Heber C. Kimball

“ As brother Brigham has said, I can say that every word is true that brother James has spoken. God bless him and fill him with the Spirit of righteousness, that the power of God may be upon him; and God bless every good man and woman; the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall be upon them, and you cannot help it. We will arise and live our religion and serve our God: instead of running down into degradation we will regenerate ourselves. ”

“ If twenty-five years will produce this amount of people, how much will be the increase in one hundred years? We could not number them, or if we did sum up the amount to any given time, they are still on the increase.
But some of you are taking a course to spend your lives for nought, while brother Brigham, and I are becoming like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Prophets. Why do you not be profitable to yourselves, and put out your lives to usury? ”

“ That is loving the wicked, to send them there to hell to be burnt out until they are purified. Yes, they shall go there and stay there and be burnt, like an old pipe that stinks with long usage and corruption, until they are burnt out, and then their spirits may be saved in the day of God Almighty. It is my feelings that they may be damned for their awful iniquity in shedding innocent blood, as also all who sanction their acts, both men and women, together with all who associate with them and partake of their spirit, for that spirit is opposite to God and His servants. ”

“ I have spoken these things with good feelings, and these principles are laying the axe at the root of the trees, and that tree will fall which is not connected with God and His children. The Scripture says that there is an axe laid at the root of every tree, that is, it is laid at the root of every man and woman, and that axe will be used to slay them, if they persist in iniquity. If there is an axe at the root of my tree, let me so live that I may be worthy to pick up that axe and slay the wicked, and not be slain. That man or woman who will not do that, will be slain. ”

“ A hundred years will not pass away before I will become millions myself. You may go to work and reckon it up, and twenty-five years will not pass away before brother Brigham and I will number more than this whole Territory. Now, if that number proceeds from us, I tell you our roots are fruitful. Take away every cause of death to those roots and nourish them and cherish them, and they will increase and you cannot help yourselves. ”

“ I bless the Saints, the good men, the good women, and the good children the wide word over, and I bless the earth we inherit; but I feel to curse the wicked, and the ungodly, and those who are taking the road to destruction. ”

“ I know the character of the human family and the course that many men and women are taking; they are making a desolation and taking a course to bring destruction upon their root; they are following a course that would ultimately depopulate the earth. All will come to that, if they do not take a course of continual increase for ever and for ever. ”

“ I am national in one respect: I am strongly in favour of the house of Israel, and of all good men and women of every nation, clime, and country, for they are of my kindred, and have sprung from the same Father and God that I have. ”

“ How long do you suppose it will take a little man like me, though I feel perfectly able to thrash any six common wicked men, if I am faithful in keeping the commandments of God and true all the days of my life to my brethren, as I have been hitherto and mean to be more so, to get into the celestial kingdom of God with my whole posterity, in case there should be no obstruction? ”

“ And if you persist in your sins, you will have to be judged out of the old scrap-book. Is not this a great promise?
It is easy to do right, to lay aside old erroneous notions, hypocrisy, thieving, lying, and a thousand other things that are a rebellion against God and against His authority. I want to know if God will love and respect and send His angels to one of my wives, though she were fifty, sixty, or a hundred years of age, if she is disobedient to me when I am as merciful, generous, and kind a man to her as ever lived? ”

“ Do you not know that the Prophet says, that if the people turn away from their sins and repent, and forsake them, thus saith the Lord, I will no more remember their sins against them for ever; but if they turn from their righteousness to their unrighteousness, I will bring all their former sins back upon their heads, those which they have committed in all their days? ”

“ They had to do the works of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in order to be admitted where they are;—they had to be polygamists in order to be received into their society. God knows that I am not ashamed of those good men now, and how much more I shall prize my associate polygamists, when I am further advanced in knowledge, I do not know. ”

“ I have not spoken vulgarly, but have spoken of the acts wherein some have degraded themselves in the eyes of heaven. God cannot abide with such persons, nor His angels, and the Holy Ghost will not dwell with them, when they are so corrupt. ”

“ Upon the same principle let wickedness be in our midst undisturbed—pay no attention to it at all—and it will ruin this whole people. It will canker the roots of the trees and spread, until all the branches pertaining to those trees are defiled and corrupted. ”

“ I bring this up as a comparison, to show that the world have become degenerated. Upon the same principle some are a great many degrees below zero, that is, below the point of perfection at which God first made us. ”

“ Some men cannot go and live but a short time in Tooele, or San Pete, or Box Elder, or in any other of our settlements, before they begin to feel that there is no people like the people in the place where they are living. ”

“ Neither God nor His Son Jesus Christ will send the holy angels to minister to such a woman, and she need not tell about their coming to visit her, nor about receiving revelations from heaven concerning brother Brigham, and about what brother Brigham and brother Heber should do. ”