166 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
while laying themselves open to the charge of being law-breakers, and assun:iing an attitude of defiance toward the laws and institutions of the country in which they lived, this bond of sympathy, of crim- inality if you will, particularly when made a mat- ter of conscience, when recognized as a mandate from the almighty, higher than any human law, and in whose obedience God himself was best pleased, and would surely afford protection, could but prove in the end a bond of strength, particularly if permitted to attain age and respectability among themselves, and assume the form of a concrete principle and of sacred obligation.
If instead of falling back upon the teachings of the old testament, and adopting the questionable practices of the half-civilized Jews; if instead of taking for their models Abraham, David, and Solomon, the saints at Nauvoo had followed the advice of Paul to the saints at Ephesus, putting away fornication and all unclean- ness, and walking worthy of their vocation, in all lowliness and meekness, as children of light, they would probably have remained in their beautiful city, and come into the inheritance of their Missouri Zion as had been prophesied. Had they consulted more closely the signs of the times, had they been less orthodoK in their creed, less patriarchal in their prac- tices, less biblical in their tenets, less devoted in their doctrines — in a word, had they followed more closely the path of worldly wisdom, and, like opposing chris- tian sects, tempered religion with civilization, giving up the worst parts of religion for the better parts of civilization, I should not now be writing their history, as one with the history of Utah.
But now was brought upon them this overwhelming issue, which howsoever it accorded with ancient scrip- ture teachings, and as they thought with the rights of man, was opposed to public sentiment, and to the conscience of all civilized nations. Forever after they must have this mighty obstacle to contend with; for-
