Joel Rae instructed his wondering household, further, that such glory as this would be reserved, not for Brigham alone, but for the least of the Saints.  Each Saint would progress to Godhead, and go down with his Eve to make and people worlds without end.  This, he explained, was why God had made space to be infinite, since nothing less could have room for the numberless seed of man.  In conclusion, he gave them the words of the Heaven-gifted Brigham:  “Let all who hear these doctrines pause before they make light of them or treat them with indifference, for they will prove your salvation or your damnation.”

Yet often during that winter while he talked these doctrines he would find his mind wandering, and there would come before his eyes a little printed page with a wash of blood across it, and he would be forced to read in spite of himself the verses that were magnified before his eyes.  The priesthood of which he was a product dealt but little with the New Testament.  They taught from the Old almost wholly, when they went outside the Book of Mormon and the revelations to Joseph Smith—­of the God of Israel who was a God of Battle, loving the reek of blood and the smell of burnt flesh on an altar—­rather than of the God of the Nazarene.

He found himself turning to this New Testament, therefore, with a curious feeling of interest and surprise, dwelling long at a time upon its few, simple, forthright teachings, being moved by them in ways he did not comprehend, and finding certain of the dogmas of his Church sounding strangely in his ears even when his own lips were teaching them.

One of the verses he especially dreaded to see come before him:  “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”  He taught the child to pray, “O God, let my father have due punishment for all his sins, but teach him never to offend any little child from this day forth.”

He used to listen for this and to be soothed when he heard it.  Sometimes the words would come to him when he was shut in his room; for if neither of the women was by her when she prayed, it was her custom to raise her voice as high as she could, in the belief that otherwise her prayer would not be heard by the Power she addressed.  In high, piping tones this petition for himself would come through his door, following always after the request that the Lord would bless Brigham Young in his basket and in his store, multiplying and increasing him in wives, children, flocks and herds, houses and lands.

CHAPTER XXV.

The Entablature of Truth Makes a Discovery at Amalon

The house of Rae became a house of importance in the little settlement in the Pine Valley.  It was not only the home of the highest Church official in the community, but it was the largest and best-furnished house, so that visiting dignitaries stayed there.  It stood a little way from the loose-edged group of cabins that formed the nucleus of the settlement, on ground a little higher, and closer to the wooded canon that gashed the hills on the east.