During the September vacation of 1931 Daryl Chase and I returned to Utah, where we shared the interesting experience of a long interview with President Brigham H. Roberts, a member of the First Council of Seventy and noteworthy Church historian. It was just two years before his death, but he was astonishingly vigorous, alert, and incisive in his conversation. He was most friendly and candid toward us and made some interesting reflections about his career as an historian and the problems he had to face in his own research and writing. Speaking with frankness and considerable ironical wit, he deplored the fact that most Mormons were largely ignorant of L. D. S. history and had so many naive misconceptions about it. With a droll smile and a tone of mock hyperbole he stated that many would be deeply disturbed if they knew its actual history. He thought there might be some difficult problems for us if we chose to write on Mormon topics for our doctoral dissertations. This advice caused Chase to write his dissertation on "The Early Shakers;" my topic, finished in 1934, was "The Rise of the Sects as an Aspect of Religious Experience," an analysis of sociological factors which were instrumental in the rise of the great heretical movements in the Christian Church of the second century A.D.