Discourse by Elder L. Snow, delivered in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake
City.--Blessings proportioned to faith and diligence.--Plainness of
the Gospel.--Naaman, the Assyrian.--How the Gospel found us.--The
same as that of New Testament.--Power of the Gospel.--Testimony
of the Elders.--What Philanthropists tried to do, the Lord
has done.--Joseph Smith.--His mission.--Obedience brings
knowledge.--Elders honest and brave as the ancients.--Knowledge not
confined to our leaders.--Falsehood refuted.--The dishonest will
apostatize.--Persecution promised.--The honest will receive the
truth.--The Latter-day work will triumph.
In addressing an assembly of Saints, I expect the benefit of their
prayers, without the ceremony of asking, being assured they are aware,
as well as I am, that our teachings and administrations in the Gospel
of life are blest according to our faith and prayers and the diligence
and attention we bestow.
I propose to make some general observations upon the Gospel and its
administrations, and in relation to its effects when received, and
the important blessings derived by this community through its divine
power and virtue. This Gospel, which God has commanded us to offer to
the world, is an order or system of things, simple, plain, and may
easily be understood. In regard to its principles--the nature of its
requirements and the precise kind and character of its blessings and
promises, no one, however ignorant or unlearned, needs to be left in
the dark any great length of time; but may discover its golden truths
and the emblazoned mark of divinity in its arrangements as distinctly
and as speedily as Naaman, the captain of the Assyrian host, found
divine virtue and the hand of divinity in the order prescribed to him
by Elijah, through which his leprosy was removed. In his case the
order of obtaining miraculous blessings, viz.: to immerse seven times
in Jordan, as prescribed by Elijah, was so simple, so plain, and in
regard to its divine efficacy, so easy of ascertainment, that the great
captain, at first, was exceedingly wrathy at the idea that God should
propose to work upon him through such easy and simple forms; but the
order through which he could be healed of his leprosy was prescribed of
God through the Prophet, and finally the Assyrian officer, through the
plain, common-sense reasoning of his servant, concluded to waive his
objections, and comply with the requirements; and having done so, he
received the promised blessing.
The first principles of the Gospel which we offer, and which put men
in possession of the revelations of God and of a knowledge of this
work, are precisely as simple, plain and as easy of understanding as
the order before alluded to, through which the heavens were opened in
Naaman's behalf.
The Gospel was brought to our respective locations, far remote from
these mountain vales. It found us citizens of many nations--speaking
our respective languages, each possessing his peculiar notions
and prejudices, with our associations and a strong attachment to
kindred, friends and country. However unpleasant, unkind, unjust
and inconsistent it might appear at first, we clearly foresaw that,
in receiving this Gospel, we should be compelled to break up those
associations and sever those attachments, leaving the lands of our
nativity, and going forth with our wives and children to a distant
land, of which we had but little knowledge. Yet a similar requisition
was made upon the House of Israel, in the land of Egypt; also upon Noah
and his family, and upon Abraham and the family of Lot, in the city of
Sodom, and upon the families of Lehi and Ishmael, as mentioned in the
Book of Mormon. But in the provisions of the Gospel which was offered
to us, there were fairness and safety; it proposed to give us, through
obedience to its requirements, a perfect knowledge of its divine
authenticity; so that in leaving our kindred, breaking up our social
relations, and going forth from our native lands, we should first
become perfectly assured that it was no human contrivance--something
gotten up to effect some political purpose, or to satisfy some
worldly ambition to achieve some private end through human cunning or
craftiness.
The Gospel was plain and simple in its requirements, and there could be
no mistaking the precise nature of its blessings and promises, nor the
manner and time in which they were to be reached.
The first feature in this system which struck us with surprise and
arrested our attention, was its perfect similarity, in all its
parts, with the Gospel as recorded in the New Testament. It required
repentance and a forsaking of sins--immersion in water for the
remission of sins, with a promise that, through the laying on of hands
by those having authority, people should receive the Holy Ghost, by
which a knowledge should be obtained of the truth of the doctrine.
Another remarkable feature which called into exercise our most serious
consideration, was the solemn testimony of the Elders, that they
possessed the right to administer these sacred ordinances by virtue of
the holy Priesthood committed to Joseph Smith through the ministration
of the Apostles, Peter, James and John. And furthermore, that this
solemn and most important fact should be revealed to every man upon his
faithful obedience to the Gospel requirements.
