The feeling and determination of the people cannot be better expressed than by extracts from the sermons of their leaders at this critical period. Sunday morning, September 16, 1857, Brigham Young, in his public discourse, said:-- "This people are free; they are not in bondage to any government on God's footstool. We have transgressed no law, and we have no occasion to do so, neither do we intend; but as for any nation's coming to destroy this people, God Almighty being my helper, they cannot come here. [The congregation responded a loud 'Amen.'] . . . "We have borne enough of their oppression and hellish abuse, and we will not bear any more of it, for there is no just law requiring further forbearance on our part. And I am not going to have troops here to protect the priests and hellish rabble in efforts to drive us from the land we possess; for the Lord does not want us to be driven, and has said, 'If you will assert your rights, and keep my commandments, you shall never again be brought into bondage by your enemies.' . . . "They say that their army is legal; and I say that such a statement is as false as hell, and that they are as rotten as an old pumpkin that has been frozen seven times, and then melted in a harvest sun. Come on with your thousands of illegally ordered troops, and I will promise you, in the name of Israel's God, that you shall melt away as the snow before a July sun. . . . "You might as well tell me that you can make hell into a powder-house, as to tell me that you could let an army in here, and have peace; and I intend to tell them, and show them this, if they do not stay away. . . . And I say our enemies shall not slip the bow on old 'Bright's neck' again. God bless you. Amen." In the afternoon of the same day, the "lion" again roars, as follows:-- "There cannot be a more damnable, dastardly order issued, than was issued by the Administration to this people, while they were in an Indian country in 1846. Before we left Nauvoo, not less than two United States Senators came to receive a pledge from us that we would leave the United States; and then, while we were doing our best to leave their borders, the poor, low, degraded curses sent a requisition for five hundred men to go and fight their battles! That was President Polk; and he is now weltering in hell, with old Zachary Taylor, where the present Administration will soon be, if they do not repent.