He peered again into the fire, and added, by way of clenching his argument:  “I guess it would have been rather slow-going, if the Lord had confined Abraham to one wife, like some of these narrow, contracted nations of modern Christianity.  You see, they don’t know that a man’s posterity in this world is to constitute his glory and kingdom and dominion in the world to come, and they don’t know, either, that there are thousands of choice spirits in the spirit world waiting to tabernacle in the flesh.  Of course, there are lots of these things that you ain’t ready to hear yet, but now you know that polygamy is necessary for our exaltation to the fulness of the Lord’s glory in the eternal world, and after you study it you’ll like the doctrine.  I do; I can swallow it without greasing my mouth!”

He prayed that night to be made “holy as Thy servant Brigham is holy; to hear Thy voice as he hears it; to be made as wise as he, as true as he, even as another Lion of the Lord, so that I may be a rod and staff and comforter to these buffeted children of Thine.”

His prayer also touched on one of the matters of their talk.  “But, O Lord, teach me to be content without thrones and dominion in Thy Kingdom if to gain these I must have many wives.  Teach me to abase myself, to be a servant, a lowly sweeper in the temple of the Most High, for I would rather be lowly with her I love than exalted to any place whatsoever with many.  Keep in my sinful heart the face of her who has left me to dwell among the Gentiles, whose hair is melted gold, whose eyes are azure deep as the sky, and whose arms once opened warm for me.  Guard her especially, O Lord, while she must company with Gentiles, for she is not wonted to their wiles; and in Thine own good time bring her head unharmed to its home on Thy servant’s breast.”

He fasted often, that winter, waiting and watching for his great Witness—­something that should testify to his mortal eyes the direct favour of Heaven.  He fasted and kept vigils and studied the mysteries; for now he was among the favoured to whom light had been given in abundance—­men at whose feet he was eager to sit.  He learned of baptism for the dead; of the Godship of Adam, and his plurality of wives; of the laws of adoption and the process by which the Saints were to people, and be Gods to, earths yet formless.

There was much work out of doors to be done, and of this he performed his share, working side by side with the tireless Brigham.  But there were late afternoons and long evenings in which he sat with the Prophet to his great advantage.  For, strangely enough, the two men, so unlike, were drawn closely together—­Brigham Young, the broad-headed, square-chinned buttress of physical vitality, the full-blooded, clarion-voiced Lion of the Lord, self-contained, watchful, radiating the power that men feel and obey without knowing why, and Joel Rae, of the long, narrow, delicately featured face, sensitive, nervous, glowing with a