| 295 CHAPTER 17.
1880.
THE situation at the opening of the year 1880 was quite well expressed in an editorial in Saints' Herald for January 1, reading as follows:
In beginning the present volume of the Herald, we do so with a degree of pleasure that we do not often experience.
The long pressure of doubt and uncertainty respecting the business interests of the country which necessarily affected the Saints' the Herald, and the general work, has been gradually, but surely removing. The upward turn of the wave has begun; and unless something unforeseen occurs to destroy the fair hopes of the sanguine, the period of prosperity will for a time continue. . . .
The spiritual condition of the church has been improving. It should have been no wonder that in the outset of the Reorganization, and for some years after, if the effort was to continue so long, there should be a reign of unsettled spirituality; that men, and women too, should unite with the church who would not endure unto the end; who would be "lovers of pleasure," and would in the service of self drift into unregenerate habits again from which they had once been made free. Many such have been eliminated, and now the spiritual atmosphere is growing clearer. The fresh, invigorating impulses of the Spirit are at work-not in isolated places, as at the first, but generally, in all the places where
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