Saints: No Unhallowed Hand

Key Takeaways

Read in 2021 and tagged #Faith #History of the Church #Family History. The highlights cluster around a handful of obsessions — not the events of the trek so much as the interior problems of building an institution out of fallible people. Six threads run through what Kyle marked:

1. “Righteous in the dark.” The most-repeated Kyle note in the whole book. Brigham frames the trek as a proving ground — “an opportunity for every man to prove himself, to know whether he will pray and remember his God, without being asked to do it every day.” Who you are when you arrive matters as much as how you get there (Judges 7). Character is what you do unprompted, unwatched, untold. See Obedience, Spirit of Humility.

2. Prosperity as the real threat. When gold is discovered in California, Brigham’s response is counterintuitive: “If we were to go to San Francisco and dig up chunks of gold, it would ruin us.” His “worst fear” is not persecution but success — that the Saints “will get rich… forget God… wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church.” Kyle’s gloss: prosperity makes it easy to think you don’t need to call on God. This is the connective tissue to Working Toward Zion and Prosperity Gospel — the retrenchment, anti-extravagance, and cooperative economics that follow are an institutional immune response to wealth. “Seek ye first the kingdom.”

3. Fallible men, infallible work. The book is unusually candid about leaders’ imperfection, and Kyle marked nearly every instance. “Can a prophet be mistaken? I will acknowledge that all the time.” “Man having the priesthood may be fallible; I do not pretend to be infallible.” Yet “the work… emanated from God. He is its author.” The resolution Kyle reaches for: believe certain keystone truths that let you make the right decisions — “cut the thread that ties you to the prophet of God and sink yourself to hell.” See Living Revelation, Revelation.

4. The Manifesto and the temporal–spiritual calculus. The dramatic spine of Kyle’s highlights. Woodruff weighs the loss of the temples (and the ordinances for the living and dead they house) against holding the line on plural marriage, and chooses “to act for the temporal salvation of the Church.” His theology of revelation is the live question: “inspiration is revelation… a man is not always required to say ‘Thus saith the Lord.’” Kyle’s recurring probe in the margins — why is Woodruff’s medium of revelatory reception different from Joseph Smith’s? and can we ever say a commandment will never be revoked? — sits right on Line upon line, precept upon precept and Living Revelation. Lorena Larsen’s Abraham-and-Isaac dark night and B. H. Roberts’s inability to raise his hand to sustain it are the human cost.

5. Authority to decide vs. authority to execute. A governance theme Kyle pulled out explicitly. The Quorum of the Twelve acts unanimously “or not at all”; “it is not in the power of two of them to rip it up”; reorganizing the First Presidency was “as much experimentation as anything.” Brigham forgives Parley but flags a structural need for clarification. Kyle connects it to Henry B. Eyring studying decision-making bodies as an academic and finding the Quorum genuinely abnormal. See Institution Building, Stewardship.

6. Women’s agency, record-keeping, and “home literature.” Eliza R. Snow (“to do good — to bring into requisition every capacity… for saving souls”), the discipline of keeping careful minutes (Kyle: note taking), Susa Young Gates writing before six a.m. with three children underfoot, and the haunting divorce dream — “He did not understand then. But he does now.” The counsel to “never write a line… not calculated to help and benefit this kingdom” reads as a personal note to a writer. See Stewardship.

Connections

• Saints — The Standard of Truth — Volume 1; the Joseph Smith founding era this book picks up from.
• Saints — Boldly, Nobly, and Independent — Volume 3; the post-Manifesto continuation.
• American Zion — Benjamin Park’s single-volume history of the same tradition, read with an eye to the institution-vs-politics tension; covers the fallible-leader and living-revelation threads from a more critical academic vantage.
• Working Toward Zion — the economic counterpart: United Order, cooperation, retrenchment, and the Law of Consecration that Brigham’s anti-gold, anti-extravagance sermons here set in motion.
• Brigham Young — Pioneer Prophet / Brigham Young — American Moses — full biographies of the figure who dominates this volume.
• The Self-Own of Doubt (essay) — Kyle’s own writing on faith and doubt; the John Widtsoe Harvard-doubt arc and Lorena’s dark night are the narrative version of the same argument.

Concepts: Zion — the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley as a literal Zion-building project, “a place of refuge, a land of peace”; Gathering of Israel — Woodruff “piloting a road for the house of Israel”; Prosperity Gospel / prosperity as threat — Brigham’s “worst fear” that the Saints “wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church”; United Order and the cooperative movement as an institutional immune response to wealth; Polygamy — the antipolygamy crusade and the Manifesto’s temporal-vs-spiritual calculus; Living Revelation and Line upon line, precept upon precept — Woodruff’s “inspiration is revelation” and the question of whether a commandment can ever be irrevocable; Obedience and Spirit of Humility — “righteous in the dark,” proving oneself unwatched; Repentance — Oliver Cowdery’s pride in staying away; Faith — Lorena Larsen’s Abraham-and-Isaac dark night.

