The Gospel was brought to our respective locations, far remote from these mountain vales. It found us citizens of many nations--speaking our respective languages, each possessing his peculiar notions and prejudices, with our associations and a strong attachment to kindred, friends and country. However unpleasant, unkind, unjust and inconsistent it might appear at first, we clearly foresaw that, in receiving this Gospel, we should be compelled to break up those associations and sever those attachments, leaving the lands of our nativity, and going forth with our wives and children to a distant land, of which we had but little knowledge. Yet a similar requisition was made upon the House of Israel, in the land of Egypt; also upon Noah and his family, and upon Abraham and the family of Lot, in the city of Sodom, and upon the families of Lehi and Ishmael, as mentioned in the Book of Mormon. But in the provisions of the Gospel which was offered to us, there were fairness and safety; it proposed to give us, through obedience to its requirements, a perfect knowledge of its divine authenticity; so that in leaving our kindred, breaking up our social relations, and going forth from our native lands, we should first become perfectly assured that it was no human contrivance--something gotten up to effect some political purpose, or to satisfy some worldly ambition to achieve some private end through human cunning or craftiness. The Gospel was plain and simple in its requirements, and there could be no mistaking the precise nature of its blessings and promises, nor the manner and time in which they were to be reached. The first feature in this system which struck us with surprise and arrested our attention, was its perfect similarity, in all its parts, with the Gospel as recorded in the New Testament. It required repentance and a forsaking of sins--immersion in water for the remission of sins, with a promise that, through the laying on of hands by those having authority, people should receive the Holy Ghost, by which a knowledge should be obtained of the truth of the doctrine. Another remarkable feature which called into exercise our most serious consideration, was the solemn testimony of the Elders, that they possessed the right to administer these sacred ordinances by virtue of the holy Priesthood committed to Joseph Smith through the ministration of the Apostles, Peter, James and John. And furthermore, that this solemn and most important fact should be revealed to every man upon his faithful obedience to the Gospel requirements.