “I think I understand goods as well as any man.” Where did you get your knowledge, can you tell me? “Oh, I got that from practice. I have learned, as soon as I touch a piece of broadcloth, linen, or cotton cloth, to tell its quality without ever looking at the fabric; I can tell instantly by the touch of the finger. I have got this by practice.” Very good, we will say you did. Did you plant that ability in your finger, and which gives sensibility to your nervous system from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, which is the foundation of the knowledge you have acquired by practice? Acquired or practical knowledge is one thing, but natural or internal knowledge is the foundation of practical or acquired knowledge, and without this in the soul no being could acquire it any more than this stand, not one particle more. Now, Mr. Merchant, that is the secret of your acquired knowledge or skill. Then acknowledge it, manly, honestly, uprightly, firmly, and positively, and give God the praise and honor, for to Him they belong.

Do you need anything more than this innate ability to acquire knowledge to guide you and to ensure success in your business? Yes, you do. They say when a person preaches experience, the facts are not easily got over. I am going to tell Mr. Merchant what he needs. You take a man who conducts his business on his own resources, and however well he may lay his plans his business frequently fails on his hands and he becomes bankrupt; for he cannot foresee what is going to transpire in the markets. “Well, how are you going to prevent such mishaps?” You need the Spirit of the Lord to enable you to foresee. This is what is needed when you buy goods, where you trade and do business; you need the spirit of revelation to be with you. We frequently hear our merchants say they cannot do business and then go into the pulpit to preach. I will say that there is not a merchant in this Territory who attends to as much of what is called worldly business, or temporal things, as I do, yet I can afford to preach several times each week, and say my prayers as long as I wish to. Now, if I preach experience, who can controvert it? If anyone does not believe my statement, let him live with me and he will soon learn that a pressure of business that will take a merchant a week to think about, I know the moment it is mentioned to me. I see and understand it from beginning to end, and I say, at once, “Do thus and so,” “Go yonder,” or “Take such and such a course;” but I need the Spirit of the Lord continually to guide and dictate me in business pertaining to farms, merchandising, mining, missions, buying, selling, etc., etc.; and the more I have to do the more revelation I need, and the more acute my spirit must become.

It is a great mystery to many people, and especially to strangers, how I have preserved myself. My life depends upon the Spirit of the Lord, although my body gets sometimes a little out of order, and it is very probable my stomach will ache pretty bad after this loud talking, for I am neither iron nor immortal. But a great many marvel at my preservation. I have revealed the secret a great many times, and can now—I never worry about anything. I try to live so as to know my business and understand my duty, and to do it at the moment without a long study. If ever I am in the least bothered with anything that comes before me it is in some frivolous case, trying to give counsel and advice to an individual without doing any mischief. If they want to do right, regardless of self or the world, it is no trouble to tell them what to do. And I say to a farmer or a merchant, if you want to live so as to prolong your days, never worry about anything; but have the Spirit of the Lord so as to know what to do, and when you have done or counseled right never fret about the result. It is in the hands of the Lord, and He will work out the problem, and you need not be at all afraid of the matter. And this is true of all the acts of the children of men. The Lord has constituted us rational beings, and our volition is free to choose good or evil, just as we will; but when we have followed out our choice the Lord will overrule the result of our acts—it is in His hands and He will bring it out to suit Himself, and He will make the wrath of man praise Him. When men undertake, as we see them occasionally, to interrupt every movement of the kingdom of God, and lay their plans, and have the train well laid in their own minds, for the destruction of the kingdom, the first thing they know they are in the mud and the Saints are thrown up. We have seen this scores of times. It is just so in the world. Men may propose, but God will dispose according to His good will and pleasure.

