- Verses 1-4: Taken from a sermon by Joseph Smith, delivered on July 23rd, 1843
- Verse 5: Taken from Joseph Smith’s letter from jail, dated March 20th, 1839
1. Friendship is the Grand Fundamental Principle of Mormonism; it is designed to revolutionize and civilize the world and cause wars and contentions to cease and men to become friends and brothers.
2. Even the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together; the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf, the young lion and the fatling; and a little child shall lead them; the bear and the cow shall lie down together, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall play on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord of Host.
3. That friendship which intelligent beings would accept as sincere must arise from love, and that love grows out of virtue, which is as much a part of religion as light is a part of God.
4. Hence the saying of Jesus: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.”
5. One token of friendship, from any source whatever, awakens and calls into action every sympathetic feeling; it brings up in an instant everything that is past; it seizes the present with the vivacity of lightning; it grasps after the future with the fierceness of a tiger until finally all enmity, malice, hatred, and past differences, misunderstandings, and mismanagements lie slain victims at the feet of hope.