| 299 while the sectarians denounce and oppose us as seditious heretics, ignorant, unlearned, and presumptuous, they gladly see and help to push us into the breach to defend Christian truth against error and infidelity, as they class unbelief; though they denounce us as allied to those of the salt land by reason of a supposed common origin; these salt land Saints scout us as heretics, apostates, recreant and sectarian, by reason of our persistent warfare against what we believe to have been improperly and unlawfully added to the faith of the Church of Christ by them. Refusing to hold converse, or discussion with us, because they so hold us apostate, they still are glad to class us with the sectarians and as those who are not "persecuted." That is a strange position in which men may be placed wherein there is no compensating, or alleviating conditions; hence in this labyrinth of dilemmas in which it may be supposed by these who say we are not persecuted, that they have placed us, and where they would fain believe that we are, there is this alleviating circumstance: the Lord said that he would bless a people who should do as we are striving to do; and the very blessing that he declared he would bless them with, these men arouse us of having; therefore, we must be the people he referred to.
About this time Acting Secretary Bell, of the department of the interior, rendered a decision which had an important effect on the polygamists of Utah. They had been taking advantage of the fact that plural wives were not recognized under the law as wives and each woman thus related who desired had been entering government land in her own name, thus giving the husband control of as many homesteads as he had wives. The decision of the department was to the effect that this would not be permitted.
In January, 1880, President Joseph Smith preached four times in Carthage, Illinois. As this is the place where his father and uncle met their death at the hands of a desperate and law-defying element of society a little more than thirty-five years before, it will be interesting to read how he was received. We therefore insert comments from the local press. The Republican, published by J. M. Davidson, in the issue for January 21, 1880, contains the following:
Elder Joseph Smith, son and successor of the founder of the Mormon church, delivered a series of discourses at the court-house in this city, commencing on Friday evening and closing on Sunday evening. He had good audiences throughout, that gave him a respectful hearing. His discourses were chiefly directed to an explanation and defense of the tenets of the Reorganized Mormon Church. His Sunday night's discourse
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