It is exactly at this point that I arraign Mr. Wilson before the bar of public opinion, and tell him that what he represents as true I denounce as false; and this quite apart from any books from which he has paraphrased much of the matter he weaves into his story. The trouble is that the sources whence he makes his deductions are as untrue in their statements as his paraphrases of them are. Mr. Wilson is as one who walks through some splendid orchard and gathers here and there the worm-eaten, frost-bitten, wind-blasted, growth-stunted and rotten fruit, which in spite of the best of care is to be found in every orchard; bringing this to us he says: "This is the fruit of yonder orchard; you see how worthless it is; an orchard growing such fruit is ready for the burning." Whereas, the fact may be that there are tons and tons of beautiful, luscious fruit, as pleasing to the eye as it would be agreeable to the palate, remaining in the orchard to which he does not call our attention at all. Would not such a representation of the orchard be an untruth, notwithstanding his blighted specimens were gathered from its trees? If he presents to us the blighted specimens of fruit from the orchard, is he not in truth and in honor bound also to call our attention to the rich harvest of splendid fruit that still remains ungathered before he asks us to pass judgement on the orchard? I am not so blind in my admiration of the Mormon people, or so bigoted in my devotion to the Mormon faith as to think that there are no individuals in that Church chargeable with fanaticism, folly, intemperate speech and wickedness; nor am I blind to the fact that some in their over-zeal have lacked judgement; and that in times of excitement, under stress of special provocation, even Mormon leaders have given utterance to ideas that are indefensible. But I have yet to learn that it is just in a writer of history or of "purpose fiction," that "must speak truly," to make a collection of these things and represent them as of the essence of that faith against which said writer draws an indictment. "No one would measure the belief of Christians," says a truly great writer, "by certain statements in the Fathers, nor judge the moral principles of Roman Catholics by prurient quotations from the casuists; nor yet estimate Lutherans by the utterances and deeds of the early successors of Luther, nor Calvanists by the burning of Servitus. In such cases the general standpoint of the times has to taken into account." (Edeshiem's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, preface, page 8.)