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Brigham Young

Portrait of Brigham Young
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

AUTHOR PROFILE

Brigham Young

Brigham Young led the Latter-day Saints after Joseph Smith’s death and became the Church’s second president. He is inseparable from the westward migration, the founding of settlements in the Great Basin, and the effort to build a lasting Church community there. His many recorded sermons also require attention to their nineteenth-century setting and to the difference between a reported speech and an authenticated verbatim transcript.

FEATURED QUOTE
“But how are we to be made happy? There is one course—love the Giver more than the gift.”
— Brigham Young

Biography at a glance

  • Born: 1801 in Vermont
  • Died: 1877 in Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Church service: Apostle from 1835; President of the Church from 1847 until his death
  • Historical role: Led the migration to the Salt Lake Valley and the building of Latter-day Saint settlements in the West

Conversion and early leadership

Young studied the Book of Mormon before being baptized in 1832. He soon joined the Church’s missionary and leadership work, including the 1834 Camp of Israel and a mission to Britain. His willingness to support Joseph Smith during difficult years helped make him a central figure in the Quorum of the Twelve. The Church’s history essay covers both these early years and the choices he made later.

Leading the Saints west

After the killings of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, Young led the Twelve as the Saints planned a new place to gather. He directed the migration from Nauvoo and helped establish communities in what became Utah and neighboring states. Church, civic, and family life were closely intertwined in his leadership. His record includes achievements in migration and settlement as well as teachings and policies, including plural marriage and the priesthood restriction, that require candid historical context. The Church’s essay on that restriction is essential related reading.

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Quotes by Brigham Young

58 quotes

When the Savior has completed the work, when the faithful Saints have preached the Gospel to the last of the spirits who have lived here and who are designed to come to this earth; when the thousand years of rest shall come and thousands and thousands of Temples shall be built, and the servants and handmaids of the Lord shall have entered therein and officiated for themselves, and for their dead friends back to the days of Adam; when the last of the spirits in prison who will receive the Gospel has received it; when the Savior comes and receives his ready bride, and all who can be are saved in the various kingdoms of God – celestial, terrestrial and telestial, according to their several capacities and opportunities; when sin and iniquity are driven from the earth, and the spirits that now float in this atmosphere are driven into the place prepared for them; and when the earth is sanctified from the effects of the fall, and baptized, cleansed, and purified by fire, and returns to its paradisiacal state, and has become like a sea of glass, a urim and thummim; when all this is done, and the Savior has presented the earth to his Father, and it is placed in the cluster of the celestial kingdoms, and the Son and all his faithful brethren and sisters have received the welcome plaudit – “Enter ye into the joy of your Lord,” and the Savior is crowned, then and not till then, will the Saints receive their everlasting inheritances.

Journal of Discourses, 17:117

— Brigham Young

After the spirit leaves the body, it remains without a tabernacle in the spirit world until the Lord, by his law that he has ordained, brings to pass the resurrection of the dead. When the angel who holds the keys of the resurrection shall sound his trumpet, then the peculiar fundamental principles that organized our bodies here, if we do honor to them, though they be deposited in the depths of the sea, and though one particle is in the north, another in the south, another in the east, and another in the west, will be brought together again in the twinkling of an eye, and our spirits will take possession of them. We shall then be prepared to dwell with the Father and the Son, and we never can be prepared to dwell with them until then. Spirits, when they leave their bodies, do not dwell with the Father and the Son, but live in the Spirit world, where there are places prepared for them. Those who do honor to their tabernacles, and love and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, must put off this mortality, or they cannot put on immortality. This body must be changed, else it cannot be prepared to dwell in the glory of the Father.

Journal of Discourses, 8:28

— Brigham Young

In the Millennium, when the Kingdom of God is established on the earth in power, glory and perfection, and the reign of wickedness that has so long prevailed is subdued, the Saints of God will have the privilege of building their temples, and of entering into them, becoming, as it were, pillars in the temples of God, and they will officiate for their dead. Then we will see our friends come up, and perhaps some that we have been acquainted with here. If we ask who will stand at the head of the resurrection in this last dispensation, the answer is – Joseph Smith, Junior, the Prophet of God. He is the man who will be resurrected and receive the keys of the resurrection, and he will seal this authority upon others, and they will hunt up their friends and resurrect them when they shall have been officiated for, and bring them up. And we will have revelations to know our forefathers clear back to Father Adam and Mother Eve, and we will enter into the temples of God and officiate for them. Then man will be sealed to men until the chain is made perfect back to Adam, so that there will be a perfect chain of Priesthood from Adam to the winding-up scene.

Discourses of Brigham Young, 116

— Brigham Young

We will take the best men we can find among them – when they pass through the veil they are in happiness, they are in glory, they go among the disembodied spirits; but they do not go where there are resurrected bodies, for they cannot live there: a Prophet or an Apostle cannot live there. They also go into the spiritual world to live with spirits. Do they commune with the Father and Son? The Father communes with them as He pleases, through the means of angels, or otherwise the Son and Holy Ghost. This is the situation of the Prophet, the Apostle, and all Saints before they receive their resurrected bodies; but they are looking forward to the time when they shall receive their bodies from the dust; and those that have been faithful, probably, will now soon get their resurrected bodies. Abraham has had his body long ago, and dwells with the Father and the Son, among all the Prophets and faithful Saints who received their resurrected bodies immediately after the resurrection of the Savior [Section 133:55]. They were then prepared to enter into the Father’s rest and be crowned with glory and eternal lives, but they were not prepared before. No spirit of Saint or sinner, of the Prophet or him that kills the Prophet, is prepared for their final state: All pass through the veil from this state and go into the world of spirits; and there they dwell, waiting for their final destiny.

Journal of Discourses 6:293-294, August 15, 1852

— Brigham Young

“When Jesus was on the earth, he said to his people, ‘How oft would I have gathered you, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not; therefore, behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’ (Matt 23:37-8) And if the Saints of this dispensation do not listen to the call of the good Shepherd, and gather according to the holy commandment, the time is not far distant, when the representatives of the Saviour now on earth, may have occasion to say, as he said, ‘Your house is left unto you desolate;’ for plagues, famine, pestilence, and death are beginning to circumscribe the earth; and where will safety be but in Zion – the land of God’s appointing – the home of the Saints; a land choice in products and government above all other lands; therefore, we say unto you, Arise and come forth, and tarry not, for the great day of the Lord is at hand, and who shall abide His coming?”

Messages of the First Presidency, April 1852, vol. 2, p. 99

— Brigham Young

“Six days is a mere term, but it matters not whether it took six days, six months, six years, or six thousand years. The creation occupied certain periods of time. We are not authorized to say what the duration of these days was, whether Moses penned these words as we have them, or whether the translators of the Bible have given the words their intended meaning. However, God created the world. God brought forth material out of which he formed this little terra firma upon which we roam. How long had this material been in existence? Forever and forever, in some shape, in some condition.”

Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe, p. 100

— Brigham Young

Some were disposed to do right with their surplus property, and once in a while you would find a man who had a cow which he considered surplus, but generally she was of the class that would kick a person’s hat off, or eyes out, or the wolves had eaten off her teats. You would once in a while find a man who had a horse that he considered surplus, but at the same time he had the ringbone, was broken-winded, spavined in both legs, had the pole evil at one end of the neck and a fistula at the other, and both knees sprung.”

Journal of Discourses, 2:306–7

— Brigham Young

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