grandeur and beauty, reared, beautified, and finally completed by the toil and contributions of all the Saints, in which all had a property—in which all were to pay their devotions, baptize for their dead, and perform the secret ceremonies by which they are initiated into the different degrees and orders of their faith. But the mass were, notwithstanding, ready to go, at the advice or dictation of their rulers. A conference was held in the Temple on the 6th of October, at which the matter was debated and resolved upon, and an epistle was put forth by Brigham Young to the Saints throughout the United States, announcing the determination to remove as early as the next spring; and they were urged to come forward and finish the Temple, and receive their endowments, before bidding a farewell to their beloved city. The place of destination at first contemplated was Vancouver's Island, near the mouth of the Columbia.
Among the curious things to be noted at this period was the excommunication from the Church of William Smith, the sole surviving brother of the prophet. This man, it seems, was ambitious of the succession, and, in the bitterness of his disappointment, had let out some unwholesome secrets in regard to the conduct of the twelve apostles, for which they consigned him over to the "buffetings of Satan;" and the language of the prophet Joseph, while pronouncing a blessing upon his brother, contrasts strangely enough with the denunciations subsequently showered upon the same subject. He became, in Mormon phraseology, an apostate, and spoke in utter condemnation of the designs of the leaders, representing "that it is their design to set up
