A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 16, 1856.

I rise to make a few remarks, to satisfy the feelings of the people and correct their minds and judgment.

You have heard concerning the sufferings of the people in the handcart trains; and, probably you will hear the Elders, for some time to come, those who have lately returned from their missions and those now on the Plains, speak about the scenes they have witnessed, and I would like to forestall the erroneous impressions that many may otherwise imbibe on this subject.

Count the living and the dead, and you will find that not half the number died in brother Willie’s handcart company, in proportion to the number in that company, as have died in past seasons by the cholera in single companies traveling with wagons and oxen, with carriages and horses, and that too in the forepart of the season. When you call to mind this fact, the relations of the sufferings of our companies this season will not be so harrowing to your feelings. With regard to those who have died and been laid away by the roadside on the Plains, since the cold weather commenced, let me tell you they have not suffered one hundreth part so much as did our brethren and sisters who have died with the cholera.

Some of those who have died in the handcart companies this season, I am told, would be singing, and, before the tune was done, would drop over and breathe their last; and others would die while eating, and with a piece of bread in their hands. I should be pleased when the time comes, if we could all depart from this life as easily as did those our brethren and sisters. I repeat, it will be a happy circumstance, when death overtakes me, if I am privileged to die without a groan or struggle, while yet retaining a good appetite for food. I speak of these things, to forestall indulgence in a misplaced sympathy.

You have heard the brethren relate their trials through Iowa; it is a wicked place. Those regions of the country are the locality of the afflictions that have come upon this people. Take Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, and they are the places where we have been afflicted and driven. What can we expect from those people? Anything but hell out of doors?

Not long since I was talking with one of the brethren, who has crossed the Plains this season, in regard to the propriety of companies starting so late. He argued that it was far better for the Saints to be striving with all their might, doing all they could to serve the Lord and keep His commandments, and traveling the road to Zion with intent to build it up and establish the kingdom of God on earth, even though they should lay down their lives by the way, than to stop among the Gentiles and apostates. I told him it was a good argument, though it was not exactly according to the will of the people and the will of the Lord, for He wishes to throw temptation and trial before His people, to prove them preparatory to their eternal exaltation; consequently, if the people have not an opportunity of proving themselves before they die, by the ruler of their faith and religion, they cannot expect to attain to so high a glory and exaltation as they could if they had been tried in all things. Yet I believe it is better for the people to lay down their bones by the wayside, than it is for them to stay in the States and apostatize.

I told the Elder that his argument seemed reasonable, but it made me think of the story about a Roman Catholic priest and a Jew. The priest was crossing on the ice, and on his way found a Jew, who had fallen through an air hole, clinging to the edge of the ice, and unable to get out. He begged of the priest to help him out, but he would not, unless he first professed a belief in Jesus Christ. “I cannot,” said the Jew. “Then I will let you down,” replied the priest, and let go of him. Still clinging to the ice, as the priest was about to leave, he again begged him to pull him out. “I cannot, unless you believe in Christ.” “I cannot believe,” said the Jew, and the priest let him go again. At length the Jew said, “Take me out, I do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all my might.” “Do you?” said the priest, “then I think it is best to save you, while you are a Christian and strong in the faith,” and he shoved him under the ice.

If we could have it so, I would a little rather the Saints could be privileged to come here and serve the Lord, or apostatize, as they might choose, for we surely expect to gather both the good and the bad. You recollect what I told you, last Sabbath, that we can beat the world at anything. If brother Willie has brought in some of the sharks, the garfish, the sheepheads, and so on and so forth, it is all right, for we need them to make up the assortment; as yet, I do not know how we could get along without them; all these kinds seem to be necessary.

I have seriously reflected upon the gathering of the people. They have all the time urgently pled and importuned to be gathered, especially from the old countries where they are so severely oppressed; and they are willing to come on foot and pull handcarts, or to do anything, so they can be gathered with the Saints. Well, we do gather them, and where do many of them go? To the devil.

In Nauvoo we had obligations, to an amount exceeding $30,000, against Saints that we had brought from England with our private means; and there is not to exceed two, of all the persons thus brought out, who have honorably come forward to pay one cent of that outlay in their behalf; and some of them were in the mob when it killed Joseph.

I knew all the time that it was better for many of these persons to stop in England and starve to death, for then they might have received a salvation; but they pled with the Lord and with His servants for an opportunity to prove themselves, and made use of it to seal their damnation and become angels to the devil. They had the opportunity, do you not see that they had?

If Saints do right and have performed all required of them in this probation, they are under no more obligation, and then it is no matter whether they live or die, for their work here is finished. This is a doctrine I believe.

If brother Willie’s company had not been assisted by the people in these valleys, and he and his company had lived to the best light they had in their possession, had done everything they could have done to cross the Plains, and done justice as they did, asking no questions and having no doubting; or in other words, if, after their President or Presidents told them to go on the Plains, they had gone in full faith, had pursued their journey according to their ability, and done all they could, and we could not have rendered them any assistance, it would have been just as easy for the Lord to send herds of fat buffaloes to lay down within twenty yards of their camp, as it was to send flocks of quails or to rain down manna from heaven to Israel of old.

My faith is, when we have done all we can, then the Lord is under obligation, and will not disappoint the faithful; He will perform the rest. If no other assistance could have been had by the companies this season, I think they would have had hundreds and hundreds of fat buffaloes crowding around their camp, so that they could not help but kill them. But, under the circumstances, it was our duty to assist them, and we were none too early in the operation.

It was not a rash statement for me to make at our last Conference, when I told you that I would dismiss the Conference, if the people would not turn out, and that I, with my brethren, would go to the assistance of the companies. We knew that our brethren and sisters were on the Plains and in need of assistance, and we had the power and ability to help them, therefore it became our duty to do so.

The Lord was not brought under obligation in the matter, so He had put the means in our possession to render them the assistance they needed. But if there had been no other way, the Lord would have helped them, if He had had to send His angels to drive up buffaloes day after day, and week after week. I have full confidence that the Lord would have done His part; my only lack of confidence is, that those who profess to be Saints will not do right and perform their duty.

You hear the testimony of the brethren with regard to the feasibility of the handcart mode of traveling; that testimony and their experience have fully sustained the correctness of the views and feelings of myself and others upon that subject from the beginning. It is the very essence of my feelings that the people in this house, if we wanted to cross the Plains next season to the States, could start from here with handcarts, and beat any company in traveling that would cross the Plains with teams, and be better of and healthier. These are my feelings, and they have been all the time.

I have argued the point before the people that they are not aware of their ability, that they do not know what they can do; that they are healthier when they live in the open air. What gives the people colds and makes them sick? You hear many say, “I had not had a cold this fall, until I came into our new house.” Brethren and sisters that have come into the city from living in the canyons, and those who have arrived from the States this season, have not been troubled with colds until they came into warm houses; that gives them colds, by depriving their lungs of the benefit they are organized to receive from the atmosphere.

It is a strange thought, but could you weigh the particles of life that you constantly receive from the water you drink and from the air you breathe, you would learn that you receive a greater proportion of nourishment from those sources than from the food you consume. Many are not aware of this, for they are not apt to reflect how much longer they can live when deprived of food than they can when deprived of air. When people are obliged to breathe confined air, they do not have that free, full flow of the purification and nourishment that is in the fresh air, and they begin to decay, and go into what we call consumption.

People need not be afraid of living out of doors, nor of sleeping out of doors; this country is much healthier than the lowlands in the States, or than many places in the old world. I recollect that in 1834, myself, brother Kimball, and others, traveled two thousand miles inside of three months, and that too in the heat of summer. We cooked our own food, carried our guns, got our provisions by the way, and performed the journey within ninety days. We laid on the ground every night, and there was scarcely a night that we could sleep, for the air rose from the ground hot enough to suffocate us, and they supplied musketos in that country, as they did eggs, by the bushel; they never thought of supplying less than a bushel or so at once to an individual. That journey was many times more taxing upon the health and life of a person, than this season’s handcart journey over the Plains.

You may take the rich and the poor, every person, and they can gather from the Missouri River, or from parts of the States where there are no railroads or steamboats, easier than they can with teams. And I am ashamed of our Elders that go out on missions, it is a disgrace to the Elders of Israel, that they do not start from here with handcarts, or with knapsacks on their backs, and go to the States, and from thence preach their way to their respective fields of labor. Brother Kimball moves that we do not send any Elders from this place again, unless they take handcarts and cross the Plains on foot. When the time comes, I expect that this motion will be put to vote.

It is a shame for the Elders to take with them from this place everything they can rake and scrape. I can go on foot across the Plains. As old as I am, I can take a handcart and draw it across those Plains quicker than you can go with animals and loaded wagons, and be healthier when I get to the Missouri River. Our Elders must have a good span of horses, or mules, and must ride, ride, ride; kill many of their animals, and get little or nothing for those left when they arrive at the Missouri River, besides taking four or five hundred dollars worth of property from their families. And some ride so much that they do not know how to preach, whereas, if they would walk, they would be in far better condition to labor in the Gospel.

As to the expediency of the handcart mode of traveling, brothers Ellsworth, McArthur, and Bunker, who piloted the three first handcart companies over the Plains, can testify that they easily beat the wagon companies. Brother Ellsworth performed the journey in sixty-three days, and brother McArthur in sixty-one and a half, notwithstanding the hindrance by the baggage wagons. If brother Willie’s company could have had their provisions deposited at Laramie and at Green River, and had been free from wagons, they would have been in this valley by the time they were in the storms.

We are not in the least discouraged about the handcart method of traveling. As to its preaching a sermon to the nations, as has been remarked, they are preached pretty nigh to destruction already. We do not care whether the handcart scheme preaches to them, or whether it be by the teachings of the Elders of Israel. They are so bound up with their friends and so priest-ridden, that they cannot burst through those chains; and they will have to remain so until Jesus devises some other means to save them, for the great majority will not hear and obey.

There are a few who are sufficiently independent to obey the truth when they hear it. We will gather them up, and let the devils howl and let all hell be moved in striving to overthrow this people. We will gather the faithful, God being our helper, and we do not care whether the rest hear and believe or not. The sound of the Gospel has gone to the uttermost parts of the earth, as I have told you already; and I know not a people, and hardly a nation, but what it makes them quake from center to circumference. If they do not believe the sound that has gone forth, let them disbelieve; we ask no odds of them.

We do not expect that all the people will believe, and wickedness will increase while the Saints are gathering together. If those who profess to know what right is, will do right and live to the Gospel of Christ which they understand, there is no danger but what the elect will be saved, and that the devil cannot get them. All that Jesus designs to save he will save; all that are disposed to believe and obey, he is disposed to save, and will do it. And those that will falter and hearken to the teachings and seductions of the world, the flesh, and the devil, he can save upon the principles he has established.

Men act upon their own agency; we do not expect that those who will not hearken and obey will be saved by the Gospel; and many that obey the first principles of the Gospel will not live their religion.

Let this people live their religion here. We cry to you all the time to live your religion. Let every man and woman forsake their evil ways, and turn unto the Lord with all their hearts, that He may have mercy on us, that the light may shine, and the nations feel its influence, and the honest in heart rejoice therein and be gathered to Zion.

