"You'll publish it to the world, then, the same as other revelations?"
"No," he replied. "No."
"Then I'll not obey it," I said, "because if God is ashamed of it, I am."
His air of prophetic authority changed to one of combative resolution. He explained that one of the other candidates, a strong Democrat, had agreed to accept the revelation if I would; that the two of us could give our strength to the church candidate; that the Church would turn to my father the votes that it had already in command for McCune, and my father's election would be carried.
I felt that the thumb-screws were being put on me again. For the second time I was being forced to the point of denying the Senatorship to my father by refusing him my support. And there could not have been, for me, a more vivid and instantaneous illumination of the hidden depths in this Church system—or in the individual Prophet of the cult—than was made by Snow's determined insistence that I should break my word of honor to the people of the state and of the nation, pledge that broken faith to him, induce all my supporters in the legislature to violate their covenants—Mormon and Gentile alike!—and upon his mere assumption of divine authority, direct Mormon and Gentile to stultify and disgrace themselves forever as men and public officials. There was something appalling in the calculating cruelty with which he proposed to devote us all to destruction and dishonor. There was something inhumanly malignant in the plan to use my known affection for my father in order to make me guilty of the very betrayal of the people which I had publicly denounced. I looked at him—and heard him, now, placidly, confidently, with a renewed suavity, urging me to do the thing.
"President Snow," I interrupted, "does my father know of this?"
He answered: "No."
"I'm glad of it," I said. (And I was!) "This is not the way to work out either the destiny of 'God's people' or the destiny of this state. It would place my father in a most humiliating position to be elected—at the orders of the Church—under the assumption that God Almighty had directed men to break their solemn promises to their constituents. I have as high an admiration for my father's wisdom and ability as you or the Democratic candidate who has offered to withdraw at the will of the Church, but I should be paying no honor to my father by dishonoring my pledge to my constituents and asking other men to dishonor theirs."
He dismissed me with an air of benignant sorrow!
The deadlock in the legislature continued unbroken. Among my supporters was Lewis W. Shurtliff, the President of the "Stake of Zion" in which I lived; he was one of the highest Church dignitaries in the legislature and was regarded as my foremost champion in the Senatorial contest. On the last day of the legislative session, at President Snow's instruction, my father, known as a Republican, was offered as a senatorial candidate to this Democratic legislature, and all the power of the Church influence was thrown to him. President Shurtliff's wife came to our headquarters, that night, and knelt, with a number of other ladies, to pray that her husband might be spared the humiliation of breaking his repeated promise not to desert me! We all knew that if he broke his promise, it would cause him more mental anguish than anyone else; but we knew, too, that if the command came from Church headquarters, he would have to obey it. Men broke their political pledges to their people and outraged their own feelings of personal independence or partisan loyalty, rather than offend against "the will of the Lord." The forces of the other candidates went to pieces, and on the last night of the session my father's vote reached twenty-three. (It required thirty-two votes to elect.)