"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee; "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing; "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." And so, for now nearly fifty years, this Mormon Israel have been getting out of their native countries, and from their kindred, and from their father's house unto the gathering places that their God has shown them. But they have been driven from those gathering places from time to time; yes, driven farther west. There was the land which God was showing them. At first it was too distant to be seen even by the eye of faith. Too many thousands of miles even for the Spartan heroism of the sisters; too dark a tragedy of expulsions and martyrdoms; and too many years of exoduses and probations. The wrath of the Gentiles drove them where their destiny led them--to the land which God was showing them. And for the exact reason that the patriarchal Abraham and Sarah were commanded to get out of their country and from their kindred and their father's house, so were the Abrahams and Sarahs of our time commanded by the same God and for the same purpose. "I will make of thee a great nation." "And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and I will multiply thee exceedingly." "And thou shalt be a father of many nations." "And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and thy seed after thee." To fulfill this in the lives of these spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah, the gathering dispensation was brought in. These Mormons have gathered from the beginning that they might become the fathers and mothers of a nation, and that through them the promises made to the Abrahamic fathers and mothers might be greatly fulfilled. This is most literal, and was well understood in the early rise of the church, long before polygamy was known. Yet who cannot now see that in such a patriarchal covenant was the very overture of patriarchal marriage--or polygamy. So in the early days quite a host of the daughters of New England--earnest and purest of women--many of them unmarried, and most of them in the bloom of womanhood--gathered to the virgin West to become the mothers of a nation, and to build temples to the name of a patriarchal God! CHAPTER XI. THE LAND OF TEMPLES--AMERICA THE NEW JERUSALEM--DARING CONCEPTION OF THE MORMON PROPHET--FULFILLMENT OF THE ABRAHAMIC PROGRAMME--WOMAN TO BE AN ORACLE OF JEHOVAH. Two thousand years had nearly passed since the destruction of the temple of Solomon; three thousand years, nearly, since that temple of the old Jerusalem was built.