The famous Congregationalist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher once wrote: “A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.”[1] On the other hand, Mark Twain recalled how he kept the Sabbath Day as a boy: “But we were good boys . . . we didn't break the Sabbath often enough to signify—once a week perhaps. . . . Anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.”[2] Emily Dickinson added: “Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.”[3]

The history of Sabbath day observance in America is a complex subject. From the Puritans to the Second Great Awakening, observing the Sabbath received many a thunderous sermon of devotion. Jonathan Edwards, whose remarkable sermonizing helped spark the First Great Awakening a century before Joseph Smith, was as influential as any other cleric in extolling the virtues of strictly observing the Sabbath day. In his sermon “The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath,” he referred to the Christian Sabbath as the “grace and blessing” of Christ, “one of the most precious enjoyments of the visible church,” the one day in seven especially marked for joy, and the one day of the week to remember the resurrection and redemption of the Son of God. And to reverence it he called for a particular effort to avoid sin, abstinence from worldly concerns, and attendance to spiritual exercises with the greatest diligence “as the rest and refreshment of the soul.” It was the day to remember Christ’s redemption through partaking of the Lord’s Supper, and to practice works of “mercy and charity” since “it is a day kept in commemoration of the greatest work of mercy and love towards us that ever was wrought.”[4]

With the passage of time, however, strict Sabbath day observance declined, as did religious devotions generally. With the ascent of rationalism, the growing Deism of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution, and the migration of so many Americans from New England westward to make a new living on the ever-expanding frontier, the years immediately following the American Revolution were, in historian Gordon S. Wood’s words, “the most irreligious period in America history,” the “period of the lowest ebb-tide of vitality in the history of American Christianity.”[5] As Perry Miller famously phrased it, their “errand into the wilderness”[6] often meant trading Sunday devotions for newfound business opportunities and other more secular pursuits. Joseph Smith, born in Vermont in 1805, joined with his parents and siblings in likewise moving from New England to the western reaches of upstate New York in 1816 and, like so many others, shared in this time of uprooting. “Mormonism” must therefore be seen as one of many efforts at the time of the Second Great Awakening to reclaim religious devotion among an ever increasingly unchurched and disconnected population.[7]

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the nature of Sabbath day worship among the early Latter-day Saints and how they kept this day holy in the formative early history of the Church from its inception in April 1830 until 1837, the so-called Kirtland, Ohio, period. This topic has received surprisingly little attention among scholars. The task of pursuing it has been made much more doable today, thanks to the recent publication of the Joseph Smith Papers, the digitization of several early Latter-day Saint journals, and the availability of several other contemporary sources.[8]

The Latter-day Saints found scriptural injunction to keep the Sabbath day holy not only from reading the Holy Bible but also from their study of the Book of Commandments (or as it was later renamed, the Doctrine and Covenants), as well as the Book of Mormon. In the Doctrine and Covenants especially, one sees a very early commitment to observing this holy day. For example, a revelation to the Church dated August 1831 states: “And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day; for verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High . . . , confessing thy sins unto thy brethren, and before the Lord. And on this day thou shalt do none other thing, only let thy food be prepared with singleness of heart that thy fasting may be perfect, or, in other words, that thy joy may be full” (59:9–10, 12–13). And this from a second revelation received three months later: “And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord. And the inhabitants of Zion shall also observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (68:28–29). Likewise, the Book of Mormon repeatedly speaks directly of the centrality of the Sabbath (Jarom 1:5, Mosiah 13:16–19), stating that the Church in previous times “did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls,” and also to partake of the “bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus” (Moroni 6:5–6). Alma, one of the better-known prophets of the Book of Mormon, commanded his people “that they should observe the sabbath day, and keep it holy, and also every day they should give thanks to the Lord their God (Mosiah 18:23).

The Saints, therefore, felt enjoined to keep the Ten Commandments, including the fourth command to keep the Sabbath day holy; however, they viewed this injunction with a good deal of latitude or “wiggle room” in how to keep that commandment, preferring a distinctly practical, less rigid interpretation. The Saints always registered a distaste for, if not an opposition to, the traditional formalities of preaching and worshiping then common in many other established Christian religions of the day.

