George G. Bywater

“ We, as Latter-day Saints, have embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is that Gospel? It is faith in God; it is an avowed confession of the existence of a Deity, that there is a supreme intelligence that not only governs, but built the universe, the great architect of the heavens. We believe in his existence; that he is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek him. ”

“ It is in this—that in the profession of Christianity we have accepted it as a whole; we have not regarded fractional Christianity, sectional Christianity, modern Christianity, as the embodiment of those principles and teachings which the great Founder of our faith came into this world incarnate to reveal, and which He left as a heavenly legacy to the children of men—children of the great common Father, with whom we, with Him, once existed, He being the first begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, the first born of many brethren. ”

“ Is it the atheist, the man who believes that there is no God nor any controlling power but that which exists in the forms of matter we behold? Is it the man who ignores the Supreme Being, the ruler of the universe? Is it that class of people who live without God, and without hope and without faith in the world to come? ”

“ What would you think of us if we were to tell you that we would cease to believe in the religion of Jesus Christ? It is true you do not know what it means, and hence we pity you. It is true that we know we are of God: we know that these principles and revelations are divine; we know that they have emanated from Him who cannot lie; we know these things, and if you knew them would you ask us to deny our faith, to prove recreant to our trust, to become unworthy the confidence of our families and of honest men around us on every hand. ”

“ And by the development and the upholding of the principles of nature God is consummating his designs, which will terminate in the salvation of man and the perfection of the earth as a residence for the redeemed of all past ages, when the light of the sun will not be needed, for the glory of God will be the light, and intelligence and truth shall flow as the mighty ocean, and knowledge shall cover the great deep, and no man then need say, Know ye the Lord, for all shall know him from the least to the greatest; and every man in every place will meet a brother and a friend. ”

“ It is the constant battle that is being waged by antiquated theories and principles, which are perhaps established in the hearts of the majorities, whenever a new truth is introduced to the world; whenever a principle that has not been recognized distinctly as such has not entered into the constitution of their own religion, philosophy, politics or science. Whenever a new truth is introduced, the stubborn and inflexible conservators of antiquated notions and ideas are unwilling to widen the area of their thoughts, and extend the boundary of their reflections still outward. ”

“ We regard man as the highest form of intellectual and moral existence with which we are acquainted. We regard man as the most perfect embodiment of all the creations of nature with which we are acquainted. He possesses the highest development of a nervous system, the most complex organization in all its parts, the most fruitful brain, producing the grandest results witnessed in every form of animated existence ”

“ Yet show me where there are any doctrines or principles taught by the Latter-day Saints that are not in the strictest accord, in the most perfect harmony, in the closest union with the teachings and doctrines taught centuries ago? There are not any to be found; and yet we hear the cry of immorality; we hear the cry of barbarism, of infidelity, of names that I hardly like to repeat, applied to the Latter-day Saints just as they were applied to Jesus and the Apostles, 1800 years ago. ”

“ Do you choose to imitate the examples of the persecutors of the humble and despised Nazarene by persecuting, imprisoning and putting to death men and women who profess precisely the same theology, who worship the same God, who bow at the same sacred altar as Jesus and His Apostles did, who advocate the same doctrines, who administer in the same ordinances, and who in every doctrinal particular are following their divine Master and fellow laborers, the Apostles of old? ”

“ The truth and elements which go to make up that system of worship, that system of faith, that system of belief, or, in other words, that system of divine knowledge, possess in their nature every virtue requisite, and every element of worth, and every force and principle of energy that can reach man—man in his entirety, man as a whole, not some particular phase of his nature, as they are not designed to develop one particular characteristic of his being. ”

“ As a community of people we have received this Gospel; we have embraced its first principles. We have gathered ourselves together to these mountain valleys in fulfillment of prophecy to be further taught of him. We are entering into the development of that work which has been the theme and burden of the prophetic song of men who lived long ages ago. We live in an age of revelation. We live in an age of Prophets and Apostles and inspired men. ”

“ I would say, as my brother before me has said, would to God that they could be inspired by the same divine intelligence, by the same supreme wisdom and enlightened by the same heavenly understanding that chased away the darkness of ages, cleared up the obscurity in which the human mind was enveloped in the days of Jesus ”

“ When Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior of mankind, was on the earth sojourning for a few brief years with the children of men, he gave expression to this most beautiful and highly philosophic rule: "For every tree is known by its fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. By their fruits ye shall know them." It is the contemplation of the elementary principles embodied in this rule that has awakened within my mind the reflections I have referred to, while gazing upon this congregation seated in this beautiful place of worship. ”

“ Our doctrines have been before the world for many years. Our Church works contain a very full and clear exposition of our views in relation to our faith, in relation to our principles affecting our life here and hereafter, and yet we discover, my friends, that we are unpopular, that we are not to be included among the Christian elements of society; we are considered Pagans, heathens, outlaws, barbarians, an immoral and reprobate race. And let me ask, how was it in the days of Jesus, this great prototype of human perfection, this great master-teacher of the purest of all truth? ”

“ We will suppose that a master builder has conceived a plan for a magnificent structure, for a beautiful residence, for a temple of worship, for a temple of science, for a temple of freedom, a temple of truth ”

