“Contents,” Ensign, Sept. 1978 Ensign September 1978 Volume 8 Number 9 Contents Special Features First Presidency Message: Absolute TruthPresident Spencer W. Kimball 1830: Pivotal Year in the Fulness of TimesRichard L. Bushman The Spirituality of Joseph SmithDean C. Jessee Every Member WAS a MissionaryWilliam G. Hartley Challenge to Greatness: The Nineteenth-Century Saints in New YorkLavina Fielding Anderson The Way It Looks Today: A Camera Tour of Church History Sites in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Seventeen Centuries of ChristianityDe Lamar Jensen Why Study History?Elder G. Homer Durham Unique Teachings from the Doctrine and CovenantsWilliam E. Berrett Alvin Smith: Reminder of the Fairness of GodLarry C. Porter Makers of Moons and TestimoniesCaroline Eyring Miner “Daddy, I’m Talking to You”Dan L. Johnston Regular Features News of the Church On the cover: A stretch of the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania. On the banks of this river, the Prophet Joseph and Oliver Cowdery received the Melchizedek Priesthood at the hands of Peter, James, and John. Photography by Jed A. Clark. Inside front cover: The road to the Sacred Grove from the Joseph Smith farm near Palmyra. Inside back cover: The Hill Cumorah, crowned with the Angel Moroni monument. Buildings of the Rochester New York Stake welfare farm lie to the left; on the right is the visitors’ center.