Seeing and Hearing.--In the year 1875 President Ulysses S. Grant came to Utah--the first Executive of the Nation to set foot within the Territory, now a State. It was at a time when, all over this broad land, bitter prejudice against the Latter-day Saints prevailed. It was freely asserted that the man who had finished with the South, would "make short work" of Utah and the "Mormons." Among the places visited by the President and his party during their stay, was the Salt Lake Tabernacle, where he heard the organ played by Joseph J. Daynes. What the President thought of it, I never learned; but Mrs. Grant, her face streaming with tears, turned to Captain Hooper, who had been Utah's delegate in Congress, and said with deep feeling: "I wish I could do something for these good Mormon people." The music had touched her heart, and perhaps the heart of her noble husband; for Grant was noble, though yielding at times to intense prejudice. [12] No Substitute for the Gospel.--Let it not be supposed, however, that music, poetry, painting, sculpture, science, or any other thing, can take the place of the great uplifting Plan whereby the world, already redeemed, is yet to be glorified. No gift can vie with the Giver, no creature usurp the functions of the Creator. He will use everything true and good and beautiful to melt the hearts of men and prepare them to be saved; but salvation itself comes only by one route--the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the great Ideal, and it must be honored and maintained as such. In dealing with it, no Procrustean process is permissible. It must not be chopped off because men think it too long, nor stretched out because they deem it too short. It did not come into the world to be mutilated. Revelation cannot bow down to tradition. Truth is the standard--truth as Heaven reveals it--and the opinions and theories of men must give way. The Gospel's accessories are no substitute for the Gospel. Footnotes 1. Lessons in Life, by Timothy Titcomb (J. G. Holland)--Lesson 22, "The Poetic Test." 2. As a Man Thinketh, "Visions and Ideals." 3. "Love and the Light," p. 68. 4. Moses 6:63. 5. Matt. 6:28, 29; Luke 12:27. 6. Sartor Resartus, 3, "Symbols." 7. Moses 6:63. 8. Representative Men, Plato, p. 51. 9. Emerson's Essays, 3, "Compensation."