Now ask yourselves, and let me ask you, who has been {229} to you, individually, and told you to vote just as you have voted here today? Has any man visited your habitations to tell you that when you come to this house you must all vote precisely alike? I will pause right here and will request that, if any person present has been so instructed, he or she will let us know it. I do not see any person rise, and I need not look for any one to do so, from the simple fact that not a word on this subject has been said to the Latter-day Saints. Our doctrine is true and we like it; our faith is one and we are one in it, our object is one and we unitedly pursue the straight and narrow path that leads to it. 14:91. If the time was that the Elders of Israel could not be chastened and corrected for their wrongs, and be set right, you may know that they have proved recreant to the faith. And if those who are appointed to lead this people dare not rise up and tell them of their iniquity and chastise them therefor, and teach them the way of life and salvation, you may know that your leaders have fallen from their station. 5:124. We will first present the Authorities of the Church; and I sincerely request the members to act freely and independently in voting--also in speaking if it be necessary. There has been no instance in this Church of a person's being in the least curtailed in the privilege of speaking his honest sentiments. It cannot be shown in the history of this people that a man has ever been injured, either in person, property, or character, for openly expressing, in the proper time and place, his objections to any man holding authority in this Church, or for assigning his reasons for such objections. Persons have frequently ruined their own characters by making false accusations. 7:227-228. {230} Our ecclesiastical government is the government of heaven. No being possesses intelligence, in any degree, that he has not received from the God of heaven, or, in other words, from the Fountain of all intelligence, whether he acknowledges his God in it or not. No man, independent of the Great Ruler of the universe, is capable of devising that which we see and are well acquainted with. All mechanism, good government, wholesome principle, and true philosophy of whatever name or nature, flows from God to finite man. What for? To determine what he will do with it. It is for his improvement and advancement in the arts of civilized life, morality, and true religion. This has been taught you from the beginning as the unmistakable features of our holy religion. 7:141.