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Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 35 Page: 692 (~1872)

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692 are really consummated before taking any position upon them; but we prefer to be charged with striking at shadows in case that the abandonment and consequent admission do not take place, than to be subsequently charged with taking advantage of what might be said to have been forced upon polygamists. We regard the situation in Utah as fraught with very grave issues; not only to 'Mormons' and 'Gentiles' there; but to the people of the United States generally, and to us of the Reorganization especially.

"The position which we as an individual have assumed upon the main question at issue, has been known from the first; and much, very much censure has been passed upon us for assuming that position. Many things which have transpired within the past few years go far towards confirming us in the position taken, and relieving the position taken from its seeming inconsistency. Had we any less faith in the law of compensation, which, ordained of God, makes all things even, we should scarcely have cared to have entered into the field of religious and social warfare as a defender of the faith of 'the fathers' of the church, as a Latter Day Saint, under the depressing, cloud that to us has ever lain over the horizon of the past, and with a knowledge of the ordeal to which we must submit being the descendant of one whose name was 'had for good and evil' among men.

"Very few have shared with us in the feelings and sentiments this warfare has given rise to. Nor have we cared to often express them, for fear that they might be chargeable to an undue morbidity of mind not compatible with the largeness and grandeur of the plan of salvation. To some extent we have feared what the developments of a disruption in Utah might reveal of the past. This fear we have outgrown or overcome; and we are now persuaded, that not being responsible for the acts of others who have lived in the past, we can neither change nor obliterate the record they have made; we have therefore no just reason to fear what the truths of that record are. We are now prepared for whatever those revealments of the past may be.

"We wish everybody to understand that we are not an apologist for Brigham Young or any of those who are his

(page 692)

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