I want to say to the Latter-day Saints, and to those who are not Saints, we have faith in God, and we have a reason for it. Every character who has declared himself to be God, except the one we serve, has failed and been foiled in his calculations; he has come short in his plans and been put to shame. There is no question but foul spirits have declared themselves to be deities; we have history to this effect. But they have come off in shame. But the Lord is our God and it is He whom we serve; and we say to the whole world that He is a tangible Being. We have a God with ears, eyes, nose, mouth; He can and does speak. He has arms, hands, body, legs and feet; He talks and walks; and we are formed after His likeness. The good book—the Bible, tells us what kind of a character our Heavenly Father is. In the first chapter of Genesis and the 27th verse, speaking of the Lord creating men, it reads as plain as it can read, and He created man in His own image and likeness; and if He created Adam and Eve in His own image, the whole human family are like Him. This same truth is borne out by the Savior. Said he, when talking to his disciples: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” and, “I and my Father are one.” The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with His train; I do not know who they were, unless His wives and children; but at any rate they filled the Temple, and how many there were who could not get into the Temple I cannot say. This is the account given by Isaiah, whether he told the truth or not I leave everybody to judge for himself.

The Bible also says the Lord talked with Moses; He talked with the rich and the poor, the noble and the ignoble. He sent His angels, and at last sent His Son, who was in the express image of the Father–His Only Begotten Son, according to the flesh, here on this earth. That is the God we serve and believe in. He is a God of system, order, law, science, and art; a God of knowledge and of power. He says to the human family, “Do as you please, but I will overrule the results of your actions.” He says to the wicked, “You may fight these Latter-day Saints, but they are my people, I have called them, and commanded them to come out of Babylon and to gather themselves together. You, wicked world, may fight them; you may lay your plans and schemes, but with all your machinations and wisdom I will show you that I am greater than you all, and I will put you to shame, and blast your expectations, and disappoint your calculations, and your attempts to injure my people will be foiled; for Zion shall arise, her glory shall be seen, and the kings of the earth shall enquire of the wisdom of Zion; and God shall be great, and His name shall be terrible among the inhabitants of the earth; and He will bring forth His kingdom and establish His government, and Jesus will come and rule, King of nations, as he does King of Saints.” We have law, we have rule, we have regulations; and they are here, they are written and published to the world. They are in the Old and New Testament, Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants; and we call upon all the earth, the rich and the poor, to hearken unto these things! Who will receive them? Not many rich, not many noble, not many great men of the earth; but the poor of this world the Lord has chosen, and He will make them rich, and they will be heirs of the earth. But they will be heirs with pure hearts, not with that covetousness we see manifested now. When we are prepared to receive the kingdom in its purity, and to honor its laws and principles in our lives, just so soon the Lord Almighty will bestow upon us strength, power, wisdom, glory, riches and honor, and all the good things that pertain to His kingdom; and the Lord will be great among the people, and they will revere and acknowledge His name.

God bless you brethren and sisters, Amen.

Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 30, 1870.

I can say to the people, as I have frequently said, if we were apt scholars to learn the truth and to understand the mind and will of God concerning us, and would then each and every one of us with fervency perform his duty, it would not be necessary to talk quite so loud and quite so long as we do now. But we are still children and can learn but little at a time; and we need to have our lessons repeated in our hearing very frequently, for we are apt to lay down our books when we go out of these schools where instructions are given. We are very apt to slumber and sleep and forget what resolutions we have made in our own minds, and to forget what we have heard from the servants of God. If we could learn our lessons, treasure them up and practice upon them, it would not be necessary to spend so much time in talking or in listening to these who talk; but it is necessary for us to talk and then to practice and show the people as well as teach them how to build up the kingdom of God upon the earth. It is quite a pity that we do not understand things! Take the inhabitants of the earth as they are, and in many things pertaining to what is called worldly wisdom—mechanism, the sciences and the arts, there seems to be a great deal of knowledge displayed; but they are ignorant, at the same time, of the fountain of this knowledge. They cannot conceive of anything any broader or deeper than the extension of their own minds and that of their neighbors. If we—that is, mankind generally, could understand that whatever we enjoy, whatever wisdom and knowledge we possess, is bestowed upon us by and comes from God, we should perhaps be more willing to acknowledge Him in these blessings; and until the people called Latter-day Saints do this, we shall continue to talk to them and to ourselves.

