You can read the account given of our first parents. Along came a certain character and said to Eve, you know women are of tender heart, and he could operate on this tender heart, "The Lord knows that in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt not surely die, but if thou wilt take of this fruit and eat thereof thine eyes will be opened and thou wilt see as the Gods see"; and he worked upon the tender heart of Mother Eve until she partook of the fruit, and her eyes were opened. He told the truth. And they say now, "Do this that your eyes may be opened, that you may see; do this that you may know thus and so." In the days of Jesus and his Apostles the same power was operating, and, actuated by that, men hunted them until the last one was banished from human society, and until the Christian religion was so perverted that the people received it with open hands, arms, mouth and heart. It was adulterated until it was congenial to the wicked heart, and they received the Gospel as they supposed. But that was the time they commenced {165} little by little to transgress the laws, change the ordinances, and break the everlasting covenant, and the Gospel of the kingdom that Jesus undertook to establish in his day and the priesthood were taken from the earth. 15:126. The land of Judea has fallen into disrepute, and it has become a desert, just through the apostasy of those who once inhabited it, who had the oracles of God among them. 16:66. _The Restoration_--Generations have come and gone without the privilege of hearing the sound of the Gospel, which has come to you through Joseph Smith--that was revealed to him from heaven by angels and visions. We have the Gospel and the keys of the holy Priesthood. 7:173. We are a people whose rise and progress from the beginning, has been the work of God our Heavenly Father, which in his wisdom he has seen proper to commence for the re-establishment of his Kingdom upon the earth. 2:170. Do you think the Lord Almighty will reveal the great improvements in the arts and sciences which are being constantly made known and will not revive a pure religion? If any man imagines that with the mighty strides which the sciences have been making for a few years past, there will be no improvement in religion, that man is vain in his imagination. God will improve the religion of the nations of the earth in proportion to the improvement made in the sciences. This is true whether you believe it or not. The Lord has commenced the work, and it is a marvelous one. 12:135.