George A. Smith · 1855 April General Conference · 1855-04-08
Published in Journal of Discourses, Volume 2, pp. 360-368 (delivered April 8, 1855). BYU ContentDM precise page link recorded; text is drawn from the Historical General Conferences (Weebly) transcript of JD 2:360-368. Smith defended the Book of Mormon's authenticity from personal experience (having advocated for it since age thirteen), addressed the inadequacy of the meetinghouse despite its capacity for 12,000 people, and remarked on the fulfillment of Joseph Smith's prediction about perpetual Church growth. Pitman shorthand report; the speaker did not review this text before publication. Text transcribed from the printed JD.
Full text of the discourse as published in the Journal of Discourses. BYU ContentDM's item-detail page currently fails to render in modern browsers (loads, then a client-side script redirects to the generic lib.byu.edu collections page; reproduced 2026-06-30, site-wide BYU bug, not link-format specific). Re-promote to preferred/source_url once BYU fixes this.
Digital transcript referencing JD Vol. 2.
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