Discourse

There is one thought that has weighed very much upon my mind during our Conference, and probably it is because of the peculiar circumstances and the changed conditions which surround us. It is the supreme importance of members of this Church living in close communion with God—the necessity for a living testimony in the breasts of every one of us, that each may know for himself or herself that the course which is being pursued is in accordance with the mind and will of God. ¶

If the officers of this Church were dependent upon the people, upon their sustenance, upon their confidence, and the people themselves did not know by any means except that which human wisdom would impart or human judgment justify, that they were taking the right course, we would be in a most unfortunate position, because constant changes are occurring. I need hardly refer to that which took place at our last Conference in order to bring this home to the minds of all. I allude now to the manifesto. ¶

If the Lord were not with this Church, if he were not directing His servants, and the people themselves did not have the testimony of Jesus concerning this work, the issuance of that manifesto would have had a fatal effect upon thousands, perhaps, in the Church. I can say for myself that I never shrunk from anything in my life as I did from that. I know it was God who dictated it—that it was issued in accordance with the requirements of the Spirit of God; and I also know that every member of this Church who is living in close communion with the Lord has had a testimony—notwithstanding their natural feelings with reference thereto, notwithstanding the painful consequences which followed its adoption in relation to existing family relations—that it was the right thing to do. The outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the people at the time, upon the people who have come since to this conference—the Spirit which has been bestowed upon us since we assembled, are all evidences to my mind that the Lord has borne a testimony to the Latter-day Saints concerning these matters. ¶

There are many things connected with this subject that no doubt, if time and opportunity afforded, might be talked about to the satisfaction of many present. I was much impressed by the arguments made yesterday as to the duties which we owe to our Government; and the line of distinction was drawn between religious and civil obligations. That distinction was made very plain, I presume, to every mind. While the argument was in progress the idea suggested itself to me that perhaps there might be some who would say, in listening to it and the revelations which God has given to us concerning our duties in regard to civil government, “Why, then, did you as a people place yourselves in an attitude of resistance to the laws which have been enacted?” For it is a well-known fact that many of our people have gone to prison, when by saying they were willing to obey the law—they were told, at least, in some instances—they might have escaped punishment. Now, to some persons there seems to be something irreconcilable, or that needs explanation, in this matter. ¶

You may remember that yesterday afternoon a distinction was drawn—though this was not dwelt upon—particularly in favor of constitutional law. We have held for many years—in fact since 1862—that any law directed against our marriage relations—which we believe to be a part of our religion—was in violation of the first amendment to the Constitution. In that view we have been sustained by very many good judges. There was the law of God on the one hand and the law of the land upon the other, the latter, as we believe, enacted by prejudice and leveled against our religion to destroy us. We considered it necessary, however, that this law should be obeyed to the very uttermost. This was explained to some extent during our last conference. But these are the reasons we have had: we felt as though we would endure all the penalties that could be inflicted upon us legally to vindicate the principle of religious liberty; we felt that our principles were being infringed upon by laws of this description. Whether our fellow citizens appreciate what we have done or not, we certainly feel that we have done a good work in thus standing in passive resistance—not active resistance—to the law which we regarded as an encroachment upon religious freedom. Every patriotic man in this country ought to applaud a people or an individual who stands up in defense of any principle that pertains to human rights. We have done this—we intended to do it—to call attention to what we looked upon as a wrong. ¶

We endeavored by our sacrifice to arrest the progress of this crusade against our religious liberty; we honestly believed that we had a right to act as we did. That we have failed, however, in persuading the nation, that we have failed in making apparent to the people and convincing them of this, is very clear at the present time. We have utterly failed. We have carried this to such an extent that the Lord himself has signified His acceptance of the sacrifices and offerings of the Latter-day Saints. He has said to us, “It is enough now. You having done your duty, this matter must rest with Me;” and we have, in consequence, sustained the issuance of that manifesto, undertaking to comply with the law—that we will do our best to carry it out, having done all in our power up to the present to vindicate our rights. But the day will come—and I am not afraid to risk my reputation, if I have one, as a prophet—when that which we have done will be recorded with admiration and praise. When a people can make a sacrifice such as we have, when by the mere expression of a few words we could have saved ourselves ignominy and pain of imprisonment and the sad consequences involved to the wives and children of those called upon to suffer, it will be written in history that what was offered to us we declined, preferring to endure all these things to vindicate our rights. ¶

