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Show USE AND ABUSE OF BLESSINGS. 313 such great and inestimable blessings, in the proclamation of the Gospel, that they will be damned who reject them, for light brings condemnation to men who love darkness rather than light. Have this people been blessed too much ? I will not positively say, but I think they have, inasmuch as their blessings in some instances have been to their injury. Why ? Because they have not known what to do with their blessings. While the brethren were speaking of the liberal hand of Providence in bestowing abundantly the products of the earth, it occurred to" me, that this people, to my certain knowledge, had felt that they had too much, and they esteemed it as good for nothing. It is true what brother Jedediah Grant said with regard to wheat, and other grains, for I have seen it myself. I have seen hundreds, and thousands, and scores of thousands of bushels of grain lying to -waste and rot, when it has not brought a great price. Many of this people have thought, and expressed themselves in language like this -" I can go to California, and get so much gold, or I can trade and make so much gold, I cannot therefore spend time to take care of wheat, nor to raise i t ; let it lie there and rot while I go and accumulate riches," They were then wealthy, for their granaries and barns were full of the blessings of the Lord, but now they are empty, because they did not know what to do with their blessings. I can tell this people how to dispose of all their blessings, if they will only allow me time enough ; and if I cannot tell them how, I can show them. For instance, you who have fields of wheat, beyond the limits of grasshoppers, will have considerable crops when it is harvest- 14 |