Selected from Joseph Smith Jr.’s Liberty Jail Letters, March 20th, 1839
1. A fanciful and flowery and heated imagination be aware of, because the things of God are of deep import, and time and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out.
2. Thy mind, O’ Man, if thou wilt lead a soul into salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss and expanse of eternity.
3. Thou must commune with God.
4. How much more dignified and noble are the thoughts of God, than the vain imaginations of the human heart.
5. We exhort one another to a reformation with one and all—both old and young, teachers and taught, both high and low, rich and poor, bond and free, male and female.
6. Let honesty, and sobriety, and candor, and solemnity, and virtue, and pureness, and meekness, and simplicity crown our heads in every place, and, in fine, become as little children without malice, guile or hypocrisy.
7. And now after your tribulations, if you do these things and exercise fervent prayer, and faith in the sight of God always,
8. God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit—yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost—that has not been revealed since the world was until now;
9. Which our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectation to be revealed in the last times, which their minds were pointed to by the angels, as held in reserve for the fulness of their glory;
10. A time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld; whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest.
11. All thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
12. And also, if there be bounds set to the heavens or to the seas, or to the dry land, or to the sun, moon, or stars—
13. All the times of their revolutions, all the appointed days, months, and years, and all the days of their days, months, and years, and all their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dispensation of the fulness of times—
14. According to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall enter into his eternal presence and into his immortal rest.
15. Ignorance, superstition, and bigotry placing itself where it ought not are oftentimes in the way of the prosperity of this church—like the torrent of rain from the mountains, that floods the most pure crystal stream with mire and dirt and filthiness and obscures everything that was clear before.
16. Notwithstanding we are rolled in for the time being by the mire of the flood, the next surge, peradventure, as time rolls on, may bring us to the fountain as clear as crystal and as pure as snow, while all the filthiness, flood wood and rubbish is left and purged out by the way.
17. How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it upstream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the latter day saints.