Brethren and sisters and friends: We have met this afternoon to
commemorate the death and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ in His
crucifixion on Calvary's cross as an atonement for the sins of the
world. We have met here to worship God. The spectacle of a worshiping
congregation is not new either in Utah or throughout Christendom at
large. A country or a people who are devoid of the sensibilities of
the obligations which they owe to the Supreme Ruler of the universe,
to the creator of the world and all things that in it are, would be
considered pagan, would be considered an uncivilized people. In
speaking of civilization Emerson once said that a nation without a
well-defined language, without clothing, without a system of marriage
we call heathen, we call barbarous, and he might have added with
propriety and like truthfulness, that a people who assemble not to pay
their devotion to the Great God, the architect of the universe, and
the common Fa ther of the human race, are an uncivilized people. While
we admit this to be true there are other facts associated with and
belonging to this subject of the worship of the Deity, that present
themselves very forcibly to our view, and I may enumerate a few of
them.
As I have already said, the assembling together of a people in a
congregational capacity to pay their adorations to God their Heavenly
Father is not a strange or an exceptional spectacle, but is common
throughout the world. Nevertheless there is great diversity of opinion
regarding divine worship; there are varied methods of paying those
adorations to the Supreme Being. The worship that they offer to Deity
is presented in ritualistic forms and described methods, in systematic
modes; in the form of homilies, in the exercise of prayer, of singing
of psalms, of the administration of sacraments, that differ very
widely the one from the other. But who on account of this diversity of opinion, who on account of this presented variety of modes
of bowing before, or of lifting up unto the Supreme Being our hands in
adoration and praise, or in the discharge of our devotional
obligations would say, that, but one, two, three, or any restricted
number should be guaranteed the liberty, the freedom, the religious
toleration, the political and moral right of bowing the knee before
God, and of lifting up their voices in praise and prayer to Him who
made the sun, the moon and the stars, and who created all things that
live and move and have a being? Show me a people, cite to me a nation
or a family of nations that have come to the conclusion, that have
made a predetermined decree that none shall worship the God of Daniel,
or none shall worship the Dianah of the Ephesians, or none shall
worship the golden image made by Nebuchadnezzar—you show me a people,
a community, or a nation, or family of nations, that are fettered and
bound by this proscriptive spirit and the dogmatic institutions and
traditions of their times, and I will show you a people that are
fettered with chains forged in the fires of bigotry and superstition
and that will prove to them a barrier to national and universal
progress.
The subject that we have had presented before us by my respected
brother who preceded me is a very interesting one, interesting from
more sides than one, interesting from every side, interesting from
center to circumference, in part and in entirety. It is the subject of
the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of a people's own
conscience, unrestricted and unrestrained by arbitrary or compulsory
measures. He has referred to historical instances related in sacred
history to circumstances under which and by the development of which
the spirit of persecution, the spirit of intolerance, the spirit of
tyranny and oppression has manifested itself. It is a well known and
universally recognized fact throughout all Christendom today, that,
Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world; that Jesus of Nazareth, the
Son of God, the redeemer of the human race, is the captain of our
salvation, and that there is no other name given under heaven whereby
man can be saved but the name of Jesus. This will be readily and
clamorously conceded, persistently avowed, and zealously declared, by
every church that lays any claim to the name of Christian throughout
the whole world; that he was the founder and finisher of that faith
which can alone save the family of man; that through His life, death
and resurrection, in connection with the principles of immortality and
eternal life which He brought forth to the knowledge of the world, in
His own person, fulfilling very many of the prophecies relative to
the dispensation of the fullness of times—that through Him, and
through Him alone, should salvation come unto Israel, and a fallen
world be redeemed. The Apostles he was pleased to select from among
the unlettered, the uncultivated and the undistinguished among His
fellow men, were called to be ministers of his word, to be ambassadors
of the message of salvation, to be His heralds of peace—peace on earth
and good will to all men. It is true He selected them from among the
humble fishermen that were following their occupation of fishing on
the sea of Galilee. It is true He did not select them from the learned
doctors of the law. It is also true that they were men that had not
attained to any high repute, or had been elevated to any dignified or scholastic position in the land, either ecclesiastical or
political. They were graded as the offscourings and dregs of the human
race. They were, so to speak, the dregs of human society. Yet today,
in this age of boasted Christian enlightenment, in this age of boasted
Christian freedom—pardon me for the remark—they claim that these men
were the servants of the Lord, men that bore in their possession the
principles of life and salvation unto all the world, and these men
were in their day bold to make affirmations such as fell very
unwelcomely, very unacceptably upon the ears of the elite, of the
educated, of the refined, of the professional classes of Jewish and of
Roman society, and also upon those who were cultivated in Greek
literature, and constituted the most refined element of human society.
