The vision ended. Man! what hast thou seen? Answer: Nothing out of the ordinary course; all I beheld was nature moving in perfect accordance with the law of its existence: not one single deviation or shadow of turning from the immutable laws of truth.

But hast thou seen no miracle? Yes; it was all miraculous it was all achieved by the law of light, which was the immediate power of God; but it was all upon the most natural, easy, simple, and plain principles of nature in its varied order; and which to call the most miraculous I know not! Whether it was the creation of a world, the blosoming of a flower, the hatching of a butterfly, or the resurrection of the body, and the making of new heavens and a new earth. All these were so many displays of the power of God.

All these were miraculous.

All these were natural.

All these were spiritual.

All these were adapted to the simplest capacity, aided by the spirit of God.

All these were too sublime for an arch-angel to comprehend by his own capacity without the spirit of revelation.

has been before the of the City of , and is proven clear of the charges prefered against him; restored to full fellowship, and to his former standing in his .

I obeyed, I returned back to my in the field and rehearsed the whole matter to him. He replied to me, that it was of God, and to go and do as commanded by the messenger. I left the field and went to the place where the messenger had told me the were deposited; and owing to the distinctness of the vision which I had had concerning it, I knew the place the instant that I arrived there. Convenient to the village of , Ontario co. New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood; on the west side of this hill not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates deposited in a stone box: this stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all round was covered with earth. Having removed the earth and obtained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the stone and with a little exertion raised it up, I looked in and there indeed did I behold the plates, the and the Breastplate as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement; in the bottom of the box were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I made an attempt to take them out but was forbidden by the messenger and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, neither would until four years from that time, but he told me that I should come to that place precisely in one year from that time, and that he would there meet with me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates. Accordingly as I had been commanded I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews respecting what the Lord was going to do and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days. As my ’s worldly circumstances were very limited, we were under the necessity of laboring with our hands, hiring by days works and other [p. 771]