On a pleasant Saturday evening, after a four days' journey, they arrived in Salt Lake City, where Durant met his family all feeling well. The meeting between husband and wife and children, after such a long separation, was happy in the extreme, and it was with thankful hearts that they kneeled by the family altar, praising God in fervent prayer for His kind mercies in preserving them to meet once more.
During the afternoon of the next day, Sunday, they all attended meeting, where an Elder delivered the following discourse, which Mr. Brown listened to with marked attention:
"MY BRETHREN, SISTERS AND FRIENDS:
"I am thankful for the privilege of speaking to you a short time this afternoon. I am anxious to explain, whenever opportunity affords, the nature of our faith.
"In this free country, where we congratulate ourselves in enjoying and allowing the greatest freedom to everybody, I presume we will, all of us, speaker and congregation, exercise the privilege of explaining and reflecting upon the things that may be said, so that our friends, I trust, will leave us understanding a little more about the nature of our religion than when they came to the meeting.
"Our visiting friends have, doubtless, heard about the Latter-day Saints. They have had the opinions of men who have spoken in the pulpits, and who have written books about the Mormons, and they, very likely, have come here under certain impressions in regard to the Mormons' faith.
"I am sorry to say that experience has taught me that the public generally have been deceived. I am gratified sometimes in listening to acknowledgements of this kind from those who have heard for themselves, and have thus been able to judge intelligently as to whether the reports which they have heard from our enemies are correct or not.
"It seems strange, but it is nevertheless true, that many people who wish to know the faith of the Saints go to their enemies to learn of them. I do not know whether our kind friends have thought of the inconsistency and injustice of such a course as this. If I wished to learn what the Roman Catholics believed in, I do not think at present that I would go to the Protestant Church to learn it; or if I wished to learn what any denomination of professing Christians believe, I do not think it would be just for me to go to some other denomination to ascertain it. In the first place, other churches might be led perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally to misrepresent the faith of their neighbors, and I might be deceived through their misrepresentations. On the other hand, there is no need of my going to any one church to learn the faith of another people, because I can go just as easily to their own church to listen to their explanations, and thus be sure of getting information of their peculiar views, without trusting to the misrepresentations of their neighbors. Now I submit that such a course as this is right; it is just, and accords with our impressions of a fair and just hearing and consideration from the parties most interested, as to whether their faith be correct or not.
"Of course we have no disposition, as Latter-day Saints, even if we had the power, to constrain any person to believe our doctrines. We have not the power; we have not the disposition. We simply wish to explain the nature of that religion of which we are ministers—laboring under a feeling of anxiety to deliver the message with which we have been sent, that our friends may have the privilege of receiving or rejecting it, just as they think proper.
"I approach the examination of this subject, because I believe that many of our kind, honest, well-wishing friends—those who desire to serve God according to His will and pleasure—are under the impression that there exists a confusion so general, and errors so prevalent, that religion seems to be losing its hold upon the minds of the people. And, of course, we who have faith in God and in His revealed word, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, deplore a state of things that indicates a departure from that respect and reverence which we wish to see existing and manifested on the part of the people towards the Supreme Being.