Topics.—1. Lorenzo Snow as President. 2. Election of B.H. Roberts to Congress. 3. The Mission to Japan.
Questions and Review.—1. Who constituted the fifth Presidency of the Church? 2. Tell what you can about Lorenzo Snow. 3. What is the law of tithing? 4. What message did President Snow deliver regarding the law of tithing? 5. Why was the Church in debt? 6. Who opened the Japanese mission?
CHAPTER XXXIX.
PRESIDENCY OF JOSEPH F. SMITH.
The First Presidency of the Church was reorganized for the sixth time October 17, 1901. Joseph F. Smith was chosen president, and he selected for his counselors, John R. Winder and Anthon H. Lund. At a special conference held in Salt Lake City November 10, 1901, this presidency was sustained by the vote of the Church.
From his boyhood President Smith has been an active, earnest member of the Church over which he now presides. His father was Hyrum Smith the Patriarch, brother to the Prophet Joseph. You will remember how these two brothers were so closely together in the beginning of the Church, and how they were both killed in Carthage jail.
Joseph was thus left fatherless when he was a boy six years old. As a boy he had not the privilege of going every day to school or of playing peacefully in the door-yard of his home. Mobs drove them out of Missouri, and then out of Nauvoo. They had little peace. Two years after his father had been killed, Joseph's mother, with her family, had to leave her home, along with the Saints, and undertake the long westward journey. Although Joseph was only eight years old at the time, he successfully drove a team of oxen for three hundred miles over the rolling prairies of Iowa. This was not an easy task for the boy, for the road was often steep or muddy, and many older drivers had breakdowns on the way.
In chapter 27 of this history you are told of the Saints stopping for a time at Winter Quarters, getting ready to move westward. Joseph and his mother were with them. Most of his time was spent in herding his mother's cattle. And he was a good herdboy, too. He saw to it that none of them was lost. There were Indians in that country then, and often they would steal cattle and horses. One day Joseph had a narrow escape. It happened this way:
Joseph and another boy had driven their cattle to the herd-grounds, and they were having a good time on their horses which they rode. Suddenly, they heard the whoop of Indians. On looking up, they saw a band of about thirty savages riding toward them. They were naked, their bodies daubed with clay and their hair and faces painted! Joseph's first thought was not about himself, but about his cattle. If the Indians should drive off his cattle, the family would not be able to go to the Valley next spring. So, off he rode to try to save his stock, the Indians coming in the same direction. They whooped and yelled so that the cattle ran off in great fright. Then the Indians singled out Joseph, for they wanted his horse, which was a good one and could run. The chase was now on in earnest. Joseph turned. Some of the Indians followed, while others slacked to head him off. Soon he was between two parties of Indians. After a time they closed in on him. One of the Indians took him by the arm, and another by the leg, and lifted him from his horse, letting him fall to the ground. The horses jumped over him, but did not hurt him. The Indians rode off with the horse, but did not get the cattle.