The Word of Wisdom has been preached to this people, first and last, a good deal, that is the written word in the Doctrine and Covenants. It has been read and taught to the people now, some thirty-eight years! And yet we neglect to observe this trifling lesson concerning our health. Is it not strange? Yes, it is; it is passing strange; it is astonishing! How many there are of our brethren who say, “I can’t dispense with my tobacco! I can’t lay down my pipe or cigar and let it alone; I must take it up again, I can’t live unless I have a little tobacco in my mouth, or in my nose.” I have no knowledge of their using it in their ears. Old men, middle-aged men, men strong in intellect and physical force, athletic men, will say, “I must have a little tobacco.” Is this the case with the Elders of Israel? You recollect that, here, a year ago I think it was last Conference, if my memory serves me aright, when the Bishop of the Church was presented for acceptance to the people, and then his counselors came up, I made this reservation—I would vote for them if they would let their liquor and tobacco alone; and I believe the people voted for them on the ground that they were to cease using ardent spirits and tobacco. If they have not used it from that day to this, there were but few days that they did not use it. They should be examples to the Church; they should be like fathers to the Church. If they are really the counselors of the Bishop, they should practice everything that is good that he practices; and if the Bishop himself should neglect any duty, they should perform their duty as counselors, and should teach, guide, direct and counsel the Bishop to improve in his life.

But to return to the brethren and the use of tobacco. There are many of our Elders who say, “I can’t live without indulging in this unseemly appetite.” To say that the nature of man requires tobacco and spirits is absurd. I do not know but we might prove that the nature of a dumb brute desires this at certain times. I am not sure but what certain would drink liquor if it were reduced considerably; perhaps they might drink it when rather strong. I think I have heard of some few instances in the course of my life. But you put cattle into a field where there is tobacco and you will see that none of them will eat it unless they are sick, they will take it then, but at no other time. If a horse, ox or sheep be in good, ordinary health it will not touch it, and to say that it is necessary for man is absurd! Well, is it good for nothing? Was it created in vain? No, the Word of Wisdom tells us that tobacco is for sick cattle, and the dumb brute will demonstrate this if it is sick and can get at it. The tobacco plant and the lobelia plant are similar in taste and outward appearance, though not in their effects; but the former is for cattle, the latter for man. The difference in their effects is chiefly, that lobelia has no narcotic influence, while tobacco has.

I wish to ask those brethren who are in the habit of using tobacco, Won’t you leave it alone and try lobelia, and see if you can become attached to it? If you can, it will prove that it possesses narcotic properties; if you cannot, it will prove that it possesses no such properties. Mankind would not become attached to these unnecessary articles were it not for the poison they contain. The poisonous or narcotic properties in spirits, tobacco and tea are the cause of their being so much liked by those who use them. I hear something occasionally about tea, but I say if the ladies would take the natural leaf from the stem and dry it upon wood they would not become attached to it as they do to the green tea, Young Hyson, Gunpowder and other popular brands, for these kinds are cured on copper, and they partake more or less of the nature of the copper on which they are dried, through being impregnated with its poisonous qualities.

I say this to the brethren and sisters, that they may see if they can become attached to and really crave any of these stimulants that do not contain quite a quantity of poison. There is no doubt whatever that the food we eat, and which is absolutely necessary to sustain us, contains poison. I do not dispute that the poison contained in the bread that has been distributed from the table this afternoon, if extracted by a skillful chemist, would be enough to kill; but still, as combined with the other constituent elements of which bread is composed, it is not injurious, and we eat it without harm. But where we find so much poison in articles the people will become very strongly attached to them in a very short time. For instance, how quickly persons become attached to the practice of opium eating; they cannot live without it! If there was no poison in it it would not operate upon the system as it does. In some countries it is said that the fair sex are in the habit of arsenic eating, and this is for the special purpose of improving the complexion. Let a lady commence taking the smallest possible particle of this article, and if she continues the practice, in a few years she will not be able to live without it.

