“We have been trying long enough with this people, and I go in for letting the sword of the Almighty be unsheathed, not only in word but in deed.”
Lest he should be mistaken, he said:—
“What ought this meek people who keep the commandments of God do unto them? ‘Why,’ says one, ‘they ought to pray the Lord to kill them,’ I want to know if you would wish the Lord to come down and do all your dirty work?.... When a man prays for a thing, he ought to be willing to perform it himself.... Putting to death the transgressors would exhibit the law of God, no matter by whom it was done.”
Heber C. Kimball, the “model Saint,” after a speech to the same effect, in which, as usual, he made use of the most disgusting language, added:—
“Joseph Smith was God to the inhabitants of the earth when he was among us, and Brigham is God now!”
But more shocking than any other was the language of Brigham Young himself. On the 21st of September, 1856, in a discourse delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, and afterwards reprinted by authority in the Journals of Discourses, vol. iv., pp. 53-4, he said:—
“The time is coming when justice will be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet; when we shall take the old broadsword and ask, ‘Are you for God?’ and if you are not heartily on the Lord’s side, you will be hewn down!”
...
“There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world or in that which is to come; and if they had their eyes opened to see their true condition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to Heaven as an offering for their sins, and the smoking incense would atone for their sins; whereas, if such is not the case, they will stick to them and remain with them in the spirit world.
“I know, when you hear my brethren telling about cutting people off from the earth, that you consider it is strong doctrine; but it is to save them, not to destroy them....