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THE DESERET WEEKLY

that Gospel. He held the Priest-
hood, and he taught me the same
Gospel that Paul taught. As many
of you may have heard me remark
before, I went to Sabbath school, in
my boyhood, under Dr. Porter, in
Farmington, Connecticut. He and
Dr. Haws, of Hartford, Conn.,
were Presbyterian divines, and were
considered great men in that day.
In that Sabbath school I read the
New Testament. I learned verse
after verse and chapter after chap-
ter. What did the Testament teach
me? It taught me the Gos-
pel of life and salvation; it
taught me a Gospel of pow-
er before the heavens and on
the earth. It taught me that the
organization of the Church consist-
ed of Prophets, Apostles, Pastors
and Teachers, with helps and gov-
ernments. What for? "For the per-
fecting of the Saints, for the work
of the ministry: for the edifying
of the body of Christ, till we all
come in the unity of the faith and
of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect man, unto the meas-
ure of the stature of the fulness
of Christ." [##Ephesians 4:12-13##] These are the
things which I learned, and they
made an impression upon me.
I believed in them; yet I had never
heard them taught by any clergy-
man or divine upon the earth. In
my early manhood I attended the
meetings of almost every denomina-
tion there was. On one occasion I
attended one of those great meet-
ings which were sometimes held in
Connecticut, at which forty or fifty
ministers of various denominations
were gathered together. They
prayed for a pentecostal season and
for a good many other things. At
this meeting permission was given
for anybody to make remarks. I
was quite young then. I arose and
stepped into the aisle, and I said to
that body of ministers: "My
friends, will you tell me why you
don't contend for the faith once de-
livered to the Saints? Will you tell
my why you don't contend for that
Gospel that Jesus Christ taught, and
that His Apostles taught? Why do
you not contend for that religion that
gives unto you power before God,
power to heal the sick, to make the
blind to see, the lame to walk, and
that gives you the Holy Ghost and
those gifts and graces that have been
manifest from the creation of the
world? Why do you not teach the
people those principles that the
ancient Patriarchs and Prophets
taught while they were clothed with
the revelations of God? They had
the administrations of angels; they
had dreams and visions, and con-
stant revelation to guide and direct
them in the path in which they
should walk." The presiding elder
said: "My dear young man, you
would be a very smart man, and a
very useful man in the earth, if you
did not believe all those foolish
things. These things were given
to the children of men in the dark
ages of the world, and they were
given for the very purpose of en-
lightening the children of men in
that age, that they might believe in
Jesus Christ. Today we live in the
blaze of the glorious gospel light,
and we do not need these things."
Said I: "Then give me the dark
ages of the world; give me those
ages when men received these prin-
ciples."

There is where I stood in my
youth. I did not believe that these
gifts and graces were done away,
only through the unbelief of the
children of men. They were done
away when men rejected the law of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ; turned
away from the Kingdom of God,
built up altars to Baal, and sought
to carry out principles of their own.
And the earth remained in that con-
dition until the Lord raised up a
Prophet in these last days. He
raised up Joseph Smith, who laid
the foundation of this Church and
Kingdom. And from that day un-
til the present, whenever any one
has embraced the Gospel of Christ
and lived that religion, the gifts and
blessings of that Gospel have been
bestowed upon them. And this
will be so unto the end.

I have traveled many thousands
of miles, at home and abroad,
preaching the Gospel of Christ to
my fellow-men; and, in my experi-
ence, I have never known a man or
woman who, when they received
the Gospel with honest hearts and
were baptized, did not receive a tes-
timony for themselves. While in
England, in 1840, I was inspired of
the Lord to go to Herefordshire.
There had never been any Elders in
that part of the country. When I
arrived there I found about six hun-
dred people called United Brethren.
They had broken off from the Wes-
leyan Methodists. They sought for
those ancient gifts that I have been
speaking about. They had been
praying to God to open the way be-
fore them. What was the conse-
quence? All of them, except one,
including forty-five preachers, were
baptized in thirty days. They re-
ceived the Gospel, and the gifts and
graces followed them.

As I said before, these are the
principles that I believe in. And I
will say here that this same Gospel
was with Father Adam, with Noah,
with Enoch, and with all the an-
cient patriarchs and prophets.
There has been no change. And I
say, as a servant of God, there is no
change in the eternal and everlast-
ing Priesthood. It is without be-
ginning of days or end of years. It
is from eternity unto eternity. By
the power of that Priesthood, God,
our Eternal Father, has organized
all worlds, and redeemed all worlds
that have ever been redeemed. By
that same Priesthood men have ad-
ministered on the earth in the or-
dinances of the Gospel of Christ.
There is no change to the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, nor to one of the or-
dinances thereof. And whenever
that Gospel is offered to the children
of men, it is by the power of the
Priesthood. No man who has ever
breathed the breath of life, since
God made the world, has ever had
the power to go forth and minister
in one of the ordinances of the Gos-
pel of Christ, without that Priest-
hood; and no man ever will. This
may not be believed by many of the
inhabitants of the earth; but it is true.

We have been gathered to these
valleys of the mountains by the
power and inspiration of God. We
might have gone forth and preached
till we had become as old as Methu-
selah, and if the power of the Al-
mighty had not attended that
preaching, Utah might still have
been a desert. But the Spirit of God
bore record to the teachings of the
Elders of Israel, and the honest in
heart and meek of the earth re-
ceived the Gospel and gathered to
these valleys. This is in fulfill-
ment of the revelations of God.
John the Revelator, in his vision on
the Isle of Patmos, saw "another an-
gel fly in the midst of heaven, hav-
ing the everlasting Gospel to preach
unto them that dwell on the earth,
and to every nation, and kindred,
and tongue, and people, saying with
a loud voice, Fear God and give
glory to Him; for the hour of His
judgment is come." [##Revelation 14:6-7##] Those words
have been fulfilled. The angel of
God has visited the earth and deliv-
ered the fulness of the Gospel unto
the inhabitants thereof, and they are
receiving it. By the power of that
Gospel you left your homes and came
to these mountains of Israel.

Now, Paul says that if we preach
any other gospel than that which he
taught, we should be accursed. [##Galatians 1:8##] The
first principle in that Gospel is faith
in Christ as the Savior of the world.