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Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 34 Page: 671 (~1872)

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671 with doing the whole of the wood work, it will be conceded that a unity of purpose with energy of action will usually accomplish the most unlikely of human designs, and render those of great feasibility a thing of a day.

"We are of the opinion that many of the past associations have been destroyed through the lack of a proper understanding and appreciation of their working details. If so, then is the lesson necessary to be learned pointed out.

"The building of cities; a favorite theory, the measure of every age. How anxiously has the saint longed for the power to build up, and how constantly have his feet been turned from the ways of the great city of the greater King. Who shall tell how the subtle influence, the hope of one day entering into the gates and walking the streets of a city of God, a Salem, a city of Peace, has cheered the stricken heart and elated the soul of the laborer in Zion at his daily toil; the hardy artisan as he sang to the stroke of his sounding hammer; the scholar as he strove to 'show himself a workman that needeth not to be ashamed;' the wise man as he sat beneath the skies of a distant clime, and sighed for the day when the 'tribes' might return.

"Where are the cities of the saint! Kirtland lies upon the hills a 'deserted village;' 'Far West,' 'Adam-ondi-ahman,' and the City of Cities, lie wasted and dead; 'Nauvoo,' on fairer site than which the sun does not shine, is a city of less than one tenth of her former inhabitants. Her hills are covered with the vine, and her valleys bear the peach and the plum; while the beer-drinking, wine-growing Teuton has built his 'wine vaults,' and garnished his 'wine gardens' with the stones quarried by the saints of God, and by their patient hands laid in the walls of 'the temple that crowned the hill.'

"A sad comment upon the unfaithfulness of man is found in the fact that of all the host that once held sacred worship within the 'City of the Saints,' few have an inheritance there. Of those few, the family of 'Joseph the Martyr' form a part, and these are sedulously striving to sow the 'word' and some of them are combatting [combating], step by step, for

(page 671)

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