[Brigham Young]
One of the first objections that was urged against Joseph Smith was that he was a money digger; and now the digging of gold is considered an honorable and praiseworthy employment. They are hunting for gold all over the country, doing the very thing which they condemned in him. The next fault they found with Joseph and the Saints was that they were stirring up the slaves to rebellion against their masters; and this was published abroad. Have they not done, and are they not now doing, the very thing for which they falsely blamed the Saints? The next accusation was that the Saints took more wives than one. Whether they will make one grand sweep of it in the future, and all conclude to take more wives, I cannot say. I wish they might; I do not, however, wish this for any private benefit it will be to me or to God's people, but that they may make women honorable wives whom they now destroy, and conduct themselves more like human beings who bear the image of God than they now do before Him. It is for their own sakes that I wish this, and for the sake of the unfortunate females whom they outrage. ... Supposing that the Latter-day Saints had possessed the city of New York for the last twenty years, as they have these valleys of Utah, and the young women of that city from sixteen years of age to twentyone had been in the hands of Mormon Elders as wives, how many would have now been living and honorable mothers of a bright, intelligent, and vigorous race of men and women, that have met an untimely grave, husbandless, childless, friendless, disgraced, and forgotten? ...
It is absolutely necessary that the Saints should receive the further ordinances of the house of God before this short existence shall come to a close, that they may be prepared and fully able to pass all the sentinels leading into the celestial kingdom and into the presence of God. ...
[Source: Journal of Discourses. Liverpool, England, 1853-86. 12:161-167; Deseret News. Also Deseret Evening News, Deseret News Weekly, Deseret News Semi- Weekly, and Deseret News Extra, Salt Lake City, in The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]
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