Many of our sisters think they cannot live without tea. I will tell you what we can do—I have frequently said it to my brethren and sisters—if they cannot live without tea, coffee, brandy, whiskey, wine, beer, tobacco, &c., they can die without them. This is beyond controversy. If we had the determination that we should have, we would live without them or die without them. Let the mother impregnate her system with these narcotic influences when she is bringing forth a family on the earth, and what does she do? She lays the foundation of weakness, palpitation of the heart, nervous affections, and many other ills and diseases in the system of her offspring that will afflict them from the cradle to the grave. Is this righteous or unrighteous, good or evil? Let my sisters ask and answer the question for themselves, and the conclusion which each and every one of them may come to is this, “If I do an injury to my child, I sin.”

We very well know that the customs which prevail in the world are such as to cause millions and millions of children to go to untimely graves. Infants, children, youth, young men and young women, thousands and tens of thousands of them go to an untimely grave through the diseases engendered in their systems by their progenitors. Is this wrong or is it right? If it is wrong we should abstain from every influence and practice which produces these evil effects; if it is right, then practice them. But we say it is wrong; God says it is wrong, and He has pointed out in a few instances the path for us to walk in, by observing the Word of Wisdom, and He has declared that it is fitted to the capacity of the Saints, yea the weakest of all who are or can be called Saints. And this Word of Wisdom prohibits the use of hot drinks and tobacco. I have heard it argued that tea and coffee are not mentioned therein; that is very true; but what were the people in the habit of taking as hot drinks when that revelation was given? Tea and coffee. We were not in the habit of drinking water very hot, but tea and coffee—the beverages in common use. And the Lord said hot drinks are not good for the body nor the belly, liquor is not good for the body nor the belly, but for the washing of the body, &c. Tobacco is not good, save for sick cattle, and for bruises and sores, its cleansing properties being then very useful.

Now then, will we observe the Word of Wisdom? Will we let our tea, coffee, whiskey and tobacco alone? Shall I answer for my brethren and sisters? Yes, I will answer. A large proportion of the Elders of Israel will let these things alone, they do let them alone; but there is a certain percentage of them that you might as well talk to the wind as to talk to them about these things. As for my sisters, I can answer the question for them. They may not have their tea on the table when the husband sits down to breakfast or supper, and their teacups, saucers and teapot may be out of sight, but I will insure that many of them take a little tea for the stomach’s sake in the course of the day, whether the father or husband knows anything about it or not; and if the question is asked why I think so, I answer from the statistics of the sales of tea and coffee in our stores; they prove this. We were very urgent, a year or two ago, with regard to the Word of Wisdom, and the influence then raised made an impression on the people which caused them to forsake the use of these unnecessary articles for the time being. It was our wish then, and is still, that the money generally paid out for tea and coffee, liquor, tobacco, &c., be used to send for the poor Saints and bring them to a land where they can accumulate the common necessaries of life, instead of staying in their own land, and going down to an untimely grave for the want of food. I recollect one sister said to me, one day, “Brother Brigham, here is twenty dollars”—I think that was the sum—“I give this into the poor fund. At such a time you advised us to let our tea and coffee alone, and contribute the same amount that we would expend for these articles in bringing the poor from the old country. It would have taken me twenty dollars to supply me with these articles to this time. I have saved the money; my health now is more than fifty percent better than when I left off tea. I can now work ten, or perhaps twelve, hours a day easier than I could two or three when I took these stimulants.” Some others have sent in a few dollars thus accumulated for the relief of the poor; but I think most of our sisters have taken to their old practice of drinking tea again. Perhaps I do not judge rightly, but my conclusions are formed from information in my possession, as to the amount of this article sold.