People: Brigham Young dominates the volume; Wilford Woodruff authors the Manifesto; John Taylor, George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith lead through the crisis; Eliza R. Snow and Susa Young Gates anchor the women’s-agency and Note-taking / Writing (“home literature”) threads; Karl G. Maeser on education; B.H. Roberts’s inability to sustain the Manifesto; John Widtsoe’s Harvard doubt; Jane Manning James and Lorena Larsen as the human cost; Joseph Smith as the founding referent; Henry B. Eyring on the Quorum as an abnormal decision-making body; Spencer W. Kimball and Russell M. Nelson referenced in Kyle’s margins.

Highlights

• “As Brigham says, you must be all honest or you will not get there,” she said. “If you feel cross, you will have trouble.”

  Kyle: Who you are when you arrive is as important as how you get there. (Judges 7:5–7)

• “This is a strange age we live in,” Wilford thought after reading the letter. The United States government claimed to protect oppressed peoples and to shelter exiles, but Wilford could not remember a time when it had helped the Saints.
• Occasionally she worried about how far she was traveling from her parents and other relatives, but her belief in Zion comforted her. The revelations spoke of Zion as a place of refuge, a land of peace. That was what she wanted in her life.
• During these trials, most Saints obeyed the commandments. But some stole, cheated, criticized the apostles’ leadership, and refused to pay tithing. Brigham had little patience for this behavior. “Men get led away by degrees,” he declared, “until the devil gets possession of their tabernacle and they are led captive at the will of the devil.”

  Kyle: Connect to 2 Nephi; carnal security.

• Brigham admonished the Saints to work together, keep covenants, and avoid sin. “We cannot be sanctified all at once,” he said, “but have to be tried and placed in all kinds of shapes and proven to the utmost to see whether we will serve the Lord unto the end.”

  Kyle: “Learning to be righteous in the dark.”

• Despite the company’s progress, Brigham was often frustrated when he saw the actions of some members of the company. Most of them had been in the Church for years, served missions, and received the ordinances of the temple. Yet many ignored his counsel on hunting or idled away their free time with gambling, wrestling, and dancing late into the night.
• “Do we suppose,” he asked the men on the morning of May 29, “that we are going to look out a home for the Saints, a resting place, a place of peace, where they can build up the kingdom and bid the nations welcome, with a low, mean, dirty, trifling, covetous, wicked spirit?” Each of them, he declared, ought to be men of faith and sober minds, given to prayer and meditation.
• “Here is an opportunity,” he said, “for every man to prove himself, to know whether he will pray and remember his God, without being asked to do it every day.”

  Kyle: “Righteous in the dark.”

• As Wilford Woodruff traveled west with the advance company, he often reflected on its sacred mission. “It should be understood,” he wrote in his journal, “that we are piloting a road for the house of Israel to travel in for many years to come.”

  Kyle: Connect to Elder Holland’s comment: “where every man now stands a boy will yet stand.” Also connect to the Calf Path and my poem about setting paths.

• Brigham could not see the valley clearly, so Wilford turned the carriage to give his friend a better view. Looking out across the valley, Brigham studied it for several minutes. “It is enough. This is the right place,” he told Wilford. “Drive on.”

  Kyle: “It is enough.” Connect to Bishop Daniels story.

• As the men followed Brigham, admiring the land, he stopped suddenly and thrust his cane into the ground. “Here shall stand the temple of our God,” he said. He could already see a vision of it in front of him, its six spires rising up from the valley floor. Brigham’s words struck Wilford like lightning. The men were about to walk on, but Wilford asked them to wait. He broke off a branch from a nearby sagebrush and drove it into the ground to mark the spot. The men then continued on, envisioning the city the Saints would build in the valley.
• Establishing Zion beyond the Rocky Mountains granted the Saints an opportunity to create a new society where Jane, her family, and others like them could be welcomed as fellow citizens as well as Saints. But prejudices ran deep, and change seemed unlikely in the near future.
• Sam Brannan also returned to the bay, still convinced that Brigham was foolish to settle in the Salt Lake Valley. “When he has fairly tried it,” he told some battalion veterans, “he will find that I was right and he was wrong.”
• “If the Quorum of the Twelve do a thing, it is not in the power of two of them to rip it up,” he said. “When we got the machine moving, it was not your business to stick your hands among the cogs to stop the wheel.”

  Kyle: There is authority to decide and then there is authority to execute.

• “I forgive you,” Brigham replied. “And if I don’t do right,” he added, “I want every man so to live in the sunshine of glory to correct me when I’m wrong. I feel bowed down to the grave with the burden of this great people.”

