I am proud and happy today, my brethren and sisters, to be a Latter-day Saint, and I am also proud and happy to be a citizen of this great Republic, the mightiest and best government organized by man that the sun shines upon. I am glad that I can see, as you can, a divine purpose in the founding of this Government, as in the founding of this Church. I believe there is a relationship between them,-not a union of church and state, but the relationship of a common purpose, and that purpose God’s-He who was the founder of this Church and also the founder of this Nation. It was something more than a coincidence that the Gospel of Christ, now called Mormonism, but whose proper surname is the Perfect Law of Liberty, should come forth upon this land of liberty in these last days. I desire if I may have the Spirit of the Lord, to indicate some of the points of relationship between this great religious government and the great civil government that came before it to prepare its way.

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