B. H. Roberts

“ Humanity towards all, reason and refinement to enforce virtue, and good for evil are so eminently designed to cure more disorders of society than an appeal to "arms," or even argument untempered with friendship and the "one thing needful," that no vision for the future, guideboard for the distant, or expositor for the present, need trouble any one with what he ought to do.
His own good, his family's good, his neighbor's good, his country's good, and all good seem to whisper to every person—the governor has told you what to do—now do it. ”

“ They who dwell in his presence are the church of the first born, and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known, having received of his fullness and of his grace;
And he makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion.
And the glory of the celestial is one, even as the glory of the sun is one.
And the glory of the terrestrial is one, even as the glory of the moon is one.
And the glory of the telestial is one, even as the glory of the stars is one, for as one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial world ”

“ I know the Almighty will bless all good men; He will bless you; and the time has come when there will be such a flocking to the standard of liberty as never has been or shall be hereafter. What an era has commenced! Our enemies have prophesied that we would establish our religion by the sword. Is it true? No. But if Missouri will not stay her cruel hand in her unhallowed persecutions against us, I restrain you not any longer. I say in the name of Jesus Christ, by the authority of the Holy Priesthood, I this day turn the key that opens the heavens to restrain you no longer from this time forth. ”

“ For illustration, suppose the case of two men, brothers, equally intelligent, learned, virtuous and lovely, walking in uprightness and in all good conscience, so far as they had been able to discern duty from the muddy stream of tradition, or from the blotted page of the book of nature. One dies and is buried, having never heard the Gospel of reconciliation; to the other the message of salvation is sent, he hears and embraces it, and is made the heir of eternal life. Shall the one become a partaker of glory, and the other consigned to hopeless perdition? ”

“ And when fifteen thousand free citizens of the high-blooded republic of North America are robbed and driven from one State to another without redress or redemption, it is not only time for a candidate for the presidency to pledge himself to execute judgment and justice in righteousness, law or no law; but it is his bounden duty as a man, for the honor of a disgraced country, and for the salvation of a once virtuous people, to call for a union of all honest men, and appease the wrath of God by acts of wisdom, holiness, and virtue! ”

“ General Joseph Smith—a man of sterling worth and integrity and of enlarged views—a man who has raised himself from the humblest walks in life to stand at the head of a large, intelligent, respectable and increasing society, that has spread not only in this land, but in distant nations,—a man whose talents and genius are of an exalted nature, and whose experience has rendered him in every way adequate to the onerous duty. Honorable, fearless, and energetic, he would administer justice with an impartial hand, and magnify and dignify the office of Chief magistrate of this land ”

“ True greatness never wavers; but when the Missouri compromise was entered into by you for the benefit of slavery, there was a mighty shrinkage of western honor; and from that day, sir, the sterling Yankee, the struggling Abolitionist, and the staunch Democrat, with a large number of the liberal-minded Whigs, have marked you as a black-leg in politics, begging for a chance to shuffle yourself into the Presidential chair, where you might deal out the destinies of our beloved country for a game of brag that would end in—"Hark from the tombs a doleful sound." ”

“ The Latter-day Saints will, at all events, and profit by the instruction, and call upon honest men to help them cherish all the love, all the friendship, all the courtesy, all the kindly feelings and all the generosity that ought to characterize clever people in a clever neighborhood, and leave candid men to judge which tree exhibits the best fruit—the one with the most clubs and sticks thrown into its boughs and the grass trodden down under it, or the one with no sticks in it, some dead limbs and rank grass growing under it ”

“ Again, those who fall away from Mormonism carry with them the evidences of that fall. Unbelievers say to Mormons, "Come out of the darkness of your superstitions into God's sunlight of freedom"—but when one looks upon the fate, the condition and experience of those who have denied the faith, he receives small encouragement to obey the summons. Seldom indeed are they prospered even in the affairs of this world, and the canker-worm gnawing within, writes upon their faces the anguish of heart which their lying lips deny. They smile, but smiling suffer; the heart still beats, but brokenly lives on ”

“ But the Church of Christ, precious as it is; beloved by its great Head; in the harmony of its truth, perfect; in the beauty of its holiness, passing all praise; in its power of salvation, absolute—yet the Church of Christ will doubtless stand under the protecting aegis of the Kingdom of God in common with other systems of religion, enjoying only such rights as will be common to all. ”

“ He that does not strive with all his powers of body and mind, with all his influence at home and abroad, and to cause others to do so too, to seek peace and maintain it for his own benefit and convenience, and for the honor of his State, nation, and country, has no claim on the clemency of man; nor should he be entitled to the friendship of woman or the protection of government.
He is the canker-worm to gnaw his own vitals, and the vulture to prey upon his own body; and he is, as to his own prospects and prosperity in life, a felo-de-se of his own pleasure. ”

