If Joseph Smith had been an impostor and his revelations consequently not genuine, would he have dared to make promises like those contained in the forgoing? Could anything have proven more disastrous to his schemes than to promise people gifts which were not in his power to give? If he was not a servant of God would he not studiously have avoided to connect the Lord with any of his schemes in such a way? Could he imagine that God would sanction his doings by pouring out his gifts and blessings upon people who were being deceived by a wicked impostor? Certainly not. If Joseph Smith was not called of God he would have had to re-echo the old, old sectarian song from the dark ages: These things (the gifts and blessings following the believer) have ceased, because they are no longer necessary. It is a well-known fact that the signs which were promised by the Savior and enumerated in St. Mark, 16th chapter, 17th and 18th verses, did follow the believers. The Acts of the Apostles are full of examples of this kind. It is also a known fact that when Christianity in the days of Constantine the Great, and later became mixed up with Paganism and was then made the State Religion of {116} the Roman empire, and the people were compelled at the edge of the sword to accept it, that these signs did not follow the members of this false church. But when the clergy, in order to blind the masses, told the people that the reason why the members did not enjoy these blessings, as in former years, was that they were no longer necessary, they told a deliberate falsehood. The real cause was that this apostate church had "transgressed the law, changed the ordinance and broken the everlasting covenant," and that Christ did not recognize this new form of so-called Christianity as His doctrines of salvation, nor accept of the order of their organization as anything akin to the Church organized by Himself and His Apostles. Hence, He withheld His gifts, signs and blessings from them, and for hundreds of years they were unknown so far as church gifts were concerned. An anecdote that I heard a friend relate several years ago will illustrate the contrast between the true Church of Christ and fallen Christianity. A prominent cardinal of the Roman Catholic church, on a certain occasion, visited the Pope of Rome, and together with him examined the contents of the treasure chamber at the Vatican where gold, diamonds and other costly things were deposited. While gazing upon the costly treasures the Pope remarked. "We can not truthfully say now as Peter and John said anciently that we have no silver and gold." "No, that is true," answered the cardinal, "and there is something else we cannot say. We cannot command the lame in the name of Jesus Christ to arise and walk."