In these propositions, though at first seemingly strange, we saw
that everything was plain, fair and honorable. In doing what they
required, we should only do, in fact, what, as true-hearted believers
in the ancient Gospel, we ought to do, and if we failed to receive the
promised blessings, and thereby proved the Elders' testimony false,
our religious condition would, nevertheless, be then as good as any
other Christian's, and a little better, perhaps, because we should
have approached a little nearer to the doctrines of the Scriptures,
inasmuch as their true forms and ceremonies were concerned. Of course,
in this case, having proved to our satisfaction that there was no Holy
Ghost--no supernatural manifestations--no knowledge--no revelations
accompanying the Elders' administrations of the Gospel; no human
persuasion, no cunning sophistry could have induced us to leave our
homes and friends, to embark in a scheme which our common sense taught
us would eventuate in bitter disappointment and inevitable ruin; but,
like other Christians, we should have continued in the enjoyment of
friends and home, groping our way through religious darkness, expecting
nothing, hoping nothing, and receiving nothing.
But the fact that I am now speaking to assembled thousands of
intelligent and enlightened people, who received this Gospel with the
aforementioned fond considerations and lively expectations--gathered
here by their own free will and choice, out of almost every nation,
demonstrates most clearly, most forcibly and most solemnly, that
this system of life, this Gospel as proclaimed by Joseph Smith, has
been shown to us by the revelations of the Almighty--that it is
undeniably His will, His word and His message; not only this, but we
find within ourselves a fixed purpose--an unalterable resolution to
do, if need be, what many of us have already done; show the sincerity
of our convictions of these solemn truths, through sacrificing all we
possess--not even holding our lives as dear to us as this religion.
There was yet another prominent feature embraced in this order of
things, viz., where it found people in poverty, misery and in a
condition but a little above starvation, it spoke in positive terms
of future relief and effectual deliverance. It did not simply say,
"Be ye warmed and be ye clothed," but it declared plainly, and in
distinct terms, that the Lord had seen their bondage and oppression,
and heard their cries of sorrow and affliction, and had now sent His
Gospel for their deliverance, and would lead them into circumstances of
independence, where they could supply their own wants and necessities.
There, again, was something consistent and worthy of all praise and
admiration, and characteristic of our Great Parent, which we discover
in all of His dispensations, when they are in actual working order, as
they were in the case of Noah, and in calling Israel and making them an
independent people; likewise as in calling Lehi to establish a people
upon this continent, as well as in many other instances.
A religion or system is of very little account, where it possesses
no virtue nor power to better the condition of people, spiritually,
intellectually, morally and physically. Enoch's order of the Gospel did
for his people all this, and it has done the same in every instance,
when preached in its purity and obeyed in sincerity. Many of the
thousands of persons in these beautiful valleys, who formerly were
compelled, with their wives and children, to subsist in a half starved
condition--not owning a habitation, nor a foot of land, nor a horse,
cow, pig, nor chicken--in fact, not anything they could call their
own--subject at any moment, through the whim of their employer, to be
turned into the streets, miserable beggars; now own cabinet shops,
factories, mills, flocks and herds, beautiful gardens and orchards,
productive farms, wagons and carriages, dwelling in their own houses
in comfortable and easy circumstances. No one has any apprehension of
starvation within the jurisdiction of the Latter-day Saints.
The Gospel proposed these blessings at its announcement, and they have
been most miraculously accomplished. No other religious system could
have achieved such things, nor dared any other Christian denomination
venture to send out its missionaries "without purse or scrip," and
without a collegiate education, to declare to the people that they had
authority from God to administer the sacred ordinances of the Gospel,
through which should be revealed tangible evidence and knowledge of
its divinity, and of their being authorized to administer it, and
take the people from a state of poverty, and lead them thousands of
miles, and despite every obstacle, establish them as a comparatively
independent people in the midst of a wild desert country. That they
found the people poor, friendless and without the means of living, and
in servitude not much better than Egyptian bondage, as we found many
of them; they would have imparted no cheering news of an approaching
salvation from the God of heaven, but could only have exhorted them to
be contented and reconciled with their unhappy lot, and in no case must
they look for any new revelation or miraculous interposition.
What philanthropists have wished to accomplish, and have often
attempted, the Lord is now doing on a magnificent scale in this
great American Desert. Flourishing settlements, towns and cities are
rapidly being built, extending over a distance of five hundred miles
in length--hundreds of miles in width, through the untiring energy and
perseverance of a people formerly totally ignorant of such labors.
In these cities people live in harmony and peace; and robberies,
grog shops, gambling hells, houses of ill-fame and prostitution are
not known in any of our numerous towns and cities, except in some
instances where Christians (so called) possess a footing and influence.
Everywhere else this community flourishes without these demoralizing
institutions.
