| 573 Maine to New Mexico, and from Oregon to Florida, in England, Wales, Tahiti, and Australia.
It has made the name of Latter Day Saint honorable in places where it was a hiss and a byword, and has been the instrument of fulfilling the word of the Lord, "and ye shall find favor in the eyes of the people."
It has so wrought that its elders are able to stand up in defense of its truths without a cringing sense of shame of the name they bear.
It has kept its public pledges to advocate the truth and insist that honesty is not only the best, but is the only policy that will establish men.
It has an almost empty treasury, but its Bishopric can sleep in peace because their coffers hold no ill-gotten gains, and its officers do not fear the just complaint of wronged and oppressed comrades.
It has built no temples, but it has gathered together bands of believers into the "regions round about," who have no "milk of the Gentiles" to turn sour on their hands.
It has consecrated the individual labors of hundreds of faithful, honest men, but has not "consecrated" the wealth of others, nor of the "cattle on a thousand hills," without giving an equivalent in honest compensation therefor.
It has built "houses of worship" in places where its members dwell, and where they have sung, prayed, and worshiped [worshipped] God after the manner their neighbors call heresy, but have maintained their integrity during it all.
It is carefully and steadily gaining ground everywhere, and the "Lord confirms the word."
It has built up a publishing house worth many thousands of dollars, and is using it to spread the truth.
It has published and given to the Saints and the world, "in the own due time of the Lord," the Inspired Translation of the Holy Scriptures, the most valuable uncompleted (incomplete in the sense that it was not published in his lifetime) work of Joseph the Martyr.
It has placed the Scriptures, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants before the world, as containing the word of God, and has maintained them there honorably and consistently.
It has through the instrumentality of those agencies which God sometimes employes [employs], to bring his purposes to pass, discovered and placed before the Saints and the public, what is evidently the long lost "Manuscript Found," which the opposers of the latter-day work have so industriously urged as the origin of the Book of Mormon; and which is proved to be a clumsy attempt to account for the settlement of this, or some other land, by a class of mariners cast away from their vessel which was lost. By making this discovery and publishing the Manuscript the Reorganization has definitely shown that the Book of Mormon did not originate with Reverend Solomon Spalding.
It has so labored and so lived, that the places whence the Saints were driven in the years gone by are open to their return, and the inhabitants
(page 573) |
