ple from the children of men and that we would have no power
to restore it.

Then they asked whether it meant a cessation of plural marriage
living--whether they would be required to separate from the wives whom
they had taken in the holy covenant.

He answered, firmly, that it did; that the brethren in Washington found
it imperative; that it was the will of the Lord; that we must submit.

I saw their faces flush and then slowly pale again--and the storm broke.
One after another they rose and protested, hoarsely, in the voice of
tears, that they were willing to suffer "persecution unto death" rather
than to violate the covenants which they had made "in holy places"
with the women who had trusted them. One after another they offered
themselves for any sacrifice but this betrayal of the women and children
to whom they owed an everlasting faith. And a manlier lot of men never
spoke in a manlier way. Not a petty word was uttered. Their thought was
not for themselves. Their grief was not selfish. Their protests had a
dignity in pathos that shook me in spite of myself.

When they had done, my father rose again with a face that seemed to bear
the marks of their grief while it repressed his own. He dwelt anew on
the long efforts of our attorney and our friends in Congress to resist
what we believed to be unconstitutional measures to repress our practice
of a religious faith. But we were citizens of a nation. We were
required to obey its laws. And when we found, by the highest judicial
interpretation of statute and constitution, that we were without grounds
for our plea of religious immunity, we had but the alternative either of
defying the power of the whole nation or of submitting ourselves to its
authority. For his part he was willing to do the will of the Lord. And
since the Prophet of God, after a long season of prayer, had submitted
this revelation as the will of the Lord, he was ready for the sacrifice.
The leaders of the Church had no right to think of themselves. They
must remember how loyally the people had sacrificed their substance and
risked their safety to guard their brethren who were living in plural
marriage. Those brethren must not be ungrateful now. They must not now
refuse to make their sacrifice, in answer to the sacrifices that had
been made for them so often. The people had long protected them. Now
they must protect the people.

Under the commanding persuasion of his voice I saw the determination of
t