Franklin D. Richards

“ I realize that it is so, for one, and I doubt not that the good Saints of Cache Valley also appreciate the same. If we can only preserve in ourselves that freedom of spirit which will enable us to comprehend the present, as it really is, we may rejoice indeed in knowing that the good time has overtaken us. It is not with us now as it has been, when scantiness and even hunger have been in our habitations. At present, so far as the comforts of life are concerned, the people are enjoying a competency of food and raiment, house and home, kindred and friends. ”

“ Once it took all of six months to hear from the old countries, say London; now we hear that "yesterday, President George A. Smith attended Conference with the Saints in London."
By these things we can see that we have come upon times when, if we are up to the scratch, we live very fast. It is no vain, untrue or humorous saying that we are living in a fast age. In matters of intelligence and business transactions we live weeks in a day, if we wisely direct our time and energy, when compared with those who have preceded us. ”

“ If there is any man amongst you who wants to take a wife, does he not have to obtain a certificate from his Bishop that he pays his Tithing? If any of you want to be baptized in the font in the house of the Lord for the generations of your dead, do you not need a certificate from your Bishop that you pay your Tithing? ”

“ That we may so live as to be able and pliant instruments in his hands, ready to do every good word and work, in bringing again Zion, establishing righteousness and truth in the earth, and hastening the day for the return thereto of the presence and glory of God, is my desire in the name of Jesus. ”

“ I desire to be more and more useful in helping to promulgate. them in the earth. I have pleasure in the labors of the Church. I rejoice exceedingly in the advancement of the cause of truth, and realize that we have to be wide awake in order to keep track of, and along with, the purposes, plans, devices and providences of God, that we may work with him, that he may work with and through us in bringing to pass his purposes, and the great and glorious events connected with his work in the last days. ”

“ The institution of Tithing is one which is emphatically binding upon us, and is as essential to our salvation and exaltation in the kingdom of God, so far as temporal things are concerned, as the ordinance of baptism for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost are in the spiritual part of the Gospel. ”

“ If we have witthheld [withheld] and kept back any portion of our Tithing, then have we robbed God, for that full tenth is not ours in any sense of the word, it is the Lord's, and if we keep it from him we rob him of that which is his. We should keep correctly in our minds and understandings that which is ours and that which is the Lord's. ”

“ The law of Tithing was in the household of faith, the Church of God on the earth, before the old Babylonish nations were founded, and they as well as the sectarians have learned pretty much all they know from the people of God at one time or another. ”

“ The implements to accomplish more labor are in our hands. They have overtaken us and are overtaking us, and will continue to do so, by means of which the amount of good which the Saints have been enabled to do in any given time in the past, is very small compared with the measure of good which they will be enabled to accomplish in the future. ”

“ When the Bishop or his clerk goes round to settle up Tithing, he finds a class of persons who act as though they felt it their bounden duty to get the figure of their Tithing down to the lowest possible scratch ”

“ These things make us realize our bearing and position one with the other in regard to business transactions.
But who is it that has placed the earth and its surrounding elements subject to the powers, governments and inhabitants of the earth? It is he who created them, and he it is who says that the earth and its fullness are his; and when we look at this matter and consider it carefully there is something about the subject of Tithing that commends itself strongly to our attention ”