Now the question arises, “What is going to be done?” It has seemed to me that a magnanimous Government like ours might cease its operations against those who are involved conscientiously, who believed that they were acting according to the command of God. I have hoped for this. I hoped at one time that our persecutions, and the manner in which the courts were proceeding against us, would have the effect of calling the attention of the nation to those wrongs under which we were suffering. But it is a lesson of history, repeated in our case, that persecutions only increase by the addition of victims. Every victim adds more to the flame of persecution. This is the history of the past; it is illustrated and confirmed in our own history. Every fresh victim, instead of arresting or lightening the persecution, only serves to intensify the feeling of determination that this must be crushed out at all cost and hazard. Every man that went to prison only seemed to be an evidence of our obduracy and our determination to defy the law, and to strengthen the opinion that we must be subdued and broken down. ¶

Well, now, a serious question presents itself before us respecting the present condition of things. Here are women—very many of them—and children placed in a sad position. These women are bound to their husbands by ties that have been considered the most sacred, and among us they have been honored quite as much as though they occupied the position of legal wives. What shall be done in reference to them? It is a serious question—one that comes to us constantly. It is one that I hope will be answered by the action of the Government. When it becomes convinced of our sincerity in issuing this manifesto declaring that plural marriages should cease, let us hope that some favorable action will be taken in regard to existing relations. ¶

I am not certain yet that we shall be disappointed in this. I believe we have already seen, in effect, a great softening of feeling upon these points, and the people must understand—they should understand—that what we do shall be done in good faith; that we do not deal in deception. Each one must seek to accommodate himself to affairs so that we shall not create a feeling that will be a continuation of the antipathy manifested through this doctrine. So far as our sincerity is concerned, I think it is of the utmost importance that the world should know that when we make a promise of this kind we mean exactly what we say—that we are not dealing falsely, that we are treating this matter in good faith, leaving the result with God our Eternal Father; and that we will to the best of our ability accommodate ourselves to the changed condition of affairs. I have no doubt if we do this that, in the end, the result will be all we can desire. ¶

None of us doubt that God is controlling this work to suit His own purposes and to fulfil His own designs. I have been compelled to acknowledge my own blindness; I never had such a feeling concerning my own ignorance and inability to comprehend the plans and purposes of God as I have had of late. But I bow to His Supreme wisdom; it is infinite. He understands the end from the beginning; He has laid the foundation of this work. ¶

I have testified, I might say hundreds of times, before public men, that I believed if I had not done what I did in reference to plural marriage I would have been damned utterly. I have said this before leading men; I have said it before the President of the United States; I have said it wherever I have talked about the subject. I can only speak for myself; but the command came to me in such a form from my God that I believe I would have been damned if I had not obeyed it. Having this belief embedded in my very nature, what could I do but obey? It was either obedience on the right hand or damnation on the left. Yet, notwithstanding this, I obeyed the law; and hence it is, I say, we need the Spirit of God to be with us, because all these things come in conflict with all our pre-conceived ideas and that which we have framed in our own minds. We have to trust to our God for the results. He has laid the foundation of this work; He has carried it forward to the present time, and He will take care of it in the future. ¶

I say now publicly that it is the intention of the Latter-day Saints to obey the law and leave the results with the God of heaven. But some of our brethren have asked this question: “How can you reconcile it with consistency that our brethren who go into court now and say, ‘We will obey the law,’ whereas before all felt this to be wrong?” The conditions are entirely different, as you will see. It needs no deep penetration to perceive how differently we are situated now from what we were then. Our position is not at all what it was. We now say, “We bow in submission to the law.” It would have been almost a betrayal for some of us to have done this before. ¶