As I told the brethren the other evening, if the candle of the Almighty does not shine from this place, you need not seek for light anywhere else. If this people have not the light and power of God with them, the Elders that go forth cannot have the light and enjoy the power that we do not have here; they must be lower than we are; they cannot attain to the light that we can here.

Shall we forsake our wickedness? I say, thank God, that I see a spirit of repentance in a degree; but I want to see so thorough a reform that sin and wickedness will be done away. Live your religion; that tells the whole story. If you live your religion you have the Holy Ghost in you, it abides with you; you shun evil, and put forth your energies to do all the good you can; you will refrain from everything that is evil, and do everything you can to promote the cause of God on the earth.

It is all embraced in the three words, live your religion; that is what I wish to say to all good people. That the Lord may help us so to do, that we may be accounted worthy to be saved in His kingdom, is my constant prayer, brethren and sisters, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Remarks by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, November 9, 1856.

I wish to say to the brethren, as many as are here today, who have come across the Plains with the handcarts, that I feel to bless you, and you may be sure that you have my best feelings all the time.

While brother Ellsworth was speaking about the Spirit, and the spirits that were around them, the spirit that he seemed to have to contend with, and the spirit that the people had to contend with, I wanted to tell one secret. While those brethren and sisters were faltering, and did not know whether to stop or go along, there was faith in this valley that bound them to that journey and they were obliged to perform it, they could not help performing it. Who had that faith? The people here; and the Spirit of the Lord was all the time prompting them, and the brethren who led them. They were, as many are now, they were prompted to do as they did; they could not do anything else, because God would not let them do anything else. The brethren and sisters came across the Plains because they could not stay; that is the secret of the movement. But let the devil have his will, and do you suppose that any of them could have crossed the Plains? No, not a person ever would have started. But they did start, and they performed the journey.

We are doing a great many things, and Joseph did a great many things, because the Spirit of the Lord prompts us to do them, as it prompted him. Joseph could not do anything else than what he did; it is the same with us all the time. The Lord prompted the handcart companies all the time, in the midst of their afflictions, to prepare for and start upon their journey, and they only had faith and power for the day, and on the morrow it seemed as though they certainly had to stop. But when tomorrow came they had faith and power to perform the journey of that day, and so they have been prompted day by day, to this point.

God is at the helm of this great ship, and that makes me feel good. When I think about the world, and the enemies of the cause of God, I care no more about them than I do for a parcel of musketoes. All hell may howl, and they may run up and down the earth and seek whom they may destroy, but they cannot move the faithful and pure in heart. Let those apostatize who wish to, but God will save all who are determined to be saved.

Brethren and sisters, I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Discourse by President Heber C. Kimball, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 9, 1856.

I wish to advance a few ideas that are upon my mind, and they concern every individual in this congregation and every person that professes to be a Latter-day Saint. I have often reflected upon them, and they are particularly in my mind today.

Last evening I attended the High Priests’ Quorum, and perhaps there were a hundred or a hundred and fifty High Priests present. In that meeting brother Brigham gave permission to the members of that Quorum to be baptized in the font; but he objected to anyone going into that font, to be baptized for the remission of sins, until he had actually repented of and made restitution for the sins he had committed. If any of them had done anything wrong, he wished them to confess to those they had aggrieved or injured, and make restitution; and wherein they had committed sins and violated their Priesthood and their covenants, they must make satisfaction to those they had injured; and not step into that font, until they have done these things.

That is the course to take; and how do you expect to get a remission of your sins, and be forgiven by the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Ghost, so that you can have the Holy Ghost rest upon you, unless you repent and make restitution or restoration, and make atonement for the sins that you may have committed?

I pray to my Father, in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, that the High Priest or any other person that attempts to go into that font without previously making restitution for such evil as he may have committed, may be cursed and withered until he does make restitution.

I will now touch upon another point. Our Bishops are now breaking bread, the emblem of the broken body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I say let every one who is guilty of sins they have not repented of, and made restitution for, refuse to partake of that bread, also of that water (which is an emblem of the blood of Jesus that was spilled for the remission of our sins), until they have repented and made restitution; for unless you do, you shall drink damnation to yourselves, until you make restitution. I do not care who the persons are.

If the High Priests, who are clothed with the Priesthood which is after the order of God, should be prohibited a Gospel ordinance, until they make good that which they may have done wrong, why should you as a people partake of these emblems upon any other conditions? If you do you eat damnation unto yourselves, and you will become sickly and pine away and die.

Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, 11th chap. and 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th verses, has written as follows—

“26. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.

“27. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

“28. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.

“29. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

“30. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.”

According to Paul you perceive that those who partook of the bread and wine unworthily, became sickly and died; but those that eat and drink worthily will receive life and salvation by partaking. Now, gentlemen and ladies, what do you think of partaking of this bread and this wine in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Some of you, doubtless, have been guilty of committing more or less sin, of being more or less rebellious to the authorities of this Church, and to the Priesthood and government of God, and then coming and partaking of this sacrament. Do not such persons comprehend that they are drinking damnation to themselves? Why should persons wish to partake of this sacrament, when they know that they are unworthy?

I want to warn you and forewarn you not to trifle with this ordinance, nor to indulge in any unwise conduct. I desired the opportunity of telling you my feelings before this bread is dedicated and consecrated. I do not consider that it is dedicated and consecrated to any person that cannot eat it with an upright heart, or to one that will eat it and then live in a course of rebellion against God and His authority.

I do not consider that one of my wives, or one of my children, has a right to partake of these emblems, until they make a full and proper restitution to me, if they have offended me. Why is this? Because I am their head, I am their governor, their dictator, their revelator, their prophet, and their priest, and if they rebel against me they at once raise a mutiny in my family.

I forbid all unworthy persons partaking of this sacrament; and if such do partake of it, they shall do it on their own responsibility, and not on mine. In partaking unworthily, a person is corroding and destroying himself, not me. This ordinance is administered on condition of your living in righteousness, and of your hearts being true to your God and to your brethren.

How can you love your God and Jesus Christ, and not love those that He has sent to you to do you good? Can you love God and His Son Jesus Christ, and not take the counsel pointed out by brother Brigham and those that are sent to you? Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commandments;” and brother Brigham and his counselors can say, if you love God, love us and keep our commandments. Why? Because brother Brigham is placed as God’s agent to us in the flesh.

When you go into heaven, into the celestial world, you will see the Church organized just as it is here, and you will find all the officers down to the Deacon. Our Church organization is a manifestation of things as they are in heaven, and you are all the time praying that the Church here may be brought into union and set in order as it is in heaven.

Do you think a wife is contending against her husband with a good spirit, when she is commanded to be subject to her husband, even as we are to Christ? Is it not just as necessary that women should be governed, as that men should be? Is it not just as reasonable that a wife should be governed, as that her husband should be? I want to know what good a wife is to me, unless she will let me lead and guide, and let me govern her by the word of God.

When a wife is obedient to her husband there is union, there is heaven, that is, there is one heaven, though it is a little one; and a righteous union is what will make a heaven.

There are many kinds of sin, among which is the sin of confusion; and I tell you there is plenty of confusion in a family where each one wants to be head. Just look at it, what a heaven that is! We all have to make our heaven, or do without one.

A great many of this people want their endowments; but I never wish to give another man or woman their endowments, until they have reformed from whatever they may have done amiss. I had as soon give the devil his endowment as to confer it upon some men and women who profess to be Latter-day Saints; I want them to reform first.

Do I feel as though I wanted to dance? No, I never want to go forth again in the dance, until the spirit of reformation is rife among the people. Neither do I want to see any man or woman partake of this sacrament, when they are living in open rebellion against God, against His government, and His servants.

I have no wife nor child that has any right to rebel against me. If they violate my laws and rebel against me they will get into trouble, just as quickly as though they transgressed the counsels and teachings of brother Brigham. Does it give a woman a right to sin against me, because she is my wife? No, but it is her duty to do my will, as I do the will of my Father and my God.

It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and unless she is, I would not give a damn for all her queenly right and authority; nor for her either, if she will quarrel, and lie about the work of God and the principle of plurality.

I tell you, as the Lord God Almighty lives, my sword is unsheathed, and I never will sheath it until those of you who have done wrong, repent of your evil deeds. Some of you have found fault, because I am so plain and severe. No man can rise up here with his sophistry and silver lips, and have the Holy Spirit for a moment.

A disregard of plain and correct teachings is the reason why so many are dead and damned and twice plucked up by the roots, and I would as soon baptize the devil, as some of you. You call that a hard saying, do you not?

Brethren and sisters, shall I ask the Lord to bless this bread and dedicate it to Him for you, and then you partake of it unworthily? You would only drink condemnation to yourselves, not to me. I have not knowingly injured one of you; if I have injured anyone in this congregation, or in this Church, I must have done it by telling them the truth, if that can be called an injury. There is not that man or that woman that can justly say that I have taken the first dime from them, or stolen anything, or told a lie; if there are any such let them come forward and I will make restitution fourfold.

All the fault I have to find with myself, and I presume all that God has to find with me, is because I have sometimes held back and resisted His Spirit; and so have my brethren, for if we would yield to it at all times, we should be ten times more severe than we now are. I know that when I have seen certain evil practices in our midst, I have felt bad about it. For instance, hire some men to work, and the moment you are out of their sight they will scarcely do a thing. What are such men good for?

The man that will be lazy and spend his time for nought, will steal, and will also be liable to consider it no sin to commit adultery. And some of the men and women whom you employ, will steal from you almost as much as the wages for which they were hired.

While standing between you and the bread, I know of no way but to preach plain to you, and to tell you of your faults. Now I feel clear; and I could not feel at peace, until I had told you what was in my mind.

May God have mercy upon you and enlighten your minds, touch your intellects and qualify you for your callings.

I will tell you a dream that brother Joseph Fielding had in England, about the time that brother Brigham and I went back on our second visit, for it will apply to many in this congregation.

Brother Fielding dreamed that he had a sharp sickle, and that he hung it up on a bush, but when he returned and took down his sickle, he found the edge all taken off from it. This will apply to many others. You remember it, do you not, brother Joseph? And is it correct? It is, and his sickle has not cut from that time to the present, and the reason is he has had a woman straddle of his neck from that day to this. Amen.

A Discourse by President J. M. Grant, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 9, 1856.

I believe, with brother Kimball, that many of this people partake of the sacrament unworthily. Some will steal their neighbor’s spade, or his crowbar, or wood from his pile, or cabbages and potatoes from his garden, or hay from his stack, or go into his yard and milk his cows, and commit numerous other sins, and the next day come here and partake of the sacrament.

When I see persons very religious outwardly, I always look for them to commence stealing the first opportunity they have, and on the next day expect to hear them speak in tongues in some class meeting, or ward meeting, and give the interpretation of tongues, or relate some remarkable dream or vision. I noticed another thing in this Tabernacle. When it was first completed, brother Brigham wanted a certain number of seats reserved for his family. Now, would you believe that some of the most pious old ladies and sisters in the Church would be at the four doors of this Tabernacle by seven o’clock in the morning, that they might crowd into seats reserved for the President’s family and crowd them out. Those are professedly the most pious among us; bless you, they are professedly just as full of religion as they can be.

