George Q. Cannon

“ And in our day we behold the same effect. The Latter-day Saints and their work have been like a city set on a hill. They have attracted the gaze of the nations, and that, too, without any especial effort on their part to make themselves conspicuous. The clamor of our enemies has greatly contributed to this. What do their attacks accomplish for us? They advertise us and give us an importance to which we could not otherwise attain. ”

“ Not that many would avow their wish to have our lives taken, but to destroy our union, to destroy the influence of our leading men. Now, I ask you, Latter-day Saints, are you so blind and so foolish as not to see that this is the object of every attack which is made upon us? You who do not feel in favor of more union and of concentrating our efforts, ask yourselves this question and reflect upon the objects sought to be obtained by those who are arrayed against us. We do not seek the destruction of any, we have never been aggressive, we have never sought to force our opinions upon any one ”

“ We are living in one of the most important periods of the earth's history. Events are of such a character connected with us as to excite the greatest interest, and no one connected with the people, who feels as he or she should, can help being interested in the way in which this work is progressing and attracting attention throughout the earth. There is no people, to-day, on the face of the earth who are situated in this respect as are the Latter-day Saints. ”

“ There is power in concentration of effort, and it is this which gives us our character in the earth to-day. Cause the Latter-day Saints to be disunited, divide us asunder, split us into factions and what would we amount to? Why, nothing at all, we would not count anything in the history of the race or of the earth; but the very notice that we receive, the attention that we attract is a tribute to our union and to that amount of the cementing influence which prevails among us as a people. ”

“ May God bless you and fill you with his Holy Spirit, that you may carry it with you to your various homes in the remote parts of the Territory, and that it may live and burn within you, fill you with good and holy desires to do the will of God, keep his commandments and live in close communion with him, and then you need never be afraid of being deceived, for you can not be if you have the Holy Ghost within you, and that this may be the case, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus. ”

“ I look around me and I see a people who, if they were not Latter-day Saints, if they did not believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, would not be noticed in any particular manner, but who, because they are Latter-day Saints, are known more widely and whose movements attract more attention and excite greater interest, whose public men are more advertised and their lives and characters published more widely throughout the earth than those of many rulers of great nations. ”

“ God is dealing with us in a most remarkable manner, and is fulfilling, through his people, the predictions of the holy prophets, and we behold on every hand, when we open our eyes to see and our hearts to understand, the great events which God said should transpire in some day and age in the future. ”

“ But because we are united, because we have set our faces against these things, because we discourage vice we are unpopular, and we shall continue to be so until a better judgment prevail. I have said there is no disguising the fact, nobody attempts to disguise it, that the object sought for at the present time is the destruction of this people as a people. ”

“ There is one thing with which I am greatly impressed, and that is, within a few years how determined the enemies of the kingdom of God have been to destroy that work which he has founded. How they have envied, maligned, and maliciously persecuted this people, and how they have concocted plots for their overthrow! ”

“ God has sent us here for this object, and I do not know any better thing that we can engage in than to build up the Zion of God. It is as good and as great a labor as we can be engaged in, in fact it is the labor which God has assigned unto us as a people and as individuals, and if any of us are engaged in anything else we are not in the line of our duty, and we should turn aside from that and pursue the path which God has marked out. ”

“ Every fair-minded man who comes to this land and deports himself as a gentleman, and any fair-minded lady who comes and deports herself in like manner, might live here until they were as old as Methuselah was, if we continued as we have been, without ever having the least cause of feeling against us. We ask no more from others than we are willing to extend to them with the greatest liberality and freedom ”

“ It is an advantage, because, as I have said, it causes men and women to reason and reflect, and it promotes investigation. There have been hundreds who have come here and been brought in contact with this people, who have been astonished at what they have seen, because what they have seen has been so different in every respect from the stories that they have heard, and the effect and revulsion of feeling have been much greater than they would have been had they never heard anything about us at all. ”

“ Yet it is not these representatives who wish so much to do us harm, but it is a body of men here who are anxious to gain power and influence at the expense of a people whose prosperity and influence they envy. ”

“ Every effort of this kind has for its object the destruction of the union of this people. Why, if we were disunited, if we were split into factions we might have houses of ill-fame on every corner in juxtaposition with churches ”

“ In this last Congress no less than eight bills were introduced, having for their object the subjugation of the people of Utah to the ring of men who have sought their destruction, and yet the population of this entire Territory does not number as much as a second class city in the United States. ”

“ Union among us is all-important, because we have a power opposed to us that will destroy us if it can, there is no disguising this fact, it is publicly announced everywhere. It was hoped when the railroad was completed that that would do it ”