| 156 leading the nation. We therefore write unto you, beloved brethren, as wise men that will foresee the evil and hide yourselves until the indignation be overpast.
"Concerning those who have more immediately instigated our removal by shedding the blood of our Prophet and Patriarch, and burning the habitations of scores of families in the midst of the most desolating sickness ever known in the western valley, and who oblige us to watch for our lives night and day, we have nothing to say. We have told such tales to our father the President, and to all the highminded governors, until we are weary of it. We look far beyond those by whom offenses come, and discover a merciful design in our heavenly Father towards all such as patiently endure these afflictions until he advises them that the day of their deliverance has come. It is our design to remove all the saints as early next spring as the first appearance of thrifty vegetation. In the meantime the utmost diligence of all the brethren at this place and abroad will be requisite for our removal, and to complete the unfinished part of the Lord's house, preparatory to dedication by the next General Conference. The font and other parts of the temple will be in readiness in a few days to commence the administration of holy ordinances of endowment, for which the faithful have long diligently labored and fervently prayed, desiring above all things to see the beauty of the Lord and inquire in his holy temple. We therefore invite the saints abroad generally so to arrange their affairs as to come with their families in sufficient time to receive their endowments, and aid in giving the last finish to the house of the Lord, previous to the great immigration of the church in the spring. A little additional help in the heat of the day from those abroad, to those here, who have been often driven and robbed, will sweeten the interchanges of fellowship, and so far fulfill the law of Christ as to bear one another's burthens [burdens].
"The sacrifice of property that will probably accrue from a virtually coerced sale in a given short time, together with the exhaustion of available means, that has arisen from an extensive improvement of farms, and the erection of costly public and private edifices, together with persecutions and
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