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of whom the Lord had said—“ They shall be called by my name, and I will save them ;" and for generations he had striven to do so. When pursued by the hosts of Pharaoh He had delivered them from Egyptian bondage; He had destroyed the Hittites and other heathen nations, and had given them possession of the land of Canaan, and in every way had tried to bless them; yet they would not be blessed, and in the Prophet Isaiah's writings we read that they had transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken the everlasting covenants. Do you think the Gentile Christian nations have rebelled? I know they have. Take, for in stance, the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of the world, as found in this book-the Bible. He commanded His Apostles to go to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. How many methods of baptism were practised in those days? Just as many as there were saviors-one. How many methods of laying on of hands for the Holy Ghost? One. How many methods of obtaining the spirit of prophecy and the gifts of healing and the discerning of spirits? One. One God, one faith, and one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and one only. Well, the Apostles went and preached this gospel, yet one would vary a little on one point, and another on another, and those who took the gospel and ran here and there would introduce items of doctrine that were altogether imaginary. Do we find any curious ideas advanced in our day? Yes, I can relate a circumstance that I once heard myself, from one of the first elders in this church. He was preaching to the people on the principle of adultery, and told them that, according to the law of the Lord, whosoever commits

adultery shall have his blood shed. But the idea striking him that millions had committed this crime whose blood had never been shed, he thought this could not be correct, and so to improve it he said if their blood was not shed in this life it would be in the resurrection. What an absurdity! There is no blood. there. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Does not this show to you how these little things will creep into the Church? Have we the power and authority and the method of detecting every such error? We have. Do you know what they are? Some of you do, and if you do not I shall not tell you to-day. But we are in possession of the means by which to detect every error that comes into the church, and to decide satisfactorily on every point, and to decide what is and what is not true.

Its

The gospel is a fountain of truth, and truth is what we are after. We have embraced the truth-namely, the gospel of the son of God. first principles are to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to repent of our sins, then go down into the waters of baptism for the remission of our sins, and have hands laid upon us for the reception of the Holy Ghost, which will lead us into all truth. If there are any of my friends or enemies here who do not know what "Mormonism" is, I am telling them. We believe in God our Father. This leads me right to another point that I have not much time to talk about. I recollect preaching once in the old bowery with regard to our Father and God, the Being we worship and whom we think so much of. There was a Baptist minister present; he was staying at my house. He was a kind, friendly man, and was on his way to the gold mines. He was sitting beside me. I wanted to leave

him in a puzzle. I would not tell him, but brought him right to the point, and there left him. When we got home, said he, "Oh! brother Young, you came right to the point exactly, and I did pray that you might tell us what kind of a being God is." I replied, "I left you in a puzzle on purpose for you to guess it. You have read it frequently, and you can hardly read the Bible at all without reading precisely what kind of a being our Father is." Said he, "I am not aware that I know anything about it." I asked him if he could tell me what kind of a being Adam was. "Oh! Adam was a man like I am." I asked him if he believed in the history of the creation, as given in Genesis by Moses, for if he did he would find that God said to His associates, "Let us go down and make man in our own image and likeness." He believed the history given by Moses, and had read the passage to which I referred. "Then," said I, "you must believe that Adam was created in the exact image of the Father." He had never thought of that in his life. I told him I had read that many times to Christians and to Christian ministers, but they would not believe what was in the Bible. Says Jesus, "Whosoever has seen me has seen the Father." He is the Being the Latter-day Saints worship; He is a man-God. Can you get a better term than that-a God-man? It is said that Jesus is the only begotten of the Father. It

is strange that people cannot understand it, but they cannot unless they are told. How can we know unless we are told, and how can we tell the people unless the Lord tells us to do so? Faith comes by hearing the word of God declared, and this must be declared by those having authority. This character whom we serve is God, the God and Father of our Lord

Jesus Christ and the Father of our spirits, if the Apostle tells the truth; if he has not, who can correct him unless they have a revelation from the heavens ? I have had a great many ministers tell me that I must understand that spiritually. I have told them that I read and understood it just as it was, and if it was not right, and they could give the correct meaning (which it was impossible for them to do without revelation), they were under condemnation before the Lord if they did not do so. That would stop them.

