I have long looked forward with joyful anticipations to the time, when I should again meet with the people of God in these mountains, and have the privilege of standing before them. I feel very thankful to my Father in heaven for this great privilege. I have been absent from this city and place over three years, and have performed one of the longest missions of my life. I feel thankful to God that you gave me this privilege, and that I have had the opportunity of adding one more lengthy mission to the long catalogue of missions which I have taken abroad among the nations. It is a great satisfaction to me to have the privilege of being numbered with this people, and to have my name enrolled among those who profess to be Latter-day Saints. With them is safety; with them are joy, peace, and satisfaction. And I feel to say, as one said in old times—that with this people I desire to live, and, if it is necessary to die, I desire to have the privilege of dying with them. But I do not know whether it will be necessary for all of us to die, perhaps there may be some who will escape this curse in some measure, and who may meet with a change equivalent to that of death.
I have been abroad for the purpose of doing good, that was the only object I had in view in leaving this Territory three years ago last spring. Whether I have done much good or not remains for the day of judgment to reveal; it is not altogether for me to judge in relation to this matter. We are well assured that our Father, who reigns in yonder heavens, keeps a journal, or, in other words, a record—a great record in which He records the doings of the children of men. We know, from a certain declaration of Jesus in the Book of Mormon, concerning the records of heaven, that the acts and doings of all men are recorded by the Father in that book, and the time is fast hastening when I, as an individual, and all others, must be brought before the Judge of all the earth, and our acts and doings here, in this short space of time appointed to us as a probation, will be read before us, or if not read they will be perfectly remembered by us and by those who sit in judgment, so that a righteous judgment will be rendered on our heads, and we will receive the reward of our doings, whether they be good or evil. I have enjoyed myself remarkably well on this mission. I hope that some good has been done, and that the Lord will remember the good that I have intended to do, even though it may not have been fully accomplished. He knows the desire of my heart has been to fulfil the numerous missions which I have taken during the last thirty-seven years of my life.