[CRICKETS CHIRPING] It was nighttime in the Ohio town of Kirtland, and Apostle Parley P. Pratt had already gone to bed when there was a knock at the door. It was several brethren with fellow Apostle Heber C. Kimball who said he had felt inspired to wake Elder Pratt and give him a blessing. "Thou shalt go to upper Canada, even to the city of Toronto, and there thou shalt find a people prepared for the gospel. And thou shalt organize the Church among them. And from the things growing out of this mission shall the fulness of the gospel spread into England." So as Brother Pratt prepared for his journey in far off Toronto, the Lord was preparing for the conversion of the future third President of His Church in the latter days, John Taylor. [MUSIC PLAYING] Born November 1, 1808 in Milnthorpe, Westmoreland County, England, John Taylor as a young boy had seen the vision of an angel in the heavens holding a trumpet to his mouth and sounding a message to the nations, a vision John didn't understand until years later. He was baptized a member of the Church of England as a baby. And when he was about 16, John decided to join the Methodist Church. And within five years from that time, John and his family had immigrated to Toronto, where he became a class leader in the Methodist Church there. One class member was Leonora Cannon, who had traveled to Canada from England as a ladies' companion. John Taylor had met his future wife. As time went on, he and several friends became dissatisfied with many Methodist doctrines and formed their own study group. While this group held their meetings, a nearly destitute Parley P. Pratt left a sick wife down in Ohio to go to upper Canada, even to Toronto, to preach the restored gospel. After John had heard Parley preach, however, he was not converted immediately. For three weeks he followed the American from place to place, listening to his sermons and recording them so he could compare them with the scriptures. He also made a prayerful study of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Finally, he was convinced that the true gospel of Jesus Christ had been restored to the earth by heavenly messengers. The meaning of his childhood vision had been made clear. He and Leonora were baptized in May 1836. Others of the study group were also baptized, among them Joseph Fielding. He asked John Taylor to write concerning the gospel to his brother, a minister in Preston, England. And thus, the way was prepared for the fulness of the gospel to be spread into England, as Elder Kimball had prophesied. Only a few months after his baptism, John Taylor was placed in charge of the Church in Canada until a year later, Joseph Smith asked John to settle in Far West, Missouri. There the Taylors lived for a year, long enough for John to be ordained an Apostle in 1838, and long enough to suffer through some of the worst mob persecutions the Saints saw in Missouri. So within a few months, the Taylors were moving again. This time to Illinois, where they lived in an old military barracks while John prepared for a mission to England. After his mission, he helped to build Nauvoo into one of the finest cities in the West and served his community more than ably as editor of two papers, the Times and Seasons concerned more with Church matters and the Nauvoo Neighbor, concentrating more on cultural and educational matters. Then on June 27, 1844, tragedy struck in nearby Carthage, and John Taylor was there. [SINGING A POOR WAYFARING MAN OF GRIEF]

"I sang a song that had lately been introduced into Nauvoo. The song was very much in accordance with our feelings, where our spirits were all depressed and gloomy with ominous forebodings.

Soon afterward, I saw men with painted faces coming around the corner of the jail. [GUN SHOT] "A ball passed through the panel of the door and struck Brother Hyrum. [GUN SHOT] "Another ball from outside entered his back.

