"It was this same principle that crucified the Lord Jesus Christ, and will cause the people to kill the Prophets in this generation."
What! would even the Saints have so done? Did not some of those who were Saints then, so do?
Had not Joseph said many times—are not men now living who heard him say: "Would to God, brethren, I could tell you who I am! Would to God I could tell you what I know! But you would call it blasphemy, and there are men upon this stand who would want to take my life."
"If the Church," said he, "knew all the commandments, one half they would reject through prejudice and ignorance."
No wonder, then, that he should choose his confidants; for their sakes no less than his own. For these also are Joseph's words:
"When God offers a blessing, or knowledge to a man, and he refuses to receive it, he will be damned."
Revelation is ever the iconoclast of tradition; and such is the bigotry of man, his natural hatred of the new and strange, as opposed to his personal interests or private views, that the very lives of those whose mission is to introduce and establish new doctrines, though designed as a blessing to humanity, are ever in danger from those whose traditions would thus be uprooted and destroyed.
Joseph was not a coward; it was he who said that a coward could not be saved in the kingdom of God; but neither was he lacking in caution, especially when warned of the Lord of the necessity for its exercise. Therefore, was he now revealing, to a chosen few, whom God had prepared to receive what he should tell them, one of the grand principles of the everlasting Gospel, "unlawful to be uttered" to the multitude, yet one day to be thundered from the house-tops in the ears of all living, with many other mighty truths locked in the treasure house of future time, of which eternity still holds the key.
Before he would trust even Heber with the full secret, however, he put him to a test which few men would have been able to bear.
It was no less than a requirement for him to surrender his wife, his beloved Vilate, and give her to Joseph in marriage!