From the days of the gold excitement in California, there had been an influx of adventurers into Utah. Most of them were men of reckless lives, men of improper habits. Their influence became greatly detrimental to many of the Saints. It must be counteracted, and the so-called Reformation was to be the means of setting the people right. It was to be a time of repentance. Every responsible position that men held, whether ecclesiastical or civil, called for the most devout obedience to God's law. Men who were legislators observed the ordinance of baptism that they might more conscientiously and more uprightly enact laws for the happiness and welfare of the people. The October conference which was then at hand was devoted to the proclamation of repentance throughout the Church. The new zeal was felt everywhere, both at home and abroad. There were frequent visits from house to house. The leaders of the Church were foremost in the new move. A special call was put upon Jedediah M. Grant. To him the work of the Reformation was a special mission. He was by nature a most zealous man, {374} and this special call increased his zeal. He gave to the work all his energies and carried more the burden of that mission than any other man of his time. It proved too much for his physical nature, which could not bear the incessant labors, and consequently on the 1st of December, 1856, he departed this life. Of him Elder Woodruff writes in his journal: "He died December 1st, 1856, twenty minutes past 10 o'clock. He was aged forty years, nine months, and seven days. We went immediately to his house where we found his wives and children weeping bitterly. Jesse C. Little, Leonard W. Hardy, Daniel H. Wells, Doctors Sprague, and Dunyon, and Israel Ivins, stood by him as he breathed his last. As I gazed upon his tabernacle of clay, I felt to exclaim, a mighty man in Zion is laid low, a valiant man in Israel and a great champion of the Kingdom of God is taken from us! We feel his loss deeply. For two months it seemed as though he had been hurried to close up his work. He had been preaching for several months calling upon the people to repent. His voice had been like the trumpet of the Angel of God. He has labored night and day until prostrated by sickness. He called at the Historian's office on the 19th of November which was his last day out. During his sickness, he beheld a glorious vision from which he related to the brethren all he had seen of the spirit world." Of President Grant, Elder Woodruff records the following testimony by Brigham Young: "We have no cause to mourn for Brother Grant. He is well off. He has lived in advance of his age and is better fitted for eternity in the forty years of his lifetime than many would be in one hundred years."