"But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history! Let the horrible narrative never be written! Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy, which no human eye shall ever read; or the missing pleiad, of which no man can ever know more than that it is lost, and lost forever!" And now, I invite your attention to the remarks I made in the commencement of this discourse--to the prosperity of the land, embracing both North and South America, to the extent and grandeur of it, and I ask you, does it not fulfil better than any other part of the earth, better than any other continent or continents--does it not better answer the description of Moses and of Jacob, when they described the land that should be the inheritance of the great Patriarch Joseph, than any other land does? Most assuredly. VIEWS OF THE PROPHET JOSEPH. When the Book of Mormon was revealed and it became known that the Americas were precious lands of promise, and that God had such a high destiny for the two continents as is described in the Book of Mormon, that among other things America was the place where the Zion of God should be built in the last days, the brethren in those early days very naturally became anxious to know where the city of Zion would be located. After much striving for the knowledge, the place of Zion was at last revealed to them. The Lord indicated the place for the commencement of the building of Zion, and the place for the temple upon which the glory of God should rest by day and by night. This place was declared to be near Independence, Jackson county, Missouri. The site for the temple and the land around about was dedicated under the supervision of the prophet, and the Saints in the eastern states were commanded to gather to this place. They did so, and lived there some three years when their enemies rose up against them and expelled them from the land under circumstances of great cruelty and hardship. The Saints, who had been driven from their homes, accounted themselves exiles from Zion, and there was much disappointment in Israel because, apparently, the promises of God had failed them; for they looked forward to an unbroken possession of the land, notwithstanding the word of the Lord to the contrary. (See Introduction to Volume III of the History of the Church, pp. xxxii-xxxix.) Shortly after this, three years later, a still further removal was made into the counties of northern Missouri, and finally, as you know, the entire Church was expelled from the state of Missouri and had to take refuge in Illinois.