They pushed the door some distance open and discharged their guns into the room, when I parried them off with my walking stick. [GUN SHOTS RING] "I remember feeling as though my time had come. After parrying the guns for some time, seeing no hope of escaping, it occurred to me that we might have some friends outside. I made a spring for the window. As I reached the window, I was struck. [GUN SHOT] "I felt myself falling outside, [GUN SHOT] but immediately I fell inside from some unknown cause and [GUN SHOTS RING] falling under the bed not far from the window. While on my way, I was wounded in three other places. Joseph also made an attempt to leap out of the window. [GUN SHOTS RING] "Oh, how lonely was that feeling--cold, barren, and desolate. Our Prophet, our counselor, our general, our leader was gone." [MUSIC PLAYING] But the Church did not die with the Prophet, nor did John Taylor, who was miraculously saved, as his watch stopped a bullet aimed for his heart. During the winter of 1846, John with two other Apostles was called on a second mission to England, where they spent nine months settling problems in the branches of the Church and gathering scientific instruments for the Saints to use in their westward trek. They returned in April 1847, just in time to deliver the instruments to Brigham Young, who was leaving for the West with the advanced company. John Taylor was left behind to help organize and lead the main body of Saints in their westward journey two months later. John Taylor remained in Salt Lake Valley that first trying winter, while Brigham Young and others of the Twelve returned to Winter Quarters, Nebraska. Two years later, John Taylor left Utah to fulfill a mission to France, where he organized a project for bringing the sugar beet industry to Utah and directed the translation of the Book of Mormon into French and German. Later in the Eastern United States, he presided over the branches of the Church. An able writer, he penned essays, editorials, poems, and wrote the book Mediation and Atonement, a major contribution to an understanding of the Atonement of Christ, who is the Redeemer of mankind and Mediator with the Father. One of his most courageous writings, however, came as a part of his calling in the eastern states. The doctrine of plural marriage had recently been announced, and to help curb the renewed surge of anti-Mormon sentiment, Brigham Young sent brethren to various cities around the country to set up newspapers and tell the Mormon viewpoint. John Taylor went to New York and located in the very heart of that city's newspaper world, centered between the New York Herald and the Tribune, two of the most outspoken anti-Mormon newspapers in New York, on the corner of N and Nassau Streets. And what did Mr. Taylor call his newspaper? Why, The Mormon. With a masthead filling at least one fourth of the front page, editor Taylor left no doubt in the reader's mind that he believed it is better to represent ourselves than be represented by others. "We are Mormon," he declared in the first issue, "inside and out, at home or abroad, in public and in private, everywhere." Well had he earned his unofficial title "defender of the faith." After returning to Utah once again, he was able to spend a little more time with his family, as he filled various civic and territorial positions. Then in 1877, John Taylor was called to the most important assignment in his Church career. On August 25th, Brigham Young died. And as President of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, John Taylor assumed the leadership of the Church. Three years later in the Tabernacle at October general conference 1880, the new First Presidency was sustained by the separate priesthood quorums of the Church, a procedure instituted by John Taylor, one of several procedural and organizational changes he made to meet the needs of a growing Church, one which is still observed. As Church President, John Taylor faced challenges small and great. Each challenge, however, was met with a characteristic width and forthrightness he had shown in his lifelong defense of the gospel. In 1882, after he had officially been President of the Church for only two years, the Church's very survival was threatened with passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act in the United States Congress. Anti-Mormon sentiment had been growing steadily since the public announcement of plural marriage some 30 years earlier. The effect of that bill on Church members was devastating. With the stroke of a pen, over 12,000 citizens lost their right to vote, to serve on juries, or to hold public office--not only citizens who practiced plural marriage, but as the law was interpreted by federal officials, those who also simply believed in the practice. Furthermore, most Church leaders went into hiding to avoid the possibility of life imprisonment under one judge's ruling, which could send them to prison for up to five years for each day that they lived with any one of their plural wives. Although the ruling was later declared unconstitutional, thousands of Mormon fathers did go to prison "for conscience sake," as they expressed it. Perhaps no one was better prepared to defend the Church at this time than John Taylor. Yet, even his experience was little match for the onrushing tide of legal judgments. Even he found it necessary to go into hiding. In his last public appearance in February 1885, he asked: "What would you do? Would you resent these outrages and break the heads of the men engaged in them? No, avoid them, just as you would wolves or snakes. But no breaking of heads, no bloodshed, rendering evil for evil. Let us try to cultivate the spirit of the gospel." That night following his sermon, President Taylor went into self-imposed exile in the homes of friendly Saints. Despite the need for secrecy and limited travel, an amazing amount of correspondence and Church business was carried out. Business and news was mostly done through the mail. Personal meetings were rare. The First Presidency, for example, met only once at midnight during the two and a half years of President Taylor's exile. And visits from family members were almost as rare. His love for and advice to them had to be conveyed through the mail, as in the letter that he wrote on his 78th birthday: "Some of you have written that you would like to have a peep at me. I heartily reciprocate that feeling and would like to have a peep at you on this occasion, but in my bodily absence, my spirit and peace shall be with you." And characteristically rising above his problems, he advised: "If we are doing the will of the Lord, out persecutions and trials may be blessings in disguise.

Our great Redeemer said, Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for my sake. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. We should feel, as Paul said in his day, For our affliction is but for a moment." And perhaps the challenges and trials faced by John Taylor did seem to him but for a moment, for within that year his health began to fail. And on Monday, July 25, 1887, his spirit slipped beyond the reach of his enemies. Seventy-six years later a tribute to John Taylor was published in the Congressional Record of the United States, where he was praised "as a leader of his people, as a missionary who converted hundreds to the church in America, England, France, and other countries, as a journalist and editor, as a legislator, and as a devoted husband and father. But further, he was a strong and determined defender of human liberty." And so it was that President John Taylor would be considered a giant among men of any generation. "We are in the hands of God. And the nation is also in the hands of God. And we can do nothing, unless He permits it. Neither can this or any other nation. "He controls them according to the council of His own will, and He manipulates, manages, and directs the affairs of the children of men. He has appointed us to do a work. It is not our work, but we are willing to do it with His help. Will He be thwarted in His designs? I tell you, no. The kingdom of God will rule forth, and no man can stay it." [MUSIC PLAYING]