History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

166 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
while laying themselves open to the charge of being
law-breakers, and assuming an attitude of defiance
toward the laws and institutions of the country in
which they lived, this bond of sympathy, of criminality
if you will, particularly when made a matter
of conscience, when recognized as a mandate from
the almighty, higher than any human law, and in
whose obedience God himself was best pleased, and
would surely afford protection, could but prove in the
end a bond of strength, particularly if permitted to
attain age and respectability among themselves, and
assume the form of a concrete principle and of sacred
obligation.
If instead of falling back upon the teachings of the
old testament, and adopting the questionable practices
of the half-civilized Jews; if instead of taking for their
models Abraham, David, and Solomon, the saints at
Nauvoo had followed the advice of Paul to the saints
at Ephesus, putting away fornication and all unclean-
ness, and walking worthy of their vocation, in all
lowliness and meekness, as children of light, they would
probably have remained in their beautiful city, and
come into the inheritance of their Missouri Zion as
had been prophesied. Had they consulted more
closely the signs of the times, had they been less
orthodox in their creed, less patriarchal in their prac-
tices, less biblical in their tenets, less devoted in their
doctrines—in a word, had they followed more closely
the path of worldly wisdom, and, like opposing christian
sects, tempered religion with civilization, giving
up the worst parts of religion for the better parts of
civilization, I should not now be writing their history,
as one with the history of Utah.
But now was brought upon them this overwhelming
issue, which howsoever it accorded with ancient scripture
teachings, and as they thought with the rights
of man, was opposed to public sentiment, and to the
conscience of all civilized nations. Forever after they
must have this mighty obstacle to contend with; for-