Suppose that a number of men were holding a citadel and the enemy on the outside demanded a surrender, the great bulk of those within would perhaps say, “No, we shall not surrender; we will maintain this citadel,” whereas the few would exclaim “Yes, we will surrender it,” and hoist the flag. Now the rest would feel that to be a betrayal on their part. But suppose on the other hand, that the whole body inside had been beleaguered for some time, and, finding it of no use to stand longer on the defensive, agreed to join in the surrender, then it would be no discredit to hoist the flag. This example may not exactly illustrate our position, but to my mind it has some features bearing upon it. Everyone can now join in the surrender honorably. We have made covenants it is true; but each man must arrange his affairs so that he would not violate those covenants, thereby bringing down the displeasure of God. But he must honor the law of the land. I do not know whether it is wise to talk too much upon this question, but I think we had better deal with it plainly and meet it squarely as it presents itself to us rather than dodge it. That is my view. ¶

I want to save this people if possible from distress, from sorrow—to save ourselves from the evils that the enemy would heap upon us if they could take the advantage. This they are trying to do by asserting that we are not honest, and so seeking to get us in continual trouble. This is not all necessary. This people have suffered for several years now as no people ever have before within the confines of the United States. We have suffered quietly, and our grief has not been much known. It has been concealed from the world to a very great extent. The anguish and misery that have been inflicted upon families have been born silently. We have passed through very serious trials, but I believe with all my heart that there is a brighter day dawning upon Zion. ¶

I would like to refer to the remarks made by President Woodruff this morning. He said that a short time ago there were no Apostles upon this stand. I do not know how you felt at that time—I had not the privilege of being and meeting with you; but I know how I and the brethren felt who were deprived of that opportunity. This is changed; glory be to God every day! We have freedom and we can meet with you and speak to you, and give you counsels as the Lord requires of us. We can entreat you so to live as to have a testimony in your hearts concerning this. ¶

I wish to allude to another point; I mentioned it yesterday. Some have said to us they believed that if we had taken the course Daniel did when he was put in the lion’s den, and the three Hebrew children when put in the fiery furnace, perhaps it would have been more heroic and more consistent with our profession as Latter-day Saints. A person looking at this superficially might think there was something in the spirit of it. I have no earthly doubt that if President Woodruff had been required to go into the lions’ den or into the fiery furnace, or to do anything else in the way of sacrificing his life in order to save this people, he would have done it. I have not a shadow of doubt that President Taylor would have done the same. All of us knew his courage and firmness. I will not speak of myself; but I do not believe there is one of these men holding the apostleship who would not gladly, had it been God’s will and the sacrifice would have sufficed, have given up his life to save this people. The three Hebrew children in taking the course they did involve only their own lives; their action did not involve the lives, liberties, and future of a great people. Therefore you can see that the analogy between their case and ours is not a complete one. ¶

When Daniel went into the lions’ den he himself was the sufferer; it was his own life only that was jeopardized. But suppose just for a second that the leaders of this people had said, “We will stand and resist this we will carry out this command of God in the face of the whole world”? What would have been the effect? Why, it would have involved this entire people, every member of this Church, every man and child in it. And how many are there who would have obeyed that doctrine and shown their faith? How many would perhaps have said, “You have no right to drag us into this—to involve us and our lives and our future, and everything that we have on earth in a sacrifice which only you yourselves are concerned in.” Can you not see the difference between the three cases I have quoted? It is as plain as it can be. ¶

God guided those men of old to do as they did. God has guided His Church until now; He guided us to do what we have done, and in the history of His dealings with the children of men it will be recorded that we have made as great or greater sacrifices than any people that ever lived. ¶

Now I wish to say this much because I have heard expressions such as those to which I have referred; I have heard them too many times from those who themselves have shown their faith in the doctrines sufficiently to obey them. Well now, brethren and sisters, this is the great point of all I have said thus far: Each one of us should have the light of the Spirit of God shining in his heart so that he may know for himself that which is right, that when we hear the voice of the true Shepherd we will recognize it. We may not be able to tell all the details, but we will know by the testimony of the Spirit of God within us that which is right. This is the testimony which it gives to the Latter-day Saints. They know when they hear the voice of a servant of God and they understand it. They may not be able to explain all of the reasons connected with this, but they have a living testimony of the truth within them. ¶

