the presence of our Savior and God, in order to possess the kingdom. Selfishness, wickedness, bickering, tattling, lying, and dishonesty must depart from the people before they are prepared for the Savior; we must sanctify ourselves before our God.
"I wanted to ask Brother Long a question this morning—what he had learned in regard to the original sin. Let the elders, who like speculation, find out what it is, if they can, and inform us next Sabbath; or, if you have any thing else that is good, bring it along. I wish to impress upon your minds to live your religion, and, when you come to this stand to speak, not to care whether you say five words or five thousand, but to come with the power of God upon you, and you will comfort the hearts of the Saints. All the sophistry in the world will do no good. If you live your religion, you will live with the Spirit of Zion within you, and will try, by every lawful means, to induce your neighbors to live their religion. In this way we will redeem Zion, and cleanse it from sin.
"God bless you. Amen."
The gift of unknown tongues—which is made by some physiologists the result of an affection of the epigastric region, and by others an abnormal action of the organ of language—is now apparently rarer than before. Anti-Mormon writers thus imitate the "blatant gibberish" which they derive directly from Irvingism: "Eli, ele, elo, ela—come, coma, como—reli, rele, rela, relo—sela, selo, sele, selum—vavo, vava, vavum—sero, seri, sera, serum." Lieutenant Gunnison relates[1] a facetious story concerning a waggish youth, who, after that a woman had sprung up and spoken "in tongues" as follows, "Mela, meli, melee," sorely pressed by the "gift of interpretation of tongues," translated the sentence into the vernacular, "My leg, my thigh, my knee." For this he was called before the Council, but he stoutly persisted in his "interpretation" being "by the Spirit," and they dismissed him with admonition. Gentiles have observed that whatever may be uttered "in tongues," it is always translated into very intelligible English.
That evening, when dining out, I took a lesson in Mormon modesty. The mistress of the house, a Gentile, but not an anti-Mormon, was requested by a saintly visitor, who was also a widow, to instruct me that on no account must I propose to see her home. "Mormon ladies," said my kind informant, "are very strict;" unnecessarily so on this occasion, I could not but think. Something similar occurred on another occasion: a very old lady, wishing to return home, surreptitiously left the room and sidled out of the garden gate, and my companion, an officer from Camp Floyd, at once recognized the object of the retreat. I afterward learned at dinner and elsewhere among the Mormons to abjure the Gentile practice of giving precedence to that sex than which, according to Latin grammar, the masculine is nobler. The lesson, however,
- ↑ The Mormons. Chap. vi. Social Condition.