As for the choice of day for the Sabbath, little, if anything, in Latter-day Saint scripture speaks directly to which day of the week this should be. Nor did Joseph Smith Jr. give much commentary on the topic. While the Church propounded a great many new and distinctive doctrines and practices, assuming that Sunday was the appropriate day to honor the Sabbath was a product of a host American rural frontier culture and applied local custom, tradition, and interpretation to the topic. It was never a point of debate or serious discussion. More to the point, the specific day was less important than the spirit of the occasion.[9]

“In Remembrance of the Lord Jesus”

From the beginning the sacrament lay at the heart of Sabbath day devotions in the early restored Church. A revelation given on April 6, 1830, the day the Church was organized, specified that the Sabbath day—which the Saints took to mean Sunday—was to be reserved for partaking of the sacrament (or Communion) in grateful remembrance of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. “It is expedient that the church meet together often to partake of bread and wine in the remembrance of the Lord Jesus” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:75).

Nevertheless, the sacrament was not restricted just to Sundays. For instance, the sacrament was administered on the day the Church was organized in Fayette, New York, on a Tuesday—April 6, 1830. It was again administered on the day of the first Church conference two months later—a Tuesday, June 1, 1830.[10] From time to time the sacrament was blessed and passed at weekday missionary conferences.[11] A very special presentation of the sacrament occurred at the postdedication services of the Kirtland Temple, on March 30, 1836—a Friday.[12]

If the day of the week was less important to the Saints than the spirit of worship, so too the tokens or emblems of the sacrament were of less importance than the covenants of the sacrament. “It mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory,” read another early revelation (Doctrine and Covenants 27:2). The Saints viewed the sacrament as an essential renewal of their faith and a cleansing of the soul rather than a literal, mysterious reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ, well known in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which held that the bread and wine literally turned into the body and blood of Christ.

Nevertheless, the sacrament was often a spiritual highlight in the Sabbath day observance of these early congregants, a time of renewing sacred covenants in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving. “In the afternoon, administered the Lords Supper, as we are wont to do on every Sabath,” one early member recalled, “and the Lord blessed our souls with the out pouring of his spirit, and we were made to rejoice in his goodness.”[13] And again from Joseph Smith’s own records: “Having opened by singing and prayer, we partook together of the emblems of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we then proceeded to confirm several who had lately been baptized; after which we called out and ordained severals to the various offices of the Priesthood. Much exhortation and instruction was given; and the Holy Ghost was poured out upon us in a miraculous manner.”[14]

“The People Collected”

While Sunday meeting times remained fluid, by 1836 the Saints had settled on meeting twice on Sundays as well as at other times throughout the week. A typical Sabbath day, at least in Kirtland in the mid-1830s, looked as follows:

1. 10:00 a.m.–Noon Preaching service (often held outdoors)
2. Noon–2:00 p.m. “Intermission”—lunch or dinner—also baptisms, confirmations, interviews, and visits
3. 2:00–4:00 p.m. Preaching service/sacrament
4. 4:00–7:00 p.m. Supper and family time
5. Evenings Marriages, visiting family and friends, administering to the sick, choir singing, prayer meetings, disciplinary councils, scripture study, reading, and writing letters

A typical service included hymn singing, prayers, observance of the sacrament, and sermonizing and was sometimes referred to as “a refreshing time.”[15] Among the favorite songs were “O God the Eternal Father” and “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain,” both included in their earliest hymn books.[16] During their intermissions, the Saints often performed outdoor baptisms in nearby rivers, lakes, or streams followed by confirmations and priesthood ordinations. Early missionaries often baptized and confirmed their followers on the Sabbath. “I opened the meeting by prayer and exhortation,” one missionary recalled. “I then opened a door for the reception of new members. Bro. Reuben Field’s wife came forward. We then repaired to the water about two miles distant. I baptized them though it was a cold day and considerable snow on the ground. We then appointed a confirmation meeting at Bro. Field’s that evening.”[17] On Sabbath evenings, they would often reconvene for choir singing, candlelight prayer meetings, even weddings and sometimes funerals. There was then no requirement that all branches of the Church follow a prescribed worship or meeting format or schedule. Rather, there was a wonderful localization, freedom, and spontaneity in their worship services that was designed to fit local needs and priorities. For instance, while some held worship services in the afternoon, others did so in the evening.[18]

