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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

All who have lived on the earth according to the best light they had, and would have received the fullness of the Gospel had it been preached to them, are worthy of a glorious resurrection, and will attain to this by being administered for, in the flesh, by those who have the authority. All others will have a resurrection, and receive a glory, except those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost. It is supposed by this people that we have all the ordinances in our possession for life and salvation, and exaltation, and that we are administering in these ordinances. This is not the case. We are in possession of all the ordinances that can be administered in the flesh; but there are other ordinances and administrations that must be administered beyond this world. I know you would ask what they are. I will mention one. We have not, neither can we receive here, the ordinance and the keys of the resurrection. They will be given to those who have passed off this stage of action and have received their bodies again, as many have already done and many more will. They will be ordained, by those who hold the keys of the resurrection, to go forth and resurrect the Saints just as we receive the ordinance of baptism, then the keys of authority to baptize others for the remission of their sins. This is one of the ordinances we cannot receive here, and there are many more. We hold the authority to dispose of, alter and change the elements; but we have not received authority to organize native element, to even make a spear of grass grow.

Journal of Discourses, p. 397

— Brigham Young

I will take the liberty of saying to every man and woman who wishes to obtain salvation through him (the Savior) that looking to him, only, is not enough: they must have faith in his name, character and atonement; and they must have faith in his father and in the plan of salvation devised and wrought out by the Father and the Son. What will this faith lead to? It will lead to obedience to the requirements of the Gospel; and the few words that I may deliver to my brethren and sisters and friends this afternoon will be with the direct view of leading them to God.

Journal of Discourses, Vol.13, p. 56, from talk given July 18, 1869

— Brigham Young

“Now, remember, my brethren, those who go skating, buggy riding or on excursions on the Sabbath day – and there is a great deal of this practiced – are weak in the faith. Gradually, little by little, the spirit of their religion leaks out of their hearts and their affections, and by and by they begin to see faults in their brethren, faults in the doctrines of the Church, faults in the organization, and at last they leave the Kingdom of God and go to destruction. I really wish you would remember this, and tell it to your neighbors. “

Journal of Discourses, 15:83

— Brigham Young

President Brigham Young said to the saints in anticipation of the arrival of more of our members walking across the plains on the Sabbath Day: “When those persons arrive I do not want to see them put into houses by themselves. I want to have them distributed in this city among the families that have good, comfortable houses; and I wish the sisters now before me, and all who know how and can, to nurse and wait upon the newcomers, and prudently administer medicine and food to them. . . . The afternoon meeting will be omitted, for I wish the sisters to go home and prepare to give those who have just arrived a mouthful of something to eat, and to wash them, and nurse them up. . . . Prayer is good, but when (as on this occasion) baked potatoes, and pudding, and milk are needed, prayer will not supply their place. Give every duty its proper time and place.”

Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:100-101

— Brigham Young

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