No one, however, prejudiced he may be, can scarcely avoid acknowledging
the palpable fact that this system has conferred miraculous blessings
upon thousands and tens of thousands, in the way of putting them
in possession of the means of sustaining themselves, after having
delivered them from oppression and tyranny little better than African
slavery: and no doubt our legislators at Washington, one and all,
would give us credit for our indefatigable and successful labors in
establishing an extensive and flourishing colony on a portion of our
government's domain, formerly inhabited only by savages and wild
beasts, provided we would admit this work to be the work of man, and
not of God--that it had been accomplished through the artifice and
wisdom of man, and not by the power, wisdom and revelations of God.
Joseph Smith, whom God chose to establish this work, was poor and
uneducated, and belonged to no popular denomination of Christians.
He was a mere boy, honest, full of integrity, unacquainted with
the trickery, cunning and sophistry employed by politicians and
religious hypocrites to accomplish their ends. Like Moses of old,
he felt incompetent and unqualified for the task--to stand forth as
a religious reformer, in a position the most unpopular--to battle
against opinions and creeds which have stood for ages, having had the
sanction and support of men the most profound in theological lore;
but God had called him to deliver the poor and honest-hearted of all
nations from their spiritual and temporal thralldom. And God promised
him that whosoever should receive and obey his message, and whosoever
would receive baptism for the remission of sins, with honesty of
purpose, should receive divine manifestations--should receive the Holy
Ghost--should receive the same Gospel blessings which were promised
and obtained through the Gospel, as preached by the ancient Apostles:
and this message, this promise, was to be in force wherever and to
whomsoever it should be carried by the Elders, God's authorized
messengers. So said Joseph Smith, the uneducated, the unsophisticated,
the plain, simple, honest boy.
It is through the virtue and force of this boy's statement that I
speak this afternoon to assembled thousands. In the integrity of my
heart, with honesty of purpose to know the the truth, I received
the message--I obeyed this form of doctrine, and I received, in the
most tangible and satisfactory manner, a divine manifestation, the
promised blessing--a knowledge of this work. Am I the only witness?
How is it with the experience of thousands whom I now address? Are
you also witnesses? If you are not, I ask you in the name of common
sense, Why are you here? Why did you leave your homes and countries,
giving your sanction to the truth of a system which promised you divine
manifestations, but which you failed in experiencing? Being honest
ourselves, if we cannot bear a solemn testimony of having received
divine manifestations of the great fact that God himself has founded
this order of things, then it becomes a serious fact that we are
witnesses, and in truth the only proper witnesses, that this whole
plan and pretension of Joseph Smith is a sheer falsehood--a miserable
fabrication.
It will be recollected that this Gospel message proposed to give us
divine manifestations through our doing certain specified acts; we
have performed those acts in precisely the manner indicated. None but
ourselves have attempted to conform to this arrangement, consequently,
no other people are prepared to be witnesses either for or against this
system.
The Gospel, as recorded in the New Testament, in its promises and
provisions, was precisely similar. It required certain specified acts
to be done, with promises that divine manifestations should follow
their performance. Jesus said, "_He that will do the will of God
shall know of the doctrine_." Peter, on the day of Pentecost, said,
"Repent, and be baptized for the remission of sins, and you shall
receive the Holy Ghost." Again, Jesus said, "These signs shall follow
them that believe," etc. A multitude of testimonies could be produced
from the New Testament, showing that divine manifestations and perfect
knowledge were promised to and were actually received in a specified
and tangible form by those who then obeyed the Gospel. Those who obeyed
its requirements were the only competent witnesses for or against its
divine authenticity. After honestly complying with its requisitions,
viz.: repenting of, and forsaking their sins, being immersed in water
for the remission of sins, and receiving the ordinance of the laying
on of hands; then had they failed to receive the Holy Ghost, with its
gifts and promised knowledge and attendant signs, they would have seen
that the entire Apostolic scheme of salvation rested on a baseless
fabric.
When the Gospel, or order of things which we have received, was
presented to us, we carefully compared it with the Gospel recorded in
the Scriptures, and found it alike precisely, in every particular,
as regarded its forms, ordinances, and the authority to administer
them: its promise of the Holy Ghost and of the signs that should
follow, together with a promise of a knowledge of its divinity. In
many instances it was brought to us by men with whose character we
were perfectly familiar, and for whose honesty and integrity we could
vouch; who solemnly stated, in private and in public, that through an
obedience to its requirements, they had obtained, in a tangible form, a
perfect knowledge of its heaven-born principles.
