Twenty-seventh of June, 1844. Eventful period in the calendar of the nineteenth century! That awful night! I remember it well: I shall never forget it! Thousands and tens of thousands will never forget it! A solemn thrill--a melancholy awe comes o'er my spirit! The memorable scene is fresh before me! It requires no art of the pencil, no retrospection of history, to portray it. The impression of the Almighty Spirit on that occasion will run parallel with eternity! The scene was not portrayed by earthquake, or thunderings, and lightnings, and tempests; but the majesty and sovereignty of Jehovah was felt far more impressively in the still, small voice of that significant hour, than the roaring of many waters, or the artillery of many thunders, when the spirit of Joseph was driven back to the bosom of God, by an ungrateful and bloodthirsty world! There was an unspeakable something, a portentious significancy on the firmament and among the inhabitants of the earth. Multitudes felt the whisperings of woe and grief, and the forebodings of tribulation and sorrow that they will never forget, though the tongue of man can never utter it. The Saints of God, whether near the scene of blood, or even a thousand miles distant, felt at the very moment the Prophet lay in royal gore, that an awful deed was perpetrated. O, the repulsive chill! the melancholy vibrations of the very air, as the prince of darkness receded in hopeful triumph from the scene of slaughter! That night could not the Saints sleep, though uninformed by man of what had passed with the Seer and Patriarch, and far, far remote from the scene; yet to them sleep refused a visitation--the eyelids refused to close--the hearts of many sighed deeply in secret, and inquired, "Why am I thus?" One of the Twelve Apostles, while traveling a hundred {284} miles from the scene of assassination, and totally ignorant of what was done, was so unaccountably sad, and filled with such unspeakable anguish of heart without knowing the cause, that he was constrained to turn aside from the road and give utterance to his feelings in tears and supplications to God. Another Apostle, twelve hundred miles distant, while standing in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, with many others, was similarly affected, and was obliged to turn aside to hide the big tears that gushed thick and long from his eyes. Another, President of the High Priests, while in the distant state of Kentucky, in the solitude of midnight, being marvelously disquieted, God condescended to show him, in a vision, the mangled bodies of the two murdered worthies, all dripping in purple gore, who said to him, "We are murdered by a faithless state and cruel mob."