ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH AT FAYETTE—REVIEW OF THE PROPHET'S LABORS— HIS UNPRETENTIOUS CHARACTER—THE COURAGE WHICH ANIMATED HIM WAS SHARED BY HIS ASSOCIATES—THE WITNESSES AND EARLY MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH.  
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized on the 6th day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty, in Fayette, Seneca County, in the state of New York. Six persons were the original members: Joseph Smith the Prophet, Oliver Cowdery, Hyrum Smith, Peter Whitmer, Jun., Samuel H. Smith, and David Whitmer. Each of the men had already been baptized by direct authority from Heaven. The organization was made on the day and after the pattern dictated by God in a revelation given to Joseph Smith. The Church was called after the name of Jesus Christ; because He so ordered. Jesus accepted the Church, declared it to be His own, and empowered it to minister on earth in His name.
 
The sacrament, under inspiration from Jesus Christ, was administered to all who had thus taken upon them His name.
 
This was a day of great joy to Joseph—a joy which was shared by those who became thus united with him in a holy work. It is also a day now reverenced by hundreds of thousands of the human family; a day to be held in sacred veneration throughout all the time to elapse until the Messiah Himself shall come in glory to accept the Kingdom from the hands of His authorized servants, and to give reward for all the woes and the persecutions which men have heaped upon His chosen ones.
 
Joseph was at this time twenty-four years of age. A period of ten years had passed since the hour in which the Father and Son had first appeared in answer to his prayer. During the most of this time he had been in close communication with the Heavens, and the organization of the Church was but the accomplishment of a definite purpose of the Almighty. Joseph had been led along, himself not knowing in complete fullness to what great result his life and labors were tending. He had only known to do the will of Heaven as expressed to him, and to patiently await the future. Doubtless at this hour of the organization he looked back with thanks and marvel at all which God had given for the benefit of His children. From out of the false religions of the earth the Lord had lifted this His servant, and had trained him from boyhood in the way most pleasing to Him.
 
In the very manner of the restoration of the gospel, Joseph learned that God requires even His elect to defer to the order and authority instituted by Christ. The power by which Joseph Smith was baptized was the same power by which every man must be baptized who has a membership in the Church of Christ. That power had been taken from the earth, leaving the human family without the authority to administer the ordinances of the gospel during many centuries. No earthly being could restore it, and none could use it until John the Baptist conferred it in its fullness upon Joseph and also upon his fellow servant, Oliver. There is something significant in the fact that the authority to baptize was bestowed upon Joseph and Oliver by the same personage who had stood in the waters of the Jordan about 1800 years before, to immerse in that stream the earthly tabernacle of God's Only Begotten. As Joseph had not been permitted to officiate in baptism, or to confer the Aaronic Priesthood, until John had visited him and transmitted that authority from Heaven, so after even this blessing had become his own, he was unable to seal the gift of the Holy Ghost, or to ordain an Elder, until after Peter, James and John had endowed him with the Priesthood after the holy order of Melchisedek. And even after both these holy orders of Priesthood were given to him, and he had ordained Oliver unto them; even after he had beheld in vision the establishment of the work of righteousness, he knew not how nor when the organization of the Church should be accomplished. It was necessary that God should define the mode and the principle of organization and should direct each step to be taken in this establishment of His kingdom; and it was not until He did this that Joseph knew in what manner to obtain the restoration of the power which belongs to the body of the Saints in Christ.
 
Joseph proceeded carefully, and exactly according to the instruction of the Almighty, and he laid the foundation of a work which will endure as long as earth shall last.
 
The people who thus became associated with Joseph were generally his seniors, but there was no hesitation on their part in yielding him the respect due to the representative of Christ on earth, and they united in giving him a devotion which supported and blessed him from hour to hour. Joseph was no longer an uncouth village lad, for the exalted course of his life during the years in which he had walked under God's guidance had elevated him intellectually until he was already the peer of any man. No doubt at this hour he was lacking, as he had been in his earlier youth, in the technical teachings of the schools; but he had a deeper knowledge and a finer judgment than any possessed by the most favored of all the students of the colleges. As a boy he may have been no more potent in swaying the feelings and judgment of those with whom he came in contact than were his fellow youths; but as a man of God, clothed upon with the Priesthood, filled with zeal, noble in carriage, majestic in deportment, no person could view him without bestowing veneration. Such is the testimony of all who knew him at this time. It is true that he had not yet received that broad culture, he had not penetrated to the depths of theology, astronomy, and all the higher sciences which govern the kingdom of Christ, and unto which the Spirit of God eventually led him; but from his almost transparent face there shone a light of such beauty and power, and from his lips there came such words of divine promise to mankind, that his associates accorded to him a greater respect than could have been elicited by the most learned minister of earthly churches, or the most powerful ruler of earthly kingdoms.
 
The men who were thus associated with him, and who thus freely tendered him, as the vicegerent of God on earth, the highest devotion of their souls, were not naturally enthusiasts in the matter of religion; nor were they men who could be deceived. They were of Puritan ancestry and demanded the conviction of their reason before yielding their faith.
 
That reason once convinced, they were men of such exalted courage that they dared the ridicule of the pulpit and the anger of mobs, to voice their convictions and to yield their adherence to the gospel. The witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and the men who supported Joseph in his fulfillment of the divine command to organize the Church of Christ in these last days, have left no room for a doubt of their sincerity. Conservative in character, thrifty in habits, they were not of a class who would venture from any slight motive to excite the hatred of a world which they knew would deem itself outraged by their avowal. Each one of them knew enough of the early experiences of Joseph to feel certain that he, too, would become the object of clerical ridicule and the vindictive persecution of the masses, incited by jealous religious leaders. At every step since Joseph's encounter with the intolerant spirit of the community in which he lived, he had been obliged to call upon the Lord to aid him with more than mortal courage, to meet and withstand the cruel assaults of his enemies. In thus joining him, the witnesses and early mem............