That opposition made a rustle of stirring in the pause that followed. I saw it in the changed expressions of some of the faces. Several of the men--including my brother Abraham, and Joseph F. Smith--asked whether the manifesto meant a cessation of plural marriages: whether no more such marriages were to be allowed. President Woodruff answered that it did; that the Lord had taken back the principle from the children of men and that we would have no power to restore it. Then they asked whether it meant a cessation of plural marriage living--whether they would be required to separate from the wives whom they had taken in the holy covenant. He answered, firmly, that it did; that the brethren in Washington found it imperative; that it was the will of the Lord; that we must submit. I saw their faces flush and then slowly pale again--and the storm broke. One after another they rose and protested, hoarsely, in the voice of tears, that they were willing to suffer "persecution unto death" rather than to violate the covenants which they had made "in holy places" with the women who had trusted them. One after another they offered themselves for any sacrifice but this betrayal of the women and children to whom they owed an everlasting faith. And a manlier lot of men never spoke in a manlier way. Not a petty word was uttered. Their thought was not for themselves. Their grief was not selfish. Their protests had a dignity in pathos that shook me in spite of myself. When they had done, my father rose again with a face that seemed to bear the marks of their grief while it repressed his own. He dwelt anew on the long efforts of our attorney and our friends in Congress to resist what we believed to be unconstitutional measures to repress our practice of a religious faith. But we were citizens of a nation. We were required to obey its laws. And when we found, by the highest judicial interpretation of statute and constitution, that we were without grounds for our plea of religious immunity, we had but the alternative either of defying the power of the whole nation or of submitting ourselves to its authority. For his part he was willing to do the will of the Lord. And since the Prophet of God, after a long season of prayer, had submitted this revelation as the will of the Lord, he was ready for the sacrifice. The leaders of the Church had no right to think of themselves. They must remember how loyally the people had sacrificed their substance and risked their safety to guard their brethren who were living in plural marriage. Those brethren must not be ungrateful now. They must not now refuse to make their sacrifice, in answer to the sacrifices that had been made for them so often. The people had long protected them. Now they must protect the people.