  Kyle: Connect to quote about “I want no man to follow me…”

• Amid these difficulties, Brigham remained unsettled about his meeting with Parley. Although he had forgiven his fellow apostle and told him to forget the matter, their disagreement revealed a need for clarification—and possibly changes—in how the Church was currently led and organized.

  Kyle: As much experimentation as anything.

• William Phelps, who had once briefly left the Church himself after falling out with Joseph Smith, likewise invited Oliver to go west. “If you believe that we are Israel,” William wrote, “come on and go with us, and we will do you good.” But Oliver’s resentment ran deep. He believed that Thomas Marsh, Sidney Rigdon, and other Church leaders had turned Joseph and the high council against him in Missouri. And he feared that his disaffection from the Church had hurt his reputation among the Saints. He wanted them to remember the good things he had done, especially his part in the translation of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the priesthood.

  Kyle: Connect to Mary in The Chosen season 2; “it wouldn’t be much of a redemption if it only lasted a day.” There is pride in staying away from repentance. “It’s you and me Lord.”

• He understood that his responsibilities as president of the Twelve set him apart from the other apostles, giving him authority to receive revelation for the quorum and everyone within its stewardship. But he also understood that he could not act alone. The Lord had revealed in 1835 that the Twelve were to make decisions unanimously or not at all. By divine direction, the apostles were supposed to act “in all righteousness, in holiness, and lowliness of heart” when making decisions. If they were going to do anything as a quorum, they would need to come together in unity and harmony.

  Kyle: Connect to Henry B. Eyring talking about getting called as an apostle, having studied decision-making bodies as an academic but seeing the Quorum of the 12 Apostles were not normal.

• Wilford Woodruff shared his hesitations about creating a First Presidency, but he expressed his willingness to align his will with God’s. “Our president seems to be moved upon by the Spirit,” he said. “He stands between us and God, and I for one don’t want to tie his hands.”

  Kyle: “Cut the thread that ties you to the prophet of God and sink yourself to hell.” I can believe certain keystone truths that help me make the right decisions.

• The Saints saw the seagulls as angels sent from God, and they thanked the Lord for answering their prayers in time to save their damaged fields and replant their crops.
• The harvest would not be as large as they had hoped, but no one in the valley would starve.
• “We are gaining a fund of knowledge,” John was pleased to report, “and, as a large majority, feel encouraged and well satisfied.”
• Meanwhile, in cities and towns across the globe, rumors about gold in California spread like wildfire, luring people away from homes, jobs, and families with the prospect of easy wealth. In the fall of 1848, thousands of people—many of them young men—swarmed to the California coast, hoping to strike it rich.
• Knowing the gold would tempt the impoverished Saints, Brigham Young addressed the matter soon after he arrived back in Salt Lake City. “If we were to go to San Francisco and dig up chunks of gold,” he told the Saints, “it would ruin us.” He urged them to stay on the land the Lord had given them. “To talk of going away from this valley for anything,” he said, “is like vinegar to my eyes.”
• Now was not the time to dig for gold, Brigham told the Saints. “It is our duty to preach the gospel, gather Israel, pay our tithing, and build temples,” he said. Wealth would come later.

  Kyle: “Seek ye FIRST the kingdom of God.”

• “The worst fear that I have about this people,” he said, “is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell.”

  Kyle: There is such a danger in being prosperous in a worldly sense because it makes it easier to think you don’t need to call on God.

• “Would you prefer that I went for perhaps three years to France?” “I would rather you went to save souls than to find gold, even though the time be longer,” Elizabeth said. George could not disagree. As a boy in England, he had looked up to missionaries like his uncle John and Wilford Woodruff, anticipating the day when he would serve a mission as well. But a call to dig for gold was hardly what he had imagined.
• “A man must always live with the love of the priesthood in his heart,” he taught, “and not the love of the things of this world.”
• He recounted his own struggle, twenty years earlier, to accept Joseph Smith’s vision of the afterlife and the three kingdoms of glory. “When that first came to me, it was so directly contrary and opposed to my education and traditions,” he admitted. “I didn’t reject it, but I could not understand it.” His faith in the revelation grew as he sought clarity from the Lord. “I would think and pray, read and think, pray and reflect,” he told the Saints, “until I knew and fully understood it for myself, by the visions of the Holy Spirit.” Brigham then bore witness of the Lord’s revelation to Joseph Smith on eternal marriage, testifying that God still revealed His words to the Church. “If it was necessary to write them, we would write all the time,” he said. “We would rather the people, however, would live so as to have revelations for themselves, and then do the work we are called to do. That is enough for us.”

