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Show no THE MORMON CHURCH. become the leader in Israel. The people loved Joseph, and revered his memory, and had it not been for the powers of mimicry of Young, the counsel of Emma would prob ably have prevailed, and long ere this he would have been a subject of Joseph II., or more probably the Church would long since have ceased to exist. The miraculous demon stration, as the prophet regarded it, was beyond any assur ances Emma could give them of what had been the wishes of the Prophet, and they accepted it as indisputable evidence that a greater than Joseph willed it otherwise. Finding their existence as a sect in jeopardy if they re mained in Illinois and Missouri, they soon after the death of Smith, sought a more congenial country. In April 1847, the pioneer band of saints, numbering 143 men, headed by the President, left the Missouri River for a new Zion in the Far West. In the fall of that year they reached Salt Lake Valley, and Brigham, from a peak of the Wasach Mountains, saw the country, and had a vision in which he was told that this was to be their future Zion, where the Temple of the Lord was again to be erected never to be removed, and that the light of the Gospel was to radiate thence to all the world. That fall the city was laid out, and they immediately com menced preparing for the reception of the hosts of Zion who were to follow. Brigham Young returned to the Missouri River, and in 1 848 he was confirmed by a General Conference of the Church in the position to which he had been called by the people on the occasion referred to. In the same year Young returned to Salt Lake City, taking with him the great mass of the Mormons. These people had then col lected on the banks of the Missouri, opposite Council Bluffs, preparatory to their migration to the land which Brigham told them was to flow with milk and honey, equalled only by the Promised Land, which Moses was allowed to look upon but not possess. That they did not find it to be all their imaginations pictured, I have already stated. They endured great hardships on the journey, and intense suffering after their arrival. They were short of provisions, and before |