Yet they were bold to declare, "We know that we are of God, and the
whole world lieth in wickedness." What do our Christian friends say?
What do our pulpit declaimers announce to their congregations when
they select such positive declarations, such strong doctrinal
enunciations as the one I have quoted and many more like unto
them—what do they say? Oh, they tell their Christian friends that they
lament the darkness, the moral blindness, the intellectual and
doctrinal opaqueness of that age; that had they lived in the days when
Jesus sojourned among men, when He went about speaking words of
kindness, uttering sentences of love and mercy, expressing His good
will to the whole human family, and seeking to promulgate the
principles of peace in a distracted age; say they, "Oh that we had
lived in the days of Jesus; oh that we had had the privilege of bowing
down at His feet like Mary and Martha; oh that we had had the
opportunity of surrounding Him when the precious words of life fell
from His hallowed lips—the lips of Him who spake as never man spake;
oh that we had had this privilege." And the tears of penitence for the
sins of the dead who had gone centuries before them trickle down their
face and stain the pages of the sacred scriptures from which they
select their texts when they refer to the blindness and hardness of
heart of the people who treated with ignominy and contempt the world's
greatest reformer, the world's universal redeemer, the Son of God
Himself. What do they say of them? "Oh," say they, "how strange it
is, how remarkable it is that those people with the writings of the
blessed Prophets—with the writings of Hosea, of Jeremiah, of Amos, of
Joel, of Habakkuk, of Zechariah, of Malachi, and of all the prophets
in their possession, wherein are found so many prophecies relating to
the coming of the Messiah, relating to the ushering in of a new
dispensation, relating to the inauguration of a reign of peace such as
the world had never seen, such as God had not promised unto the
children of men, until the period of the world's history when Shiloh
should come—how remarkable with all this that they did not receive
the Son of God. "If we had lived in these days," say they, "we believe
that we would have been able to see the hand of God; we would have
marked His divine footprints among the people; we would have
recognized by our ears the voice of the Good Shepherd; we would have
listened with hearts subdued with humility, with minds illuminated by
inspiration, to the marvelous and inimitable truths uttered by the
Savior of the world. Oh, how wicked it was for those people to
be so hardhearted; how wicked it was not only for the common people
but for the rulers of the Jews, for the members of the Senate, for the
doctors of the law, for the lights of the generation, the leading men
of the period in which they lived that they should be guilty of such
inhuman, such unnatural, such unjust conduct as to persecute men
against whom no charge in truth and in verity could be found except it
was that they were pleased to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord, to announce unto the world of mankind that a dispensation of
divine providence had been ushered in, wherein a change should take
place over the minds of the people; wherein a new order of things
should be developed, and wherein the Mosaic law with all its
sacerdotal rites and ceremonies were to be consummated and brought to
a termination in the fulfillment of the prophecies, and in the
introduction of a higher and a purer law." These are their feelings;
the ministers preach to the people after this fashion, and read to
them such passages as these:
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and
shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
"Rejoice and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven:
for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."
This language, my beloved friends, is of a very forcible character.
Probably a few reflections upon the sentiments incorporated in these
declarations of uninspired men may not be altogether uninstructive or
unprofitable unto us at this time.
