hy?--because you can give them the tokens, signs, and grips
pertaining to the holy priesthood and gain your eternal exaltation in
spite of earth and hell. But how about the likely and good man outside
this Church who has rejected the message of the Book of Mormon and ain't
got these signs and passwords? If he's going to be let in, too, why have
doorkeepers, and what's the use of the whole business? Why in time did
the Lord go to all this trouble, any way, if Brother Rae is right? Why
was Joseph Smith visited by an angel clad in robes of light, who told
him where the golden plates had been hid up by the Lord, and the Urim
and Thummim, and who laid hands on him and give him the Holy Ghost? And
after all that trouble He's took, do you think He's going to let
everybody in? Not much, Mary Ann! The likely men may come the roots on
some of our soft-hearted Elders, but they won't fool the Lord's Christ
and His angel gatekeepers."
Elder Beil Wardle, on the other hand, showed a tendency to side with
the liberalism of Brother Rae. He cited the fact that not all
revelations were from God. Some were from perverse human spirits and
some from the very Devil himself. There was Elder Sidney Roberts, who
had once suffered a revelation that a certain brother must give him a
suit of finest broadcloth and a gold watch, the best to be had; and
another revelation directing him to salute all the younger sisters,
married or single, with a kiss of holiness. Urged to confess that these
revelations were from the Devil, he had refused, and so had been cut off
and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan in the flesh.
"And you can't always be sure of the Holy Ghost, either," he continued.
"When the Lord pours out the Holy Ghost on an individual, he will have
spasms, and you would think he was going to have fits; but it don't make
him get up and go pay his debts--not by a long shot. Of course I don't
feel to mention any names, but what can you expect, anyway? A flock of a
thousand sheep has got to be mighty clean if some of them ain't smutty.
This is a large flock of sheep that has come up into this valley of the
mountains, and some of them have got tag-locks hanging about them. But
it don't seem to pester the Lord any. He sifted us good in Missouri, and
He put us into another sieve at Nauvoo, and I reckon His sieve will be
brought along with Him on the day of judgment. And if there are some
lost sheep in the fold of Zion, maybe, on the other hand
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