As far as I can learn the cup of tea stands on the stoves in the houses of my near neighbors, associates, and those with whom I am best acquainted. I go along occasionally and take up a tin cup, and say, “What is this?” “It is a little tea; we have just made a little tea this morning;” or, “we thought we would have a little tea this morning.” I have not seen any on my table, but frequently I am asked, “Will you have a little tea?” I can say I have tasted it to see whether I have liked it or not. I have desired not to like it. I never was in the habit of using it, except a very small portion of my life. But I do not like it. It has got to be made very delicate, about as weak as if for a child, and then a good share of nice cream and sugar in it for me to like it at all. I have frequently taken a spoon and said, “Let us see what you are drinking? Oh, yes, tea! It wants a little sugar and cream in it.” If you who use it will drink a large share of sugar and cream in it, it will not have that same influence on your stomach as if you drink it raw, I mean without the sugar and cream; it will not injure the coating of the stomach to the same extent. And if you adopt this practice, adding a little more sugar and cream, and having your tea gradually weaker and weaker you may finally get rid of it.

I ask again will we observe the Word of Wisdom? “No, we will not, unless we have a mind to.” That is the answer. “If we have a mind to and feel disposed to do so, we will observe it, but not without.” I say to all the Elders of Israel, if it makes you sick and so sleepy that you cannot keep out of bed unless you have tobacco, go to bed and there lie. How long? Until you can get up and go to your business like rational men, like men who have heads on their shoulders and who are not controlled by their foolish appetites. I have said to my family, and I now say to all the sisters in the Church, if you cannot get up and do your washing without a cup of tea in the morning, go to bed, and there lie. How long? Until the influence of tea is out of the system. Will it take a month? No matter if it does; if it takes three months, six months, or a year, it is better to lie there in bed until the influence of tea, coffee and liquor is out of the system, so that you may go about your business like rational persons, than to give way to these foolish habits. They are destructive to the human system; they filch money from our pockets, and they deprive the poor of the necessaries of life. Hundreds and thousands could have keen brought here to this Territory, where they could have had food to eat, raiment to wear, and been taught so as to have a house of their own, could have known how to build a good cabin, lived under their own roof and eaten their own bread; whereas, now they are perishing by scores and hundreds. Do these habits rob the poor? Yes, they do. Do they produce evil? Yes, they do. They do not bring that sweet satisfaction of the Spirit of God to our hearts and our feelings and affections that would come to us by the observance of the Word of Wisdom, and using the means thus wasted to feed the poor and clothe the naked.

A few words with regard to our tithes and offerings—a subject that was presented to the people yesterday. You come to the rich, that is, those who are best off, for we cannot boast that anybody is rich in our community, but those who have the most means, as a general thing, do the least. Our tithes and offerings are neglected; the poor are needy, they want bread, and a little of something to make them comfortable. There may be a few, perhaps, sick in this Ward, and the next, and so on through the Wards, and there is nothing contributed for their assistance. I know it is the disposition of many to turn round and say, “We pay our tithing.” I want to inform the Latter-day Saints that since we have been in these valleys there has not been one-tenth part of the tithing paid into the Church that was due to it; but everything that we can rake and scrape goes to the poor, and for the building of the kingdom of God, as it was designed; and the poor and the needy get pretty much all of it. If they do not, I do not know it. It is left in the hands of our agents and clerks, and I know it is dealt out to our workmen and the poor as long as we have anything left. And then upon this God has blessed me sufficiently that I feed and clothe my scores of poor, independent of the tithing office; and He will bless any man, any family, or any people who is liberal. As it is written in the good book,” The liberal man deviseth liberal things,” and if he deviseth liberal things by his liberality he shall stand. The Lord will bless that people that is full of charity, kindness and good works. When our monthly fast days come round, do we think of the poor? If we do, we should send in our mite, no matter what it is. What is it to give ten or twenty pounds of flour, or a hundred pounds of flour? What is it to give a little meat, or sugar, or a little money, or whatever is wanted? Does it impoverish us? It does not. If this people have not been sustained by the hand of the Almighty, I ask how they have been sustained? Could any other people have lived in these valleys except the Latter-day Saints? No, they could not. The elements would not have produced the corn, the wheat, the oats, the rye, the peas, the barley, the vegetables and the fruit. These elements in which we live would not have produced them for anybody else. But the Lord suffered us to be driven here from our homes, and He promised us He would lead us into a goodly land. He has done so. He has blessed the soil, the water and the atmosphere; He has blessed the shining sun and the falling rain, and He has forbidden the hoary frosts to cut off our crops, as they did when we first came here; and we have been sustained and preserved, and if the Lord Almighty has not done it, let some man tell who has. As far as my knowledge goes, the providences of God have sustained this people, the hand of the Lord has fed and clothed them, and given them all they possess. We were not fit to live in Christian society; we were not worthy of the holiness, beauty, excellency and glory of the Christian world, let our enemies tell the story; but they must drive us into the wilderness, there to perish as they thought. And if God has not sustained us after all that we have passed through, let some one tell how we have been sustained.