Our Lord Jesus Christ-the Savior, who has redeemed the world and all things pertaining to it, is the only begotten of the Father pertaining to the flesh. He is our elder brother, and the heir of the family, and as such we worship him. He has tasted death for every man, and has paid the debt contracted by our first parents. What about this? I am not going to tell this, for I have a few more ideas with regard to the Christian world that I wish to lay before you. Why have they wandered so far from the path of truth and rectitude? Because they left the Priesthood and have had no guide, no leader, no means of finding out what is true and what is not true. It is said the Priesthood was taken from the, Church, but it is not so, the Church went from the Priesthood, and continued to travel in the wilderness, turned from the commandments of the Lord, and instituted other ordinances. There are a great many churches that do not believe in ordinances at all, and there are some called Christians who do not believe in the blood of the Savior, and that he, himself, was nothing more nor less than a good man. If they believe in the baby resurrection, or that a person who had committed adultery would have his blood shed in the

resurrection, it would be just as consistent as to believe what they do believe. These ideas are all wrong.

The Christian world struggled on until the days of the Reformation. But what of the Reformation? Nothing, only it shows that there were some few among them who had courage to come out against the orthodox principles ordained, published, and proclaimed by the Priests. They had an idea in their minds that the Lord was going to do something for the people, but they could not tell what. There was a spirit upon them that prompted them to declare against the wickedness of those professing to be Christians. Did they profess to know enough to take the truth and leave the error? No; down to the days of my youth the Christians did not know any better than to renounce any doctrine that the Church believed from which they came. This is more or less the case with every denomination on the face of the earth. Some who call themselves Christians are very tenacious with regard to the Universalians, yet the latter possess many excellent ideas and good truths. Have the Catholics? Yes, a great many very excellent truths. Have the Protestants? Yes, from first to last. Has the infidel? Yes, he has a good deal of truth; and truth is all over the earth. The earth could not stand but for the light and truth it contains. The people could not abide were it not that truth holds them. It is the Fountain of truth that feeds, clothes, and gives light and intelligence to the inhabitants of the earth, no matter whether they are saints or sinners. Do you think there is any truth in hell? Yes, a great deal, and where truth is there we calculate the Lord has a right to be. You will not find the Lord where there is no truth. The devil had truth in his mouth as

well as lies when he came to mother Eve. Said he, "If you will eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will see as the gods see." That was just as true as anything that ever was spoken on the face of the earth. She did eat, her eyes were opened, and she saw good and evil. She gave of the fruit to her husband, and he ate too. What would have been the consequence if he had not done so ? They would have been separated, and where would we have been? I am glad he did eat. I am glad the fruit was given to mother Eve, that she ate of it, and that her eyes were opened, and that my eyes are opened, that I have tasted the sweet as well as the bitter, and that I understand the difference between good and evil.

When the Lord called upon His servant Joseph, after leading him along for years until he got the plates, from a portion of which the Book of Mormon was translated, “By and bye," said he, "you are going to organize my church and establish my kingdom. I am going to have a church on the earth. All these churches you have inquired about are wrong; they have truth amongst them, but not the Priesthood. They lack a guide to direct the affairs of the Kingdom of God on the earth— that is the keys of the priesthood of the Son of God." This tells the story. We possess the Priesthood. The Lord sent John to ordain Joseph to the Aaronic Priesthood, and when he commenced to baptize people he sent a greater powerPeter, James, and John, who ordained him to the apostleship, which is the highest office pertaining to the Kingdom of God that any man can possess on the face of the earth, for it holds the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and has power to dispense the blessings of the kingdom. This

priesthood is that which the Christian | talk about, not pertaining to the world do not possess, for they have Kingdom of God on the earth, but to taken leave of the kingdom and the the faith of this people before God, priesthood. Joseph bestowed this priesthood upon others, and this Church possesses it and its power, which enables us to detect all error, and to know what is true.

There are other things I wanted to

but I shall leave this for the present, as I feel that I have talked as long as is prudent for me. May the Lord God of Israel bless you, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

DISCOURSE by President D. H. Wells, delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt

Lake City, June 30th, 1867.

