IT is always a pleasure to meet with the Saints, and I always find substantial pleasure in bearing that portion of the labor of the ministry which devolves upon me. Of course there are times when human nature is physically incapacitated from labors. Nevertheless I rejoice exceedingly in the contemplation of the work that we are engaged in. Certainly the review of our immense subject, our great calling, our vast labor, and the wonderful results that follow them—when they are reviewed as they were this morning, and called up before our minds, must awaken deeply interesting and I should hope broadly expanded views and reflections in the minds of the Saints.
We are, as a people, and also our labors as well as the results of them, a great outstanding witness to the world of the divine character of the work we are performing—the high order of our calling to perform that work, as well as pointing significantly to the grand and glorious results which must inevitably follow the labor and toil that are now upon the Latter-day Saints. Any person whose bosom is warmed and whose intellect is lit up by the Holy Spirit must rejoice greatly in the contemplation of the great last dispensation which is now fairly before the world, fairly upon the Saints, like the harness that is upon those that are appointed to labor, to pull, to lift, and to toil.
Where is there any people upon the face of the earth, except the Latter-day Saints, who have from their religious convictions—or from any system of ethics or morals that they possess, gone forth upon the face of the earth, and, from honest, conscientious convictions, and, from their most heart-felt appeals, taken hold of the honest in heart, or of the vicious in heart; anywhere upon the face of the earth, and gathered together a people comprising twenty to thirty different languages and nations, and brought them together to any place, located them, and established a system of government that has been for their improvement, for their benefit, for the increase of their influence, their peace, or their happiness in any sense, either spiritual or temporal?
You can look abroad upon the earth in vain to find any other example that has any kind of relationship, or bears any kind of analogy or appearance like unto the work that is being performed by the Latter-day Saints in the days in which we live.
Who is it that is doing this work What is the character of this people? Are they those that have been through the schools and been educated to appear in the most plausible and convincing manner in all classes of society? Are they those that have been brought up in affluence and comfort; that can present every thing that is pleasing and engaging to the eyes, the ears and the minds of those they address? Not at all. Not many learned or noble. It is often the inexperienced boys that are picked up from the plow, from the workshop, to the humblest of laboring men, toiling, struggling, and many a time when they have not been able, from persecution and oppressive circumstances in which they have been placed, to make a comfortable livelihood, yet they have left the bosoms of their families and gone forth in faith carrying the principles of eternal truth and administering them, with an honest heart and clean hands and by the authority of the Holy Priesthood from heaven to the children of men. And what have they done? What has this simple, humble plan accomplished? Without money in their pockets, without letters of recommendation even to the people, without means oft times to make them comfortable, abnegating themselves, deficient in the comforts and necessities of life, they have gone forth with their hearts full of love and blessing to the human family to find other bosoms kindred to their own, though strangers in appearance, ready to receive the glad testimony of these servants of God. It is not the learned and the noble, nor the wealthy of the earth that have brought their hundreds, their thousands and their tens of thousands to this country.