“ My friends, if the popular prejudices of the first or second century of the Christian era had continued to be the dominant influence of the world and had suppressed the promulgation of the principles of Christianity and the maintenance of their claim upon men and women, where would your boasted Christianity be to-day? Where would your enlightenment be to-day if the revelations of Jesus Christ had been swept out of existence, if the world had been deprived of them entirely, what would be our state at the present time? It is true we have had a long reign of apostacy ”

“ We are enthusiastically, frantically, and mercilessly incensed against your social system. We cannot endure it. You must believe as we do. You must think as we do, and if you don't choose to think and believe as we do, you must act as we do, or you cannot be in fellowship with us." Now, my friends, this is the spirit of the age in which we live, and I am respectfully at the whole world's defiance to present to me or any other intelligent Latter-day Saint a solid, logical or truthful argument of a contradictory nature. ”

“ We have received the doctrines of Jesus Christ: faith in Him; repentance of sins, and baptism for the remission of sins; and we have essayed and covenanted to live a new life in Christ Jesus; to seek to do good to all men, and evil to none; and like Daniel of old, to be faithful to the statutes and to the decrees and behests of Jehovah, the decrees of man against us notwithstanding; we having come to the conclusion in our own minds that God and a few good men form an overwhelming majority. And we shall see and yet learn that truth will triumph and prevail. ”

“ We may say, the works of God and the word of God both constitute the avenues of human information, and that whoever ignores the one deprives himself of much of the benefits which flow from accepting the other; that there are two doors which open to the temple of truth, and they are both indispensably necessary to engage man's full capacity and to endow him with the principles of knowledge, and with the purposes of his being here upon the earth, together with his origin and final destiny. ”

“ What do we preach? The self-same principles that Jesus taught. We do not take it as expressive of a high and lofty mind to be combative, to court discussion, but we are at the defiance of the unbelieving world to prove one principle of our fundamental doctrines, revealed to us in this age by Joseph Smith, or by Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, that is not in perfect harmony with the highest conceptions and the most pure natures the world ever had, and is not in perfect consonance with the declarations of holy writ. ”

“ To-day we have a nominal acceptance of Christianity as a revealed religion. There are but few people living who are so obtuse in their minds, or who are so morally degraded in their nature, or so far lost to every sense of personal respect and Christian propriety, as to deny the goodness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of which the Apostle Paul avowed himself as not ashamed—very few indeed. ”

“ What would our christian ministers think of such a body of men as that of Jesus and His Apostles assuming a position of that kind before them? How well they have declaimed in favor of the martyrs of Christianity. With what burning eloquence they have extolled the heroism, the stout-heartedness of the men and women who were willing to go as lambs to the slaughter, like their divine Master, rather than prove recreant to the sacred obligations they had assumed. ”

“ And I may here say, and I do so with feelings of shame and regret, that the bitterest persecutions that have ever been waged upon the world's battle fields have been waged by men who have professed the doctrines of the meek and lowly Jesus. Yes, the most overwhelming torrents of human blood that have ever stained the world with its gory hue, have been let out by the violent hands of those who professed to administer in the sacred things of God, who professed to be inspired by the spirit of the Divine Master. ”

“ There is much of the knowledge that has been conferred upon the family of man, there is much of that intelligence and understanding which man has been brought into possession of that we can not use immediately in regulating our affairs socially, or in any other work in the structure of society. But the principles to which I am now directing your attention; the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, are fundamental principles; they are cardinal elements, they are the foundation stones, if you please, of the great superstructure of humanity; they reach the fundamental conditions of its being ”

“ We know of no time in the world's history when the intelligence of the masses of mankind has been of that advanced and refined culture as to accord the right to the Creator of the universe to dictate a government for the children of men. ”

“ In speaking of civilization Emerson once said that a nation without a well-defined language, without clothing, without a system of marriage we call heathen, we call barbarous, and he might have added with propriety and like truthfulness, that a people who assemble not to pay their devotion to the Great God, the architect of the universe, and the common Father of the human race, are an uncivilized people. ”

“ So that those of our friends whether here or elsewhere who suppose that opposing the truth will produce an arrest of its growth, and extinguish the life it contains, the vitality embodied in it, are simply poor readers of human history, are simply ignorant of the facts of history, and are ignorant of the various phases of human nature, as that human nature has been de-veloped in the varied schemes that have sprung into life during the centuries past and gone. But when we take these indestructible principles that outlive the ages ”

“ But, my friends, if there is a sage or philosopher that has ever uttered a sentiment or declared a principle or enunciated a law by which he would give birth to his conception of the philosophy of life, of the purpose of human existence, that could express it more forcibly, more philosophically or in stricter harmony with the principles of exact science than this ancient Prophet, then I know not his name nor am I acquainted with him as an author. ”

“ I am so thoroughly disgusted with the rottenness and the canting hypocrisy of society, and with the infidelity of its social relations, and with the entire degeneracy of the morality of our age, to talk upon this subject, particularly with men who have jumped at conclusions and who have reached them without measuring every step they have taken, without analyzing the elements of the doctrines they call in question ”