.

There had been a time when he read with freshened hope the promises of
forgiveness in that strange New Testament. Once he had even believed
that these might save him; that he was again numbered with the elect.
But when this belief had grown firm, so that he could seem to rest his
weight upon it, he felt it fall away to nothing under him, and the truth
he had divined that day in the desert was again bared before him. He saw
that how many times soever God might forgive the sins of a man, it would
avail that man nothing unless he could forgive himself. He knew at last
that in his own soul was fixed a gauge of right, unbending and
implacable when wrong had been done, waiting to be reckoned with at the
very last even though the great God should condone his sin. It seemed to
him that, however surely his endowments took him through the gates of
the Kingdom, with whatsoever power they raised him to dominion; even
though he came into the Father's presence and sat a throne of his own by
the side of Joseph and Brigham, that there would still ring in his ears
the cries of those who had been murdered at the priesthood's command;
that there would leap before his eyes fountains of blood from the
breasts of living women who knelt and clung to the knees of their
slayers--to the knees of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints; that he would see two spots of white in the dim light of a
morning where the two little girls lay who had been sent for water; that
he would see the two boys taken out to the desert, one to die at once,
the other to wander to a slower death; that before his sinful eyes would
come the dying face of the woman who had loved him and lost her soul
rather than betray him. He knew that, even in celestial realms exalted
beyond the highest visions of their priesthood, his soul would still
burn in this fire that he could not extinguish within his own breast. He
knew that he carried hell as an inseparable part of himself, and that
the forgiveness of no other power could avail him. He no longer feared
God, but himself alone.

From this fire of his own building it seemed to him that he could obtain
surcease only by reducing the self within him. As surely as he let it
feel a want, all the torture came back upon him. When his pride lifted
up its head, when he desired any satisfaction for himself, when he was
tempted for a moment to lay down his cross, the cries came back, the sea
of blood surged before him, and close