I wish to see people come to meeting right and in order; to do so they must be right at home, they must be right all the while.

I seriously question, when some people are baptized, whether they do not come out of the water the same poor miserable devils as they went in.

There must be a foundation in the people, the right standard in the breast, and that must be inherent in the people more or less, or else our professions are in vain. I, therefore, want every person to leave the bread in the salvers, and the water in the cups, and not partake of the sacrament, unless they are right. I want every thief, and every unrighteous person to let the bread alone.

If I could have one prayer effectually answered forthwith, it would put a stop to a great many evils in Israel, to say the least of it. But as the work of reformation increases among the people, our President says, and it is so, that we may look for the workings of an opposite power. The solution he gave last night, in the High Priest’s Quorum, is the best explanation that I have heard concerning the fogs that we have felt for some time past. The principle was this, that as we advance in the light and in the truth, the arch adversary and his associates will make a corresponding effort to darken our minds and becloud our atmosphere, and thereby throw us into the fog.

I am aware that we have only a few among us but what feel determined to reform; the great majority wish to live their religion, and I am glad of it. I believe that the majority of this congregation that are here today actually intend to do right. Now do not let the devil cheat you; and if the devil marshals his forces against you and beclouds your minds, tell him that you are serving the God of Israel. If you are in the dark and cannot get light, keep a firm hold on the foundation of truth, and be determined not to be jostled off it.

Brother Kimball frequently alludes to discords in families. I was listening, as I came along the street, to a Bishop who spoke of discord in a certain family in his Ward. The person he alluded to has but one wife and is said to be a fine man, and his wife is said to be a fine woman, and of good parentage. They have some five promising children, but that woman wants to forsake her husband and go to her father.

You may sum up the difficulties in families throughout the country, and you will find ten to one more jars in families where there is but one wife, than in families where there are a number.

I believe there has been a disposition, on the part of some men and women to break the strong tie that ought to bind families together, but I do not believe they will accomplish much. I look for our relations to be permanent and the institutions of the Church to be eternal, because they are perfectly right; I now refer more particularly to our family organizations. But there is more or less discord in families, I would like it to cease altogether; and I would actually like the day to come in Israel, when the people will not only love the doctrines and revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ, but rejoice that they live in the day when the Prophet Joseph has brought them forth.

To the man I have just now been alluding to, say to that wife, “Go to your darling people then.” If she wished to leave me, and the Almighty had blessed me with the means, I would bless her and bestow upon her everything I could. I would give her all my cattle, horses, and other property, and say, “God bless you, go and prosper, if you can.” If necessary, I would rise at midnight and write her out the neatest bill she ever saw, and I would figure it all over with flowers and doves, and bedeck it with red ribbons.

I make these remarks, not that I have had any difficulty with my own family, but because there is a principle I wish to speak upon. I believe that men should lead their families, and not drive them. Some people do not understand the difference between leading and driving a flock of sheep. Brother Willes has seen the shepherds and their flocks in the Eastern countries, and can tell you the difference in the management of flocks in those countries and America. In America the sheep are driven; in the East the shepherds lead their flocks. The American and English spirit, and also the spirit of some other nations, places the sheep in front and the shepherd must follow.

If there is any difficult place, a stream to ford, or a slippery log to walk on, the American’s spirit is to try his wife first on the log, to drive his wife and children across first; he must drive. I do not like that, though some men are almost compelled to do so, because the women are determined to lead.

I have traveled with brother He– ber, and I never saw a milder man in my life, when everything is right and people keep out of his track. But when they get in his path he is obliged to tread on their heels, for they cannot walk so fast as he can. He is not to blame for that; they are to blame.

In the early ages of the world there was a youth imprisoned by the ruler of the people. His parents went to the ruler and pled with him to release their son, but they could not prevail at first. They then wept and tore their reverend locks from their heads to move the ruler to pity, and when they had done this he released their son from prison. The historian remarks that it was not so much the weakness existing in the youth’s parents that caused them to tear their hair, as it was the obstinacy in the ruler; they were obliged to take that course, resort to such means, to effect their purpose.

Am I to blame for scolding the people? Not at all. Is brother Heber? Not at all. Is he to blame for chastising an unruly wife? No. If she gets in his path and he steps on her heels, is he to blame? No, and if she is hurt thereby, it is the result of her own acts.

What will be the result of the chastisements given to this people? I answer, if they heed them, they will bring them into the true path. It is the situation of the people that prompts the teachings they now receive from God’s servants. If all the people did right, they would not be chastised at all. If a man’s family conduct themselves right, do you suppose that a consistent, reasonable man will find fault with them? No. If all the people in a Ward do right, will the Bishop chastise them? No; but if they do not do right, the Bishop is placed under the necessity of coming forth, clothed in the armor and power of the Almighty, to put them right, and of calling upon the teachers to assist him in this work. And when the people repent and are found to be on the right track, the Bishop lays the rod on the shelf.

This is the case with brother Brigham. Does he chastise this, that, and the other man, because he likes the job? No. You know that he is mild, and is a father to this people; and were I to take any exception to his course, it would be on account of his being so merciful. Why? Because he is more merciful than I am. When he extends mercy to the people, he deals it out more lavishly than I would, unless the Lord should lead me as he does him. I have not so much mercy, so much of God and eternal life in me as brother Brigham has in him; it does not belong to me to have so much, for he stands at the fountain of life; he descends below all things and ascends above all things to this dispensation.

I hear men undertake to laugh and joke in their familiar chat with each other, and say that they heard brother Brigham say this or that, and that they saw brother Brigham do this, that, or the other, and strive to justify themselves on that account. But brother Brigham commands an influence that you do not command, and cannot be thrown off the line of propriety and truth, as easily as you and I. When men do not know the power that constrains them, they ought to be cautious how they speak and how they act.

Brother Brigham is a father to the Quorums of this Church; and when the people are right, has he a disposition to chastise them? No, he has a fatherly feeling to bless them, and so has brother Heber. I do not know whether I have as much of that feeling as either of them, with regard to the Church, but I do not suppose that there is a man on the earth that is fonder of children than I am. If I do not like old people so well as some do, I like children well enough to balance the deficiency.

I would be glad to see more peace, mercy, truth, equity, justice, and righteousness made manifest in the midst of this people. We want the hay, the straw, the wood, the stubble, the dross, and every impure principle burnt up. When a man is wrong and will turn round and do right, I love him better than I did before. We do not feel like casting you off, like casting you into the mire, and saying “God Almighty damn you.” “Get out of the mud and may the Lord God of Israel bless you” is what we say. I had rather bless ten men than curse one. I am not led to curse, but I am led to chastise iniquity, to bring out the alloy, expose sins and bring to light that which is wrong among the people; but I do not want to curse them.

I tell you that the devil is working against us, and Lucifer is in the land. Did you know that he had come to this country? Let me tell you the news today, if you have not heard it; he has come to this country and has been seen, the real old fellow himself, the same Lucifer that was cast down from heaven.

Another thing; did you know that all hell is let out for noon? The master is in the schoolhouse, therefore. When we talk of hell we mean uncle Jim, uncle Bill, uncle Sam, and all our uncles and cousins over the wide world. We mean old Babylon, the confusion that is over the wide world.

But thanks be to our God, and to high heaven, the light of God is here and the truth of God is here, and we have waged a war with Lucifer, under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we be able to stand in the contest and overcome. We bring no railing accusation against our common enemy, but we tell him and his host that they must surrender. We say to the sinners in Zion, be afraid, you must surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. We say to you, Saints, rub up your armor, gird on the sword of the Almighty and walk forth to battle, and never yield the ground.

Some men say that they feel sick and faint, and weary, when they see so much darkness among the people. I feel as though I could say to the mountains and to all hell, get out of my way, or I will kick you out; I am not going to surrender. I want no poor pussyism around me; hang not your sickle on the tree to rust, but make it still sharper, and cut more grain in one day than you have ever done; and tell the devil that you are ahead of him. You old men, that let your sickles rust, take them down and sharpen them up, and walk into the fields and reap down the grain, that there may be wheat in the house of our God, for the harvest is great and the reapers are few.

I am not of that class that believes in shrinking; if there is a fight on hand, give me a share of it. I am naturally good natured, but when the indignation of the Almighty is in me I say to all hell, stand aside and let the Lord Jesus Christ come in here; He shall be heir of the earth; the truth shall triumph, the Priesthood and Christ shall reign.

I had rather fight the devils that are out of tabernacles, than those that are embodied. The grand difficulty we have to encounter is from devils that enter into you; they take possession of your houses, and then we have to fight devils in tabernacles. We want the devils cast out of you, and the power of God and the light of the Almighty to shine in you as a lamp.

The result of the teachings we are receiving, if practiced, will reform the whole community. When you are right we will cease to chastise, we will cease to rebuke; we will cease throwing the arrows of the Almighty through you, we will cease telling you to surrender, to repent of all your sins. But until you do this, we will continue to throw the arrows of God through you, to hurl the darts of heaven upon you and the power of God in your midst; and we will storm the bulwarks of hell, and we will march against you in the strength of the God of Israel. And by the power of the Priesthood restored by the Prophet Joseph, by the light of heaven shed forth by brother Brigham and his associates, we expect to triumph; and in the name of Jesus Christ, we do not mean to surrender to evil.

A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 9, 1856.

I rise to explain one principle to Elders who are in the habit of preaching the Gospel to the world. Not but what their views coincide with mine, not but what they fully comprehend the matter, but all have not the power and faculty to develop what is in them; some are at a loss to explain that which they understand.

I wish to refer more particularly to a remark made by brother Benjamin L. Clapp, who has just been speaking to us concerning men coming to him in Texas, and saying that things were thus and so in Utah. What can they tell about Utah? To begin with, they do not know any evil of this people; the sins of this people are with themselves and their God. I defy all hell and all the devils in and about the inhabitants of the earth to substantiate permanent acts of wickedness against the Elders of this people.

Suppose that men came to brother Benjamin in Texas, and told him that I was the biggest scoundrel in the world, do not this people know better about that than they? And even Benjamin himself knows it to be a falsehood. We know that is falsehood, and I should have taken the liberty of telling them so.

I never preached in Texas, but I have preached in places as wicked; and when a man told me that which was not true about this people or about the leaders of this people, I would take the liberty of telling him that he was not telling the truth. I preached during twenty-four or twenty-five years among the wicked, and I never yet saw a man that I was afraid to tell that he was saying that which was not so, when I knew better; frequently they would turn and say to me, “You had better tell me that I lie,” and my prompt reply would be, you do, sir, and that before God.

What fault could the world justly find with this people? Some have passed through here to California to dig gold, but they have received nothing at the hands of this people but kindness. What do they know about us? They cannot charge us with one evil. Suppose there are wicked men here, I say the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that gathers fish both good and bad, and I say this because it is true.

