Moses Thatcher

“ If every human being who has, or ever will live is to be judged by the law of redemption as Christians believe, and there be no repentance beyond the grave, how then shall infants and heathens who never heard of Christ or his law be redeemed? To say nothing about the dead what is to become of the four hundred millions of Chinese now inhabiting the empire of China, who do not, and in all probability will not in this life, know anything about the Gospel? What about the two hundred and eighty million followers of Mohammed, who, like the Chinese, have never heard of water and spirit baptism! ”

“ The God we worship is full of compassion, justice and love. Hence the broad scope of His plan of human redemption, reaching the living and the dead, in time and in eternity. I can comprehend how a demon might want to consign to eternal punishment without a hearing, without law, His creatures, but how men can pretend to worship a God possessed of such attributes is a mystery.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.—He who created the heaven and earth and is the father of all spirits, will not thus condemn. He will judge men by the light they have had and by the deeds done in their bodies ”

“ God neither changes nor is he a respecter of persons; the causes, therefore, which He ordained to produce certain results in one age will produce them in another. What would we think of an earthly father who, having bestowed every care in the education, advancement and exaltation of his first born; giving instruction, encouragement, sympathy and love, but to children born later only the history of his doings with their older brother? Quick to hear and answer the prayers of the first, deaf to the supplications of others. A living testimony to one, doubt and despair to the rest. ”

“ But if He has made no change, He will surely, hold us responsible for accepting any that men have made. Can a church not even bearing the name of the Redeemer, and having neither Apostles nor Prophets, bear the fruits enjoyed by the disciples of our Lord in the days of and subsequent to His ministry? Do any of them ever claim to have such fruits? Who among them have the endowments of the Comforter, whose mission it was and is to bring the teachings of Jesus to the memory, show things to come and lead into all truth? ”

“ Their child may stumble and fall, his feet may traverse bye and forbidden paths, he may do ten thousand wrong things, but in the midst of all the love of father and mother reaches out and yearns for the reclamation and redemption of the wayward one. This love, implanted in the human heart, is of divine origin. It is the mainspring that prompts saving efforts. The plan of salvation being permeated with it, strikes unerringly at human selfishness, and bidding us do unto others as we would have others do unto us, cannot possibly be narrow. ”

“ No man without the Holy Ghost can testify that Jesus is the Christ; neither could any men under similar circumstances utter from the heart such sentiments of forgiveness without the direct inspiration of the Almighty. Christians may assimilate, preach about, and praise a love that passeth the comprehension of the finite mind, but no mortal can love his enemies and pray for the forgiveness of those who despitefully use and would kill him, without the testimony of Jesus, and the knowledge accompanying it. ”

“ True religion will do these and ten thousand kindred deeds of charity, whenever and wherever practiced. The fearful wrongs everywhere seen in the Christian world were not fore-ordained, nor are they any part of heaven's economy, but are the fruits of the acts of sinful man, the results of God's laws broken and trodden under feet of men whose wicked injustice blotch and mar the harmony and peace of the universe. ”

“ God so loved the human family that He gave His only Begotten Son to die for the sins of the world, and in all the dealings of God with the human family, the careful student will find that the deepest, the strongest, the chord that gives forth the sweetest music, is that which vibrates under the touch of this infinite, almost incomprehensible, love of the Almighty. ”

“ Where God is he can never abide, nor can those having received the testimony of Jesus who deny it. Such can never, if they reject the truth, sin against the light and put Jesus again to an open shame, abide the presence of God. When through the stoning blood of Christ their spirits and bodies are brought together in the resurrection of the wicked and are judged according to the deeds done in the body, the second death will pass upon them. The first death resulted in a temporary separation of body and spirit, but the second will result in eternal separation. ”

“ It will silence the voice of envy and remove the foot of oppression from the neck of the poor. Its church steeples will cast no shadows over the homeless, starving, shivering child of God, left miserably to perish under the very droppings of the sanctuary. ”

“ The coercive, agency destroying plan of Satan, having been rejected by the councils of heaven, a better, more noble plan, one founded in unselfish love that distills the mercies of God in the human heart, as the dews of heaven moisten and gladden the parched earth, was adopted. This plan, while holding the keys of the Godhead in the authority of His priesthood, is yet simple and easily understood—so plain is it that a wayfaring man need not err. ”

“ It caused the disciples of Jesus to take gladly the spoiling of their goods and bear patiently the contumely heaped upon them. How few can comprehend it! Physical courage is common enough even in this degenerate age. Exhibitions of brute force can be witnessed on every hand. The crawling worm as it drags its slimy term, will turn and fight for existence, and the lowest of God's creatures struggle for life. ”

“ Jesus, the Mediator of the Covenant, the Captain of our salvation, through whose atoning blood our sins are washed away, and by whose merits and our faithfulness we shall be brought again into the presence of God the Father, has declared that a man cannot enter the Kingdom of God except he be born of the water and of the Spirit ”

“ Outside the gates will be sorcerers, adulterers, the lover and maker of lies, and those that lay in the gate making men offenders for a word will be there among dogs, but the means of increased knowledge and a power will be within their reach. Thousands of honest men are anxiously watching the issues of our day, and while they have not moral courage to express interest in our sympathy for the Saints in their hearts, they feel both. ”