  Kyle: Connect to President Nelson, “unable to survive spiritually…”

• Brigham believed in the humanity of all people, and he opposed slavery as it existed in the American South, where enslaved men and women were considered property and lacked basic rights. But like most people from the northern United States, he believed black people were suited for servitude.
• Joseph F. Smith was only fifteen, after all. Sometimes he felt strong and important, but other times he sensed his own weakness and insignificance.
• Brigham and Jedediah blessed George to write and publish with wisdom and inspiration and to speak without fear. They also blessed Elizabeth to accomplish a good work alongside George and to one day be reunited with her loved ones in the valley. Afterward, Brigham encouraged George to develop his writing talents as much as possible. “Roar!” Jedediah added. “Let them know you are a Cannon.”
• Franklin arose again and asked the emigrants to vote on the matter. “If you knew that you should be swallowed up in storms,” he asked, “would you stop or turn back?” With cheers, most emigrants removed their hats, raised their hands, and voted to continue to Zion.
• Brigham spoke urgently about the imperiled emigrants. “They must be brought here; we must send assistance to them,” he declared. “That is my religion. That is the dictation of the Holy Ghost that I possess. It is to save the people.”
• “Your faith, religion, and profession of religion will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God,” he said, “unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.”
• Brigham learned that relief wagons carrying the members of the Martin company would arrive later that day. He quickly canceled the rest of the day’s meetings. “When those persons arrive,” he said, “I want to have them distributed in the city among the families that have good and comfortable houses.”
• “We have forgotten ourselves and gone to sleep, laid aside our religion, and gone to amuse ourselves with temporal things,” John explained further.
• Some men were also called as “home missionaries” to visit with families in the Church. During these visits, the missionaries asked a set of formal questions to learn how well family members kept the Ten Commandments, loved one another and their neighbors, and worshipped with their ward members.

  Kyle: Spirit of humility — why don’t we ask these questions anymore?

• Bishops, home missionaries, and Church members also clashed sometimes when frequent home visits and public confessions proved embarrassing, disruptive, or intimidating. With time, Church leaders began encouraging that interviews and confessions be done in private.
• Joseph walked into camp with firewood still in his arms. One of the riders trotted up to him with a pistol in his hand. “Are you a Mormon?” he demanded. Joseph looked him in the eye, fully expecting the man to shoot him. “Yes, sirree,” he said. “Dyed in the wool. True blue, through and through.” The man gazed back at Joseph, bewildered. He lowered his pistol and seemed for a moment to be paralyzed. “Shake, young fellow,” he then said, reaching out his hand. “I am glad to see a man that stands up for his convictions.”
• “‘Can a prophet or an apostle be mistaken?’ Do not ask me any such question, for I will acknowledge that all the time,” he declared. “But I do not acknowledge that I designedly lead this people astray one hair’s breadth from the truth, and I do not knowingly do a wrong, though I may commit many wrongs.”

  Kyle: Infallibility.

• Though Brigham believed in the value of work, he also encouraged the Saints to rest and enjoy life. “The people must have amusements,” he declared. He believed that recreation and physical exercise were important to both body and soul.

  Kyle: A bow that is constantly strung will lose its spring.

• Books, especially the scriptures, came alive in the classroom. Professor Maeser encouraged the Young children to ask questions and puzzle out solutions to problems. Though she was ever eager to learn something new, Susie sometimes became frustrated when she made mistakes in her schoolwork. Professor Maeser was patient. “Only those who have the courage to make mistakes,” he told her, “ever learn worthwhile lessons and truths.”
• Brigham decided to organize a School of the Prophets in each of the larger towns of the territory. Nearly thirty-five years earlier, the Lord had commanded Joseph Smith to organize such schools in Kirtland and Missouri to foster unity and faith among priesthood holders in the young Church and to prepare men to proclaim the gospel.
• Brigham wanted the new School of the Prophets to nurture greater spiritual unity and devotion among the men of the Church. He believed it could help them understand the importance of economic cooperation, covenant keeping, and Zion building before the coming of the railroad.
• Few people understood the purpose of the Relief Society as well as she did. As the secretary of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, Eliza had written careful minutes of the meetings, recorded Joseph Smith’s teachings to the women, and preserved them in a record book.

  Kyle: Note taking.

• Eliza published an article in the Deseret News. “What is the object of the Female Relief Society?” she asked her readers. “I would reply—to do good—to bring into requisition every capacity we possess for doing good, not only in relieving the poor but in saving souls.”
• “The enemy is always pleased when we do not overcome our feelings of timidity and keep our tongues from speaking words of encouragement and determination,” she said. “When that diffidence is once broken through, we soon gain confidence.” “The time will come,” she promised, “when we will have to be in large places and act in responsible situations.”
• “They will not have the same kind of trials their fathers and mothers have passed through,” he said. “They will be tried with the pride and follies and pleasures of a sinful world.” If his generation did not help young people develop faith in Jesus Christ, worldly temptations could lead them astray.

