I wish you all a happy new year, and I hope that we may live to see a good many, and that we may keep the commandments of God, obey his laws, and have his approbation and blessing upon us as a people. We have assembled here on this, the first day of the week, and the first day of the year 1871; and this leads my mind to reflect upon the age and generation in which we live, and the great events of the latter days—events which involve the interests and destiny of all the inhabitants of the earth—both Zion and Babylon, Jew and Gentile, Jerusalem, America, and the whole world. All nations are interested in the events which are approaching us, and which await this generation; for, whether the world believe it or not, they are of vast interest to them all. There have been certain times looked forward to in the world's history, in which it was believed that something remarkable would occur, and there have been several of these periods during the last fifty years. I do not know that anything was predicted at an early day with regard to 1830; but I recollect, when a boy at school, of reading a certain verse about a great eclipse of the sun—
In eighteen hundred and thirty-one
Will be a great eclipse upon the sun.
I heard about this fifteen years before it took place, it having been foretold by the astronomers, by the principles and laws of the science of astronomy. On that day I was passing through a forest of pinewood, at Farmington, Connecticut, going to see my father, whom I had not seen for some time. It was nearly as dark as night, and when I got through, into the open fields, there was what is termed a poor house, the only house erected within several miles in that region of country. A poor man had died there and they were drawing his body on an ox sled and were going to bury him. I noticed this as I passed along, and thought of what I had read; but nothing of any particular interest occurred that year except the eclipse of the sun. But in 1830 something occurred of great interest to all the inhabitants of the earth: that was the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Many persons have looked forward to the year 1860 with great interest and this has been the case with many of the Latter-day Saints. What took place in that year? The dissolution of the American Union; for in that year the South took a stand against the North, and the North against the South, in fulfilment of a certain revelation given by Joseph Smith thirty years before it took place. Joseph Smith predicted that there would be a great rebellion in the United States—the South and the North warring against each other and that this rebellion would commence in South Carolina, and would end in the death and misery of many souls; and that in process of time—after many days, the slaves would rise against their masters, and that one nation would call for aid upon another, for war would be poured upon the whole earth. I wrote this revelation twenty-five years before the rebellion took place; others also wrote it, and it was published to the world before there was any prospect of the fearful events it predicted coming to pass.
Joseph Smith once said in a speech at Nauvoo, to a company, that whosoever lived to see the two sixes come together in '66 would see the American continent deluged in blood. That was many years before there was any prospect of a rebellion. The history of '60 and of '66 is before the world, and I do not wish to spend time in referring to it.