We have in our community the worst creatures that the world can produce; the Gospel net must gather them of necessity, or the saying of Jesus, and what he knew of the kingdom in the last day would not come to pass. There are as bad men and women within the pales of this Church as there are upon this earth, and the Gospel being preached to them prepares them to become devils. As you have frequently been told, that is the only way men can become devils; they must have the knowledge to sin against the Holy Ghost, or yet the day of redemption awaits them, one or the other.

Suppose I was preaching in the world, and they should allege that some of the people in Utah swore, stole, and were wicked in many ways, I would acknowledge it to be the case. They might then inquire, “Why do you say that you have got the Gospel of salvation? And why do you come to us to preach, seeing that your own people do wickedly?” I would reply that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that gathers fish of all kinds, therefore we must have the good and the bad in Utah, or else it cannot be the kingdom of heaven.

We have some of the bad, and those who pass through our settlements, or sojourn in our midst for a brief period, become familiar with those who are wicked, but do not become acquainted with the righteous. The great majority of this people are righteous, but the worldlings seek out and mingle with the few wicked here, because both those classes love the spirit of the world.

As to the great argument against the kingdom of God, because there are some evildoers in the Church, I will take the principles and doctrines taught by Jesus and his Apostles, and show that these go to prove and substantiate the fact that this is the kingdom of God. Why? Because we can produce the meanest curses there are on the earth, those who take all the revelations given by the Almighty, and every influence and revelation they can get from the devil, and make use of them to add sin to sin. This fact is also another proof that all hell is against this people, for there is not a person in the world, that gives way to wickedness, but what has antipathy against this people.

Now hearken, O ye Texans; do you say there are people here who are wicked? So we say. Could I wish things to be otherwise? No, I would not have them different if I could. We can produce the best men and the worst, the best women and the worst, and thus prove, according to the sayings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, that this is the kingdom of God, or at least answers to the Savior’s description of that kingdom.

Were I in Texas I would say, let me tell you that I have not embraced any man on this earth, in my faith, but I have embraced the doctrine of salvation, and it is no matter what the people do in Utah. Here is the doctrine of salvation, talk against that, prove that to be false, or find a flaw in it, if you can. As for the people, they cannot save you. Never embrace a man in your faith, for that is sectarianism.

There are many of the men and women now before me who have looked for a pure people, and have supposed that that was a proof of the truth of our doctrines, but they will never find such a people until Satan is bound, and Jesus comes to reign with his Saints. The doctrine we preach is the doctrine of salvation, and it is that which the Elders of this Church take to the world, and not the people of Utah.

Some of the Elders seem to be tripped up in a moment, if the wicked can find any fault with the members of this Church; but bless your souls, I would not yet have this people faultless, for the day of separation has not yet arrived. I have many a time, in this stand, dared the world to produce as mean devils as we can; we can beat them at anything. We have the greatest and smoothest liars in the world, the cunningest and most adroit thieves, and any other shade of character that you can mention.

We can pick out Elders in Israel right here who can beat the world at gambling, who can handle the cards, cut and shuffle them with the smartest rogue on the face of God’s footstool. I can produce Elders here who can shave their smartest shavers, and take their money from them. We can beat the world at any game.

We can beat them, because we have men here that live in the light of the Lord, that have the Holy Priesthood, and hold the keys of the kingdom of God. But you may go through all the sectarian world, and you cannot find a man capable of opening the door of the kingdom of God to admit others in. We can do that. We can pray the best, preach the best, and sing the best. We are the best looking and finest set of people on the face of the earth, and they may begin any game they please, and we are on hand, and can beat them at anything they have a mind to begin. They may make sharp their two-edged swords, and I will turn out the Elders of Israel with greased feathers, and whip them to death. We are not to be beat. We expect to be a stumbling block to the whole world, and a rock of offense to them.

I never preached to the world but what the cry was, “That damned old Joe Smith has done thus and so.” I would tell the people that they did not know him, and I did, and that I knew him to be a good man; and that when they spoke against him, they spoke against as good a man as ever lived.

I recollect a conversation I had with a priest who was an old friend of ours, before I was personally acquainted with the Prophet Joseph. I clipped every argument he advanced, until at last he came out and began to rail against “Joe Smith,” saying, “that he was a mean man, a liar, money digger, gambler, and a whoremaster;” and he charged him with everything bad, that he could find language to utter. I said, hold on, brother Gillmore, here is the doctrine, here is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the revelations that have come through Joseph Smith the Prophet. I have never seen him, and do not know his private character. The doctrine he teaches is all I know about the matter, bring anything against that if you can. As to anything else I do not care. If he acts like a devil, he has brought forth a doctrine that will save us, if we will abide it. He may get drunk every day of his life, sleep with his neighbor’s wife every night, run horses and gamble, I do not care anything about that, for I never embrace any man in my faith. But the doctrine he has produced will save you and me, and the whole world; and if you can find fault with that, find it. He said, “I have done.”

It is the fashion in the world to embrace men in their faith, or a fine meetinghouse, or a genteel congregation, thinking, “O, what perfect order, and how pretty they look; how straight they walk to meeting, and how long their faces are during the services; how pretty that deacon looks under the pulpit; the people are so pretty, the meetinghouse is so nice, that we want to join such pretty people.” Such feelings will take a people to hell. Embrace a doctrine that will purge sin and iniquity from your hearts, and sanctify you before God, and you are right, no matter how others act.

I wish you all to understand that no Elders go to any place among the world, but what the wicked find fault with the people of God. They found fault with Joseph Smith, and at length killed him, as they bare a great many others of the Latter-day Saints. What for? Because of his wickedness? No. But the cry was, “Away with him, we cannot do with this man nor with his people.” Did they hate him for his evil works? No. If he had been a liar, a swearer, a gambler, or in any way an evildoer, and of the world, it would have loved its own, and they would have embraced him, and nourished and kept him. If he had been a false prophet they never would have lifted a hand against him, because he could have spread still more delusion through the world around him.

We are hated, because we are righteous. If we have sinned, the people in Texas know nothing about it; they cannot in truth find a word of fault with the character of this people, except with the few we have on hand ready to beat them at their meanness. The Lord wants those few here to fulfil His words and purposes, and they are fit for no other place. The sheep and the goats, the calves and the pigs, are all good in their places. The Lord will make use of us to His glory; and though a good many of those who now profess to be good Latter-day Saints may meet condemnation, even their course will finally result to the glory of God. Are these ideas correct? Judge ye.

Now, brethren, let me say a few words to you. Let us repent of our backslidings and tell the people of Texas that we ask no odds of them, nor of anyone else but our Father and our God, and those we are associated with in His kingdom. As brother Benjamin has exhorted you, confess your faults to the individuals that you ought to confess them to, and proclaim them not on the housetops. Be careful that you wrong not yourselves. Do you not know that if a good person is guilty of committing a crime he thinks that everybody knows it, and is ready to confess here, and there, and everywhere he has an opportunity?

I do not want to know anything about the sins of this people, at least no more than I am obliged to. If persons lose confidence in themselves, it takes away the strength, faith and confidence that others have in them; it leaves a space that we call weakness. If you have committed a sin that no other person on the earth knows of, and which harms no other one, you have done a wrong and sinned against your God, but keep that within your own bosom, and seek to God and confess there, and get pardon for your sin.

If children have sinned against their parents, or husbands against their wives, or wives against their husbands, let them confess their faults one to another and forgive each other, and there let the confession stop; and then let them ask pardon from their God. Confess your sins to whoever you have sinned against, and let it stop there. If you have committed a sin against the community, confess to them. If you have sinned in your family, confess there. Confess your sins, iniquities, and follies, where that confession belongs, and learn to classify your actions.

Suppose that the people were to get up here and confess their sins, it would destroy many innocent persons. Does Texas know about it? No, nor you about one another, if you will be wise and confess your wrongs where they ought to be confessed, and keep the knowledge of them from every person it ought to be kept from. In this way you will have strength against the enemy, who would otherwise buffet you and say, “Here is your wickedness made manifest,” and would overcome you and destroy all the confidence you have in yourselves and in your God.

If the Lord has confidence in you, preserve it, and take a course to produce more. If the Lord had a people on the earth that He had perfect confidence in, there is not a blessing in the eternities of our God, that they could bear in the flesh, that He would not pour out upon them. Tongue cannot tell the blessings the Lord has for a people who have proved themselves before Him.

That we may have confidence in Him, and He in us, let us take a course to create it, that He may open the heavens and pour upon us the blessings and power of the Holy Ghost.

Fathers, reflect for yourselves. Suppose that a father had thirty thousand dollars to distribute among three of his boys, and that one of them was a spendthrift who would prodigally sow his share to the four winds, and cause his wife and children to come on his father for support. Would that father have confidence to bestow ten thousand dollars on his spendthrift son? No, but he would deal it out to that son’s wife and children as they might need, and the rest he would preserve for him to another time. Our Father has to deal in that manner with us, for He has not confidence to know that we will do the things we ought and economize His blessings, if He should bestow them upon us.

We are like children who want the looking-glass to play with, and who cry for the sharp razor and for the moon they see reflected in the water, desiring them for playthings. Let us take such a course that God will have confidence in us, and then we shall receive all we need, all we desire and ask for.

Take a wise course; do not be foolish. I want you to reform, for there is need of it; though the world knows nothing about it. They hate us for the truth’s sake, and seek to destroy us; and I say to them, go it ye cripples, while you are young; for the day is coming in which you will find yourselves as badly crippled as ever the “Mormons” were.

May the Lord bless you. Amen.

Remarks by President Heber C. Kimball, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 9, 1856.

We have had some good instructions, and as far as I have knowledge they are all true; and obedience to those principles that we have heard will save every man and woman in this congregation and in the world, and they will open the gates of hell, and eventually redeem every man and woman that has not sinned the sin unto death. Many suppose, and I used to suppose so from what the sectarians taught me, that people went to hell for good, but I can tell you that there will be a great many who will go there for evil and not for good.

Captain Smoot’s and Captain Willie’s companies will arrive this afternoon, and the Bishops have prepared houses to take them to. A great many who went out to assist those companies, found their relatives and friends, and will take them home with them.

It is expected that the people will send in their offerings, and that the Bishops will report to brother Hunter, their presiding Bishop, that he may direct the distribution of the provisions and comforts of life to the newcomers. And it will be necessary to be as careful in dealing out food to them, as you would be with little children, otherwise they will be apt to injure themselves by eating vegetables, &c. Now do you understand me?

Let your offerings be to your Bishops, that they may be able to issue and control them in wisdom. This word of caution will also apply to those brethren who take the newcomers into their houses. Give them what you think they ought to eat, and no more; and have compassion upon them, and do not kill them with your kindness. A great many are killed by unkind acts, but this is a case of sympathy, and if you are not very careful you will injure them instead of doing them good.

I now want to say to the doorkeepers, those who attend to seating the congregation, let the men, women, and children who come here in season and take seats keep them; do not drive them away, but let them keep their seats; let all who come in good season, keep their seats. There are many children six years old who comprehend and practice what is here taught, better than many of the grown persons: their intellects are brighter than those of many of the old men and women, therefore do not drive up nor drive out the children.

