Orson Pratt

“ Here then are four witness to the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon,—Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery. Are there any living in our day and generation who can bear testimony to the divine authenticity of the Old and New Testaments? We have the testimony of persons who lived anciently, whom none, living in this generation, ever saw or heard. ”

“ When the Latter-day Saints go forth and find people who will repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ, we command them, as the disciples of Jesus did anciently, to be baptized for the remission of their sins, and then we promise them with all boldness and confidence before God, being authorized from the Heavens to do so, that they shall receive the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of the Elders. ”

“ It is a very marvelous and wondrous thing to see a numerous people assembled together in these interior wilds which, but a few years ago, were a solitary waste, where the face of a white man had been seldom seen ”

“ The apostleship has been restored by Peter, James and John—men who held the priesthood of the Son of God, men who had power to seal on earth and it was sealed in heaven. These men, commissioned and sent forth as holy angels, laid their hands upon the heads of the first Elders of this Church, and gave authority to them to ordain others to the same priesthood and calling and send them forth among the nations. It is because the people have obeyed the ordinances of the Gospel and have received the blessings promised that they have gathere [d] here to these mountains. ”

“ You know boys at the age of fourteen in those cities are apt to become contaminated with the evils with which they are surrounded; but Joseph Smith, having been reared in a secluded part of the country and laboring hard on the farm with his father, had not fallen into the pernicious habits practiced by many boys. ”

“ The angel further commanded him, instead of going to work, to go to the hill that was shown him in vision and see the plates. His father told him to do as the angel had commanded him. He therefore started according to the instructions of the angel. When he had travelled about three miles in the direction indicated he came to the place and instantly recognized it by seeing objects which had been shown him the night previous in his vision. He uncovered the spot of ground, took off the crowning stone on the stone box, and there beheld the sacred record of the ancient inhabitants of this continent ”

“ But I must mention that the Lord had commenced by restoring the lesser authority or priesthood. On the 15th day of May, 1829, nearly a year before the organization of this Church, while Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were engaged in translating and writing the record contained on these plates of which I have been speaking, they read that the people on the American continent, anciently, were baptized by immersion, and how important it was for every person who had come to years of accountablility [accountability] to be born of the water as well as of the spirit ”

“ He occasionally devoted an hour, when his labors on the farm would permit, to reading the Bible, and while doing so his eyes happened to fall on a certain passage of scripture, recorded in the epistle of James, which says that if any man lack wisdom let him ask of God who giveth liberally to all men and upbraideth not. ”