Brigham Young · 1853 October General Conference · 1853-10-06
Published in Journal of Discourses, Volume 1, pp. 322-327, delivered October 6, 1853. BYU ContentDM precise page link recorded; text below is taken from the Historical General Conferences transcript of JD 1:322-327, cross-checked against the surrounding Deseret News minutes. Pitman shorthand report by George D. Watt; the speaker did not review this text before publication. Full text reproduced; not abridged.
Full text of the discourse as published in the Journal of Discourses. BYU ContentDM's item-detail page currently fails to render in modern browsers (loads, then a client-side script redirects to the generic lib.byu.edu collections page; reproduced 2026-06-30, site-wide BYU bug, not link-format specific). Re-promote to preferred/source_url once BYU fixes this.
Digital transcript used to source the text below; matches the JD 1:322-327 citation.
Page-anchored scan witness for Journal of Discourses volume 1, page 322. Currently the only reliably clickable link for this talk; BYU ContentDM is the institutionally preferred citation but its item pages are currently broken client-side (see the BYU witness note).
Carruth CR 100 912 inventory item cr-100-912-0076. Scholarly re-transcription of George D. Watt's original Pitman shorthand report, catalogued at the Church History Library. Papers of George D. Watt MS 4534 box 2 disk 1 August 1853 - October 1853 images 142-154. Sermon in Journal of Discourses 1:322; in CR 100 317 box 2 folder 24. Transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth 14 August 2013. Recorded as a separate witness per docs/ingestion.md's Carruth policy; the printed Journal of Discourses 1:322 text stays preferred until this transcription is reviewed against it.
Proofread against the source text.
Proofread against the IA scan witness; confirmed clean, no changes needed.
Collated word-by-word against the original scan.
Heavyweight pass: no official churchofjesuschrist.org or CHL digitization exists for this 1853 discourse; BYU ContentDM/IA JD 1:322-327 remains the best verified source (BYU item page currently broken client-side, IA page-anchored link used as source_url). Speaker, date (October 6, 1853), opening sentence, and closing benediction ('May the Lord bless you. Amen.') independently confirmed verbatim against jod.mrm.org/1/322. Body reads as one coherent, unbroken discourse with no apparent gaps; talk boundaries clean; no OCR errors found requiring fixes.