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.