| 507 the same blessing was made from the stand in the grove in Nauvoo, some time prior to the murder in Carthage.
"We have always felt reluctant to speak in attestation of the position as President of the Church, for three reasons.
"1st. Every aspirant for that position since the crime that left the church a prey to aspirants, has been loud in his own defense, and has each, in turn, run into vice and folly, thereby causing the cause to be evilly spoken of.
"2d. Words are but cheap, protestations are but the breath of one's lips, and wisdom is never very open-mouthed, and the unsupported testimony of any man must fall.
"3rd. If the Lord has promised, and the work is his, the Spirit which bore testimony to it at the beginning will continue its ministrations.
"The silence which in this respect we have hitherto kept, has been variously construed, according to the bias of the minds of the saints who have been under the various circumstances attendant upon the history of the people since 1844.
"Wiseacres, honest in their every conviction, charge fearfulness or hypocrisy; cavillers [cavilers] find cause for doubt, while very many stand aloof from human testimony.
"Many concede the right, but deny the manner in which we have been content to accept the honor by ordination, once conferred by blessing.
"We have never seen the day since we arrived at the years of discretion that we had the power (if we ever had the wish) to change the fact that we are the son of Joseph Smith, the prophet of the latter days; nor has this been forgotten by others. If any work was his to do that could be continued, that we may not reasonably aspire to in righteousness, we have yet to learn what that work is.
"We were left a heritage of shame. Four boys (one now rests), to bear a world's opprobrium; to receive the rude sneer as being the sons of the 'Mormon Prophet, Joe Smith,' to be accounted by their brethren as outcasts because they followed not the beck of men, and at last, when listening to the voice which called them to bear a part in the restoration of the good name they valued, that of their
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