The blessing of children was a particular delight for Sunday worship. “On some occasions we assembled fifty of sixty little children in one circle,” remembered Parley P. Pratt, “in the midst of the assembly of the Saints, and laid our hands upon them all, and prayed for them, and blessed them in the name of Jesus.”[19]

Their “house of prayer” in those early days before any temple or chapel had been constructed often was a private home, a small schoolhouse, a nearby barn, or, more often than not, an open-air clearing or grove. Parley P. Pratt, a day after meeting Joseph Smith for the first time, spoke of a Sunday meeting in the Smith home in Manchester, New York, in the autumn of 1830. “On Sunday we held a meeting at his house. The two large rooms were filled with attentive listeners, and he invited me to preach. I did so, and afterwards listened with interest to a discourse from his own mouth, filled with intelligence and wisdom. We repaired from the meeting to the water’s edge, and, at his request, I baptized several persons.”[20]

Some of these meetings were sparely attended; others counted as many as five hundred congregants. Some preachers, like John E. Page, who was nicknamed “son of thunder” for his loud, booming voice, could be heard almost a mile away preaching from an outdoor, wooden pulpit. As George A. Smith later phrased it, early “Mormonism flourished best out of doors.”[21]

“Like Apples of Gold”—A Day of Instruction and Spiritual Uplift

Some of Joseph Smith’s sermons and those of his counselors in the early First Presidency, most noticeably Sidney Rigdon, sometimes lasted up to three hours. Among the most dominant themes of discourse (and singing) were the imminent expectation of Christ’s Second Coming, the agency of the will or soul to choose, and the need for restored priesthood authority (with references to Daniel and the “stone cut out of the mountain without hands” as their favorite passage of scripture). Indeed, their sermons contained as many references to the Old Testament (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc.) as they did to the New Testament, and the content was based far more on the Bible than on their own Book of Mormon.[22]

Sundays were not, however, the only day for gospel instruction. The School of the Prophets and School of the Elders were held during weekdays, usually in an upstairs room of the Newel K. Whitney Store. Such gatherings often featured highly instructive sermons, as evidenced by the following from Joseph Smith’s journal: “went to meeting . . . Elder [Isaac] morley preach[ed] and Bishop [Edward] Partridge in the afternoon; their discourses were well adapted to the times in which we live, and the circumstances under which we are placed, their words were words of wisdom, like apples of gold in picture’s of silver [Proverbs 25:11], spoken in the simple accents of a child, yet sublime as the voice of an angels.”[23] Wilford Woodruff, referencing his first Sabbath day in Kirtland as a new member of the Church, wrote as follows: “on the 27th of Aprail [1834] being the Lords day I attended meeting and herd several of the Brethren preach. Brother Sidney Rigdon. Orson Hide. Orson Pratt and others spoke ^Joseph Smith Closing^ during the meeting It appeared to me there was more light mad[e] manifest at that meeting respecting the gospel and Kingdom of God than I had ever receieved from the whole Sectarian world.”[24]

The tone of preaching among the Latter-day Saints reflected the fact that the Church never employed a paid or highly trained clergy. Speakers, almost all of whom were men, changed from week to week as the Saints took responsibility for their meetings and what should be said therein. Lacking formality and erudite sermonizing, Latter-day Saint Sabbath meetings were more democratic and less aristocratic in nature than those typical of the times and were characterized by enthusiastic but untrained missionaries eager to spontaneously share recent soul-stirring experiences and testimonials, as evidenced in the following description by William McLellin: “I had some desire to address the people, and with prayer in my heart, I arose. And it seemed to me that the whole volume of Truth was opened before me. My heart was animated and burning; and my tongue seemed to be untied. I spoke about an hour and a half. Many hearts were affected and many eyes filled with tears. I ceased to proclaim and seated myself. [I was] Filled with astonishment to behold the wonderful works of the Mighty God while wrapped in his ‘Eternal Spirit.’”[25]