Will He sustain us in being covetous? No; let the hearts of the people dry up with regard to the poor, in sending for those in foreign lands, in sending the Elders to the nations of the earth, in preaching the Gospel, in purifying ourselves here; let us neglect the Word of Wisdom, neglect our prayers, tithes, offerings, donations, and public works, and see how much we will enjoy the Spirit of the Lord. The danger now in the midst of the people arises from their neglect of these things; it leaves them in cold and darkness. See the apostasy in our midst; see also the love of riches. The spirit of the world and of apostasy is prevalent here, and the people want stirring up, and sometimes I feel as if they wanted a rap on each side of the head to wake them up, that they may see where they are going and what they are doing.

How is it with most of those who were our merchants here? “A little more of your money, brethren and sisters;” and the best of them are so today. I hardly know where I could draw the line of distinction between the just and the unjust; between those who, while trading, let their avaricious, craving disposition control them, and those who dealt justly. It is hard to draw the line between them, the feeling was to general. “A little more of your money, a little more wealth, a little more ease, a little more land, a little more means, a little finer house, a little better carriage, a few more horses, a few more possessions; give us your money, it is all we want of you.” And that spirit is distributed among the people.

I will stop right here and say to the Latter-day Saints, I have sought to teach you how to get rich, but I never taught you to neglect your duty; I never instructed you nor taught you to forsake the Lord; and today I would rather not own one farthing, and take my valise in my hand, as I did at the rise of the Church, and travel among the nations of the earth, and beg my bread from door to door, than to neglect my duty and lose the Spirit of Almighty God. If I have wealth and cannot use it to the glory of God and the building up of His kingdom I ask the Lord to take it from me. But how is it with some of the people? A little more ease, a little more ease to my eyelids; as the Prophet said, “a little more sleep and a little more slumber and a little more folding of the hands.” Say some, “We are pretty easy in circumstances, have quite enough to last us through life; but we want a little more for our children; and when we get enough for them we want a little more for grandchildren, and then a little more for our great-grandchildren,” and finally they never want to stop until they get the whole world; and, in very many cases, what they get will canker their souls and send them down to hell. It has been so in this Church from the beginning.

I will say to you that we have the capacity to receive, but we need teaching continually. We had three sermons this morning, and we had not half enough; and we shall keep this meeting two hours this afternoon; and we might talk to each other again tomorrow morning, and continue until our hearts get full of the kingdom of God, and building it up and the establishment of peace and righteousness upon the earth. We are called, as it has been told you, to redeem the nations of the earth. The fathers cannot be made perfect without us; we cannot be made perfect without the fathers. There must be this chain in the holy Priesthood; it must be welded together from the latest generation that lives on the earth back to Father Adam, to bring back all that can be saved and placed where they can receive salvation and a glory in some kingdom. This Priesthood has to do it; this Priesthood is for this purpose. God has revealed the plan of salvation, we know how to carry it out. If we neglect this will we be justified? No, we will not; we must carry out this plan of salvation, and in so doing we expect the whole world to be against us. It was revealed to me in the commencement of this Church, that the Church would spread, prosper, grow and extend, and that in proportion to the spread of the Gospel among the nations of the earth, so would the power of Satan rise. It was told you here that Brother Joseph warned the Elders of Israel against false spirits. It was revealed to me that if the people did not receive the spirit of revelation that God had sent for the salvation of the world, they would receive false spirits, and would have revelation. Men would have revelation, women would have revelation, the priest in the pulpit and the deacon under the pulpit would have revelation, and the people would have revelation enough to damn the whole nation, and nations of them, unless they would hearken to the voice of God. It was not only revealed to Joseph, but to your humble servant, that false spirits would be as prevalent and as common among the inhabitants of the earth as we now see them.

