A YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY

OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.




CHAPTER I.

A PARABLE.


Once upon a time the owner of a very large garden planted therein a tree,
the fruit of which was very precious and of great value to all who ate of
it. For a time, the tree grew and bore much good fruit. But the owner of
the garden had an enemy who went about secretly sowing seeds of weeds and
all manner of briers and brush, that they might spread all over the garden
and kill out the good tree which the master had planted. The enemy also
persuaded many of the workmen in the garden to neglect the good tree, and
let the briers and weeds grow up around it and so prevent its growth. Thus
in time the once precious fruit of the good tree became wild and scrubby,
no better than the enemy's trees which grew around it.

Years passed, and the master, grieving that the precious fruit should have
become so worthless, determined to plant the good tree once more in the
garden. He did not try to clear away a spot for it amid the old, overgrown
parts of the land, but he called upon certain workers to go to a distant