George G. Bywater

“ And the tears of penitence for the sins of the dead who had gone centuries before them trickle down their face and stain the pages of the sacred scriptures from which they select their texts when they refer to the blindness and hardness of heart of the people who treated with ignominy and contempt the world's greatest reformer, the world's universal redeemer, the Son of God Himself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a well known and universally recognized fact throughout all Christendom to-day, that, Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world; that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the redeemer of the human race, is the captain of our salvation, and that there is no other name given under heaven whereby man can be saved but the name of Jesus. This will be readily and clamorously conceded, persistently avowed, and zealously declared, by every church that lays any claim to the name of Christian throughout the whole world ”

“ 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. ”

“ My friends, if we were placed in this position of our own doing, we would gladly come to terms, we would gladly settle this question before the setting of another day's sun. But when we know that God has spoken from heaven; when we know as well as we know that we live that the revelations which we have received—against which the world are now fighting—are of God, born of heaven, of heavenly descent, we can but say in conclusion that we will do all we can, we will keep every law that it is possible for us to keep, we will honor our government to the best of our ability ”

“ It is the subject of the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of a people's own conscience, unrestricted and unrestrained by arbitrary or compulsory measures. He has referred to historical instances related in sacred history to circumstances under which and by the development of which the spirit of persecution, the spirit of intolerance, the spirit of tyranny and oppression has manifested itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suffice it to say that the most violent and determined opposition that Jesus of Nazareth met with in His day and generation was from the very class of men that the Christian world to-day have supposed and thought He ought to have derived the greatest possible support. ”

“ As I have already said, the assembling together of a people in a congregational capacity to pay their adorations to God their Heavenly Father is not a strange or an exceptional spectacle, but is common throughout the world. ”

“ A country or a people who are devoid of the sensibilities of the obligations which they owe to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, to the creator of the world and all things that in it are, would be considered pagan, would be considered an uncivilized people. ”

“ Oh, they tell their Christian friends that they lament the darkness, the moral blindness, the intellectual and doctrinal opaqueness of that age; that had they lived in the days when Jesus sojourned among men, when He went about speaking words of kindness, uttering sentences of love and mercy, expressing His good will to the whole human family, and seeking to promulgate the principles of peace in a distracted age ”

“ No, my friends, I will say as one of old said: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." We know the principles are right; we know they are eternal, no matter what may be the consequences. Suppose some of us are put to death, what of that? By putting us to death they simply place us beyond their power—they can do nothing more. As Jesus said, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ”

“ Our christian preachers and ministers tell their congregations that the learned doctors of the law who had little else to do but study the technicalities of the laws, to familiarize themselves with the genius of their construction, with the wisdom that promulgated them, with the necessities underlying the need for their legislation ”

“ Well, we would be answered variously, but all in harmony with one certain note of disapproval. The answer would be: "You are unlike us. You choose to profess a religion and a polity different to us. The constitution of your social structure is at variance with our ideas of morality. ”

“ This opposition was not confined to a narrow region. It was an opposition that was not limited within any special circle; for we read of one inquirer who appears to be a man of very general information addressing himself, in the form of an inquiry in his own behalf, and in behalf of those whom he represented, to the Apostles, saying:
"We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against." ”

“ It is also true that they were men that had not attained to any high repute, or had been elevated to any dignified or scholastic position in the land, either ecclesiastical or political. They were graded as the offscourings and dregs of the human race. ”