“ It throws a new light upon man's future existence. It destroys the vagueness which through nearly all ages like a mystic pall has hidden the glory and exaltation destined for man in the future eternities of God. It should be said, in this connection, that the revelations of God to Joseph Smith even before this marriage system was made known, held out to man the hope of a tangible future existence in a resurrected, immortal body of flesh and bones quickened by the spirit, and clothed with the glory of immortal youth. The future life was to be a reality, not a land of shadows ”

“ But, sir, when the nation has sunk deeper and deeper into the mud at every turn of the great wheels of the Union, while you have acted as one of the principal drivers, it becomes the bounden duty of the whole community, as one man, to whisper you on every point of government, to uncover every act of your life, and inquire what mighty acts you have done to benefit the nation, how much you have tithed the mint to gratify your lust, and why the fragments of your raiment hang upon the thorns by the path as signals to beware. ”

“ After we have been deprived of our rights and privileges of citizenship, driven from town to town, place to place, and State to State, with the sacrifice of our homes and lands, our blood has been shed, many having been murdered, and all this because of our religion—because we worship Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, shall we longer bear these cruelties which have been heaped upon us for the last ten years in the face of heaven, and in open violation of the Constitution and laws of these United States and of this State? ”

“ While I have power of body and mind—while water runs and grass grows—while virtue is lovely and vice hateful, and while a stone points out a sacred spot where a fragment of American liberty once was, I or my posterity will plead the cause of injured innocence, until Missouri makes atonement for all her sins, or sinks disgraced, degraded, and damned to hell, "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." ”

“ Why, sir, the power not delegated to the United States and the States belong to the people, and Congress sent to do the people's business have all power; and shall fifteen thousand citizens groan in exile? O vain men! will ye not, if ye do not restore them to their rights and two million dollars' worth of property, relinquish to them (the Latter-day Saints,) as a body, their portion of power that belongs to them according to the Constitution? Power has its convenience as well as inconvenience. ”

“ I would walk in the tracks of the illustrious patriots who carried the ark of the government upon their shoulders with an eye single to the glory of the people and when that people petitioned to abolish slavery in the slave States, I would use all honorable means to have their prayers granted, and give liberty to the captive by paying the Southern gentlemen a reasonable equivalent for his property; that the whole nation might be free indeed! ”

“ Here then is eternal life, to know the only wise and true God, and you have got to learn to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power. ”

“ They were, at the time, citizens of the State of Missouri. Shall they apply to the courts of the State of Missouri? Whom shall they sue? The order for their destruction, their extermination, was granted by the executive of the State of Missouri. Is not this a plea of justification for the loss of individuals, done in pursuance of the order? If not, before whom shall the Mormons institute a trial? Shall they summon a jury of the individuals who composed the mob? An appeal to them were in vain. They dare not go to Missouri to institute a suit, their lives would be in danger. ”

“ He told of the responsibility that rested upon us, as guardians of the public interest, to stand up in the defense of the injured and oppressed, to stem the current of corruption, and, as men and Saints, to put a stop to this flagrant outrage upon this people's rights.
He stated that no man was a stronger advocate for the liberty of speech and of the press than himself: yet, when this noble gift is utterly prostituted and abused, as in the present instance, it loses all claim to our respect, and becomes as great an agent for evil as it can possibly be for good ”

“ O ye crowned heads among all nations, is not Mr. Clay a wise man, and very patriotic? Why, great God! to transport 200,000 people through a vast prairie, over the Rocky Mountains, to Oregon, a distance of nearly two thousand miles, would cost more than four millions! or should they go by Cape Horn in ships to California, the cost would be more than twenty millions! and all this to save the United States from inheriting the disgrace of Missouri for murdering and robbing the Saints with impunity! ”

“ Crape the heavens with weeds of wo, gird the earth with sack-cloth, and let hell mutter one melody in commemoration of fallen splendor! for the glory of America has departed, and God will set a flaming sword to guard the tree of liberty, while such mint-tithing Herods as Van Buren, Boggs, Benton, Calhoun and Clay are thrust out of the realms of virtue as fit subjects for the kingdom of fallen greatness. ”

“ Trouble, vexation, perplexity, and contention, mingled with hope, fear, and murmuring, rumbled through the Union and agitated the whole nation, as would an earthquake at the center of the earth, the world heaving the sea beyond its bounds and shaking the everlasting hills; so, in hopes of better times, while jealousy, hypocritical pretensions, and pompous ambition were luxuriating on the ill-gotten spoils of the people, they rose in their majesty like a tornado, and swept through the land, till General Harrison appeared as a star among the storm-clouds for better weather. ”