  Kyle: Connect to Alma the Elder; physical trials vs. lifestyle trials.

• “A creed that can take the heterogeneous masses of mankind and make them a happy, contented, and united people,” he stated, “has a power within it that the nations know little of. That power is the power of God.”
• William believed the prophet was old-fashioned and exerted too much influence over the lives of the Saints. Before the cooperative movement began, merchants like William had enjoyed more control over the local market, allowing them to charge high prices and get rich. Under the new system, however, the Church sought to keep prices low to benefit poor Saints and the local cooperative stores.

  Kyle: You can only kick the church up.

• With his grasp on the market weakening, William had become irritated with Brigham’s emphasis on the sacredness of cooperation. More and more, he and Elias had begun using the Utah Magazine to prepare other like-minded people to stage a revolt within the Church.
• He affirmed that all people had a right to think for themselves, just as Church leaders had a right to counsel them according to revelation. “We work in harmony with our Savior,” he declared. “He works in harmony with His Father, and we cooperate with the Son for the salvation of ourselves and the human family.”
• Brigham also rejected the idea that Church leaders could not make mistakes. “Man having the priesthood may be fallible,” he declared. “I do not pretend to be infallible.” But his fallibility did not mean God could not work through him for the good of the Saints.
• “I will leave it to the people to do as they have a mind to,” he said. “I have the right to counsel them, and they have the right to take my counsel or let it alone.” Brigham Young
• Though he cautioned the Saints against reading the Utah Magazine, Brigham Young made no effort to shut it down. During his nearly four decades in the Church, he had seen opposition movements come and go without lasting success. While Elias and William railed against him, he left Salt Lake City to tour settlements in Utah and Sanpete Valleys.

  Kyle: You can only kick the church up.

• He also lamented that many well-to-do men and women in the Church had developed extravagant lifestyles, sometimes at the expense of their spiritual well-being. Brigham wanted all Saints, himself included, to retrench, or simplify their lifestyles. “The idle habits, the wasteful extravagance of men, are ridiculous in our community,” he declared.
• For him, extravagance often sparked competitiveness among the Saints and took time away from their spiritual development. He felt that it was a sign of worldliness, incompatible with the cooperative spirit of Zion.
• Walking from room to room, Martin testified of the sacred events that had occurred in the temple. But he grew tired after a while, and they stopped to rest. “Do you still believe that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet?” William asked Martin. The old man seemed to spring to life. “I saw the plates. I saw the angel. I heard the voice of God,” he declared, his voice throbbing with sincerity and conviction. “I might as well doubt my own existence as to doubt the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon or the divine calling of Joseph Smith.”
• “If God has any revelation to give to man,” Wilford Woodruff testified to the School of the Prophets, “he will not give it to me, nor Billy Godbe, but it will come through President Young. He will speak through His mouthpiece.”
• Joseph F. Smith echoed these words in a letter to his sister Martha Ann. “I would have no trouble in my mind were it not for the fact that I do not believe as a people we have lived as near to God as we should have done,” he wrote. “It may be the Lord has a scourge prepared for us on this account.”

  Kyle: Mosiah 7:29 — “I will hedge up your ways.”

• “We have got the gospel,” he said, “but if we expect to receive the benefits of it, we have got to live according to its precepts.” Brigham Young

  Kyle: “It is not enough to know. We must do.” — Spencer W. Kimball.

• “In this country a man may adopt any religion that he pleases,” Judge McKean declared soon after his arrival, “but no man must violate our laws and plead religion as an excuse.”
• “Zion should be the place to educate the children of Zion,” Eliza told the women. “Let the children understand that your religion is uppermost in your mind.” #Parenting
• “Brother Maeser,” said Brigham, “I want you to remember that you ought not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication table without the Spirit of God.”
• “When I think upon this subject, I want the tongues of seven thunders to wake up the people,” he declared. “Can the fathers be saved without us? No. Can we be saved without them? No. And if we do not wake up and cease to long after the things of this earth, we will find that we as individuals will go down to hell.”
• “I am not half-satisfied, and I never expect to be satisfied until the devil is whipped and driven from off the face of the earth.”
• “The height of my ambition,” he had once noted in his journal, “is to live the life of a Latter-day Saint and to lead my family to do likewise.” (Francis Lyman)
• “Our temporal and spiritual interests of the kingdom are inseparably connected,” Francis taught the members of his new stake. “Be humble before the Lord and possess the light of His Holy Spirit for our constant guide.”

  Kyle: “Never at any time have I given you a law that was temporal.”

