Page:Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow monochrome.djvu/181

 of knowledge actually received, and of having authority to baptize both priests and people, rich and poor, bond and free, with a promise of the gift of the Holy Ghost. But what was the result? How were they received? Were they accounted good, peaceable men, and well spoken of? No! far from it; most all people spoke against them, and no doubt considered them wicked, designing men, for they immediately set about whipping, stoning, imprisoning and killing them. Their own brethren, the Jews, who were best acquainted with them, were the most industriously engaged in this business. Ministers of the Jewish laws, those educated for the purpose and who made it their daily employment to expound and teach the people the word of God delivered by the holy Prophets, were generally the foremost and most bitter in these crusades against Jesus Christ, the Apostles and the Saints. Had those persons who professed to understand the Scriptures and to whom the people looked for proper explanations, been honest and virtuous men, and used a righteous influence with the people, thousands, in room of rejecting Jesus Christ and His Apostles, would have received their testimony. So, in reference to ourselves, had the ministers and clergy come to us like the good Jethro to Israel, with kind sympathy in their bosoms, and shown us that friendship which one religious class of people ought always to manifest for another, or had they used even a moral influence in our favor, the evils and cruelties heaped upon us by our enemies would have been much lessened, and those persons, like Jethro, would have been spoken of with praise and honor to the latest ages of posterity. But, alas! few instances of this kind can be recorded. It is with pleasure, however, that we here mention that in times of deep distress, brought upon the Saints by these persecutions, when large public meetings were called in various parts of the United States by virtuous and honorable citizens of the country, to express their abhorrence and detestation of those crimes and cruelties, those professing