| 505 Under date of September 28 Elder T. H. Waddel wrote from Milton, Florida: "Since last fall conference I have baptized one hundred and thirteen persons, and organized four branches; one in Alabama, and three in Florida."
October 1, 1868, President Smith published the following well-written and clear statement of his present position and past experiences. We feel sure that it will be read with interest by the student of history:-
"Looking backward along life's journey is not always the most engrossingly pleasant; but doing so over a life made bitter and burdensome by evil brought about by others, designedly, or innocently through folly, is far less inviting to the mind.
"Years before we were identified with the people of God, in their endeavors to reassert their right to the favor of God, by the practice of virtue and true holiness, we sometimes dreamed of a happy, a redeemed people, and were thrilled with the ecstacy [ecstasy] of having been instrumental, even in a dream, of aiding to bring about so great a happiness.
"The curses which fell upon separate sons who failed to do good according to their condition, was ever recurring to the mind. The grand idea of the separate and several identities answering for their several shortcomings, and receiving for righteousness a righteous reward and crown, was as an anchor to our troubled thoughts.
And when years of maturity brought firmness of recollection, and out of the tangled mass of past fleeting reminiscences, vivid memory painted the violence and injustice which had deprived the church of a faithful friend, and ourself of a kind father; together with many other things not even now pleasant to recall, a continuing fear of losing the right to the tree of life, with a strong desire to do the duties that would, or could devolve upon the son of such a father, we sought to know whether the economy of God designed a happy people freed from bondage, or whether the eternal night of despair should forever inclose [enclose] the confidence and hope once held in Christ.
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