listener was the assurance that such a course would not at present be
pleasing in the sight of God. To others, touching upon the matter of
superior forces they might have to contend with, he was loftily
inattentive.

Having made this much clear, Brigham went on in his fatherly way to
impress him anew with the sinfulness of all temporal governments outside
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Again he learned from
the lips of authority that any people presuming to govern themselves by
laws of their own making and officers of their own appointing, are in
wicked rebellion against the Kingdom of God; that for seventeen hundred
years the nations of the Western Hemisphere have been destitute of this
Kingdom and destitute of all legal government; and that the Lord was now
about to rend all earthly governments, to cast down thrones, overthrow
nations, and make a way for the establishment of the everlasting
Kingdom, to which all others would have to yield, or be prostrated never
more to rise. Thus was the rebuff of the afternoon gracefully atoned
for.

From matters of civil government the talk ranged to affairs domestic.

"Tell me," said the young man, "the truth of this new order of celestial
marriage." And Brigham had become animated at once.

"Yes," he said, "when the family organisation was revealed from Heaven,
and Joseph began on the right and the left to add to his family, oh,
dear, what a quaking there was in Israel! But there it was, plain
enough. When you have received your endowments, keys, blessings, all the
tokens, signs, and every preparatory ordinance that can be given to a
man for his entrance through the celestial gate, then you can see it."