• Following the conference, Brigham asked Jane to travel with his company to neighboring settlements. On the way, he taught her about the duties of her new calling and the importance of keeping careful records of what she and the Relief Society accomplished.
• “If you were to become the greatest woman in the world,” he told her, “and you should neglect your duty as wife and mother, you would wake up on the morning of the First Resurrection and find you had failed in everything.”
• “All that you can do after you have satisfied the righteous claims of your home and family,” he reassured her, “will redound to your credit and to the honor and glory of God.”
• John did not fear the future. “The work we are engaged in is not the work of man. Joseph Smith did not originate it; neither did Brigham Young,” he declared. “It emanated from God. He is its author.”
• Shortly before his death, her father had reminded her that the roles of wife and mother were central to her success in life. Susie wanted to fulfill those roles righteously. But did that mean she had to stay in an abusive marriage? One night, Susie dreamed that she and Alma were visiting her father in the Lion House. Brigham had an assignment for them, but rather than give it to Alma, as he usually did when he was alive, he gave it to Susie. As she left to fulfill the assignment, Susie encountered Eliza Snow in the hall. Why had her father given her the assignment, Susie asked, when he had always asked Alma in the past? “He did not understand then,” Eliza said in the dream. “But he does now.” Eliza’s words lingered with Susie after she awoke. It was a comfort to realize that her father might have a different perspective in the spirit world than he had in life. #Divorce
• She then compared the children in Farmington to an orchard of young trees. “The roots of the trees should be looked to,” she said, “for if the root is sound, the tree will be sound, and there will be but little trouble with the branches.”
• “A religious faith amounts to nothing unless we are permitted to carry it into effect,” he told Ovando. The court’s decision was unjust, he explained, because it restricted the Saints’ right to practice their beliefs. “I do not believe that the Supreme Court of the United States nor the Congress of the United States has any right to interfere with my religious views,” he said.

  Kyle: If they don’t have the right to stop us from practicing polygamy, why should we endow them with the right to enforce heterosexual marriage on everyone else?

• “We leave that with God,” said John. “It is His business to take care of His Saints.”
• “If the virtues of an institution are to be rated by their refining and intelligent results,” one reporter wrote, “there should be no prejudices against polygamy.”
• “The clouds seem to be gathering thick and portentous around us,” George wrote to John Taylor on January 13. “If the Lord does not furnish lightning rods to draw off the electricity in some other direction, which I feel satisfied He will, I see no other way for us to do than to stand up and take the pelting.”
• Since plural marriage was not required of Church members, Saints could remain in good standing with God and the Church if they chose not to practice it.
• Adding to George’s pressure was the fact that his wife Elizabeth was back in Utah, sick with pneumonia. He wanted to be with her. On January 24, 1882, however, George received a telegram with a message from Elizabeth. “Stand to your post,” she urged him. “God can raise me up in answer to your prayers there as well as here.”
• The Saints practiced plural marriage because God had commanded them to do so, he said. They had no desire to force their belief on anyone but merely wished to be granted the right to obey God as they saw fit.
• “I very much regret that the laws of my country should come in contact with the laws of God,” Rudger said, “but whenever they do, I shall invariably choose the latter.”
• “If God directs a course for me to take,” he wrote in his journal, “I desire to take it and leave the result with Him.” George Q. Cannon
• Wilford spoke about Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, each of whom he had known and worked with closely. As great as these men were, he had seen imperfection in them. But they would not have to answer to him, Wilford said. They would answer to God, who was their judge.
• “It is the duty of each of us to be a holy woman,” she had once taught them. “We shall feel that we are called to perform important duties. No one is exempt from them. There is no sister so isolated, and her sphere so narrow, but what she can do a great deal toward establishing the kingdom of God upon the earth.”
• Susa wanted to use her writing to help the Church. Eliza Snow had once encouraged her to “never write a line or a word that is not calculated to help and benefit this kingdom,” and Susa tried to live by that counsel.
• The truth was, she struggled to find time to write. She was up by six o’clock most mornings, attending to three children and the never-ending tasks of running a household.
• “Not one who is capable should be denied the privilege to do their best,” he wrote. “Our community is different from any other. Our prosperity lies in our own union, cooperation, and mutual effort. There is no one independent.”
• Zina encouraged the diverse congregation to visit each other’s meetings and become acquainted with one another. “It will tend to union and harmony, promote confidence, and strengthen the cords that bind us together,” she promised, “for there is more difference in our manner of speech than in the motives of our hearts.”
• In September 1889, while visiting Saints north of Salt Lake City, Wilford Woodruff and George Q. Cannon met with a stake president who asked if he should issue temple recommends to Saints who wanted to enter plural marriage. Wilford did not immediately answer the stake president’s question. Instead, he reminded him that the Saints had once been commanded to build a temple in Jackson County, Missouri, but they had been forced to abandon their plans when opposition became too great. The Lord had accepted the Saints’ offering nonetheless, and the consequences of not building a temple fell on the people who had prevented it. “So it is now with this nation,” said Wilford, “and the consequences of this will have to fall upon those who take this course to prevent our obeying this commandment.” He then answered the stake president’s question directly. “I feel that it is not proper for any marriages of this kind to be performed in this territory at the present time,” he said. Then, gesturing toward George, he added, “Here is President Cannon. He can say what he thinks about this matter.” George was dumbfounded. He had never heard Wilford speak so plainly on the subject before—and he did not know if he agreed with him. Should the Church cease performing plural marriages in Utah Territory? He personally was not as ready as Wilford to answer that question, so he made no reply, letting the conversation move to other matters. But later, as George recorded the conversation in his journal, he continued to struggle with what Wilford had said. “To me, it is an exceedingly grave question,” he wrote, “and it is the first time that anything of this kind has ever been uttered, to my knowledge, by one holding the keys.”
• The Saints sometimes called this writing “home literature,” a term that brought to mind Brigham Young’s notion of “home industries,” or locally made products, like sugar, iron, and silk. In an 1888 sermon, Bishop Orson Whitney had encouraged the youth of the Church to create more home literature to showcase the Saints’ greatest literary talents and testify of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. “Write for the papers, write for the magazines—especially our home publications,” he had urged them. “Make books yourselves, which shall not only be a credit to you and to the land and people that produced you but likewise a boon and benefaction to mankind.”
• In late November, Wilford met with lawyers who advised Church leaders to supply the court with more information about the temple. They also recommended that he make an official announcement that no more plural marriages would be solemnized by the Church. Wilford was unsure how to respond to the lawyers’ requests. Were such actions truly necessary, just to pacify the enemies of the Church? He needed time to seek God’s will. Night had fallen by the time the lawyers left Wilford alone. For hours, he pondered and prayed for guidance on what to do. He and the Saints had come to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 seeking another chance to establish Zion and gather God’s children to the peace and safety of its borders. Now, more than forty years later, opponents of the Church were tearing families apart, stripping women and men of their voting rights, creating obstacles for immigration and the gathering, and denying the rights of citizenship to people for simply belonging to the Church. Before long, the Saints could lose even more—including the temples. What would happen then to the salvation and exaltation of God’s children on both sides of the veil? As Wilford prayed, the Lord answered him. “I, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, am in your midst,” He said. “All that I have revealed and promised and decreed concerning the generation in which you live shall come to pass, and no power shall stay My hand.” The Savior did not tell Wilford exactly what to do, but He promised that all would be well if the Saints followed the Spirit. “Have faith in God,” the Savior said. “He will not forsake you. I, the Lord, will deliver my Saints from the dominion of the wicked in mine own due time and way.”