Some women come in here tossing their heads about, with their bonnets and everything about them all on a wiggle, but go to their homes and you will often find them as abusive to their parents as the devil can wish them to be; they come here late and expect that the little children will be made to leave their seats.

I will illustrate the difference between the temperaments of the old and young, by referring you to the buffaloes on the Plains, as most of you had a chance to observe their habits. If I wish to domesticate buffaloes, I will take none but the calves, for I can do nothing with the old ones, they have become too set in their wild ways. But I can take the calves and learn them to work and give milk, and learn them to become domesticated and useful. Amen.

A Discourse by President Jedediah M. Grant, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 2, 1856.

I always regret that circumstances should occur to call from our President remarks like some of those he was moved upon to make this forenoon; but such circumstances do occur, hence similar remarks must be made.

As an individual I have been and am very anxious in relation to the immigration now upon the Plains. Their situation is very distressing, and several have died in brother Willie’s company. Some had died before the brethren could reach them, and a few more died during the first five days after they met them. The company had encountered cold and storms, and one very stormy day which caused nearly one-third of the deaths that had happened.

They had no serious or contagious diseases, but the storms came and the air was very cold, as a matter of course some who were fatigued with the toil and anxiety of the journey sank under the inclemency of the weather; they were furnished by those that returned to them, with shoes, clothing, and food. They were not entirely destitute of provisions when the return teams met them; their rations at the outfitting were more than those of the companies in advance of them. When met they had nearly four hundred pounds of sea bread, but their last rations of flour had been dealt out on the evening previous.

Brother Willie’s company was met with on the upper crossing of Sweet Water, but the whereabouts of the ox-trains and the handcart company in rear of brother Willie are yet unknown to us.

We have now some two hundred teams out to meet them, and some were only prepared with seven days forage for animals. It will be necessary for more teams to go to their relief, with grain and hay to sustain the animals already sent out, or they will die.

The weather had been cold enough to freeze over the Sweet Water; I mention this that you may know how the thermometer stood in that region; and some animals had been frozen to death. It is winter where they are, and they are actually in the cold and snow which was near one foot deep, and as they went east it appeared to grow deeper.

The observations made this morn– ing, as a matter of course, would only be treasured up by those who had in them the spirit of life. We have persons that have so much death in them that they do not know the counsels that are given to the immigrating Saints, that do not know the tenor of advice contained in the general epistles of the Presidency of the Church. But I do not suppose that the thinking part of the community anticipated any censures being placed upon the First Presidency of this Church, in consequence of the sufferings of the people now upon the Plains. Still there is a certain class of people whose brains never reach above the calves of their legs, and they never will know anything about the general policy of the Church, about what is written, what is desired, counseled, or asked for.

In relation to handcart companies, I have said, and I say it again, that they should start by the first of May, and then they can travel leisurely according to their strength and feelings; they can then have May, June, July, and August for the accomplishment of their journey. They could not travel so leisurely this year, from the fact that there were no grain depots on the route, consequently they had to hurry through, lest their rations should fail. Were grain deposited at convenient points on the route, the trip is, in every sense of the word, a feasible one for handcarts, for without that advantage, the present year has proved the feasibility of the undertaking.

The grand difficulty with a portion of our immigration this year has been in starting in the forepart of September instead of the first of May, but even then it is worse with ox teams than with handcarts, for if the cattle fail the people have no facilities for transporting their tents, bedding, clothing, and provisions. Unless I have different feelings to what I now have, I should never wish to see a train leave the Missouri River after the middle of June, or after the first day of July at the latest, until we can establish grain depots on the route, for I do not consider any train safe in starting late.

Brother Brigham has invariably advised early starts, and he gave his reasons for so doing this morning, and I do not wish to reiterate them.

I wish to see those who are directly engaged in carrying out the operations of gathering the Saints, to correctly understand the advice given and the system adopted for the gathering, and when they understand that and carry it out, as planned and given by brother Brigham, our immigration will be free from the sad results of mismanagement. But for persons, who are ignorant of the special causes and agents in any unpleasant transaction, to at once blame the head is the height of nonsense, though people in all ages have been prone to censure their leader, in times of special distress. When crickets and grasshoppers devour, when famine wastes, and when snows, storms, and accidents occur, it is natural, in that portion of the community that lack the gift of the Holy Ghost, to murmur against the leader of the people.

With Saints, what is the practical result of that murmuring? It shuts down the gate between you and heaven, between you and the Almighty, and you cannot get the Spirit of God. The murmurings and rebellions of ancient Israel prevented Moses from leading them to the land of Canaan. So soon as they had to endure hardship they began to murmur against Moses, and the result was the Lord would not give them His Spirit; the same has been the result in this dispensation.

In the days of Joseph, if a woman happened to put on her stocking wrong side out she would blame the Prophet; and if a man happened to tie his shoestring in a hard instead of a bow knot, he was angry with the Prophet for not having inspiration enough to have prevented so dire an event. The brains of that class of people never reach above the calves of their legs. I like to see the people have a little hard sense, like the mule; I like to see them understand the principles of the Son of God.

With regard to this people, I know that they are the best people on the earth, but there is more or less alloy among them which we hate. The Savior said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net that gathereth all kinds of fish; and I believe that parable holds good in our day, with regard to the gathering of the people that are caught by the Gospel of the Son of God, through the practical preaching of the Elders. I believe this, from observing the unwise sayings and doings of some who profess to be Saints.

I am aware that the world, because we are not all strictly living our religion, will imagine, as a matter of course, that we are bursting to pieces up here, and will say, “That is what we like; we told you that if you would let the ‘Mormons’ alone they would all burst to pieces.” We can, by taking an unrighteous course, burst ourselves to pieces, but they cannot burst us to pieces, if we do right, that is certain, for they tried it when there were but eight or ten in the Church, and when there were a few hundred, and when there were a few thousand, and they were unable to burst the Church. Now they flatter themselves that we shall burst under the weight of our own conduct, but I will tell you that we are after the evildoers.

If the Bishops and Teachers will go to work, together with every officer in the Church, we can soon find out those who are not disposed to do right; and let their names be written down, and let the offense and place of residence be written against the name, that we may know who are living in sin, where they live and what their offenses are.

I know that a great many people are full of sympathy, and yet they talk of the celestial law that they are going to keep and abide; but let me tell you that if you violate that law, you must meet the penalty. How many have we got here that would sympathize with those who are guilty of breaking their covenants, and thereby virtually partake of their crimes? I believe it to be a correct doctrine that the sympathizer is more or less implicated. The President enjoined it on the High Priests to expose those they knew to have committed or to be committing evil, and if they did not, hereafter the sin would be upon their heads.

Let the whole people take warning; and let every man and woman in Israel understand that the indignation of the Almighty rests upon that person who fails to expose iniquity. And let the wrath of God be upon any officer of the Church that knows of abomination, unless he comes out and makes known that abomination. I believe this ought to be, for we want the evil deeds of every person exposed.

We want to feel after the people and hunt them up; and we want the wrath of Brigham, and the wrath of Heber, and the wrath of all the men and woman on earth that are right, and the wrath of Joseph, and the wrath of Michael, and the wrath of Raphael, and the wrath of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the wrath of Almighty God and of all the Gods in eternity to burn against those that will sin. And we want the indignation and fire of the Almighty to sweep through the land like the locusts of Egypt, until every nauseous weed that grows among the Saints of God is destroyed.

Words are said to be light and windy, but I tell you that talking these things foreshadows what will be literally and really. I would be glad, when I speak to the people, that the Lord would let His Holy Spirit accompany my words, for I do not want my words to go alone. We have to speak to this people often, and when we talk to them like a man reading off a sermon that is written, it takes but little effect. When words go to the people alone, they are not profited by them.

Instead of all the people being desirous and anxious, as they should, to serve their God and practice what they know to be right, many are all the time longing for some fantastical doctrine, for something to gratify their vain imaginations. If you wish to feast on the word of God and feel its realities, you must practice the revelations of Jesus Christ. You must advance and do the will of God, and then you will be blest.

I am aware, as the President said this morning, that it is of no use talking about the Holy Ghost, the power of God, the gift of God, or the light of the Almighty resting on this people, until they become morally reformed. Some people laugh at and deride sectarian religion. I never was a sectarian; I have been in this Church from my boyhood; but in the region where I was raised, sectarian morality exceeds, in some respects, the morality of many who call themselves Latter-day Saints.

Some here keep their children too dirty for admission into a district school where I was raised; and in some houses the towels look as though they had passed Noah’s ark, or had been used by some of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the knives and forks have the appearance of having been rusting ever since Adam was driven from the garden of Eden.

I want to see the people wake up and reform, forsake all their evil habits and everything that is dark, loathsome and impure. I want to see them eschew all dirt, and filth, and degradation, and cease profaning the Sabbath, and the name of the Lord God of Israel; I want to see them become at least as moral and temperate as any people in the Gentile world, as we call it. I tell you that the Gentiles would be shocked at the filth and dirt of some of the sons and daughters of Israel, and feel offended to associate with them; I mean that portion of the Gentiles that are pure in their moral habits.

I want to see the people repent, as the President said this morning, and make a reformation in their lives, in their doings, and in keeping their houses, farms, and everything they have, clean and tidy.

We talk about our boys being smarter than their fathers. How many of our boys are learning trades, are learning to be farmers, or to understand any useful occupation? How many boys have we that are trustworthy; and as good as their fathers were at the same age? I know that our boys are bright and active, full of energy, life, and power, but many of the parents do not teach their children as they ought. They expect the schoolmaster to teach them, but what can the schoolmaster teach them, when the parents teach them nothing at home, and take no interest in what they are learning at school?

We talk about daughters rivaling their mothers. How many daughters have we that know how to spin, make butter, keep hairs and flies’ wings and legs on one plate, and the butter on the other, make good cheese, knit their own stockings, and make good hasty pudding or mush? How many of them can make their own bonnets and dresses? How many know how to use fine needles and coarse needles, and every kind of needles?

Many parents need to reform. Let the fathers teach their sons how to work, the art of chopping and hauling wood, of breaking up the ground, and of raising grain, cattle, sheep, hogs, &c.; and let the mothers set their daughters to work; and let every man, woman, and child, that is old enough, learn the arts of industry.

We want every Bishop to teach these reforms in Israel, we want every man in Israel to teach them; and when all reform in such matters, the Lord our God, will shower His blessings upon the people of this city and upon the people in the valleys of these mountains.

You may talk of reform, you may preach upon a virtuous life, upon cleanliness, upon God and the Holy Ghost, but while there is filth around the house, filth in the yard, and in every part of the city, your preaching will not amount to much. Some people are never contented unless the cow yard is under their noses, the hen coop in the parlor, and the privy in the kitchen, that is if they have any privy.

I want the people to wake up to a sense of their duty, and begin to serve God and repent of their sins, repent of every improper habit.

