During his residence in Illinois the prophet's life was one continual course of toil, excitement, sickness, and danger. Old foes and false friends were well-nigh constantly seeking to entrap him. New schemes were constantly hatching to destroy him. During his career some fifty times he was dragged before the tribunals of his country and as many times were the judges compelled to dismiss him. While living in Illinois an effort was made to kidnap him and take him to Missouri among his old enemies. In the midst of these persecutions he was constantly preaching, translating, or completing the organization of the church--setting in order the various quorums of the Priesthood and instructing them in their duties. He endured poverty and hardship throughout the greater part of his career and scarcely knew what it was to enjoy peace--save that God-given peace that comes from within; and which, however great the tempest from without may be, gives serenity and joy unspeakable to the servants and prophets of God. At last, after a life of continual warfare with error; after enduring untold toil and persecution, illegal prosecutions and mob violence, hardships and suffering--wicked men conspired against him, and while in the charge of the officers of the State of Illinois, with the honor of the great state pledged through the governor for his protection, he was murdered in cold blood for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. Counting from the time that he received his first vision, when a lad of fourteen years, he stood a witness for God a little less than a quarter of a century; but in that short time he suffered more and accomplished more than has fallen to the lot of any other man to suffer and accomplish since the Son of God expired on the summit of Golgotha.