“Sunday 14 Held three meetings, ordained 28 elders: we enjoyed ourselves well, and had an excellent conference.”

“Gen. Joseph Smith, who was murdered in cool blood, in Jail, on Thursday, the 27th day of June, was one of the best men that ever lived on the earth. The work he has thus far performed, towards establishing pure religion, and preparing the way for the great gathering of Israel, in the short space of twenty years since the time when the angel of the Lord made known his mission and gave him power to move the cause of Zion, exceed anything of the kind on record. Without learning, without means and without experience, he has met a learned world, a rich century, a hard hearted, wicked and adulterous generation, with truth that could not be resisted, facts that could not be disproved, revelations, whose spirit had so much God in them that the servants of the Lord could not be gainsaid or resisted, but like the rays of light from the sun; they have tinged every thing they lit upon with a lustre and livery which has animated, quickened and adorned.

“The pages of Gen. Smith’s history, though his enemies never ceased to persecute him and hunt for offences against him, are as unsullied as virgin snow; on about fifty prosecutions for supposed criminal offences, he came out of the legal fire, heated like Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, seven times hotter than it was wont to be, without the smell of fire, or a thread of his garments scorched. [p. 267]