From the commencement the Church had taught the utmost freedom of mankind to worship as they chose, such liberty being curtailed only when it runs into license and infringes upon, the rights of others. In the early inception of the Church, God commanded His people to study and learn from the best of books, to acquire an understanding of the laws of God and the governments of men, to become acquainted with the heavens and the earth. Thus the Saints are the friends of all true education. Joseph Smith established a school in Kirtland for the study of Hebrew and other branches of knowledge. For Nauvoo he obtained a charter for a university. Brigham Young and his associates founded the Deseret University, now called the University of Utah. They have also established church schools, the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, the Brigham Young College in Logan, Stake academies and other schools. The sons of Latter-day Saints have graduated with honor in the Military Academy at West Point. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, they have a record unsurpassed in the law school and in other branches taught by that noted institution. The same is true of their record at Harvard and elsewhere; also are there numerous graduates of medicine, dentistry, civil engineering, etc., as taught in the great schools of Chicago, Philadelphia and other places. Mission conferences are established in almost every state of the American Union, also in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Germany, Holland, Palestine, New Zealand, Australia, the Hawaiian and many other islands of the Pacific ocean, including Japan. The present living membership of the Church, men, women and children, is not less than 310,000 souls. While there has been steady progress in numerical strength, it is not in numbers altogether that strength consists. We fully realize that "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." The greatest strength consists in the purity of the principle and the impossibility of the wicked and corrupt to remain long in the Church. God is its founder and builder. He established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It will stand always, for "whatsoever the Lord doeth, He doeth it forever." CHURCH ORGANIZATION. We have treated briefly upon the subject of Divine Authority, merely pointing out the absolute necessity of such authority in order to obtain complete salvation, and how it was bestowed and perpetuated whenever a Gospel dispensation existed upon the earth. It will not be amiss to deal briefly with the subject of Church Organization, as this specifies the distribution of divine authority to the various offices in the Church of Christ, each having specific duties to perform.