| 539 lies we are not altogether informed, only as we hear an occasional murmur that gives a clue to the bent of thought. "We were expecting that the Lord would speak and fill up the quorums at this conference," one is heard to say. "We expected a feast of fat things," says another. "We did not have the gifts at any of our meetings for testimony and prayer; what is the matter?" says still another.
We will be pardoned, we trust, if we express some thoughts concerning the late conference, and state some convictions respecting the matters before it and the action thereon. There are in the lifetime of all organized bodies, small or great, crises of greater or less importance during the passing of which doubt, uncertainty, fear, and apprehension are felt by all. The Reorganized Church has passed through several severe difficulties, in which the permanency of the institution seemed to be in great danger; but we apprehend that no session of conference has been held since 1867 in which the situation was more critical or the danger more serious and threatening than in the one we have just closed.
The question whether the church should consent to formulate a creed in which items of disbelief should find a prominent place, involving serious concessions to the views of two, three, or more prominent men in the body for the sake of the personal worth these men might be to that body, has been faced for several years, and the best that either moral cowardice or conservative wisdom could do, was to put on the appearance of putting off the evil day. Those who have attended the conferences since 1867 can not fail to remember that efforts have from time to time been made to bring about the making of specific declarations touching certain ideas, or theories of doctrine in the form of "we believe" thus and so, rather than to leave those matters couched in the more comprehensive, "we believe in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants." This question assumed definite shape at this last cession when three elders of the church said to the assembled representatives of the body: "You hold to certain things of belief which we disbelieve. We had thought you had abandoned the things referred to, but find you have not, we therefore withdraw from fellowship with you. You have preferred not to accede to our views, we therefore relieve ourselves of the things you believe."
These are not the words in which the withdrawal is framed, but the statement contains the moral aspect of the affair. The substance, the shadow of which the church has seen and felt for years, was precipitated upon us at an early hour of this last session, and the consideration of it and its consequences, its causes, and its effects, entered largely into the thoughts, conversations, and ministrations of the entire session. Its gravity was enough, its surrounding of such a nature that we should have been less than human if we had not felt its somber influence.
The question tersely stated was this, should the church recede from positions assumed by it in the days of its opening struggles, accepting in the stead thereof views held by the few adversely to those positions, for
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