I sometimes confess men’s sins for them, and they will get up and parry off. I confessed a man’s sins here lately, and he supposed that I did not know what I was talking about. If he had corrected me a little further, I would have told all his sins; I would have told the things that were in his very heart; and if he parries again, I will come out more pointedly than I did then.

In some of the wards men will rise up and confess their sins, and after a week’s reflection, they will go to meeting and commence parrying, and make themselves as good as an angel. Again, some people, when they get the Spirit of God, when they actually pray fervently, are deemed by their neighbors to have sectarian religion. If God Almighty moves upon a man to pray with a loud voice and in earnest, some are ready to exclaim that he is a sectarian, and are so anxious to put away sectarianism, that they bundle the religion of Jesus Christ out of doors. In their zeal against sectarianism and doctrines they do not like, they leave God and the Lord Jesus Christ out of the question, and prayer, and keeping the Sabbath, and moral honesty, and virtue, and purity and everything that is good.

Every portion of sectarian religion that is good is my religion. If they have a precious gem it belongs to my religion; if it is purity, virtue, integrity, the gift of the Holy Ghost, fervency, and prayer, it is my religion. Some people talk of wildfire; I would rather have wildfire than no fire at all. I would like you to come up to the light of the Almighty, and if you want to pray to God, if you want to shout and make heaven and earth ring—drive the devil out of doors, chase darkness from your houses, and from your families, and raise the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ in your households, and the flag of God in your city, and say, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will do right, and root up everything that is wrong.

This makes me think of a circumstance that occurred when we went to Kaysville to preach the reformation, under the direction of brother Brigham. There was a dark and dull spirit there which was not very congenial to our natures, and brother Joseph Young felt life in him, he was full of the Spirit. After staying a couple of days, he said to me, “Brother Grant, they feel cold, and I guess we had better go to Farmington, preach there, and go home.” After a while I said to him, “Do you know how I feel about it? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will never leave this land, until this people surrender. I will hang the flag of the Lord Jesus Christ on their doors, and there shall be a siege of forty days. Then let every man storm the castle, and rule against the bulwarks of hell, and let every Elder throw the arrows of God Almighty through the sinner, and pierce their loins, and penetrate their vitals, until the banner of Christ shall wave triumphantly over Israel. Shall we give up, and let the wicked and ungodly overcome us? No, in the name and by the power of God we will overcome them. We will cleanse the inside of the platter and have Israel saved, through the name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of his word.”

Those who will not repent by the preaching of the Gospel, we will bring to the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ in the right and proper way, for we are determined to save you all, if possible. In former days the Lord cut off rebellious Israel by thousands, to save them; He had no other way for saving them. He had tried every other means; He had opened the sea for them to pass over dryshod, and overthrew their enemies, the horse and his rider, in the flood; He made the mountains skip like rams, and the little hills like lambs; He spoke to the angels, saying, throw down your food to them, and the bright clouds shed down manna to sustain them; He spake to them in thunders, in lightnings, in earthquakes, and tried every means to save them, that a God could try in the plentitude of His mercy, and when He had exhausted the arrows of His wrath in chastisement, and the wells of His mercy in blessings and entreaty, He cut them off by thousands.

O Israel, hear, while the voice of entreaty is in the land, hear the voice of brother Brigham, and awake from your slumbers; forsake your sins and abominations and turn unto your God, that repentance may reach you, and remission of sins, and the gifts and blessings of God come upon you. May God bless you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 2, 1856.

I am very thankful for the privilege that I enjoy this morning, with so many of the Latter-day Saints. I am thankful that we have the privilege of assembling here to worship the Lord in so comfortable a building, and in quite a moderate climate. I am happy for the privilege of addressing the Saints, and I could hope with all my heart, that I may never be called upon to address any other class of people; still, the Gospel must be preached to the world, that the wicked may be left without excuse. We have done a great deal of preaching and talking to persons that knew nothing of the Gospel of salvation, and I have occupied many years in trying to lay before the inhabitants of the earth the principles of life and salvation, until, through the providence of God, I have been called to other duties than to mingle or associate with those who would not believe and practice the Gospel. Still, I should have been more than satisfied, had my duty led me in a path to associate, more or less, with unbelievers, for I can say that I would rather preach to them, would rather associate with them, would rather take my chance among a people who have never heard the Gospel preached at all, than to live in the midst of the ungodly. The term ungodly conveys an idea to my mind, perhaps, that it does not to all present, for it is a fact that a man or woman must know the ways of God before they can become ungodly. Persons may be sinners, may be un– righteous, may be wicked, who have never heard the plan of salvation, who are even unacquainted with the history of the Son of Man, or who have heard of the name of the Savior, and, perhaps, the history of his life while on the earth, but have been taught unbelief through their tradition and education; but to be ungodly, in the strict sense of the word, they must measurably understand godliness.

It is lamentable to any person who understands by the visions of eternity the plan of salvation, the providences of God to His creatures, to see one who has his mind opened to see, understand, and embrace the principles of life and salvation in his faith, and who has the privilege of being adopted into the family of heaven, of becoming an heir with the Saints that have formerly lived upon the earth, an heir with the Prophets and with Jesus Christ, and of being numbered with the children of the Most High, with a legal administrator to officiate for the attainment of all these privileges, and to open the door of salvation and admittance into the kingdom, neglect so great a salvation. But for any of this people who enjoy the privilege of seeking unto the Lord their God, of being made acquainted with the ways of life and salvation, to procure to themselves an eternal exaltation, who have the privilege of preparing themselves to dwell with Christ in the presence of their Father and their God, of being joint heirs with Christ, and with all the Holy Ones that have lived, to turn from those holy commandments, to cease or neglect performing every duty made known to them, and to let the gay and giddy fancies of this life entangle their feelings, and draw them from the principles of eternal salvation, is most astonishing to me, or to any person that ever had the vision of their minds opened.

Every principle of philosophy that is known upon the face of the earth, every argument and reason that can be adduced, would prove that such a man or woman was taking a course destructive to themselves; that they were blindfolding themselves by shutting their own eyes, and, literally speaking, rushing to a precipice from whose verge they would be dashed to pieces. It is most astonishing to every principle of intelligence that any man or woman will close their eyes upon eternal things after they have been made acquainted with them, and let the gay things of this world, the lusts of the eye, and the lusts of the flesh, entangle their minds and draw them one hair’s breadth from the principles of life.

True there are many in the world who profess to be what we call infidels, who have no knowledge of anything beyond the researches of their education, who have not the faculty to pry into and understand things beyond what they can see with their natural eyes, hear with their ears, or comprehend with their natural understandings; yet there are but few that are really left indeed in the dark, left to be in reality what they profess to be. And those few have not one particle of good sound reason, not one argument on their side, to prove that a licentious, ungodly life is of any advantage to any person on the earth, but will argue the point, and that strenuously, that strict morality should be observed among all intelligences, and an honest bearing, an upright walk, and a gen– tlemanly conversation, not giving way to vulgarity and foul language, nor doing anything in the dark that they would not be willing to be scanned in daylight. For all this they argue strenuously, and yet say that they know nothing about God and eternity. We are here, we exist on the earth. I am sure that I am alive, for I can see others living. I am endowed with a certain degree of intelligence, where did it come from? An infidel might say, “I do not know.” Where did I originate? “I do not know.” Who was the maker and former of all we can see? “I do not know.” Yet those very characters will argue the necessity of a moral life, of an honest upright walk, one with the other.

But what are their arguments and what are their hopes? Why, they say, “We are today, tomorrow, perhaps, we shall be no more. We came into existence, but how we cannot tell. We have no faith, or belief, or confidence in the God that you Christians talk about; we have no confidence in His providence; by chance we are, and by chance we shall go and be no more.” Do you not perceive that their arguments land them in the vortex of ignorance and unbelief, of misery and annihilation? Go into the world and observe those who do not possess principles that reach into eternity, and that are in eternity, principles by which they exist and by which God created all things, and you will see that those principles are lost to them, and that, whether they believe in those principles or not, their course and profession will land them without an existence, or the possession of the least thing in heaven, earth, or hell.

These reflections bring to my understanding the greatest ignorance that can be manifested by an intelligent people, those in particular that are now before me, who have had the privilege of the holy Gospel and neg– lected their duty, turned away from the holy commandments, and ceased to live their religion in every point; such conduct does manifest the greatest weakness, ignorance, foolery, and wickedness that can be produced by intelligences. If you comprehend my ideas you will agree with me, for no sensible man or woman can see the subject in any different light. If we are here by chance, if we happened to slip into this world from nothing, we shall soon slip out of this world to nothing, hence nothing will remain; consequently we have nothing to gain or lose. But the man of better judgment, of more sound reasoning, must know that everything that was, that is, or that will be, everything that can be in all the eternities in the vast expanse that we behold, must have had a Creator. No principles exhibited to the human family will suggest that a book, a bench, a house, a tree, or any growing or manufactured article, can be produced without a producer. All we know, all we see, hear, and understand, proves to us that there is no fabric without a constructor.

These reflections lead me to contrast the world with a people like this before me, a people endowed with intelligence and a knowledge of heavenly principles. That is our profession before the world, and is our confession to God and angels, to all that have lived on the earth and that are now on it; and you will hear the world exclaim, “You poor Mormons, you Latter-day Saints that have left your homes, your houses, your friends, your families, your possessions, the place of your birth, and everything that is near and dear to you, you say that the visions of your minds have been opened, that you have had the visions of eternity opened to your understanding, so that you do know that there is a God, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world; so that you do know of the principles of life and salvation proffered to you; and for these you have forsaken all and gone to the mountains.”

Of these things the whole world are witnesses against us and for us, wherever the sound of this Gospel has been; and you can hardly find a nook on the earth where the sound of it has not reached, for it has gone to the uttermost parts of the earth, and hosts are witnesses of this. Yet all acknowledge that you have something superior, that you have light and intelligence that others do not enjoy; that God has opened up the heavens to your minds, and taken away the veil from your understandings. And you say that there is a God, that you understand His character, that He has revealed Himself to you, and that you have left all and come to the mountains, and what is the cry here? Why the people need reforming, there is necessity for reformation.

“I am thankful,” says one, “that I found the spirit of reformation when I came home.” What would an angel of the Lord say, if he came here, or a devil either? “O, shame on these Latter-day Saints, it is a disgrace to intelligence, to your officers as Elders in Israel, to your characters, to your names and beings on the earth, that you have had the visions of eternity opened to you, and many have forsaken everything that is near and dear to them by way of preparation for the Celestial kingdom, and now cry out the necessity of a reformation. It is most astonishing.” I will leave it to every man, woman, and child, if it does not look strange. What! Reformation? Yes, for in one sense we intend, that is as knowledge comes to us, to reform daily. But shall the sound go forth that we do not see and understand things as we did when in England, in France, in Germany, in Denmark, in the East Indies, or anywhere else on this earth? This sound goes forth, it is echoed by the angels into the ears of our God and Father in eternity, and it is carried on the wings of the wind over the earth, that the Latter-day Saints are digging and toiling, going by sea and by land, traversing distances of thousands of miles and circumscribing the earth to be with their brethren, and when they get here they need reforming. Why? Because they have backslidden.

