r huts, by torch-light in winter, we eagerly studied the
book. We knew that we had got the word of God, that we possessed a
jewel of rich price; we were afraid that thieves might come and steal it
from us. We read and read on; most eagerly we met together to talk
about it, to discuss the meaning of parts which we could not at first
understand, to pray that our minds might be enlightened to comprehend
it. We read it, as the book itself tells us to do, with earnest prayer;
we read it with faith, and we read it not in vain. Soon passages which
seemed at first obscure were made clear to our comprehension. Every day
we understood it better and better. We had no one to whom to go for
information. We had no one to instruct us, so we went to God; we asked
Him to show us the truth, as He in the book told us to do, and His
promises never fail. He instructed our minds; He gave us all we asked
for. We now discovered, truly, how darkened had been our minds, how
ignorant we had been, what follies, what fables, what falsehoods we had
believed. We saw the gross, the terrible, the wicked errors of the
Church of our country. We found that those who should have instructed
us were generally as ignorant as we had been, and that if not ignorant,
they had taught us falsehoods, knowing them to be falsehoods. We found
in that book how the world was made; how man was first placed in the
world; how he, by disobedience to God's simple command, fell from his
happy state, and how sin thus entered into the world, and all men became
by nature sinful; how God in His mercy promised a Redeemer who should
bear upon His own shoulders the sin of all the children of Adam who
believe in Him; how God selected a people to keep His great name, and to
make it known among men; how He promised to the patriarchs of old, from
age to age, that the Redeemer of the world should be one of their chosen
tribe, and that the glad tidings of salvation should first be offered to
them; how, in process of time, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world,
from His unbounded love to the human race, appeared in the form of a
man, and in humble rank, to teach us that He regards not the persons of
men; how He was despised and rejected of men; how He suffered toil, and
sorrow, and persecution, though He spent His days on earth in doing good
to all around Him, to show the humble, and poor, and afflicted that He
can feel for them; how He was rejected by God's chosen people; how t