We learn from these declarations that Jesus Christ and his followers
had their names cast out as evil. If these historians record veritable
facts—and we have no right to question the historical verity of these
statements, because they are established and verified by secular
history: if then, they are true it becomes every thinking student of
history, every earnest and avowed student of natural theology or
sectarian lore, to understand what it was that constituted the essence
of the disagreement, what constituted the gist, the kernel, if you
please, the special reason why the existing spirit, faith and
teachings of the Jewish people, and of the Roman people, in the
commencement of the Christian era, were so opposed to the doctrines of
Jesus Christ and His apostles. I have already referred to the general
recognition by the Christian world of the doctrines of Christ and His
apostles as being the foundation of the hope of all enlightened
nations for salvation before God; for salvation in eternity, for the
redemption of the human race. What, then, was it that was the cause of
the opposition which was so pronounced, so persistent and so prolonged
against Jesus Christ and His followers. This opposition was not
confined to a narrow region. It was an opposition that was not limited
within any special circle; for we read of one inquirer who appears to
be a man of very general information addressing himself, in the term
of an inquiry in his own behalf, and in behalf of those whom he
represented, to the Apostles, saying:
"We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this
sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against."
It was not a matter of conjecture with him. It was a matter of
conjecture with him as to what the Apostle Paul thought: for Paul was
a man of letters, a man of a very extended range of experience and
observation; so much so that one of the learned rabbis of his time
told him that much learning had made him mad. But he was inquiring
respecting his (Paul's) information concerning the Church of Christ, a
body of religious worshipers with whom he was identified, and in the
midst of whom he was an authorized Apostle.
"We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest; for as concerning this
sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against."
"We know!" "What do you know, sir?" "We know that
it is spoken
against." "Where is it spoken against, sir?" "It is everywhere
spoken
against." Hence we see the universality, the general character of the
opposition that was raised against the doctrines of the humble and
despised Nazarene. Why was it, my friends, that they were opposed to
Him? Why was it that His cause was so much misrepresented; that he was
charged with keeping company with publicans and sinners, and
considered worthy of death? Simply because he introduced an organized
system of principles, of ordinances and divine institutions that were
antagonistic, not in their essential nature to the welfare of mankind,
but antagonistic to the existing dogmas, theologies and schools of
philosophy that were then in existence. They were, moreover, systems
of theology, and schools of philosophy and organized methods of
procedure—in matters theological as well as matters doctrinal and
political—that were becoming exhausted. They had reached the period of
their decrepitude. They had attained unto the period of old age. They
had manifested within them the elements of social, moral and organic
decay. Their deteriorating effects were becoming painfully apparent.
They were becoming ill-adapted to the newly developing condition of
things; inapplicable to the unfolding environments of those times; and
God, who sits enthroned in the realms of purity and of truth, had
given these systems for the sake of His people. Whatever there was of
a regenerating progressive nature in these systems, God sustained. He
sustained them until the day star had dawned for a brighter and more
glorious epoch in the world's history, when the shepherds were visited
by messengers of light from the realms of the Eternal Gods, crying,
"Peace, peace on earth and good will toward all men."
But my brother who preceded me spoke of selfishness. He touched a
chord that seems to me to be unbroken and of a very extended length. I
think it reaches over all the ages. I think it has come down from the
border times of prehistoric history. I think it is found right through
human nature, crude and cultivated, civilized and uncivilized.
The doctrine which the Savior taught touched this feeling of
selfishness. It touched the personal vanity of many. The supporters of
the systems that I have alluded to—I have no time to name them; there
may be many of you who are historically well informed and know all
about them; you know there were a number of philosophical schools in
existence in Athens and elsewhere at that time; you are acquainted, no
doubt, with the dogmas of the period. Suffice it to say that the most
violent and determined opposi tion that Jesus of Nazareth met
with in His day and generation was from the very class of men that the
Christian world today have supposed and thought He ought to have
derived the greatest possible support. Our Christian preachers and
ministers tell their congregations that the learned doctors of the law
who had little else to do but study the technicalities of the laws, to
familiarize themselves with the genius of their construction, with the
wisdom that promulgated them, with the necessities underlying the need
for their legislation; these ministers tell us that they of all other
men ought to have discovered the signs of the times, ought to have
been able to read them, and in reading them to have discovered that
the set time had come for God to bring forth His Son Jesus Christ, and
to usher in a reign of peace. But it was from this class of people
that Jesus met with the most violent and persistent persecution.