This was my experience, and after having complied with its demands,
and thereupon received a knowledge of its genuineness, and having
obtained authority to preach and administer its ordinances, I commenced
forthwith to proclaim it to the world; and no doubt there are persons
in this audience, out of different nations, to whom I have administered
this Gospel, who can witness to its virtue and efficacy. Many years I
have been engaged in forwarding the interests of this order of things,
and you are the proper judges whether it be of God or of man.
We have the same Gospel the primitive churches had, and the same
knowledge and evidence they had of its divine authenticity; and we have
just as honest and brave men to preach it as they had--men that have
proved their integrity through sacrifice as great as the Elders of the
primitive churches ever made. The testimony of our Elders is as valid
and worthy of credit as the testimony of their Elders. Our Apostles
who are living are as honest as the Apostles of the New Testament, and
their testimony is as worthy of credit, so far as they live and speak
according to the Scriptural law and testimony. If this order of things
which we have obeyed is not the Gospel--if these evidences, these
manifestations, this knowledge, this Holy Ghost, these deliverances
from misery and bondage, and being placed in comfortable and happy
circumstances, living together in peace and harmony, building beautiful
towns and cities, free from demoralizing institutions, be not the
legitimate fruits of the working of a pure and holy system established
by God, through Joseph Smith, we shall be compelled to question the
genuineness of the Gospel of the former day Saints, as recorded in the
New Testament.
By some it has been argued that Joseph Smith and his prominent Elders
were the most corrupt, wicked and infamous of impostors, but his
followers, the Latter-day Saints in general, though deceived, were very
good people, and scrupulously honest in their religious opinions.
From what I have already said in regard to the operations and effects
of this work, it is easy to be seen that, if it be an imposition, it is
not confined exclusively to the leaders of this people, but this whole
community are actively and knowingly engaged in a stupendous scheme of
deception and hypocrisy; and by the way, as I before hinted, if this
could be proved to be the case, we should be driven to the belief that
the former day Saints, also, had been engaged in the same disgraceful
imposition. More than one hundred thousand people now dwell in these
valleys, many of them having come from distant climes and nations.
In this great fact they willingly and understandingly exhibit to the
world a clear and powerful testimony--more expressive and powerful
than any language could command--that they did undeniably and most
positively receive, through the ordinances of this Gospel, administered
unto them by our Elders, a knowledge of this work through the divine
manifestations of the Almighty.
But it may be objected that, whereas members of this community were
found by our missionaries in great poverty and distress, therefore they
obeyed the Gospel and emigrated here to better their circumstances
financially, without any regard to its truth or falsity, as a divine
system. This might be true in some instances, but _impossible_ as
regards its application to this people as a community. Those persons
who received this work without religious motives, and without honest
convictions of its divine requirements, but solely for the "loaves and
fishes," cannot possibly abide the test to which every one's faith,
sooner or later, must be brought, but will have every particle of his
dishonesty and hypocrisy exposed, and will sooner or later apostatize.
Hundreds of my brethren, Elders in this Church, full of godly zeal,
animated with the purest motives, having obtained a knowledge of the
will of God, have left their wives and children, everything that the
heart holds most dear, and gone forth to the nations, without any
worldly compensation, and called on all to repent and turn their
hearts to the Lord--obey the Gospel, with a promise that they should
receive the Holy Ghost, which would "lead them into all truth, and
show them things to come," and it should be their guide and monitor--a
principle of revelation remaining with them through life, provided
they preserved their honesty and integrity, continuing faithful in
keeping the commandments of God--devoting their time, their means,
their talents, their all, to building up the Kingdom of God. These
duties were required, these blessings promised, in the preaching of the
Gospel by our missionaries and the prominent Elders of this Church. To
obtain light--a knowledge of the will of God; to get the true religion
as now revealed through the Gospel--divine manifestations regarding the
truth of the doctrine as taught by Joseph Smith, was the first and all
absorbing proposition presented to the people.
Now, whether these Elders and missionaries were base impostors,
promulgating sheer falsehoods or not, is, of course, a question of
grave consideration; and it is a matter of far greater importance, and
of more serious inquiry, whether this people, as a community, having
failed to receive those divine testimonies, kept silence as to that
most vital and important fact, and came here to practice hypocrisy in
religion, and thus fasten, irresistibly, on our children and future
generations a system of falsehoods for a divine religion.
Joseph Smith affirmed that Peter, James and John visited him and
conferred on him authority to administer the holy ordinances of the
Gospel, through which every honest-hearted man and woman were promised
the Holy Ghost and a perfect knowledge of the doctrine. Our Elders
simply affirm that, having received a divine knowledge of the fact that
this Gospel was a heaven-born institution, and through its virtue and
divine force every honest-hearted person may obtain this same knowledge.