  Kyle: Compare to when Lamoni asks Ammon for the will of God. Sometimes you can’t get guidance until you’re willing to ask.

• He was to stay true to the revelations he would receive—even when it seemed contrary to his natural judgment. “You cannot be too humble,” George had reminded him. Anthon needed to express his views freely while also listening meekly to the Lord’s prophet. “We should be willing to sit and watch the operations of the Spirit of God on this man whom God has chosen,” George had said.
• If the Church did not stop performing plural marriages, the government would keep passing laws against the Saints, a vast majority of whom did not even practice the principle. Chaos and confusion would reign in Zion. More men would go to jail, and the government would confiscate the temples. The Saints had performed hundreds of thousands of ordinances for the dead since the dedication of the new temples. If the government seized these buildings, how many of God’s children, living and dead, would be barred from the sacred ordinances of the gospel?
• “I feel it will do good,” George said. He did not think the statement was ready for publication, but the ideas in it were right. The next day, the First Presidency asked three talented writers—secretary George Reynolds, newspaper editor Charles Penrose, and Presiding Bishopric counselor John Winder—to refine the language of the statement and prepare it for publication. Wilford then presented the revised document to apostles Franklin Richards, Moses Thatcher, and Marriner Merrill, and they recommended additional refinements.

  Kyle: Still not perfectly dictated by God word for word. Why is Wilford Woodruff’s medium of revelatory reception different than Joseph Smith’s?

• “This whole matter has been at President Woodruff’s own instance,” George Q. Cannon noted that day in his journal. “He has stated that the Lord had made it plain to him that this was his duty, and he felt perfectly clear in his mind that it was the right thing.” Wilford also reflected on the Manifesto in his journal. “I have arrived at a point in the history of my life as the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he wrote, “where I am under the necessity of acting for the temporal salvation of the Church.”

  Kyle: Temporal vs. spiritual welfare.

