These political dissentions had their temptations and the gravest dangers attended them. Men were thrown indiscriminately into the society of their follow men, some of whom had no respect for those moral principles which underlie the perpetuity of religion. The spirit of politics was one of intoxication. Here and there, young men and old staggered and swaggered under its influence. They were without restraint, without reassurance, and were drifting hopelessly. Some were now piled up like driftwood after the subsidence of a flood. A few became so saturated with politics and its attending evils that the light and flame of the spirit have never since awakened and enkindled their soggy souls.
Some grew unduly suspicious. Circumstances engendered animosities. Passing events tried many to the limit of their endurance. Some soured and fell by the wayside. During the early years of statehood the influence of some of the Church leaders became involved in political struggles.
Elder Woodruff's journal discloses the regrets which he experienced over such conditions. He lamented the political folly of many, and above all deplored the loss of brotherly love which the political excitement of the times brought about. He felt that trials of one character or another were naturally the lot of the Latter-day Saints. He knew that as time went on men would be tempted and tried in proportion to their worth and consequence in the world. He was grieved, however, when he saw men who had apparently been loyal to their duty and other obligations in life become the victims of a political mania.
Political questions gave rise to long drawn controversies. Some of these controversies involved the faith and even the standing of Church members. Men sought to argue themselves through the mists and fogs of political darkness. Many were groping about as if blindfolded. In time most of them emerged from darkness into light. A few lay down by the wayside and would not believe what they could not see, and they could not see because of darkness about them. They therefore justified their obstinacy which they vainly imagined was courage. During those trying times men of long standing in the Church and of unsuspected integrity came to President Woodruff in a spirit of anger and babbled like thoughtless children. Happily many of them have seen their folly and have learned that the Church guided and controlled by the hand of God, rolls on constantly and persistently like the earth in the midst of the heavens. They have learned, too, that though the Church, like the earth moving through the mists and fogs, when its course is obscured, is nevertheless moving steadfastly and accurately forward according to the laws of its creation. Many have learned, too, that the destines of the Church are after all not in the hands of men; for men are the mere instrumentalities of a divine purpose; and if those men, having walked according to their light and understanding, pass on into the Great Beyond without moving the Church in the least from the great orbit prescribed for it by Divine wisdom, what effect can jealousy and criticism have upon it.
When brethren came to President Woodruff and declared that all the the troubles of the Church were political troubles he lamented their folly, their misunderstanding, and the want in them of that divine spirit which should guide men in every exigency of life.
"Some men," he was wont to exclaim, "really act as though they were possessed by the devil. The Church is not going to pieces. The principles of God are not falling to the ground. Such men will be ashamed of themselves some day."
He did not pretend to know why some things happened, but he knew how men ought to behave themselves after they had learned the great lesson which taught them the destinies of the Church and the duties of a Latter-day Saint. Those were remarkable times; their spirit, as far, as it can be reflected upon the pages of history, will remain to warn and instruct future generations.
President Woodruff's journal of those times discloses a prophetic insight which he had neither the wisdom to explain nor political knowledge to appreciate. Questions that were then great issues, and about which grave apprehensions were felt concerning the welfare of the Church, are now of no consequence when looked back upon. There were dire predictions which time failed to verify and which recede from every possibility as time goes on. In the Church men are affected by the spirit and contentions of the times, but the fate of men and the destiny of the Church are two quite separate matters. In no organizations of the world, and in no institutions of men is the separation between the men who conduct them and the welfare and perpetuity of the organizations so great as between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the men to whose care its interests are entrusted.
Political forecasts of those days do not tally with current events. President Woodruff no where in his journal gives any evidence of a spirit of despair. He positively refuses to take things so seriously as politicians would have him do. Harm to the Church was something he did not comprehend any more than he could comprehend how men could harm God. He manifested sorrow for those whose standard of measurement religiously was a political standard. He was not moved by those grave fears which many entertained for the Church. He took as little thought of the morrow in his contemplation of God's purposes as any man that ever lived since the days of the Master.
Men crowded about him with their tables of calculations, by which they fixed the future welfare of the Church and its threatened destruction. His journal is an interesting revelation of some men's peculiar conceptions of the destiny of the Church under the strain and stress of those times. He never pretended to follow the intricacies of men's reasoning about the future. He recorded their sayings and set over against them the more sure word of prophecy upon which he rested his faith.