WILLIAM S. GODBE.

 

            BORN in England, he visited half the world's ports as a youthful sailor, with a student's eagerness to revive the histories and to study the modern conditions of the people. Returning to his native land, he heard a new gospel expounded, investigated it and believed it was a new materialization of what the Master taught.

            He worked his way across the Atlantic and traversed the continent mostly on foot to Salt Lake City, believing that there the regeneration of mankind was to begin.

            With the enthusiasm of an earnest youth he began his work ; intense in his religion ; intense and untiring in his labor, and worked on and on until the whole territory recognized his masterful abilities, his business acumen and lovable nature ; and he became a favorite from the highest chiefs of the new creed down to the lowliest toiler, until he was looked to every- where as a support, from the inauguration of a great enterprise to the founding of a little frontier church.

            But all the time he was studying; all the time was asking himself which way Duty led ?

            Every night he went into confessional with his own conscience, until through weighing what was being said and done, the conviction came to him that while religion implied sincere service to God, still all men should be free to do any legitimate thing.

            Indeed this had been transmitted through the blood of his ancestors since before that June day in 1215 when the great charter was wrenched from a sullen and vindictive English king.

            So, when fully convinced, he declared himself. This brought to him a summons to show cause why he should not be excommunicated.

            He responded; proclaimed his love of God and of his fellow-men, and cited the record of his own life to prove his sin-

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cerity and truth, and defended what he was doing as right in the eyes of God and enlightened men.

            He was expelled, but that did not change his high nature. For awhile old friends passed him coldly by, which grieved him, but awakened within him no vindictiveness. Neither did it change his purpose.

            His fortune was shattered, and he was repudiated in places where he had been so much esteemed. He turned to the solemn mountains for sympathy and support, and thence for thirty years opened mines and roads ; built mills and furnaces : toiling without rest, but keeping his heart open to any cry of distress ; bearing no malice toward men ; but to the last proclaiming the love of God and the brotherhood of man; his path lined everywhere with charities and good deeds, until he finally died, literally in the harness of labor.

            He was a man who believed he was created in the image of God : that nothing from him must mar that image ; so he toiled on, his soul shining out more and more until when the tabernacle that held it fell away, and it took its flight, it was reflected back, high and brave and true and white as a planet's light.