“ I say to the Latter-day Saints, if the religion you have received fails to prevent you from bearing false witness, it is either untrue and not the religion of Christ, or it is not grounded in your hearts. True religion is bound to be practical religion, teaching the merchant to give sixteen ounces to the pound, thirty-six inches to the yard, and in every way to be honest and truthful. It will teach the laborer to do honest work and the employer to give honest and fair wages for the work. ”

“ Nowhere exists so great confidence between husbands and wives as in Utah. Nowhere is sexual impurity regarded with greater disgust, or chastity esteemed more highly. Philosophers, preachers and moralists may insist on the enforcement of Roman instituted monogamy, but its practice throughout the Christian world is fraught with all manner of deceivableness, of iniquity and sexual abominations. Better practice what we preach and preach what we practice, leaving no room for distrust; for, as between man and wife, where confidence dies, there you may dig the grave of love. ”

“ Nowhere in the world are women freer than in Utah. As God hates putting away, husbands among this people can put their wives away only for causes mentioned in the holy writ; but wives, on the other hand may claim freedom and support on other and more numerous grounds. Here, man regards his wife as a helpmeet, companion and part of himself, with whose assistance alone he can pass by the angels and inherit eternal, celestial glory. ”

“ Ignorant, low and wicked, they may be drunken, blasphemous, bearers of false-witness whose testimony may lead to the imprisonment of the innocent; defilers of men and women and the workers of all manner of iniquity; if they shed not innocent blood God will save them, though in the fitness of things, many will be outside the walls of the beautiful city among that class in whose society alone they are prepared to go. ”

“ There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it understanding; the sinful who listen and obey are led to repentance, and, through the doors of baptism of the water and spirit are brought out of wickedness to the enlightenment of pure knowledge, until in obedience to heavenly law they secure the keys of power authorizing them to pass by the angels, inherit glory, become heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ ”

“ The windows of heaven being opened and the fountains of the deep broken up, the earth was literally baptized in water, as hereafter, abiding the law of its creation it will be literally baptized in fire and the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Then think of the billions who have died equally or more ignorant of these vital questions, and tell me that God intends to mix them up with infants a span long, who died without being sprinkled by some poor, narrow-minded priest without authority from heaven, and I will tell you that I don't worship that kind of a God. ”

“ Whatever may be the views of uninspired sectarians as to the utter condemnation of the heathen, and of the un-sprinkled infant who dies before the dawning of reason upon its intellect, none but those mentioned will be consigned to eternal condemnation and to the misery and torments of what is called hell. ”

“ Let us obey the laws of God, the laws of no Christian nation should conflict therewith.
As the value of a coin is largely determined by its purchasing power, so the value of a religion may be partly determined by its cost and largely by the blessings it will bring. Becoming familiar with the coin issues of our country the careful, prudent man is able in many ways to detect counterfeits. Note for instance the authorized issue of gold twenties. Above the eagle, the nation's emblematic coat of arms, and surrounded by stars and rays of light are the words, "In God we trust;" ”

“ Men will be judged by the deeds done in the body. If, therefore, a man, in full possession of intellectual faculties sins against light as the son of the morning, Satan, sinned against light, no power on earth or in heaven can save him. ”

“ Thus it would seem that paradise is a place where the spirits of the disobedient are imprisoned, and as Christ preached His Gospel to them, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the thief also heard there, the conditions upon which he could be saved, for, says Peter 3, 6, "for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. ”

“ Wicked and foolish men may teach to the contrary, but they cannot effect the result. Mortals entrusted with a little brief authority, as they suppose, may exercise unrighteous dominion over the bodies and souls of men, imprisoning many, killing some. Many a saint may hereafter be commanded to worship the golden image or perish in the fiery furnace, deny his faith or be cast down into the lion's den. You have among you Latter-day Saints some who would, if necessary, give their lives for you and the cause which they have espoused. They are willing to die for the testimony of Jesus. ”

“ The opinions of men as to where and what paradise is, are of but little value. It is at least the abode of spirits, good and bad. A place of peace and rest for the good, of imprisonment and punishment for the bad. Referring to the Territory we might say we are in Utah, yet those who are here in Logan are not in Salt Lake City, nor are any of you in prison though you are in Utah. ”

“ Under certain conditions, and regulated by revelation, we believe it is true, in plural marriage, and so far as the word theocracy conveys the idea of the government of God in the affairs of men, we are willing to be called theocratic, and we confess that we prefer the motto, "Vox Dei vox Populi" to "Vox Populi vox Dei," for we think that the voice of God should be the voice of the people, but we very well know that the voice of the people is very often far from being the voice of God. ”

“ Henry Ward Beecher, in which his mighty intellect,—he is conceded to be one of the foremost thinkers of the age,—seemed to grasp material with which to bridge the gulf separating the various Christian denominations, by comparing the kingdom of heaven to the City of Philadelphia, leading into which were many railways, over each of which many trains, with many cars containing many people, passed daily. ”

“ Such is the high destiny of obedient man. But Satan was an accuser of his brethren from the beginning, hence the rejoicing of angels when he and his kind were cast down to earth bodiless, estateless and powerless, except for evil. Wandering spirits in the realms of darkness, seeking everywhere and under all circumstances to enter, defile and destroy the souls and bodies of men. ”

“ The fruits of knowledge to one, dead forms to the others. Could such a father be considered impartial, generous or just? No. And yet men would have us believe that God deals with His children in just this way. ”