And how is it today, my friends? How is it today with the Latter-day
Saints? I want to propound a few questions to my friends, as well as
to those who have no desire to be considered our friends. I have one
word to say to them. I would say, as my brother before me has said,
would to God that they could be inspired by the same divine
intelligence, by the same supreme wisdom and enlightened by the same
heavenly understanding that chased away the darkness of ages, cleared
up the obscurity in which the human mind was enveloped in the days of
Jesus; would to God they were sincere and devout and honest,
consistent believers in the Bible, the word of God. Then we would not
have so much trouble in reasoning with our friends. We have no trouble
today in obtaining an intelligent reply from our Christian friends
when we ask them, Why did Jesus and His Apostles receive persecution
at the hands of the Jews and of the Romans in their day, both as
religious and political communities? Why did they do it? The answer
would be freely given. Because they loved darkness rather than light;
because they would not purify their lives by the regenerating
principles of Christianity; because they would not deny themselves of
those forbidden fruits and of those unrestrained passions which ran
riot, and which the adherents of the Christian religion pronounce
against; because Jesus upbraided them for sin and iniquity. It was
because he told them the truth against themselves that they were
opposed to Him. What were the principles He taught? "Oh," says our
Christian friend, "they are to be found in the writings of Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John, and in the epistles of the Apostles. You will
find there the teachings that Jesus and His Apostles taught, and
there, too, are found the reasons for all the opposition and
persecution which they endured even unto death, even to the
ignominious death of crucifixion.
Well, suppose we were to ask the question now, what is the reason that
the Latter-day Saints are everywhere spoken against? What is the
answer? Well, we would be answered variously, but all in harmony with
one certain note of disapproval. The answer would be: "You are unlike
us. You choose to profess a religion and a polity different to us. The
constitution of your social structure is at variance with our ideas of
morality. We are enthusiastically, frantically, and mercilessly
incensed against your social system. We cannot endure it. You must
believe as we do. You must think as we do, and if you don't
choose to think and believe as we do, you must act as we do, or you
cannot be in fellowship with us." Now, my friends, this is the spirit
of the age in which we live, and I am respectfully at the whole
world's defiance to present to me or any other intelligent Latter-day
Saint a solid, logical or truthful argument of a contradictory nature.
There never has been and there never will be an opponent whose acumen
is equal to the task of formulating reasons rational and sufficiently
cogent to overthrow the doctrines of the religion of the Latter-day
Saints.
Now, then, if the people in the days of Jesus and His Apostles were as
consistent—or, pardon me, rather inconsistent—as the people of our day
are, they would persist in maintaining that these doctrines should not
be taught in Judea, nor in the regions round about, nor in Pamphilia,
nor in Rome, nor in Galatia, nor anywhere. You must renounce these
doctrines they said. But they did not renounce, and they put them to
death. Ah! That is the secret. Do you, then, Christians—the professed
promulgators of Bible Christianity—do you choose to repeat the deeds
of your forefathers? Do you choose to imitate the examples of the
persecutors of the humble and despised Nazarene by persecuting,
imprisoning and putting to death men and women who profess precisely
the same theology, who worship the same God, who bow at the same
sacred altar as Jesus and His Apostles did, who advocate the same
doctrines, who administer in the same ordinances, and who in every
doctrinal particular are following their divine Master and fellow
laborers, the Apostles of old? "Ah!" says one, "it is not that
exactly. If you would only promise that you would remove from your
religion every objectionable feature that it now presents to the
Christian world we would hail you as brethren, as fellow Christians."
What did the Jewish people do? What did the Roman people do? They told
Jesus of Nazareth in effect that if he would strike out of the
constitution of the new faith every principle and doctrine that was
uncongenial, if not with the prophecies which they professed to
believe in, at all events, with their construction of them; if they
would only put these away, then they could live with them. What would
our divines today think of Jesus and His Apostles if they had
permitted to be handed down to history that in consequence of the
opposition which the revelations of God had evoked in the human mind,
and had caused the public pulse to beat high, to arise to feverish
temperature, until they came to this conclusion: if we let these men
alone they will take away our name and nation; we cannot stand it;
crucify him! crucify him! release unto us the thieves—Barabbas,
anybody except Jesus of Nazareth; crucify him! crucify him!—His blood
be upon us and upon our children forever; this was the cry of the
populace; and had He made this affirmation, that in consequence of the
determined opposition, of the broad and deep-seated enmity that was
engendered in the hearts of the people against the revealed will of
God, it was best to cease to proclaim His glorious principles, it was
best to stop the administration of His ordinances, it was best to
surrender their allegiance to Almighty God, and bow in crouching
servility to their fellow men, in deference to them and rebellion to
the God of heaven. What would our Christian ministers think of such a
body of men as that of Jesus and His Apostles assuming a
position of that kind before them? How well they have declaimed in
favor of the martyrs of Christianity. With what burning eloquence they
have extolled the heroism, the stoutheartedness of the men and women
who were willing to go as lambs to the slaughter, like their divine
Master, rather than prove recreant to the sacred obligations they had
assumed. What would they say of such a Christianity? They would say,
Fie! upon such miserable stuff; fie! upon such men and women who
should attempt to lay hold of such glorious and benignant principles
as those of Christianity. They would say, the touch of such men and
women upon such principles was a contaminating touch; it would have
been an upas breath that they would have breathed when vindicating
Christianity; while they themselves were so inadequate to the
responsibilities—being devoid of the inspiration pertaining to the
truth—and so indisposed to live a life of purity which those
principles required at their hands.
