for going off alone, and taking such risks, but I satisfied him that I was always with friends, and hence not alone.

I remained with the company until they reached Beaver City. The return was as welcome and agreeable as the first visit. News came to me of the severe sickness of my boy, and I hastened homeward by stage.

I have thought many times, that since an account of the President's visits has never been described at length, I would risk the recital of a subject which abler men have left untouched, and so submit these details. Those who have never had such an opportunity, wiH be able to see how greatly such movements helped to encourage the minds of those whose duty it was to build bridges, make ditches, and kill the snakes for the generations that will follow in our own loved Deseret. I was glad to accompany, and to see so much of, one of the greatest men of the century.

THROUGH CHRIST AND REPENTANCE ARE YE .SAVED.

Learn to shun no task or duty; follow where the Savior led:
Jesus' life was plain and perfect; in his footsteps let us tread.
Ask the secret of his mission, search the key to his success:
'Twas: he sought to save his fellows, truly love them and to bless.

And his prayer was: "Thine, O Father, thine and not my will be done."
And his will was e'en the Father's, e'en the Great Eternal One.
Lo! he groaned in blood and anguish, sorely wept for those who sin,
Gladly suffered pain and sorrow, nobly died, that man might win.⚫

Follow then his sacred footsteps, crown of Glory and of Life,

And be yalient in his service, in the war 'gainst sin and strife.
He shall lead them to his glory, and deliver them from fall,
Who repent of their transgressions, and obey his saving call.
ANNIE G. LAURITZEN.

Richfield, Utah.

SILENT FORCES.

BY HENRY W. NAISBITT.

Many of the most important material forces of nature are strangely silent in their action; so far as human ears or observation goes, all the planetary universe moves in utter silence. There is no echo in the fathomless fields of space; and while poetry dilates and raphsodizes over "the music of the spheres," only the fervor of imagination hears that tone. To the ordinary soul, it is the music of silence or "music asleep." There was one who claimed that the grand orbs around us are "ever singing as they shine, the hand that made us is divine," and the Psalmist, similarly gifted, held a sentiment as beautiful and suggestive when he exclaimed, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth forth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." But that speech is not vocal, that language is not of earth, that voice is only to the soul; spirit ears may be attuned to such music, may understand such voices, may comprehend such speech, but to most of men, worlds move upon their orbits almost without observation and certainly without audible rhythm; they all move in harmony, but their gamut of tone and sound is silence, "not loud, but deep!"

The great glacier fields of earth are silent in their irresistible movements; it is only as they break above the abysmal ocean, or, drifting, dissolve in warmer waters, that they groan and crash to their ultimate destruction. Yet in all past ages their action has changed continents, aided in forming islands, and in grooving into mighty furrows the now sadly scarred face of mother earth!

We have heard of the roar of the ocean, we have heard also of its peaceful murmuring, "as it breaks upon the shore," but in mid-ocean, while it plays as with a toy on the proudest mechanism created of man, its waves roll mountain high in comparative silence; obstruction alone demonstrates the impetuous force as it is generated, and then as gradually lapses into silence that might not disturb a babe!

All have noted the soft, silent action of light as it streams from the far distant sun; men have assumed to measure its velocity, to determine its caloric, and to gauge its change from summer to winter, but few have recognized its sublime silence, its stealthy approach, its peaceful departure, its wonderful noiseless silence in every phase or mood!

In all those strange changes of plant growth which are so common as to excite hardly observation, there is the same eternal phenomenon of silence; growth is one of the manifestations and miracles of life,-"first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear," every process of flower, of shrub, of tree, of the vegetable kingdom, serene, certain, positive, each working its individual law of life without ostentation, courting no smile, fearing no frown, yet in its native habitat working out its individual problem, its given mission, its glorious, perfect life!

How unlike the operations of humanity, with its bustle, its self-inflation, its love of approbation, its desire for renown! We have not read of any achievement, save one, which indicated in its accomplishment, this attractive silence so grandly vindicated in the wonderful works of God. The unique illustration referred to is in the case of the building of Solomon's temple which "came together without the sound of ax or hammer, or any tool of iron being heard thereon." Even the peace of mankind in general, about which so much is boastingly said, is far below that tangible yet silent "peace of God, which passeth all understanding!"