You may ask me whether there is a need of reformation. Yes; and if I were to dictate you how to reform I should have to tell the old story over again, as I already have hundreds of times. First, reform as to your moral character, dealing, walk, precepts and examples. Reform first morally, before you get down before the Lord and plead with Him for the visions of eternity to be opened to your understandings, before you ask for the veil to be taken from your eyes. First reform in your moral character and conduct one towards another, so that every man and woman will deal honestly, and walk uprightly with one another, and extend the arm of charity and benevolence to each other, as necessity requires. Be moral and strictly honest in every point, before you ask God to reform your spirit.

If the people in their present situation and mode of dealing in this city, to say nothing of those out of the city, all go to work now and have meetings and call upon God to get the spirit of reformation, but sing and pray about doing right without doing it, instead of singing themselves away to “everlasting bliss,” they will sing and pray themselves into hell, shouting hallelujah. You cannot be saved by any other principle than that of the holy Gospel; and if you live in the neglect of the performance of the duties that you know are required at your hands, if you do not walk uprightly before God and your brethren, if you do not deal justly with one another, if you do not walk in honesty and soberness with one another, your faith is vain and your reformation is vain. You must repent of your evil deeds and first of all morally reform yourselves, before you can ask God for His Spirit to reform and enlighten your spirits. This is my doctrine and philosophy; were it not, I would say, let those who steal, steal on; and you that are in the habit of swearing, swear away; and you that have been in the habit of taking advantage of each other, cheat away; and those who lie, lie away; and you that trespass upon your brother, trespass away; and so continue, Christian like, only be sure, just as you are going to die, to look out and not have death catch you asleep, that when it comes you may be awake enough just to repent of all your sins and turn to God, and then you will be as fit subjects for heaven as powder would be for a burning dwelling. Our limekiln, when it is burning to its zenith, would be as fit a place for a powder house, as is the celestial kingdom for such characters.

Do you think that I am telling you the truth? I do not care one groat whether you think that I am telling you the truth, or not; for when the day comes that we shall be weighed in the balance, you will know. I am charged by the whole world with almost every degree of immoral conduct, with the most erroneous practices that were ever indulged in by any person on the earth, and for what? Because I have such an influence over these men who are sitting here; because you all hearken to your leader. I would to God that this was altogether the truth, for I tell you, in the name of the Lord, that there would not be a professed Latter-day Saint in this Territory, but what would live his religion. They think we are all one, but when the Saints gather here they are far from being one; they have not yet learned to be one in Christ, they do not understand the principle of being one in a church capacity, to say nothing about being one in a family capacity, or in a neighborhood capacity. The people might have known, long ago, what the difficulty is, if the influences, temptations, and lusts that are in us naturally are given way to, and we are led captive at the will of him that rules the world; that forms the grand difficulty.

Do you want to know the reason why I speak of our being so comfortably situated this morning in so comfortable a meetinghouse? We can return home and sit down and warm our feet before the fire, and can eat our bread and butter, &c., but my mind is yonder in the snow, where those immigrating Saints are, and my mind has been with them ever since I had the report of their start from Winter Quarters (Florence), on the 3rd of September. I cannot talk about anything, I cannot go out or come in, but what in every minute or two minutes my mind reverts to them; and the questions—whereabouts are my brethren and sisters who are on the Plains, and what is their condition—force themselves upon me and annoy my feelings all the time. And were I to answer my own feelings, I should do so by undertaking to do what the conference voted I should not do, that is, I should be with them now in the snow, even though it should be up to the knees, up to the waist, or up to the neck. My mind is there, and my faith is there; I have a great many reflections about them.

Have any of you suffered while coming here? Yes. How many of you sisters present buried your husbands, or your fathers, or your mothers, or children, on the Plains? How many of you brethren buried your wives? Have you suffered, and been in peril and trouble? Yes, you had to endure anguish and pain from the effects of cholera, toil, and weariness. Do you live your religion when you get here, after all the trouble, afflictions, and pains you have passed through to come to Zion? And to a pretty Zion! Men and women start across the Plains for this place, and are they willing to wade through the snow? Yes. To travel through snow storms? Yes. To wade rivers? Yes. What for? To get to Zion. And here we are in Zion, and what a Zion! Where it is necessary for the cry of reformation to go through the land, both a spiritual and temporal reformation. God is more merciful than man can be, and it is well for us. Again, when I consider the backsliding of the people, and their sins, I will not ask God to be more merciful, and have more sympathy towards me, than I have for my brethren and sisters.

A good many teams have already gone out to meet the Saints who are struggling to gain this place; I can hardly keep from talking about them all the time, for when I am preaching they are uppermost in my mind. The brethren were liberal last Sunday in turning out to meet them with teams, still if any more feel desirous of going to their assistance, I will give them the privilege, and advise them to take feed, not only for their own animals, but also for those of the brethren who have already gone out, for they will very likely be short. But I should be more particularly thankful if the minds of this community could be so impressed and stirred up, so wakened up, that when those poor brethren and sisters who are now on the Plains do arrive they may be able to say of a truth and in very deed, “God be thanked, we have got to Zion.” But fearfulness and forebodings of disappointment to them are in my feelings. How far they may be disappointed, I do not know.

I do not wish to be personal in this congregation, but let me say to the authorities, to the Elders of Israel, the Seventies, High Priests, Bishops, or any other quorum or class of officers, if you will appoint meetings and have only those present whom we wish to be there, I will then tell you how to commence a reformation. I will there be particular and personal in my remarks, if necessary, and I will talk to you as severely as I already have to some of the quorums. Now then, morally reform. “In what?” In everything. Reform your moral character, and be at least as moral as you would if you belonged to a Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist church, or to the Roman Catholics: be as moral as those classes of people, for heaven’s sake. Then there will be a chance for you to reform in spirit, and to get the light of eternity to shine upon your efforts.

There are a great many things to be taught and practiced. I have frequently thought that I would rather preach to and baptize new converts than to fashion over the old ones, for you can seldom get a good pattern out of them. Some will be full of seams and checks, and you never can make a sound piece out of them. If I had the material to work with I would rather make new ones, than patch up the old ones: but as we have not the new materials to work upon, we must patch up the old ones. Patch up yourselves—make your characters comely to each other. I am not so anxious about the Spirit; let a man walk as pure and holy as the Gods and angels, and then see if there will not be the light of eternity in him. Let a man or woman walk without spot or blemish and the Spirit and power of God Almighty will be with them all the time, and the angels of God will be round about them all the time, they will be preserved to do the will of God preparatory to an eternal exaltation.

Do not talk to me and tell me that you are so backslidden and dark, but reform and get the light of God within you. Some get up here and say, “I will live my religion, I will brethren; O pray for me, I will live my religion, if it costs me my life.” Yes, some of the great men of Israel talk in that style. Some of the Presidents come here and say, “I will live my religion, God being my helper, if it takes away my life.” When a man talks about his religion costing him his life, I want to ask that man if he has any common sense about him. Have you any true philosophy, argument, light, or intelligence in the least degree? “O yes, we are philosophers.” Then ask yourselves from whence you derive your lives, your means, your property, everything you can enjoy in time and eternity. Do you receive them outside of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? No you do not. And still a man will get up here and say, “I will serve the Lord, if it costs me my life.” I will say what I said yesterday, such a man is a fool. Such a man is condemned, and the wrath of God is upon him. His eyes are closed, and he is no more fit for a President of the Seventies, or any other quorum, than a red hot limekiln is for a powder house. Cut such a man off from the Church, for he has backslidden to that degree that nothing but death stares him in the face, when he looks to God and Christ with a view of keeping their law. We wish those rotten branches cut off from the Church, severed from the trunk of the tree; slash them off, and put a little wax on where you cut the limb off, that the wound may heal over, and the tree grow more thrifty. May the Lord bless us. Amen.

A Discourse by President Heber C. Kimball, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 2, 1856.

You have heard what brother Brigham has said to you today, and his words are as true as any that were ever spoken by Moses, by the Prophet Joseph Smith, or by any other man that ever lived or is now living upon the face of the earth.

Were this people living their religion as faithfully as they ought to, when a person rose up to teach you the principles of life and salvation, his mind would be free, his tongue would be loosed, and you would be able to draw from him those instructions best adapted to your feelings and circumstances. But at times it is almost impossible for a man to speak to this people. It seemed to brother Grant and me, in the Social Hall the other night, as though every person in that congregation had their hearts shut against our words; and in our congregations here I occasionally notice more or less of the same feeling. This may be measurably due to a murmuring spirit, which I am rather inclined to believe some of you have, and I will tell you wherein. Some find fault with and blame brother Brigham and his Council, because of the sufferings they have heard that our brethren are enduring on the Plains. A few of them have died, and you hear some exclaim, “What an awful thing it is! Why is it that the First Presidency are so unwise in their calculations? But it falls on their shoulders.” Well, the late arrival of those on the Plains cannot be helped now, but let me tell you, most emphatically, that if all who were entrusted with the care and management of this year’s immigration had done as they were counseled and dictated by the First Presidency of this Church, the sufferings and hardships now endured by the companies on their way here would have been avoided. Why? Because they would have left the Missouri River in season, and not have been hindered until into September.

There is a spirit of murmuring among the people, and the fault is laid upon brother Brigham. For this reason the heavens are closed against you, for he holds the keys of life and salvation upon the earth; and you may strive as much as you please, but not one of you will ever go through the strait gate into the kingdom of God, except those that go through by that man and his brethren, for they will be the persons whose inspection you must pass. I tell you this plain truth, and you may do what you think best with it.

Three handcart companies have arrived in safety and in good season, and with much less sickness and death than commonly occur in wagon companies. Does it make a man sick to labor and be diligent? Let me sit down and be inactive in mind and body, let me cease building and making improvements, or doing something useful, and I should not live six months, nor would brother Brigham, because we have become so inured to occupation.

If the immigration could have been carried on as dictated by brother Brigham, there would have been no trouble. The devil has tried to hedge up the way, so that we should not bring about the wise plans devised by our President, and has tried to make those plans look as disagreeable and as miserable as possible. Our brethren and sisters on the Plains are in my mind all the time, and brother Brigham has given, to those who wish it, the privilege of going back to help bring them in. If I do not go myself I will send a team, though I have already sent back nearly all my teams, and so has brother Brigham. Those who have gone back never will be sorry for or regret having done so. If brothers Joseph A. Young, my son William H., George D. Grant, and my son David P. had not gone to the assistance of those now on the Plains, I should always have regretted it. If they die during the trip, they will die while endeavoring to save their brethren; and who has greater love than he that lays down his life for his friends? Manifest your love by your works. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments;” by this you shall know that you love him. If you love brothers Brigham, Heber, Jedediah, and the Twelve, please to keep our commandments that are given to you from day to day, and you will be blest and exalted. I do not want a woman to tell me that she loves me, when she does not keep my commandments, for her statement would be vague and foolish.

