Elder Sidney Rigdon then rose and said: It is with no ordinary degree of satisfaction I enjoy this privilege this morning. Want of health and other circumstances have kept me in silence for nearly the last five years. It can hardly be expected that when the violence of sickness has used its influence, and the seeds of disease have so long preyed upon me, that I can rise before this congregation, only in weakness. I am now come forth from a bed of sickness, and have enough of strength left to appear here for the first time in my true character. I have not come before a conference for the last five years in my true character. I shall consider this important privilege sacred in my family history during life. I hardly promise myself lungs to make this congregation hear me. I shall do the best I can, and the greatest can do no more. The circumstance by which we are now surrounded point out the principles of my discourse--the history of this Church, which I have known from its infancy. My text is--"Behold the Church of God of the last days." I do not know that I can find it in the Bible. I do not think it necessary to have Paul to make a text for me; I can make a text for myself. I recollect in the year 1830 I met the whole Church of Christ in a little old log-house about 20 feet square, near Waterloo, N.Y., and we began to talk about the kingdom of God as if we had the world at our command. We talked with great confidence, and {289} talked big things. Although we were not many people, we had big feelings. We knew fourteen years ago that the Church would become as large as it is today. We were as big then as we ever shall be. We began to talk like men in authority and power. We looked upon the men of the earth as grasshoppers. If we did not see this people, we saw by vision the Church of God, a thousand times larger. And when men would say we wanted to upset the Government, although we were not enough to well man a farm, or meet a woman with a milk-pail, all the Elders, all the members met in conference in a room twenty feet square.