Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 1/Number 10/Missionaries

Virtue is succeeded by vice in the extreme, and all parade and pomp attached to religion is sound without substance—solemn mockery before the Lord, and an offering of vanity which never raises a soul to heaven. It is in vain to buy eternal life with money; it is in vain to please God, if we neglect the poor; it is vain to serve the Lord with fashions, and it is in vain to expect corrupt trees to bring forth good fruit. If we ever enter a world of happiness it will be because we have obeyed the commandments of the Lord; visited the fatherless and the widow and administered to their afflictions and necessities; because we have visited the saints in prison and comforted them; because we have never looked upon sin with any degree of allowance, and because we have fought the good fight of faith and been faithful to the end—yea, our ears will hear the word of the Lord, behind us, saying; "This is the way, walk ye in it."

Our nation is certainly receding from virtue; from many places there might be reason to say the people know how to act better than they do. We subjoin the following from the Albany Mercury as one evidence in support of the premises we have entered:

"MISSIONARIES.—It is a lamentable truth, that, notwithstanding the preeminent advantages the Americans enjoy, notwithstanding the great diffusion of education among them, there is a degree of religious fanaticism existing in the United States, that, if permitted to come to maturity, will sweep away, in one common ruin, liberty, happiness, and the rights of man. Do but examine one single feature of this fanaticism, and then Judge what princi-ples the WHOLE must be composed of. Look at the thousands of dollars that are sent out of the country, day after day, to support a Legion called 'Missionaries.' Look to individuals that will subscribe tens of thousands of dollars to the support of this fund, who would not give a single cent to the relief of his fellow creature on a bed of sickness, with his weeping and half naked children around him;—and then take a view of the solitary captive, the American Artisan and Mechanic, with a trifling debt on his shoulders, looking through the bars of a prison on the blessed Sabbath day, and, in our own city, depending for a morsel to eat on the charity of their fellow citizens." P.