There are dangers all around. Some of you may say, "If things get really tough, we will move here, or we will move back there, and then we will be safe; everything will be all right there." If you do not fix it so that you are safe and in good company when you are alone, or when you are with your own husband or your own wife and your own children, you will not be safe or find happiness anywhere. There is no such thing as geographical security.

The day will come--and this is another prediction of Joseph Smith's--I want to remind you of it, my brethren and sisters, when good government, constitutional government--liberty--will be found among the Latter-day Saints, and it will be sought for in vain elsewhere; when the Constitution of this land and republican government and institutions will be upheld by this people who are now so oppressed and whose destruction is now sought so diligently. The day will come when the Constitution, and free government under it, will be sustained and preserved by this people.

When the people have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States, the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men, and extending the hand of fellowship to the oppressed of all nations. This is part of the program, and as long as we do what is right and fear God, he will help us and stand by us under all circumstances.

How would peaceful, orderly secession -- the reclaiming of independence by a state or, in the case of Texas -- be "treason" against "the united States in Congress assembled"? By strict constitutional definition, "treason" consists only of "levying war against them" or in "adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

Note how this passage refers to "states" in the plural, not to a singular national government. Interestingly, there is no language in the U.S. Constitution that makes "rebellion" against the general (or federal) government a form of treason. And since the federal government was designed to be an agent of the states, a state that chooses to withdraw from that relationship is hardly a "rebel."

Furthermore, secession is not an act of war, since withdrawing from a social arrangement of any kind is exactly the opposite of aggression.

The greatest events that have been spoken of by all the Holy Prophets will come along so naturally as the consequences of certain causes, that unless our eyes are enlightened by the Spirit of God, and the spirit of revelation rests upon us, we will fail to see that these are the events predicted by the Holy Prophets.

That happens in marriages, too, and in the other relationships we have. I can't tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window "pain" of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound which the Son of God Himself died trying to heal. Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change, and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is it hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don't keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone saying, "Hey! Do you remember this?" Splat! Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, "Yeah, I remember it. Do you remember this?" Splat. And everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what our Father in Heaven pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.

There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life -- either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes -- our own or other people's -- is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.

History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office -- to teach elements. But they can only searve us when they aim not to drill but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.

It is, parenthetically, a hallmark of free nations that their citizens can discipline themselves today for a better tomorrow. Yet America is in trouble (as are other nations) precisely because a patient persistence in a wise course of public policy is so difficult to attain. Too many impatient politicians buy today's votes with tomorrow's inflation.

War necessarily brings with it some virtues, and great and heroic virtues, too. What horrid creatures we men are, that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another?