to rejoin that "The Church itself can and does know its own evidence and its own tradition." The Church is thus above mere history.
And again, spite of all trials, was not this, in many respects, a blessed time to the Church? Were not the "holy relics" of old but blessed and still fragrant saints the objects of the daily worship of the faithful? Were there not miraculous apparitions still all about us, the holy and blessed old St. Joseph and St. Brigham appearing and reappearing to many? If these divinely sent apparitions were now vouchsafed only to young children and some few women, that was but a fitting rebuke and punishment to the unbelief of the age. It was indeed sad to think that the many striking miracles, so well established in the Church's earlier traditions, had now ceased in consequence of unbelief. But the Church's triumph was none the less for the simple believing minds of its true flock. The unquestioning faith of young children had been especially rewarded by miraculous apparitions—apparitions, too, which, in an exemplary way, it could hardly be doubted, had been of purpose made punitively invisible to the scepticism of more advanced years.
Mormon truth coming direct from Heaven, through its inspired earthly head, consequently he alone was infallible upon earth. In two grand instances in particular, in the Church's experience, was this direct revelation triumphantly and most publicly manifested to the whole world.
1. When, in our earlier history, the secular power persisted in interfering with our "peculiar domestic institution," and, forsooth, in describing as human