If you would so judge of the former-day Saints, how would you judge of
the Latter-day Saints? What would you think of us if we were to tell
you that we would cease to believe in the religion of Jesus Christ? It
is true you do not know what it means, and hence we pity you. It is
true that we know we are of God: we know that these principles and
revelations are divine; we know that they have emanated from Him who
cannot lie; we know these things, and if you knew them would you ask
us to deny our faith, to prove recreant to our trust, to become
unworthy the confidence of our families and of honest men around us on
every hand. A gentle man in this city was known to say—and he said it
in language more forcible than eloquent, and you will excuse me for
not repeating it, because it might be considered sacrilege in a sacred
desk to do so—he was known to say: "If I knew what you say to be true,
I would go to prison—I would not deny it for anybody." Well, what
would you think of a man who would deny that which he knew to be true,
or say no when the truth required him to say yes? Could you trust him
as a Free Mason or an Odd Fellow, or in any other capacity where true
heartedness and genuine human worth is to be appreciated and sought?
Certainly not.
Well, now, my friends, we have made some very plain remarks this
afternoon. Permit me in conclusion to say that I am very sorry that we
are forced into this uninviting situation; but being forced into it,
pushed into it, if you please, driven into it, legislated into it,
what can we do? What would you advise us to do? Your advice would be
this possibly: "We believe that you people only say that you know this
work in which you are engaged is of God. We do not believe you do
know. We think you are like the rest of the Christian world, and that
your knowledge is no more divine, or that you have any closer
communion with God than the rest of the sects of the Christian world,
and they don't profess to know, only to believe. Therefore you are
very presumptuous to say you know these things. You ought to know
better. You had therefore better place yourselves in accord with us,
come a little nearer to us, and just say you don't believe certain
principles in your religion, and we will tolerate the other portion."
My friends, if we were placed in this position of our own doing, we would gladly come to terms, we would gladly settle this
question before the setting of another day's sun. But when we know
that God has spoken from heaven; when we know as well as we know that
we live that the revelations which we have received—against which the
world are now fighting—are of God, born of heaven, of heavenly
descent, we can but say in conclusion that we will do all we can, we
will keep every law that it is possible for us to keep, we will honor
our government to the best of our ability; but if we are asked to
choose this day whom we will serve, God or Belial, what do you take us
for? Hypocrites, knaves, fools, asinine actors in the drama of life,
or what? No, my friends, I will say as one of old said: "Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him." We know the principles are right;
we know they are eternal, no matter what may be the consequences.
Suppose some of us are put to death, what of that? By putting us to
death they simply place us be yond their power—they can do nothing
more. As Jesus said, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not
able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in hell." Now, if we are philosophers, if we are
men of wisdom, if we are students of the principles of intelligence
and of truth, why certainly we will make a wise selection, we will
elect to serve Him who created us, and we trust that God our heavenly
Father when He has so far matured His purposes, which are essential to
the consummation of the end for which He has permitted this crusade to
be waged against us, will be pleased to soften the hearts of those
around us as He did in former dispensations, and as He has done with
our own nation in our own day—that He will mold and temper the
dispositions of men, and that He will make the wrath of man to praise
Him, and the residue He will restrain. May God grant this is my prayer
in the name of Jesus. Amen.
- George G. Bywater