“ We infer from the fact, that God our heavenly Father has pointed out the way by revelation ancient and modern, that his creatures should pursue to glorify and enjoy him, and that we are acting the irrational part towards ourselves as well as that of base ingratitude to him, to let the adversary get the ascendancy over us and decoy us, till folly, vanity, and sin ultimately preponderate and satan literally take us captive at his will. ”

“ We expect, notwithstanding the great calamities that shall precede the appearance of the Savior, the wicked who shall survive those calamities, will be full of folly, full of vanity, full of laughter and every evil propensity, and that day will come in a time when they least expect it ”

“ That we may not be found in the unpleasant dilemma of the foolish virgins with no oil in our lamps?—Remember that God is not mocked nor his commands to be treated with irreverence or disrespect: his presence fills immensity, and his all-seeing eye surveys the whole of his vast creation. ”

“ We ask you to examine yourselves, brethren & sisters, after you have passed through a scene of folly and vanity and see if your taste for intellectual attainments has not become more obtuse, and your anxiety to become acquainted with the things of God, and our holy religion, far less acute. ”

“ We are well acquainted with the follies and vanities incident to youth, and we do know they are directly calculated to corrupt the taste for mental improvement, vitiate the habits, and not only so, but to grieve the Spirit of God and cause it to withdraw its vivifying influences from our souls. ”

“ We do not suppose, the Lord required any more strict obedience to his commands of you, than he does of your aged brethren, but you will permit us, who have passed the meridian and are now on the declivity of life, to speak from experience in this matter: "we speak of the things we do know, and testify of those we have seen." ”

“ If the apostle with any degree of propriety could urge such a course of conduct upon the Saints in his day, with how much greater propriety, and greater force may the same sentiments be urged upon the Saints now, that eighteen hundred years have passed away. ”

“ That immoderate laughter and foolish jesting are at war with every principle of morality or holiness of heart without which, no one will see the Lord: and that we cannot by any forced construction of ours make them accord with the sentiment couched in our text ”