Seeing that I have got on this thread, I will ask, Is there any revelation in the world? Yes, plenty of it. We are accused of being nothing more nor less than a people possessing what they term the higher order of Spiritualism. Whenever I see this in print, or hear it spoken, “You are right,” say I. “Yes, we belong to that higher order of Spiritualism; our revelations are from above, yours from beneath. This is the difference. We receive revelation from Heaven, you receive your revelations from every foul spirit that has departed this life, and gone out of the bodies of mobbers, murderers, highwaymen, drunkards, thieves, liars, and every kind of debauched character, whose spirits are floating around here, and searching and seeking whom they can destroy; for they are the servants of the devil, and they are permitted to come now to reveal to the people.” It was not so once, anciently or formerly, when there was no Priesthood on the earth, no revelations from Heaven. Then the Lord Almighty shut up this evidence, and all intercourse between men on the earth and the foul spirits, so that the latter could not deceive and destroy the former with their revelations. But God has spoken now, and so has the devil; Jesus has revealed his Priesthood, so has the devil revealed his, and there is quite a difference between the two. One forms a perfect chain, the links of which cannot be separated; one has perfect order, laws, rules, regulations, organization; it forms, fashions, makes, creates, produces, protects and holds in existence the inhabitants of the earth in a pure and holy form of government, preparatory to their entering the kingdom of Heaven. The other is a rope of sand; it is disjointed, jargon, confusion, discord, everybody receiving revelation to suit himself. If I were disposed to go into their rings I could make every table, every dot, every particle of their revelations prove that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I could lay my hands on the table with them, and if I would consent to have the spirits wrap, I would make them prove every time that Joseph Smith was a prophet; but let me go, and another man come along, a wicked man, and he would have all the evidence he desired that Joseph was not a prophet of God. I could make them say, every time, that this is the Church of Christ; while a wicked man might enter the circle and he would be told that this was not the Church of Christ; and this is their system—it is confusion and discord. It is like a rope of sand. There is no order, no organization; it cannot be reduced to a system, it is uncertainty. That is the difference between the two spiritual systems—yes, this is the higher order of spiritualism, to be led, governed and controlled by law, and that, too, the law of heaven that governs and controls the Gods and the angels. There is no being in heaven that could endure there, that could abide the heavens unless he is sanctified, purified and glorified by law, and lives by law. But take the other party, and it is without law. Well, what is it? Death. What is that? Dissolution of the body. And what will be next? The second death, and I leave every person to speculate to suit himself with regard to that; but the Scriptures say “Blessed is he on whom the second death hath no power;” and they who serve God and keep His commandments, that receive the holy Priesthood of the Son of God, have something tangible, and if they live according to this law the second death has nothing to do with them. They are above it, free from it, they are masters of it, for they command in the name of Jesus, and their words are obeyed; and what they say shall be done, is done. This is the authority that God gives. As the Scriptures say, “Whatsoever you bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you loose on earth, is loosed in heaven; and whosesoever sins you remit on earth, shall be remitted to them in heaven; and whosesoever sins ye retain on earth, are retained in heaven.” This is the authority of the kingdom of God on the earth, and we possess and expect nothing less.