The action of mentality, the power of thought to penetrate, to make or win its widening way, is similar to the power of light, to the miracle of growth, to the erosive friction of a glacier, to the majestic, stately silence of the stellar world; a great thought is never lost; receptive element, nourishment, life comes when congenial conditions assert themselves. It is like the seed which,

stored along with mummies in the ages past, when brought from darkness to light, from arid depth, to humid limits, breaks forth in growing verdure to tell the story of a glorious resurrection. So these old truths, conceived in silence, buried in obscurity, waiting only "the hour and the man" to break forth into unlimited verdure, as luxuriant as the tropics, as beautiful as any devotee's anticipation of heaven, and withal so silently powerful, that the little mustard seed becomes a great tree, or as the little leaven in three measures of meal which by and by "leavens the whole lump."

Nowhere is this startling fact of the silent fecundity of thought more strangely manifest than in the eternal truths of the Gospel as restored to the earth in this our dispensation. Christianity had become effete in many respects; it had a galvanic life, it had a measure of truth, but it had become stereotyped, it had lost its savor, its creeds were speculation, its Bible was a fetish, its representatives made merchandise of the souls of men, and its divinity or theology, made up of abstruse fictions, created wars, physical and mental, which testified to the acerbity of professors, and truly said that figments of the brain had overthrown the philosophy of the Gospel, and that superstition had exalted itself above the oracles of God!

With the dawn of a new era-an era not only of revealing but of receptivity,-old theories, dogmas, doctrines, began to unbar their doors. With the introduction of the Gospel came a time of daring controversy, every elder of The Church had an opponent, every teacher had a hearer, the stagnant waters of antiquated orthodoxy became troubled, but the "little Davids" left many a proud Goliath on the polemical battle-field. Since that, "discretion has become the better part of valor," and now contemptuous silence is the answer to all interrogatories, whether from friend or foe; it has become, as a ready opponent said the other day, "I will not discuss with you on doctrine, but on side issues I may meet you." He failed to see that all side issues were the legitimate product of the tree of Knowledge, and like the whole, in that he confessed himself an already vanquished man!

But these facts in no way forestall the argument, that "Mormon” theory and "Mormon” thought have radically changed the teachings of modern Christendom. Ministers no longer preach

a literal hell fire, they no longer consign to torment "children a span long;" they are absorbing greedily the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and as to baptism, it is asserted that many ministers are prepared to placate a convert by "immersing" him in water, if he believes in its rightfulness or necessity. It is also beginning to be realized that authority in ordinance is a factor in salvation, and all the Ritualistic strife is not of Catholic origin but comes from a less reputable source (?) than the antiquated theories of the mother church.

Many also begin to teach the beautiful truth of divine motherhood, and hosts are converts to the idea that family relationship is among the delightful probabilities of the other side. Then the general hope that an erring soul may yet find opportunities for the mercy and salvation of God, is slowly percolating through clerical and other channels, as not either unbiblical or unlikely in the great hereafter. True philosophy is making inroads into superstition and orthodoxy; but few give credit to Joseph Smith, the great latter-day Prophet, and fewer still would willingly acknowledge indebtedness to the Journal of Discourses, the writings of leading men, or the battering rams of the priesthood in general, which have silenced so many guns, stormed so many fortresses, and captured so many prisoners in the name of the God of battles and of his Son Jesus Christ!

There is more "Mormonism" preached today in every little conventicle, than there was in all the Christian world in the year 1830, when this aggressive Church, this potent power in theology, first went out. "The men that have turned the world upside down have come hither also," was the cry in the apostolic age, but it is as true today, though no man may be willing to acknowledge the fountain of his inspiration, and few may know how, when or where their blinded eyes "saw men as trees walking," and not calling for any additional sight!

Many years ago, socialists admitted that "while they had been dreaming the 'Mormons' had been working." They had solved the problem of united colonization, and manifested that industrial combination could redeem the desert and create a state; envy and chagrin led to experiment after experiment. It was thought that Brigham Young and his compeers could be system