On the very first Sabbath after having been baptized a member of the Church in 1830, Parley P. Pratt preached a sermon on his conversion. “The Holy Ghost came upon me mightily,” he said. “I spoke the word of God with power, reasoning out of the scriptures and the Book of Mormon. The people were convinced, overwhelmed with tears, and four heads of families came forward, expressing their faith, and were baptized.”[26]

Outdoor Methodist-style camp meetings were not, however, a characteristic of Latter-day Saint worship. Nor were excessive manifestations of the various gifts of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues or the interpretation of such. William E. McLellin verified that fact in the following entry. Speaking of one Sabbath evening prayer meeting in 1831, he recorded the following: “[I]nstead of shouting, screaming, jumping or shaking of hands in confusion[,] Peace, order, harmony and the spirit of God seemed to cheer every heart, warm every bosom and animate every Tongue. I really felt happy that I had seen the day that I could meet with such a people and worship God in the beauty of Holiness, For I saw more beauty in Christianity now than I ever had seen before.”[27] Nevertheless, the manifestations of such gifts of the Spirit as speaking in tongues were quite common, as shown later in this chapter.

“The Social Fireside”—A Day of Family Strengthening

As important as Sundays were to the early Saints, church attendance was not the only way to keep the Sabbath holy. Attending church was more an expectation than it was a commandment, a healthy, spiritual expectation but not the only measure of Christian devotion. Joseph Smith himself occasionally chose to stay home on Sunday with his family, not on account of sickness but perhaps to make up for times away. “At home all day. took solid comfort with my family,” he wrote on Sunday a few days before Christmas in 1835.[28] And again, “Spent the day at home in the enjoyment of the Society of my family, around the social fireside.”[29] There were, in other words, other ways to keep the day holy besides always attending church services.

“A Prophecy Was Put into Our Hearts”—A Day of Reflection, Meditation, and Revelation

The Sabbath was also a day for receiving answers to prayer, inspiration, even revelation, in and out of church attendance. For instance, while deeply troubled over the cost of building the Kirtland Temple, Joseph Smith spent one particular Sabbath in prayer: “Sabbath evening. . . . While reflecting upon the goodness and mercy of the Lord, this evening, a prophecy was put into our hearts, that in a short time the Lord would arrange his providences in a merciful manner and send us assistance to deliver us from debt and bondage.”[30] Homes were also considered as much a place for inspiration as a church service. Likewise, Sabbath time could be spent in studying and learning, such as when Joseph Smith was a student in Joshua Seixas’s Hebrew School near the time the temple was dedicated: “Spent the day at home in reading, meditation and prayer. I reviewed my lesson in Hebrew.”[31] Once again we see an emphasis not on rigid conformity to rules or traditions but on making the day pay spiritual dividends in whatever way the Saints deemed most appropriate.

“I Visited on Him All Day”—A Day of Prayer, Visiting, and Healing the Sick

The Saints also looked upon praying for, blessing, and visiting one another as other very appropriate Sabbath observances. With services often held outdoors, it was but a natural extension to go around from house to house doing good. Part of that effort included manifesting the gifts of the Spirit. Whether it was the gift of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, the gift of discernment, or more commonly the healing of the sick, Sundays often witnessed a veritable parade of such gifts of the Holy Spirit. Wrote Joseph Smith on Sunday, October 11, 1835: “visited my Father <again> who was verry sick <in secret prayer in the morning the Lord said my servant thy father shall live> I waited on him all this day with my heart raised to god in the name of Jesus Christ that he would restore him to health again . . . to the great joy and satisfaction of our souls, our aged Father arose and [. . .] praised the Lord.”[32]

On another Sunday in late 1835, after blessing a newly married couple, Joseph Smith attended a prayer meeting in the evening and exhorted the Brethren and sisters about one hour. “The Lord poured out his spirit and some glorious things, were spoken in the gift of toung[e]s, and interpreted concerning the redemption of Zion.”[33]