Look at the Christian world! How many times it was said to me, in my early career: “Oh, if the Lord had spoken to such a man, to such a divine that we have all confidence in; if the Lord had revealed His will to that man, we could have believed the whole thing.” The Lord Almighty could not do it. Do you know the reason why? I do. I was acquainted with some of the best reformers that ever walked on the American continent, as good to all appearance as lived. They would say: “We have prayed, we have fasted, we have sought, we have believed, we have had faith that God was about to reveal something from the heavens, but He has not revealed it to us.” That was the trouble. They had their way marked out before them, and if the Lord would not walk in that path they would not have anything to do with Him, and their conduct proved it. When men say: “O Lord, we are the clay, you are the potter! Fashion, shape and make us, and do with us as seems good in Thy sight, only let us know Thy will, we are here to perform whatever Thou requirest,” it makes me think of that second person that came forth in the heavens when the voice went forth: “Who will redeem the earth, who will go forth and make the sacrifice for the earth and all things it contains?” The eldest son said: “Here am I;” but he did not say “send me.” But the second one, which was “Lucifer, son of the morning,” said, “Lord, here am I, send me, I will redeem every son and daughter of Adam and Eve that lives on the earth, or that ever goes on the earth.” “But,” says the Father, “that will not answer at all. I give each and every individual his agency; all must use that in order to gain exaltation in my kingdom; inasmuch as they have the power of choice they must exercise that power. They are my children; the attributes which you see in me are in my children and they must use their agency. If you undertake to save all, you must save them in unrighteousness and corruption. You will be the man that will say to the thief on the cross, to the murderer on the gallows, and to him who has killed his father, mother, brothers, and sisters and little ones, “Now, if you will say, I repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, or on the Savior of the world, you shall be saved.” This is what all the religious sects of the day are saying now, but Jesus did not say any such thing.

How many churches are there upon the earth? Two. Let everybody speculate just as much as they please about this, there are no more, and the earth never saw but two, and there never will be but two. If one is for good, what must the other be? Why, for evil. If one is right, what must the other be? Why, wrong. And there cannot be two just right without being one. The Father cannot operate without the Son, neither can the Son officiate and operate without the Father. They cannot divide their kingdom, and one go to the right and the other to the left, like Abraham and Lot, when they divided their stock; no, they must live together; they must be one, and labor together, and all their efforts being for the salvation of the human family, must be one. If they made a division they would fall. Consequently the Lord Jesus works just as he said he would. “I come not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” He also said, “I do nothing of myself; but what I have seen the Father do, that does the Son.” “Whosoever has seen the Son has seen the Father.” All this you know, with hundreds of other Scriptures and testimonies had in ancient days, showing that the people must be sanctified by law, they must live according to that law; and they must be justified, purified, and sanctified in order to get into the kingdom of heaven, that is, the highest glory.

That saying, “the highest glory,” may give rise to a little speculation on the part of some. Let me quote one passage of Scripture. When Jesus was about to go hence, said he, “I will go away, but I will not leave you comfortless, but I will send you another comforter,” &c. I have not worded it exactly as it is in the Scriptures, that is a little fuller. He then said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions, if it had not been so I would have told you; but I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there ye may be also.” What kind of mansions did Jesus refer to? This is a question which I shall not pretend to answer at this time, for I have not time; neither how many there are, nor the rules, laws and regulations that pertain to each. But Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions;” or, in other words, in my Father’s dominion are many houses, apartments, degrees, &c. Well, what does this signify, if it does not mean in my Father’s house or dominions are many grades and degrees of glory? Now speculate just as much as you please; it is no matter how much you say or think or reflect upon this. There is space, and in that space there are mansions or kingdoms which God has prepared for His children to inhabit, according to their several capacities. We shall all go somewhere, and all upon whom the second death has no power will live eternally. We want to prepare for that mansion that Jesus went to prepare for his disciples.

The whole world of wickedness is opposed to this kingdom; but when they reduce every doctrine and principle that is believed in and preached by the Latter-day Saints, they will not find one iota, I will be as particular as Bro. Carrington was in defining the wisdom and power of man, and I will say there is not the dot of an i nor the crossing of a t that makes anything against the welfare of the human family for time or eternity; but all for comfort, help, satisfaction, glory and immortality; and all for the glory of God, to be crowned with glory and eternal lives in the presence of the Father and the Son. Every doctrine and principle that is believed in and taught by the Latter-day Saints leads, guides and directs man into the presence of the Father and the Son. May God help us to take that path. Amen.