---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Gates, Susa Young
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 23
number: 6
published: 1920-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Gates, Susa Young, "The Vision Beautiful," *Improvement Era* 23, no. 6 (April 1920): 543.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2306unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera2306unse
start_page: 543
end_page: 543
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1920-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2306unse
  publication_year: 1920
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1920, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Vision Beautiful

<!-- page:543 -->

—                                          !

                       THE VISION BEAUTIFUL                        543

It   meant in civil, religious, social and finally, financial matters,
the right of choice; it meant woman's free agency, the liberation of her long-chained will and purpose.
     She has erred in her judgment at times, since that day of
prefigured release in the Grove at Palmyra. So has her husband, her son, and her brother. But, O! the wonder and joy of
that Vision!    Today, and since that day, in this Church and
Kingdom, as was divinely ordained, together men and women
stumble along, now climbing, and now slipping on the steep
hillside.  Joined by the clinging hands of their little children,
both are facing the rising sun of the coming day of peace and
power. When the key was turned in the opening portal of sky and
earth to admit men once again in life's sacred courts, men were
endowed with the power and majesty of the Holy Priesthood;
and all its blessings, gifts, and powers are shared and shared
alike by man and his true mate. He of right enters into his
Priesthood heritage, while the Gate Beautiful opens wide to admit all of us women into the glories of the Court of the Women
Nor are we there confined! Side by side, men and women climb
the golden stairs, pass Solomon's Porch, the Altar of Sacrifice,
the symbolic tables and glowing candle-branches, into the Holy
Place; and as we go together into the Holy of Holies we voice
the hymnal of our sex
             "When I leave this frail existence,
               When I lay this mortal by,
             Father, Mother, may I meet yon
               In your royal courts on high?
             Then, at length, when I've completed,
               All you sent me forth to do,
             With your mutual approbation,
               Let me come and dwell with you."