I had been a member of this Church but a short time when I obtained,
through a divine manifestation, a clear, explicit and tangible
demonstration of the truth of this work. Thousands and tens of
thousands of Latter-day Saints, men and women in private life, can
testify to the same experience; and though I may know many things in
regard to this doctrine which in their limited experience they may not
understand, yet, in this _one fact_ they are equal to me in knowledge
and equal to the messengers who administer to them this Gospel.
I now wish to examine another prominent feature connected with the
religion of this Gospel. An important item which was held forth
prominently wherever this Gospel was announced, was that its followers
should have abundance of persecutions, and would probably, in the
progress of their new life, be compelled to make the most trying
sacrifices, as wife, children, houses and lands, the spoiling of goods,
and perhaps even of life itself. No persons are properly prepared to
enter upon this new life until they have formed within themselves a
resolution to abide this ordeal.
The Savior, the Apostles, Joseph Smith and the latter day Elders,
when offering this great system of salvation to the people, told them
clearly and emphatically that it required sacrifices of the most
serious and trying nature--that it would bring persecutions, change our
warmest friends into bitter and relentless enemies, and that instances
would occur when people, in their confused notions of right and wrong,
would even conceive they were doing God service in taking our lives.
These were dull and forbidding prospects to a rational person, in
being proselyted to a system whose truths he could not know, but only
guess at by what he was told, or of which he had read. Every man and
every woman, before receiving a system that required such sacrifices,
would require a positive assurance that submission to its requirements
would bring indisputable knowledge of its true divinity, so that,
after having obtained a divine witness of its genuineness, they could
willingly, cheerfully, and with a resolution inspired by the Almighty,
move onward over the pathway of persecution and sacrifice, traversed in
all ages by the martyred Saints and Prophets.
On this point permit me again to quote what Jesus promised, viz.:
"Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonah, flesh and blood hath not revealed
it unto thee, but my Father in heaven; and upon this rock will I
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Peter had obtained a revelation which Jesus called a _rock_, which
every man might receive individually to himself and build upon with
perfect assurance and safety, upon which he could found all his hopes
and prospects of salvation. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, promised
the Holy Ghost to all who would be baptized, or in other words, yield
obedience to the Gospel. The Holy Ghost would impart the knowledge
which would constitute the rock of revelation upon which the Savior
said His people should be established. This people have their hopes and
prospects of peace and happiness in this life and in the life to come
resting and grounded upon this rock of revelation; and we constitute
the only religious community which dares to occupy a Scriptural
position; and our claims upon the Savior's promise, that hell shall not
prevail against a people so established, gives us peace, tranquility,
unshaken confidence, and a cheering and happy assurance of security, in
the midst of all kinds of threatened ruin and overthrow.
It is the people, the masses--not exclusively their leaders--who
possess this knowledge, and boldly testify of its possession. The
astronomer may know of many laws and phenomena connected with the sun
and its movements through ethereal space; but as regards the simple
fact that it exists and shines upon the earth, millions know as well
as himself. President Brigham Young, and even Joseph Smith, so far as
respects the simple fact that this Gospel, which we preach as a divine
institution, never professed to have a knowledge more thorough, more
convincing, or more satisfactory, than tens of thousands in these
valleys who never arose to address a public audience.
This system of religion, in its nature, in the character of its origin,
the manner of its operations, and in the purposes for which it was
designed, coupled with the fact that people of honest hearts can and
will apprehend and appreciate divine truth, is such that it cannot
be destroyed. A person who is honest, full of integrity and love for
the interest and happiness of his species, having explored this long
untrodden path, and made this glorious discovery, will not and cannot
keep silence, but despite of threats and opposition, however fierce
and terrific, will boldly declare the glorious fact, spreading and
multiplying the announcement of the divine intelligence, and, if so
required, seal this testimony with his own life's blood.
Should the prominent men of this Church, together with tens of
thousands of its Elders, be swept away by our enemies, the Gospel would
still survive, and, with unabated force and vigor, still continue its
irrepressible operations; these holy and sacred truths would be avowed
and vindicated, order and proper authority continue their peaceful and
happy reign, and Elders, with hearts overflowing with love and heavenly
zeal, go forth to the nations; churches spring up in every land and
clime; Saints increase and multiply and gather together; the Kingdom of
God continue to be established, and the suggestive and inspired sayings
of the Prophet Daniel be literally and emphatically fulfilled.