George A. Smith

“ When a man uses ten or fifteen superfluous words to convey one simple idea, his real meaning is lost, he reaches beyond all the rules of grammar and rhetoric, and his idea, which, had it been clothed with simple and appropriate language, might have been good, is lost for want of more suitable words. It is like Massa Gratian's wit—"two grains of wheat hid in three barrels of chaff." It is my advice that our Elders should study brevity in all their discourses and communications to the people, and that they should speak in the plainest and simplest manner ”

“ When I was first called upon by the Prophet to go and preach the Gospel, I received a little good advice, which I have endeavored to profit by ever since, and that too, to the best of my ability.
In the morning, as I was about to start on my first mission to preach the Gospel, I waited upon brother Joseph, and asked if he had any advice to give me. "Yes," said he, "George A., preach short sermons, make short prayers, deliver your sermons with a prayerful heart, and you will be blessed, and the truth will prosper in your hands." ”

“ But the fact is, the world through their wisdom know not God, and have lost sight of and forgotten the simplicity of our fathers, and the plainness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the reason is, that from the beginning the plan of salvation was too plain and simple to be interesting to the learned, and it has ever since been the design of men of learning, to couch the wisdom and knowledge of the world in such high flown language that the poorer classes of mankind could not get anywhere near them, and thereby hide it in the superabundance of nonsense they made use of ”

“ They thirst for one another's blood, and they thirst after and desire each other's destruction, and they have no feeling for anything but blood and slaughter: and the great question the world over, but especially in the East, is whether the Emperor of Russia shall have the privilege of building as many ships as he may think proper, and putting them in the Black Sea. ”

“ I well remember the first time I ever broke those instructions; I was preaching in Virginia, in the County of Tyler. There was a Methodist preacher by the name of West, that would follow me wherever I went, and when I got through preaching he would get up to burlesque me, and he would talk for an hour or two, and then he would get his congregation to sing, but with all he could do he could not get more than thirty or forty to come and hear him preach, whereas I had from three to four hundred attentive hearers. ”

“ Now if he had commenced to preach to those, learned men the first simple principles of the Gospel, and then, as the Spirit had opened up things to his mind, have gone into the more advanced principles, he might have succeeded as he desired, but he got up with the intention of showing his great big self, and began at the big end of the horn.
There are several young Elders present, who are going on missions, and the advice that I received may not be uninteresting to them. ”

“ When he heard that West, the Methodist preacher, was going to have me tarred and feathered, he sent his best looking daughter on horseback over the mountains, dressed in the finest silk, and invited me to go over and preach, and assured me that I need not fear the least danger from the Methodists threatening to tar and feather me. ”

“ They know that the "Mormons" cannot be successfully contended with by argument and moral suasion, but only on the old Missourian system of mobocracy; they know that the priests have given it up years ago. "O," say they, "if you talk with a Mormon Elder, you are sure to get worsted; tar and feather them, mob them, and stone them out of the country, for if you listen to them, you will be deceived." ”

“ You may note it when you will, in men that go forth to proclaim the truth, and you discover that the man who has the fewest words communicates his ideas to the people, as a general thing, in the plainest manner. ”

“ I have known many young Elders go out preaching, and the first thing they would do when they began to preach would be to tell what a tremendous smart sermon they were going to preach, and what wonderful results would follow ”

“ We on the present occasion have the pleasure of sitting out of doors, and of listening to the counsel and instruction of the servants of God without being crowded, from the fact that we have Father's big kitchen to meet in, and in this capacious Bowery we can enjoy a great deal of comfort, instead of being jammed into our large Tabernacle, those of us who could get in, and the balance being obliged to go home. ”

“ And at the same time, Infidelity, Mesmerism, Electro-biology, spiritual communications of various kinds and grades are taking hold of the minds of the human race, from those in the highest ranks of society to the lowest. ”