Nor was such home visiting just for the healing of the body. The Saints would often visit one another to strengthen each other’s wavering faith and testimony, so it was a church of the hearth and home and not only of the formal congregation. Wrote William E. McLellin, another early Church leader: “This [Sabbath] evening I visited old Sister Simmons and spent a very interesting evening and morning with her, she had been very sorely tempted the week past but now her faith seemed to be increased and her confidence established and her mind at ease.”[34]

As time went on, Joseph Smith began to associate one’s being healed to his or her keeping the ordinances of the Church, particularly the partaking of the sacrament. “I spoke and admonished the church . . . to make clean the inside of the platter, and to meet on the next sabbath to partake of <the> Sacrament in order that by our obedience to the ordinances, we might be enabled to prevail with God against the destroyer, and that the sick may might be healed.”[35] Joseph Smith seems increasingly to have associated healings and other spiritual gifts with attendance at church, signifying a gradual shift from the spontaneous, less formal observances of the Sabbath in the early 1830s to greater expectations of church attendance and to more clearly defined forms of Sabbath worship.

The Sabbath—A Day of Reconciliation, Repentance, and Forgiveness

One other highly important characteristic of the early Saints’ Sabbath day observance pertained to reconciliation, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins. It was a day of wiping the slate clean, of putting past sins and grievances behind them, of confessing openly and in private the wrongs they had committed or perpetuated. Such a bearing of the soul was an unscripted, often unplanned event, but one still enjoined and from time to time expected of one another. In November 1835, during a Sabbath afternoon meeting, Isaac Hills made a public confession “after which the ordinance of the Lord Supper was administered.”[36] On a later occasion, after the First Presidency and Twelve had each spoken in turn, “[t]he Lord poured out his Spirit upon us,” Joseph Smith recorded in 1836, “and the brethren began to confess their faults one to another the other, and the congregation were soon overwhelmed in tears, and some of our hearts were too big for utterance. The gift of tongues came on us also like the rushing of a mighty wind, and my soul was filled with the Glory of God.”[37]

To conclude, the history of Sabbath day observance in the early days of the Church shows a strong commitment to Sunday worship without either strict expectation of attendance or rigid adherence to formal rites of worship. While it was assumed that the Saints would attend church primarily to partake of the sacrament, receive spiritual instruction, and enjoy fine preaching, exceptions could be made, and the sacrament and other devotions could be held on other days of the week. One might occasionally observe the fourth commandment as much by visiting and healing the sick and praying for others as by attending Sunday meetings. In so many ways, the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a church in progress, developing and defining new ways of belief and worship, new visions and understandings, including what it meant to keep the Sabbath. And in their characteristic way of applying pragmatic overtures to spiritual convictions, they believed “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

Notes

[1] Henry Ward Beecher, Royal Truths (Edinburgh: Alexander Strahan, and Co., 1862), 245.

[2] Sixty-Seventh Birthday at the Metropolitan Club, New York, November 28, 1902, in Mark Twain’s Speeches (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910), 139.

[3] Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, ed. Cristanne Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 115.

[4] Rev. Jonathan Edwards, “The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M.: With an Essay on His Genius and Writings, by Henry Rogers, 2 vols. (London: F. Westley and A. H. Davis, 1840), 2:103.

[5] Gordon S. Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History 61, no. 4 (October 1980): 364. Wood cites John W. Chandler, “The Communitarian Quest for Perfection,” in A Miscellany of American Christianity: Essays in Honor of H. Shelton Smith, ed. Stuart C. Henry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 58; William Warren Sweet, The Story of Religions in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930), 322: and Franklin Hamlin Littell, From State Church to Pluralism: A Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History (London: Routledge, 1962), 29.

[6] Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956).

[7] The term Mormonism is here used in the sense of the early history, doctrines, culture, and teachings of Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints. Though the extended name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the title much preferred by the Church today, this appellation did not come into use until 1838.