Go and plead with the Lord; ask Him to remove the darkness from your minds, to give you the light of the Holy Spirit, that it may shine upon your understanding, that you may comprehend it, and you will not wait upon Him in vain. I can assure you that He will hear your prayers and answer them; He will fill you with peace and joy, and you will know for yourselves that this is God’s work; and you will know that all your wisdom, the wisdom of men, of those standing at your head, is not alone sufficient to guide this Church. We may mark out paths for traveling, but the Lord directs our ways, and we cannot walk safely without. We may have our ideas as to how this work is going to be built up and established, but the Lord will show us, as has been quoted in our hearing by Brother Franklin D. Richards, that “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than man’s ways.” We would never have reached these valleys had not the Lord guided us; and we can look back and see how wonderfully His promises have been fulfilled in our behalf. Scarcely a step could have been taken of our own choice if we had not been upheld by God and had He not sustained us in all our doings. So it will be to the end, and we will be obliged to confess that his wisdom has done it all. ¶

There is another subject that I would like to mention before we adjourn this Conference. Remarks have been made to us concerning home industries and their importance. Talk about revelation! You go and read the sermons of President Young, and if you do not believe now that he was a prophet, I think after you have read them you will be sure he was, because he talked as a prophet to this people concerning their future, and his words were full of godlike wisdom, and he poured them out in a constant stream during his lifetime. One of his great themes was that we should become a self-sustaining people. Our minds have diverted from this to a great extent. I believe, however, that circumstances will be so arranged that we shall be compelled to pay attention to these matters. It should be the aim of every man to try and become self-sustaining, and to have his family self-sustaining. It is my desire to raise everything that is eaten and drunk by myself and my family. I have striven for this. I would like to have it so that I could have everything we wear produced here also. But what I wish to refer to now is this: ¶

We are allowing our young men throughout these valleys, by hundreds, to grow up in ignorance of skilled industries. I was recently at a conference in one of our Stakes—a large Stake, noted for the thrift of its people—and upon inquiry I found that there were only two boys in the settlement in which the conference was held learning trades, and very few anywhere else in the Stake. This to me is ominous of trouble, ominous of poverty—our young men growing up destitute of knowledge concerning skilled branches of business. I am in favor of education. I think no one who knows me will discredit me when I say that. But I am not in favor of book education at the expense of education in skill at manual labor. I have a number of sons, and I would rather they should be destitute of book learning, much as I value it, than be destitute of a knowledge of using their hands and their bodies in earning their living. I believe they would be better citizens if they would learn how to work than they would be, with all the learning that they could get, if they did not possess these other qualities. But there is no necessity that our children should be taught one branch alone. They can be given a good education, and at the same time be taught some skilled branch of labor. I think it is an error for us to send our young men to school till they are eighteen, or nineteen, or twenty years of age without teaching them some industrial occupation, because it is from fifteen to twenty that boys learn to use their muscles and how to toil without it being burdensome to them. But you take a young man after then, if he has learned nothing but what is in books, and put him to hard manual labor, and he shrinks from it. Very few men can stand it. They want to get easy employment. while I do not think it necessary that all should follow manual labor, it is necessary that all should be taught these branches, so that they can be useful. Then if they can make their living by following some lighter occupation that will be more congenial to them, they can do so. But it seems to me, brethren and sisters, that this is a subject that ought to receive our attention. We are importing skilled laborers from abroad—carpenters, brick masons, etc., to supply the demand in this city and Territory. It think this is deplorable. We should be in a different condition. ¶

