been working in the Church and teaching this gospel so assiduously
for nearly forty years that I have never had time to find out whether
it's true or not!"

If the Mormon, in his later years of manhood, dares to doubt, he must
either reveal his disloyalty to the ward teachers or continue to deny
it, from month to month, and remain a supine servant of authority. If
he reveals it, he knows that the news of his defection will permeate the
entire circle with which he is associated in politics, in business and
in religion. If his superstition does not hold him, his worldly prudence
will. He knows that all the aid of the community will be withdrawn from
him; every voice that has expressed affection for him will speak in
hate; every hand that has clasped his in friendship will be turned
against him. And into this very prudence there enters something of
a moral warning. For he has seen how many a man, deprived of the
association and fraternity of the Church, feeling himself shunned in a
lonely ostracism, has not been strong enough to endure in rectitude and
has fallen into dissipation. Every instance of the sort is rehearsed by
the faithful, with many exultant expressions of mourning, in the hearing
of the doubter. And finally, it is the prediction of the priests that no
apostate can prosper; and though the Mormon people are charitable and
do not intend to be unjust, they inevitably tend to fulfill the prophecy
and devote the apostate to material destruction.

The great doctrine of the Mormon faith is obedience; the one proof of
grace is conformity. So long as a man pays a full tithe, contributes all
the required donations, and yields unquestioningly to the orders of
the priests, he may even depart in a moral sense from any other of
the Church's laws and find himself excused. But any questioning of the
rulership of the Prophets--the rightfulness of their authority or the
justice of its exercise is apostasy, is a denial of the faith, is a sin
against the Holy Ghost. The man who obeys in all things is promised that
he shall come forth in the morning of the first resurrection; the man
who disobeys, and by his disobedience apostatizes, is condemned to work
out, through an eternity of suffering, his offense against the Holy
Spirit. At the first sign of defection--almost inevitably discovered in
its incipiency--the rebel is either disciplined into submission or at
once pushed over "the battlements of Heaven!"

By such perfect means