[8] There is a dearth of scholarship on the topic of early Latter-day Saint Sabbath day observance. Of the few works on the topic, a worthy though short study is William G. Hartley, “Mormon Sundays,” Ensign, January 1978, 19–25. See also Russel J. Thomsen, “History of the Sabbath in Mormonism” (MA thesis, Loma Linda University, 1968); published as Latter-day Saints and the Sabbath (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1971.

[9] Little has been written in early Latter-day Saint literature about the day of the week on which the Sabbath is to be honored. In recent times, Joseph Fielding Smith, a great-nephew of Joseph Smith and eleventh President of the Church, wrote: “It is universally conceded that our Savior was in the tomb during the Jewish Sabbath, and that he came forth on the early morning of the first day of the week. All four of the evangelists have written that it was early on the morning of the first day when Jesus appeared to some of his disciples. . . . This would indicate that the Lord himself had changed the date of the Sabbath, and from that time forth it should be the first day of the week.” Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1966), 2:61.

[10] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834] [addenda],” p. 41, (June 1830), josephsmithpapers.org.

[11] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1,” p. 41 (June 1830).

[12] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 187 (30 March 1836), josephsmithpapers.org. Although the journal entries capture in detail the words and actions of Joseph Smith Jr., it must be understood that he neither wrote nor dictated them. They are actually the work of several companions who acted as his scribes or private secretaries, among them Willard Richards and William Clayton.

[13] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 171 (20 March 1836). See also “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838],” p. 712 (20 March 1836), josephsmithpapers.org.

[14] “History, 1838–1856, volume A-1,” p. 41 (June 1830).

[15] The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831–1836, ed. Jan Shipps and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: BYU Studies; Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 98 (March 3, 1833).

[16] “Collection of Sacred Hymns, 1835,” pp. 30, 75,josephsmithpapers.org.

[17] Journals of William E. McLellin, 63 (November 29, 1831).

[18] Journals of William E. McLellin, 69 (January 8, 1832).

[19] Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 51.

[20] Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, 31.

[21] From an address by George A. Smith, “Preaching the Gospel,” August 12, 1855, Deseret News, August 29, 1855, 194.

[22] Grant Underwood, “Book of Mormon Usage in Early LDS Theology,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Autumn 1984): 35–74. See also Grant Underwood, “Joseph Smith’s Use of the Old Testament,” in The Old Testament and the Latter-day Saints: The 14th Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium (Salt Lake City: Randall Book, 1986), 381–413.

[23] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 52 (29 November 1835); see also “History, 1834–1836,” p. 138 (29 November 1835), josephsmithpapers.org.

[24] “Journal (December 29, 1833–January 3, 1838),” p. 17 (under April 25, 1834, heading), www.wilfordwoodruffpapers.org.

[25] Journals of William E. McLellin, 36 (August 28, 1831). On other occasions, McLellin experienced exactly opposite feelings. One Sunday, while he and Hyrum Smith were preaching to an audience of disbelievers, he arose and attempted to preach but could not. “I had no animation in it,” he confessed, “no memory, and in truth I had lost the spirit of God. Hence I was confounded, I set down and told bro. H. to preach for I could not.” Journals of William E. McLellin, 41 (18 September 1831).

[26] Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, 27.

[27] Journals of William E. McLellin, p. 34 (21 August 1832).

[28] “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1,” p. 672 (20 December 1835).

[29] “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1,” pp. 710–11 (6 March 1836).

[30] “Journal, 1832–1834,” p. 92 (30 November 1834), josephsmithpapers.org.

[31] “History 1838–1856, volume B-1,” p. 706 (21 February 1836). See also “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 159 (21 February 1836).

[32] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 7 (11 October 1835).

[33] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 9 (25 October 1835).

[34] Journals of William E. McLellin, p. 121 (2 May 1833).

[35] “History, 1838–1856, volume C-1,” p. 964 (28 July 1839); see also “Journal, 1839,” p. 9 (28 July 1839).

[36] “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 37 (15 November 1835); see also “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1,” p. 643 (15 November 1835).

[37] “History, 1838–1856, volume B-1,” p. 693 (17 January 1836); see also “Journal, 1835–1836,” p. 126 (17 January 1836).