[REPORTED BY DAVID W. EVANS.]

-

JOSEPH SMITH TAUGHT BY REVELATION-THE

GOSPEL REASONABLE AND

CONSISTENT THE LORD WORKS THROUGH SIMPLE INSTRUMENTS-
MORMONISM FULL OF CHARITY.

I have been pleased whilst listening to the remarks of br. Eldredge. The recital of his reasons for receiving the principles of the gospel forcibly reminded me of the days of Joseph, and of the effect which those principles had on my mind as I heard them proclaimed by the servant of the Lord. Many of the principles which he taught were in the world— they were not new, yet it seemed as though they had never been thought of, comprehended, or understood by the children of men; at least, they had not been by me. I did not know anything about God my heavenly Father, nor the connection which existed between Him and the children of men, nor the object He had in view in sending them through this earthly probation, until I learned it from the prophet; and I apprehend that this is, to a very great extent,

the case with the world to-day. I had no more confidence in Joseph Smith being a prophet, or in his knowing anything about religion, than I have now in a juggler or a wandering mountebank. I knew nothing at all about Joseph, except what I had heard from his enemies or read in the papers.

It was not very far-only two or three counties-from where I was born, in the State of New York, that this work took its rise. I had frequently heard through the religious papers of the miracles that had been performed by the "Mormons," and I supposed the whole affair was a great humbug, that the Mormons were fanatics and very bad people. The days of my youth were days of religious excitement-the days of revivals, which so pervaded that section of country at that time-and I can well apprehend the effect these things

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must have had on the mind of the world termed a well-read or an

Joseph; he was a young man, I was but a boy, and I know how those revivals affected young minds in the neighbourhood in which I lived. Some of those preachers would hold their protracted meetings for days and weeks, and sometimes for a month, one meeting after another, every day and every evening, getting around the young with their influences, and concentrating their prayers, perhaps, on a single individual, and praying for no other, until he would say he had got religion and was converted. Suffice it to say, that I was disgusted with it, and did not believe in any of it, and rested my chance, so far as religion was concerned, on trying to do that which was right as near as I could, and running the risk.

In this frame of mind I was introduced to Joseph Smith, by Sidney Rigdon, who remarked, at the time, that he was the man who was talked about so much. He was a fine looking man; he did not say much to me nor I to him. Time passed along, and for years after I was occasionally thrown into his society, and frequently heard him speak; and, though I did not at first believe that he was inspired or that he was more than a man of great natural ability, I soon learned that he knew more about religion and the things of God and eternity than any man I had ever heard talk. I read the Book of Mormon and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants without their having any particular effect on my mind. I did not get the principles from either of these sources, but I obtained them from Joseph, and it seemed to me that he advanced principles that neither he nor any other man could have obtained except from the Source of all wisdom—the Lord himself. I soon discovered that he was not what

educated man; then where could he have got this knowledge and understanding, that so far surpassed all I had ever witnessed, unless it had come from Heaven? It commended itself to my understanding and my sober judgment, and although I admitted nothing, and did not embrace the gospel, but stood aloof, yet the words and principles which I heard from him had their effect on my mind.

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I had been a reader of the Scriptures, and had learned a great deal by heart in my youth in the Sunday school. I had read a great many religious publications, and had a tolerable idea of what the sects of the day believed with regard to the principles of salvation. I had inves-tigated and had been raised according to orthodox notions, and in my early youth I believed in the "Trinity. I investigated the principles of the Unitarians, who did not believe in the "Trinity," and also the doctrines of the Universalists, and I believed about as much in Universalism at the time I was introduced to Joseph as in any of the religions of the day, if not a little more, but had not united myself with any church organization, because I was not fully satisfied. I heard Joseph Smith state at one time in Nauvoo that whether "Mormonism” was right or wrong, the people were just as well without as with the ordinances taught and administered by the sectarians of the day. That was exactly what I thought, though I did not comprehend so much then in relation to the ordinances of the gospel, and those authorized to administer in them, as I afterwards learned. And although my understanding of these things may have been of slow growth, yet I can say and feel that it is grounded in the truths of heaven, for with the

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