"The power to officiate in the ordinances of God has not been upon the earth since the great apostasy until the present century. Something like seventeen centuries have passed away since the authority was last on the eastern hemisphere to administer in any of the ordinances of God. During that long period marriages have been celebrated according to the customs of human government by uninspired men, holding no authority from God, consequently all their marriages, like their baptisms, are illegal before the Lord. Point out to us a husband and wife that God has joined together from the second century of the Christian era until the nineteenth, if you can. Such a phenomenon cannot be found among Christians or Jews, Mohammedans or Pagans."--Orson Pratt in the Star, page 48. The further significance of this claim is seen when one considers that it denies that the Christian church has represented Christ in the last seventeen centuries. And this denial stands in face of the testimony that Christian people have borne to Him, the martyrdoms they have suffered to carry His message to benighted peoples, the charities they have organized, the great reforms they have fostered, the general progress of mankind which they, chiefly, have promoted, and the saintly lives nurtured under the teaching of the Christian church. Surely the claim to exclusive divine authorization must rest upon proofs so clear and convincing that no sincere seeker after truth would question their conclusiveness. But no such proofs are presented. Here is the fundamental weakness of the whole system for which this astonishing claim is made--it presents no credentials that would make good a claim to even be numbered among the churches which represent Christ; much less to the only church of Christ on the earth. It would naturally be expected that, in a communication intended to really enlighten mankind concerning the Mormon faith as the only true religion--the statement of doctrine would be both full and luminous. But in the "Address" it is exceedingly brief--so brief, in fact, that one is driven to the conclusion that, as a basis upon which a candid judgment might be framed, it not only leaves much to be desired, but is positively misleading.