our rights (John Taylor)

These are our feelings in regard to rights. There was a time when I thought I had a great many rights of my own, but now I have got to understand that I have all the rights that God will give me, and I don’t want to have any more. I want to live in the light of his countenance, to ask him to give me his Spirit, and then I know I shall prosper. When you feel like talking about your rights, let me advise you to go into your closet, forget your imaginary rights, and ask the Lord to give you wisdom to guide you aright, that you may act before him as children of the light, and not be the means of throwing a stumbling block in the way of others. By pursuing this course, you will get along much easier, and there will not be near so much of that spirit of grumbling and complaining.

John Taylor

9:13

these should be the study of every saint (Orson Pratt)

These should be the feelings of every Latter Day Saint; they should study to discriminate between the right and the wrong, and be determined to walk continually in the path of virtue, of righteousness and of truth.  Let us study to make ourselves approved before God, that we may have His smiles and approbation continually.

Orson Pratt

8:312

God has preserved my feet and my tongue…(Brigham Young)

My exhortation to every man, woman, and child that has named the name of Christ—my positive command to you, which I urge upon you, and which it is your imperative duty to hearken to and obey, is to so live every moment that there will not be a dark spot upon your lives—that you can say every night, “The last is the best day I have ever lived. God be praised that I have been enabled to so live this day that I can go to sleep with a clear conscience.” In short, so live that when you wake in the spirit world you can truthfully say, “I could not better my mortal life, were I to live it over again.” I exhort you, for the sake of the house of Israel, for the sake of Zion which we are to build up, to so live, from this time, henceforth, and forever, that your characters may with pleasure be scrutinized by holy beings. Live godly lives, which you cannot do without living moral lives.

A man can commit sin, and return to the Lord and receive forgiveness; but who has the assurance that he will have power to repent? Who has the right and privilege granted unto him to swear, or to take that which is not his own and make use of it for himself? I know of no such right. Who has a right to commit adultery? If anyone has such a permit from the Almighty, bring it forth and let us read it to the congregation, that we may know it. Who has a right to bear false witness? Who has a right to defile himself by getting drunk? If you have this right, let us see it. If you have a right to disgrace your wives and children in the eyes of the people, and God says it is just and true, bring out your authority and let us see it. I know of no person who has a right to sin.

“Brother Brigham, don’t you sometimes sin?” If I do, it is none of your business; and the whole of you are not smart enough to catch me in a wrong. Look back at my life since I have been preaching the Gospel, and point out, if you can, the iniquity I have committed. “Have you not taken the name of God in vain?” Not the first time have I ever used the name of my Savior, or the name of a holy angel, or the name of the mother of Jesus, or the name of our Father in heaven with trifling feelings. “Have you not taken that which was not your own?” No; and I have not been able to get half of what is my own. I am going to have much more than I now have—not twice or thrice, but a hundredfold more. I never yet felt that I had license to commit a sin; and if I have not, who has?

Some may imagine that I am boasting: you may call it what you please. God has preserved my feet and tongue, and I am here today, though not so good as I ought to be; and you are not so good as you ought to be: there is a chance for us all to be much better. Where is there a boy in this community who has the right to disgrace his father by sin? Where is the daughter who has the right to disgrace her mother by defiling herself? Have you such a license, young women? Have you such a license, young men? If you cannot show your license to commit sin, we shall consider you impostors, and that you have no right and do not belong to our society. We will disfellowship all such men and women, whether old or young: they are already disfellowshipped in my feelings.

Brigham Young

8:160

If the Latter Day Saints live their religion, they will overcome evil (Brigham Young)

There are no persons without evil passions to embitter their lives. Mankind are revengeful, passionate, hateful, and devilish in their dispositions. This we inherit through the fall, and the grace of God is designed to enable us to overcome it. The grace of God is bestowed upon all, and the kingdom of God is planted on the earth expressly to enable mankind to overcome the evil that is in them, and to save all. If the Latter-day Saints live their religion, they will forsake iniquity and overcome the evil that the enemy of all righteousness causes to rise within them, until every passion and appetite is as perfectly under their own control as a patient animal they hold by the bit.

Brigham Young

8:160

The kingdoms that God has prepared are innumerable (Brigham Young)

The kingdoms that God has prepared are innumerable. Each and every intelligent being will be judged according to the deeds done in the body, according to his works, faith, desires, and honesty or dishonesty before God; every trait of his character will receive its just merit or demerit, and he will be judged according to the law of heaven as revealed; and God has prepared places suited to every class. The Savior said to his disciples—”In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” How many kingdoms there are has not been told to us: they are innumerable. The disciples of Jesus were to dwell with him. Where will the rest go? Into kingdoms prepared for them, where they will live and endure. Jesus will bring forth, by his own redemption, every son and daughter of Adam, except the sons of perdition, who will be cast into hell. Others will suffer the wrath of God—will suffer all the Lord can demand at their hands, or justice can require of them; and when they have suffered the wrath of God till the utmost farthing is paid, they will be brought out of prison. Is this dangerous doctrine to preach? Some consider it dangerous; but it is true  that every person who does not sin away the day of grace, and become an angel to the Devil, will be brought forth to inherit a kingdom of glory.

