In rising to address you this morning, my brethren and sisters, I rely upon your faith and prayers and the blessing of God. We have heard, during Conference, a great many precious instructions, and in none have I been more interested than in those which have been given to the Saints concerning that much mooted doctrine called Patriarchal or Celestial Marriage. I am interested in this doctrine, because I see salvation, temporal and spiritual, embodied therein. I know, pretty well, what the popular feelings concerning this doctrine are; I am familiar with the opinions of the world, having traveled and mingled with the people sufficiently to be conversant with their ideas in relation to this subject. I am also familiar with the feelings of the Latter-day Saints upon this point. I know the sacrifice of feeling which it has caused for them to adopt this principle in their faith and lives. It has required the revelation of God, our Heavenly Father, to enable His people to receive this principle and carry it out. I wish, here, to make one remark in connection with this subject--that while there is abundant proof to be found in the scriptures and elsewhere in support of this doctrine, still it is not because it was practised four thousand years ago by the servants and people of God, or because it has been practised by any people or nation in any period of the world's history, that the Latter-day Saints have adopted it and made it part of their practice, but it is because God, our Heavenly Father, has revealed it unto us. If there were no record of its practice to be found, and if the Bible, Book of Mormon and Book of Doctrine and Covenants were totally silent in respect to this doctrine, it would nevertheless be binding upon us as a people, God himself having given a revelation for us to practise it at the present time. This should be understood by us as a people. It is gratifying to know, however, that we are not the first of God's people unto whom this principle has been revealed; it is gratifying to know that we are only following in the footsteps of those who have preceded us in the work of God, and that we, to-day, are only carrying out the principle which God's people observed, in obedience to revelation received from Him, thousands of years ago. It is gratifying to know that we are suffering persecution, that we are threatened with lines and imprisonment for the practice of precisely the same principle which Abraham, the "friend of God," practised in his life and taught to his children after him.