Pardon me if I allude to my own case in this matter, as I happen to be familiar with it. I have several sons, and I have offered each of them for one year to any of our brethren who would teach them mechanism. I have done this with all the sons that I have grown up, because I thought an education of this kind was very valuable. I would like my boys to learn every kind of trade. I would like them to be skillful. I would like them to use these glorious hands that God has given us, and this glorious brain, in a skilled manner. The man who can do this is a much more useful citizen. It is bad to see so many learning to drive a team and following teaming as an occupation. Almost anybody can learn to drive a team. A girl can learn it. I have seen girls that did it excellently. There is very little skill about that. Of course, a good teamster is a rare article; I am aware of that. Then we have men following farming who do not study farming and make a business of it. If you are going to make your children farmers, give them that knowledge that will qualify them; give them a knowledge of agricultural chemistry, so that they will understand the nature of soils, and how to improve soils, and the best manure for soils, and the best soils to produce certain articles. Give them skill in this direction. Let us take advantage of the opportunities that God has given us. There are no brighter intellects in this world than are to be found among the Latter-day Saints—young men of capability, young men who will make their mark if you will give them any kind of a chance. These young men will grow up and be a mighty race, if we will take the course that we should do with them. I feel that when a child is born the parents are indebted to that child. To bring it into the world as a waif; to launch it upon society without giving it a proper education and proper training and assistance is a great wrong. If we did this we would be like animals. It is the duty of every man and every woman who has a child to do everything in their power for that child, to qualify it to be a useful man or woman, and no pains should be spared in this direction. We live in our children. After we are gone we will live in our offspring, and our good qualities will be perpetuated in them if we will take the right course. ¶

This is a subject that admits of a great deal of talk, and it ought to be spoken about in our settlements and impressed upon the people. We should take pains to teach our boys and our girls everything that will make them useful, and help to give them a knowledge of the principles that God has revealed. In this way we will be a blessing to our children. They will rejoice in us, and they will arise and call us blessed. What a glorious thing it is to think that our posterity will honor us, and that they will say, "I know that my father was a good man; that he did all he could for me." "I know my mother was a good woman; she loved me and did all in her power to give me a good start and to furnish me with all the knowledge that she could to make me a useful woman," and to have those children quote the example of their parents to their posterity, and let it go down as a heritage from one generation to another, until we shall arise up in a generation that will be accepted of the Lord, and upon whom His blessing and His power will rest. We will soon enter upon the millennium. God has told us this; and it should be the desire of every man and woman in this Church that their posterity may live, not only for a generation or two, but throughout the entire millennium, and then throughout that period when Satan will be loosed again; that as long as time shall endure some of our posterity may be found among the friends of God, bearing the holy Priesthood, honoring God, keeping His commandments, not only through the millennium, but during that period when Satan will be loosed again to go forth and tempt the nations; that even then some of our descendants will be found numbered among the righteous, and continue to be numbered among them as long as time shall last. I think this is a desirable wish for every man. And let us lay the foundation now. Let us, as parents, influence our children. ¶

Let us make our mark upon our children, and give them a fair start; endow them with all the power that we have, to make them all that we desire them to be. Every parent should have this ambition. Every man and woman ought to live for their children, and not neglect them. I feel condemned sometimes because of public duties I cannot attend to my family as I would like; and my constant prayer to God is that He will give more of His holy Spirit to them, to make up for my lack of time with them. I think this is a good prayer. Let us try to make our children all that we would like them to be, as far as our influence goes. I say to you parents who have children in the covenant, if you will pray for them God will feel after them, and He will save your posterity. He has made promises to this people, and you cling to them, in the meantime doing all you can yourselves to have those promises fulfilled, so that there will be no neglect on your part. Your children may err, and do things that are sinful and are painful and sorrowful to you. But cling to them. Pray for them. Exercise faith in their behalf. Treat them with kindness; not, however, condoning their sins and their transgressions. But be full of charity, full of long-suffering, full of patience, and full of mercy to your children. Don't drive them away by your severity, or by being too strict. But be kind and merciful to them, correcting their faults when they need correcting, at the same time showing them that your corrections are not prompted by anything but love for them and for their happiness. God bless you, in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