The sectarian world, as we call them, is a professed church of God, without the Priesthood. Sectarians have not the Priesthood; but all of them who live according to the best light and intelligence they can obtain through faithfulness to what they believe, as taught unto them, will receive a kingdom and glory that will far transcend all their expectations, imaginations, or visions in their most excited moments…

Brigham Young

8:154

present salvation (Brigham Young)

It is present salvation and the present influence of the Holy Ghost that we need every day to keep us on saving ground. When an individual refuses to comply with the further requirements of Heaven, then the sins he had formerly committed return upon his head; his former righteousness departs from him, and is not accounted to him for righteousness: but if he had continued in righteousness and obedience to the requirements of heaven, he is saved all the time, through baptism, the laying on of hands, and obeying the commandments of the Lord and all that is required of him by the heavens—the living oracles. He is saved now, next week, next year, and continually, and is prepared for the celestial kingdom of God whenever the time comes for him to inherit it.

Brigham Young

8:125

let us be faithful in all things (Kimball)

Brethren, let us gird up our loins and be faithful in all things. Will you go naked and hungry? No, not if you will do right: there will be an abundance for all that do right. I have been as poor as the poorest of you. I have been so poor that I have seen many times when I had not a change of shirts. I have also been with brother Brigham when we were both very poor; and when you talk about going through troubles and trials, I think of what I have passed through for the Gospel’s sake, in connection with my brethren; but in the midst of those trials I have always been the happiest. What have we sacrificed? Nothing at all, when we consider that all belongs to our Father. Why do you want to get up in the meetings of the Saints and tell how you have sacrificed? Think of this in the future.

Have we not been among false brethren? Yes, we have suffered from that source. When Joseph had to flee, and there was hardly a person that you could trust, that was a trying time. You have left your homes, you have left nations of tyranny and oppression, and have come to these peaceful valleys, where the devils have been made subject to the Priesthood of the Most High.

So far as I am concerned, I can say that I have sacrificed ignorance to get light—I have sacrificed to overcome the Devil, and I will rise with those that rise and come off victorious. I consider that I have sacrificed nothing for God, but that the sacrifices I have made are for my own individual benefit, and to benefit the Almighty.

Heber C. Kimball

8:111

the importance of living to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd (Brigham Young)

I wish to impress upon the minds of the Saints the importance of so living that they will always know the voice of the Good Shepherd. When they hear the voice of the Spirit of inspiration—the power of God, through any person, let the feelings and sensibilities of every one who professes to know anything of the things of God, be in a state to know and discern between that which is of God and that which is not. I have exhorted the brethren, all the day long, in this way. My whole study is employed and my whole soul is drawn out to induce this people to live their religion. How often has it been taught that if you depend entirely upon the voice, judgment, and sagacity of those appointed to lead you, and neglect to enjoy the Spirit for yourselves, how easily you may be led into error, and finally be cast off to the left hand? Is it desirable to lead you astray? No; it would not be a momentary satisfaction to a Saint of God—to a servant of God—to one who sees things as they are, to be the means of betraying and deceiving the whole human family and leading them astray where he pleased. For any man who understands the things of God to have power to lead the human family astray at his will and pleasure is calculated to destroy: it is ruin, it is waste, and will finally lead to disorganization. But a true servant of God takes more pleasure in saving the meanest capacity organized in human form upon the face of the earth than a wicked person can in leading hosts astray.

Brigham Young

8:59

true intelligence; doing good or evil; weak instrument in the hands of the devil (Brigham Young)

A firm, unchangeable course of righteousness through life is what secures to a person true intelligence…Every man is capable of doing either good or evil: he has his own choice, and will be judged by his works…He who lifts his heel against the Lord and against his anointed will find himself a poor, pusillanimous, weak instrument in the hands of the devil to accomplish his designs.

Brigham Young

8:32-33

small things upon which people stumble (Daniel H. Wells)

It is not the great things of the kingdom that cause men to fall away and go to destruction. It is the small things of life—matters of traffic and deal, upon which people stumble. Large mountains are magnified from small molehills, and they loom out greater and greater the longer persons travel in that path.

Daniel H. Wells
7:295