Were I in the situation of some of you, I would not sleep another night before starting to the assistance of the people that are now struggling through the snow. I would not wait until tomorrow, I would start today, and I would toil until I reached those brethren, and they were in this valley. When the brethren who went back first met them, they felt as though they were truly saviors to them; and when they came into their midst, they would not permit them to go ten rods from them, for while one of them was present they felt as though they were safe, as though they would be preserved from misery, from starvation, and death. And yet, perhaps, some of these very persons we are striving to save may turn against the Church, and become our most bitter enemies.

Those that have died, I presume were some of the best men and women in the company, and the most faithful. Why did not the Lord take the ungodly? It may be that He thought He would let the devil handle them a little, and kill a few of them, and the devil is so much of a financier that he will not kill his own subjects. Well, if he has slain the Saints with God’s permission, and they were a good people coming to Zion to serve God and seek for eternal glory, they have gone home happy, and we will see them again. And they will thank God that they stepped out of the world when they did, for if they had come here they would have seen the wickedness of some of this people, and perhaps they would have become unrighteous too.

As brother Brigham has said, I would rather be helping in those on the Plains than to be here, if circumstances and duty would permit. We offered our offering and started to go, but the Lord ordered it otherwise and we came home. But we have done a better work than if we had gone, for the brethren would have said, “Brother Brigham is there with his Council, and we will sit down here and roast our shins, say our prayers and lull ourselves to sleep.” There would have been no general stir in behalf of our brethren on the Plains; but scores and hundreds have now gone to meet them, and they have had good weather so far, have they not?

I cannot account for the barrier that is between you and the Lord in any other way, only that there is quite a sympathy at work against brother Brigham and his Council. But there is not a thing which he has dic– tated but what has come out right, and will now, and will work together for good to those that love God and keep His commandments. We have to acknowledge the hand of God in all things; and that man or woman that feels to murmur and complain is in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, and does not know it. May God have mercy on you. Amen.

A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, November 2, 1856.

Brother Kimball, in his remarks, touched upon an idea that had not previously entered my mind, that is, that some of the people were dissatisfied with me and my counselors, on account of the lateness of this season’s immigration. I do not know but what such may be the case, as I am aware that those persons now on the Plains have a great many friends and relatives here; but it never came into my mind that I was in the least degree censurable for any person’s being now upon the Plains. Why? Because there is not the least shadow of reason for casting such censure upon me. I am about as free from what is called jealousy, as any man that lives; I am not jealous of anybody, though I know what the feeling is; but it never troubled me much, even in my younger days. Neither am I suspicious of my brethren, therefore I was not suspecting any censure of the kind just named.

Aside from entire want of foundation, and aside from my freedom from jealousy and suspicion, there are other reasons why I could not be expected to have indulged in the suspicion of such a charge. Our general epistles usually go from here twice a year, and the immigration, the gathering of the people, is dictated in those epistles, with a considerable degree of minute detail; I also advance many ideas on the same subject, from time to time, which are written and published; and I write a great many letters on this subject, and many of these are published.

There is not a person, who knows anything about the counsel of the First Presidency concerning the immigration, but what knows that we have recommended it to start in season. True, we have not expressly, and with a penalty, forbidden the immigration to start late, but hereafter I am going to lay an injunction and place a penalty, to be suffered by any Elder or Elders who will start the immigration across the Plains after a given time; and the penalty shall be that they shall be severed from the Church, for I will not have such late starts. You know my life; there is not a person in this Church and kingdom but what must acknowledge that gold and silver, houses and lands, &c., do multiply in my hands. There is not an individual but what must acknowledge that I am as good a financier as they ever knew, in all things that I put my hands to. This is well known by the people, and they consider me a frugal, saving man, therefore there is no ground or room for their suspecting that my mismanagement caused the present sufferings on the Plains. I presume that brother Kimball never would have thought of such an idea, had he not heard it.

Say that we start a company from the Missouri River as late as the first of June, and allow them three months in which to perform the journey, then they have time to travel moderately and one month of good weather for leeway, in which to finish the journey, provided they do not complete it in three months; then they may be ninety days or more in coming a thousand miles, which a child of four years old could walk it in that time. They may stop and feed their teams, and after they arrive they will have the autumn in which to look round and prepare for winter. This is my policy, and then during the first half of the journey the cattle can get what is called prairie grass while it is at its best, for it is easily killed by frost, and cattle must have the privilege of feeding upon it before it is too dry, or frostbitten. The month of June is the best month for that grass, and this all know who are acquainted with the western prairies. Then they come to the mountain grass in the latter part of their journey, which though probably dry by the time they get to it, is filled with nutrition, nearly as much so as grain, and will fatten cattle.

They can come along moderately, take their time, and arrive here in August. They should be here in that month, what for? To help us harvest our late wheat, corn, potatoes; to help get up wood, put up fences and prepare for winter. This plan also puts into the possession of newcomers time and ability to secure to themselves their winter’s provision. Do you not see that such is the result? I have known this all the time. I have always said, send the companies across the Plains early. Companies have suffered loss upon loss of lives and property, but never by the dictation of the First Presidency. Do you not readily understand that if the immigration had been here a few months ago, or by the first of September, that they would have had opportunity to rest, and then to secure wheat, to lay up a few potatoes, to get up wood and lay in the staple necessaries for winter?

But our Elders abroad say, by their conduct all the time, that we here in the mountains do not understand what is wanted in the east, as well as they do. They do not proclaim it in so many words, but their conduct does, and “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Their actions assert that they know more than we do, but I say that they do not. If they had sent our immigration in the season that they should have done, you and I could have kept our teams at home; we could have fenced our five and ten acre lots; we could have put in our fall wheat; could have got up wood for ourselves and for the poor that cannot help themselves; and thus we might have been providing for ourselves, and making ourselves comfortable; whereas, now your hands and mine are tied.

This people are this day deprived of thousands of acres of wheat that would have been sowed by this time, had it not been for the misconduct of our immigration affairs this year, and we would have had an early harvest, but now we may have to live on roots and weeds again before we get the wheat. I look at this matter as plainly as I do upon your faces. I have a philosophical forecast, and I do know the results of men’s work; I know what the conduct of this people will produce in their future life. If I have not this power naturally, God has surely given it to me.

Well, what shall be done? Why, we must bear it. The Elders east fancy that they know more about what is wanted here than we do, and we have to bear it. Let me have had the dictation of the emigration from Liverpool, and I could have brought many more persons here, and at a cost of not more than from three to five dollars of what it has now cost, provided I could have dictated matters at every point. That is not boasting; I only want to tell you that I know more than they know. But what have we to do now? We have to be compassionate, we have to be merciful to our brethren.

Here is brother Franklin D. Richards who has but little knowledge of business, except what he has learned in the Church; he came into the Church when a boy, and all the public business he has been in is the little he has done while in Liverpool, England; and here is brother Daniel Spencer, brother Richards’ First Counselor and a man of age and experience, and I do not know that I will attach blame to either of them. But if, while at the Missouri River, they had received a hint from any person on this earth, or if even a bird had chirped it in the ears of brothers Richards and Spencer, they would have known better than to rush men, women, and children on to the prairie in the autumn months, on the third of September, to travel over a thousand miles. I repeat that if a bird had chirped the inconsistency of such a course in their ears, they would have thought and considered for one moment, and would have stopped those men, women, and children there until another year.

If any man or woman complains of me or of my Counselors, in regard to the lateness of some of this season’s immigration, let the curse of God be on them and blast their substance with mildew and destruction, until their names are forgotten from the earth. I never thought of my being accused of advising or having anything to do with so late a start. The people must know that I know how to handle money and means, and I never supposed that anybody had a doubt of it. It will cost this people more to bring in those companies from the Plains, than it would to have seasonably brought them from the outfitting point on the Missouri River. I do not believe that the biggest fool in the community could entertain the thought that all this loss of life, time, and means, was through the mismanagement of the First Presidency.

I know how to dictate affairs; and no man need to have walked in darkness touching his duty with regard to the foreign immigration. You can read their duty in our epistles, letters, and sermons; and what is the purport of those documents, on this point? That we are new settlers in a wild and uninhabited country, and are thrown upon our own resources; that we need all our teams and means to prepare for those persons who are coming, instead of crippling us by taking our bread, men, and teams, and going out to meet them. And if the present system continues, this people will be found like the Kilkenny cats, which eat up each other clear to their tails, and they were left jumping at one another; such operations will financially use us up.

Last year my back and head ached, and I have been about half mad ever since, and that too righteously, because of the reckless squandering of means and leaving me to foot the bills. Last year, without asking me a word of counsel, without a word being spoken to me about the matter, there was over sixty thousand dollars of indebtedness incurred for me to pay. What for? To fetch a few immigrants here, when I could have brought the whole of them with one quarter of the means.

What is the cause of our immigration being so late this season? The ignorance and mismanagement of some who had to do with it, and still, perhaps they did the best they knew how.

Are those people in the frost and snow by my doings? No, my skirts are clear of their blood, God knows. If a bird had chirped in brother Franklin’s ears in Florence, and the brethren there had held a council, he would have stopped the rear companies there, and we would have been putting in our wheat, &c., instead of going on to the Plains and spending weeks and months to succor our brethren. I make these remarks because they are true.

As to the companies now out, we must bring them in; and another year we will send men to the Missouri River who understand the right management of affairs, and will send them in the speediest conveyances, so that they may not get the “big head” before they arrive there, and then they may be able to do as we tell them.

Can people come across the Plains with handcarts? Ask brothers Edmund Ellsworth, Daniel D. McArthur and William Bunker, who led the three handcart companies that have already arrived; and the brethren and sisters in those companies state that they crossed quicker and easier than the wagon companies.

Those who counseled the companies to come on have nearly all gone back to their assistance, after staying at home but about two days, after their return from a long mission, thus manifesting their faith by their works.

I cannot help what is out of my reach, but I am on hand to send more teams, and to send and send, until, if it is necessary, we are perfectly stopped in every kind of business. Brother Heber says that he will send another team, and I mean to send as many more as he does; I ought to send more than brother Heber, for I am fourteen days older than he is. I can send more teams, but I do not intend that the fetters shall be on me another season.

I will mention something more. You cannot hear George D. Grant, Daniel Spencer and others of the lately returned missionaries speak without eulogizing Franklin D. Richards. They are full of eulogizing Franklin D. Richards, but they need to be careful or they will have the “big head” and become as dead and devoid of the Spirit as old pumpkins. And with them it is, “What could I have done without brother George? And what could we have done without brother Franklin? And when you hear me calling you Rabbi, know ye that I want to be called Rabbi;” and so it goes, but I suppose that this is not what they do it for.

Don’t you know that I know whether you are good for anything, or not, without my praising you? I know all about you, without telling what great things you have done, and what you have not done. But the very spirit some have in them of pride, arrogance, and self-esteem, has led men and women to die on the Plains, by scores, at least their folly has. And if they had not had any such spirit about them, God would have whispered to them to have held a council, and would have stopped them from rushing their brethren and sisters into such suffering. But we must now rescue those people, and may God help us to do it. Amen.