• He thought of the time he had spent in prison for plural marriage, and the sacrifices his wives had made because of it. What about everything the Saints had suffered for honoring and defending the practice? What of the many sermons preached over the decades supporting it? B. H. believed that God would sustain the Saints through whatever hardships came their way because of the practice. Were they now taking the coward’s way out?
• As B. H. sat alone in his seat, his thoughts churned. For every reason his companions might give in support of the Manifesto, he felt he could come up with ten more for why the Saints should have held to the principle of plural marriage—even if it brought about the very annihilation of the Church.
• After the death of his father, President John Taylor, John W. had found a purported revelation about marriage among the prophet’s papers. The revelation, dated September 27, 1886, seemed to suggest to John W. that the commandment to practice plural marriage would never be revoked.

  Kyle: Can we ever say this about anything? We don’t know the ways of God. Line upon line.

• “The presidency of the Church have to walk just as you walk,” George had said. “They have to take steps just as you take steps. They have to depend upon the revelations of God as they come to them. They cannot see the end from the beginning, as the Lord does.” “All that we can do,” he had continued, “is to seek the mind and will of God, and when that comes to us, though it may come in contact with every feeling that we have previously entertained, we have no option but to take the step that God points out and to trust to Him.”
• “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray,” he continued, reassuring any Saints who questioned the divine origin of the Manifesto. “It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place.”
• B. H. Roberts thought that listening to the Manifesto read from the pulpit was one of the most difficult moments of his life. Though he had no desire to oppose the declaration openly, his earlier assurance that it was right had not returned, and he could not raise his hand to support the statement.
• Lorena could not believe what she was hearing. She had embraced plural marriage because she believed that it was God’s will for her and the Saints. The sacrifices she had made to practice the principle had brought her heartache and trial. But they had also challenged her to live on a higher plane, overcome her weaknesses, and love her neighbor. Why would God now ask the Saints to turn away from the practice?
• Darkness flooded Lorena’s mind. “If the Lord and the Church authorities have gone back on that principle,” she thought, “there is nothing to any part of the gospel.” She had believed that plural marriage was a doctrine as fixed and immovable as God Himself. If that was not the case, why should she have faith in anything else?
• Lorena collapsed into her bedding. The darkness around her became impenetrable, and she wished the earth would open up and swallow her and her children. Then, suddenly, she felt a powerful presence in the tent. “This is no more unreasonable than the requirement the Lord made of Abraham when He commanded him to offer up his son Isaac,” a voice told Lorena. “When the Lord sees that you are willing to obey in all things, the trial shall be removed.”
• John Widtsoe celebrated his graduation from Brigham Young College in Logan. At the commencement ceremony, he received special recognition for his excellence in rhetoric, German, chemistry, algebra, and geometry. John was thrilled whenever he uncovered some new piece of knowledge.
• Theology became one of John’s favorite subjects. It shaped his character and outlook on life and made him more sensitive to the differences between right and wrong.
• “When I was appointed president of the Church I looked this question over,” Wilford replied, “and for a good while became satisfied in my own mind that plural marriage must stop in this Church.” Wilford then described how the antipolygamy laws punished not only the smaller percentage of Saints who practiced plural marriage but also the tens of thousands of Saints who did not. “It was upon that ground that I issued the Manifesto—I will say by inspiration,” he explained.
• “My view is that inspiration is revelation,” Wilford replied. “It is from the same source. A man is not always required to say, I think, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’”
• He asked a question: Was it wiser to continue performing plural marriages, regardless of the consequences? Or to live according to the nation’s laws, so that the Saints could enjoy the blessings of the temple and stay out of prison?
• “But I want to say this,” Wilford added. “I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write.”
• At night John Widtsoe would dream about acquiring all the world’s knowledge without having to worry about how long it would take to master each subject.
• “Every man has as much right—prophets, apostles, saints, and sinners—to his political convictions as he has to his religious opinions,” Wilford had declared. “Don’t throw filth and dirt and nonsense at one another because of any difference on political matters.” “That spirit will lead us to ruin,” he warned.
• “I did not understand the purposes for which the Manifesto was issued. I do not to this day,” he continued. “But sure I am that it is all right. That God has a purpose in it I feel assured, and in due time it will be manifest.” B.H. Roberts
• Now Wilford’s message to the general authorities was the same. “You want the Holy Ghost to lead and guide you,” he said. “Teach the people to get the Holy Ghost and the Spirit of the Lord, and keep it with you, and you will prosper.”
• But Anna was concerned for John. He had recently written about his struggle to believe some aspects of the gospel. At Harvard, he had learned a great many things from his professors. But their lectures had also led him to question his faith. His doubts cut him to the bone. Some days he denied God’s existence. Other days he affirmed it. Anna prayed daily for her son, deeply distressed by his doubts. But she knew he had to gain his own witness of the gospel. “If you have not had a testimony for yourself before, then now is the time that you should have one,” she wrote John. “If you seek sincerely and live purely, then you will receive it. But everything that we have, we must work for.”