How anxious the Apostle Paul was to impress upon the minds of the people the positiveness of the necessity for the preservation of the organization of the Church in its entirety. Hear what he says on the subject, 1 Cor. xii. 14-21: "For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And _the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you_." {204} To show that Paul had special reference, in his advocacy of the preservation of the body in the perfection of its parts, to the officers and gifts of the Church, it will profit the reader to peruse the 27th and 28th verses of the same chapter: "Now _ye_ are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." After this pattern has the Church, revealed anew in this age, been set up through the instrumentality of the young man Joseph Smith who, like his Divine Master, was slain on account of the testimony he bore to a perverse generation; and our reader may well pause and ask himself the vital question, where else in all the world can I find a church similar to that of ancient times? But we hasten to explain other and equally potent evidences that establish the divinity of Joseph Smith's mission and the validity of his claim to being a prophet. We will first consider the character of his teachings and administrations and their effects upon those who accept them. He announced that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand; that the Lord was about to commence His marvelous latter-day work, by preparing for the coming of the Savior. He and his associate apostles and prophets taught the same Gospel that Christ and the ancient apostles preached: Faith in God the Eternal Father, in His Son Jesus Christ, repentance of sins, baptism, by immersion, for the remission of sins, and the laying on of the hands of those holding divine authority for the bestowal of the Gift of the Holy Ghost.