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Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 34 Page: 662 (~1872)

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662 books are set forth the hope of those men, the promise by which the hope is offered, and the measures by which it is guaranteed and attained unto.

"These books are then so authenticated that they are to us the statutory enactments by which the masses of the church may claim their liberties, the propagation of the gospel be prosecuted, and the gathering indicated be effected. All men who have accepted the work and the works of these men consonant with the general character of their religious government, must be tried in their lives, and public teaching, by the rules of their accepted laws. Where these condemn, the acts condemned must be censured or ignored. Hence, where Joseph and Hyrum Smith, either as teachers of the great principles of life, or as exemplars of those principles, fell into an erroneous conception of them, and practiced accordingly, or willfully transgressed them, their successors are warned not to transgress in like manner, or fall into like errors.

"We may safely write then that the most prominent measures of the past, so far as Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and others, early adherents to the work are concerned, were, 'The propagation of the gospel, and the gathering.' Within the scope of these two measures there may be found a train of others, each one intended to be more or less conducive to the accomplishment of one or the other of them. Among them we notice, the establishment of an efficient corps of gospel ministers; holding local and general conferences; organizing branches; ordaining men to the offices of apostle, high priest, seventy, elder, bishop, priest, teacher, and deacon; the appointing and sustaining a presiding officer with proper assistants over the whole church, and localizing a center of a religious government; and the realization of sufficient temporal measures to carry on the affairs of such government; the building of a temple at Kirtland, Ohio; one at Independence, Missouri; one at Nauvoo; the establishment of a bank of issue and deposit, at Kirtland; the organization and operation of joint stock companies in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa; the building of cities, mills, workshops, and manufactories; the

(page 662)

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