Adjourned till tomorrow.
March 8th.—Met pursuant to adjournment. Evan M. Greene, Levi Osgood, Alpheus Harmon, Joseph C. Kingsbury, Ira Bond, Z. H. Brewster, Samuel Tompkins, John Ormsby, Luman Carter, John Smith, Samuel H. Smith, Thomas Fisher, Starry Fisk, Amos R. Orton and Almon Sherman were blessed. Amos R. Orton was ordained an Elder and a missionary to the Lamanites. Andrew H. Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, Sebe Ives, Ebenezer Jennings, Oliver Granger, Orson Johnson, Warren Smith, James Lake, and William Redfield were blessed, and William Redfield was ordained an Elder. Cyrus Lake, Harvey Smith, Isaac Cleveland, William Baker, Samuel S. Brannan, John Wheeler, Henry Baker, William Fisk, Henry Wilcox, George W. Gee, David Clough, and Lorenzo D. Young were blessed, and Elder Young was set apart as a missionary to the Lamanites. Jas. Durfee, Jos. Coe, Thos. Gates, Loren Babbitt, Blake Baldwin, and Jos. B. Baldwin were blessed. John Johnson, John Tanner and Gad Yale were blessed; and Gad Yale, being one who went to the relief of the brethren in Missouri, was blessed accordingly. Henry G. Sherwood, Sidney Tanner, Joseph H. Tippits, Robert Quigley, and Erastus Babbitt were blessed, and Samuel Canfield was blessed and ordained an Elder. Phineas H. Young, Samuel Rolfe, and Calvin H. Stoddard were blessed, and Elder Young was ordained a missionary to the Lamanites. Erastus Rudd, Josiah Fuller, Isaac H. Bishop, Roswell Murray, Benjamin Wells, Nehemiah Harman, Thomas Hancock, Oliver Wetherby, Joshua Grant, Jun., William Draper, Jun., Ransom Van Leuven, Tunis Rappellee, John Rudd, and Samuel Wilcox were blessed. Moses Martin, who went to Missouri, was set apart to be one of the Seventies, and blessed and warned as follows: "If thou art not purified, thou wilt not be able to execute thy commission. Thou wilt fall into the snares and into the hands of enemies who will take thy life; thou must begin to make a complete reformation in thyself."
Oliver Cowdery,
Clerk.
The following belong to the Seventies, but the date of their ordinations is not definitely known: Milo Andrus, Joseph Winchester, Zerubbabel Snow, Heman T. Hyde, Henry Brown. Nelson Higgins, (Hezekiah Fisk was blessed, but was not one of the Seventies,) Henry Beaman, Jesse Huntsman, Royal Barney, Zebedee Coltrin, Henry Herriman, and Lorenzo D. Barnes. James L. Thompson was blessed, but not ordained.
Footnotes
1. The organization of quorums of Seventy in the Church was regarded as a very strange thing in modern times, but that such an organization had existed in the Church of God, both in the days of Moses and also in the days of Messiah, is evident from the scriptures. The Lord said to Moses: "Come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. * * * Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. * * * And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink" (Exodus 24:1, 9, 11). And again, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be the elders of the people, and officers over them; and bring them unto the tabernacle of the congregation, that they may stand there with thee. And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone. * * * And Moses went out, and told the people the words of the Lord, and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle. And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease" (Numbers 11:16, 17, 24, 25).
It is not clear from the Old Testament just what the functions of the Seventy were in the Hebrew Priesthood, but they certainly were endowed with prophetic powers, and it is quite probable that the Sanhedrin (consisting of seventy-one members, inclusive of the president,) of later Jewish times had some relation to this earlier council of seventy.
The organization of the Seventy by the Savior is alluded to in the tenth chapter of Luke as follows: "After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, (from this it appears that quorums of seventy had been appointed previous to this) and sent them two and two before His face into every city and place, whither He Himself would come. Therefore said He unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would sent forth laborers into His harvest. Go your way: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way. And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the Son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the laborer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house." That is, while these men were sent forth without purse and scrip it was evidently not the intention of the Lord that they should beg from door to door. Continuing His instructions, the Master said: "And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: and heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you, notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. * * He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me and he that despiseth me despiseth Him that sent me." The Seventy, it appears went forth under these instructions and were successful, for Luke continues: "And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy name." After this very plain allusion to this order of the Priesthood called the Seventy, these instructions, and the definitions given of their duties and callings, there can be no doubt as to their constituting an important factor in the Christian Church Organization. The absence of such quorums of Priesthood in modern Church establishments is but one among many other evidences that the Church of Christ had ceased from among men.
2. See page 182 (note).
3. The quorums of Seventy, in other words—in connection with the Twelve Apostles, under whose direction they labor—constitute the foreign ministry or the Church; and when the kind of labor they are expected to perform is taken into account, it will be found that their organization is admirably adopted for their work—the means are adequate to the end proposed. In all other quorums of the high Priesthood, excepting the Twelve, the presidency consists of a president and two counselors, but the presidency of the quorum of Seventy consists of seven presidents, equal in authority. For the sake of order, however, precedence is recognized in seniority of ordination; that is, the senior president by ordination—not of age—presides in the council, and over the quorum; and in the event of his absence, then the next senior president by ordination has the right of initiative and presides, and so on down the line of presidents. The order established