We can replay at will the videos of recent Conference talks; we can turn to the printed Conference Reports for decades of past Conference talks; we can read the Journal of Discourses for many Conference addresses of the 19th century.

It’s much less common to know what an ordinary – non-General Authority – Latter-day Saint speaker said at any time in the past, especially in places far from Church centers. What did ordinary missionaries teach in all those street meetings in Europe? What did local members preach in sacrament meetings in Australia or Japan? Unlike Conference sessions, those speakers didn’t have shorthand reporters taking down their words. Yet it would be so interesting to know what they said – what principles they taught, what our ancestors heard at their first contacts with the Church.

Even so, I do still find occasional records of sermons given by Latter-day Saints. One of the most unusual times and places to have found such a talk preserved is the account below of a sermon given by one of the missionaries teaching in Calcutta, India, in 1851 – especially intriguing, because Emily Wittenbaker McMahon may have been in his audience.

The transcription isn’t perfect. I think there are several places where the reporter’s notes produced a garbled or at least incomplete paragraph. Yet it still does sound and feel very Mormon, with familiar doctrines, familiar phrases, close enough for me to believe it’s a fairly accurate report.

It was published in a newspaper in India in September, 1851.

Some of you don’t know what we believe, and I suppose I must tell you what we believe. We believe in God the Father, and Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost who regenerates. We believe that all mankind knows good and evil, because Adam and Eve fell. We believe that there is a revealed law and not a revealed law. The revealed law, brothers, is the book of Mormon, and the unrevealed law is on the conscience of mankind.

We believe, that, if they break the revealed law, they shall be cursed, and their souls when they come to die shall be confined on earth.

The book of Mormon, brothers, was revealed by an angel of the Lord to a young man, who was Joseph Smith, and he was enabled by the spirit to translate the book into English like John in the Isle of Patmos when he saw the angel, and this here book, brothers, is harmony with the New Testament, and is true.

Now the Church of the Mormons, brothers, has all the gifts of the Spirit. They can cure the sick, they can make the dead alive, they can make the eyes of the blind to see, and the ears of the deaf to hear, and all sorts of things.

Now, they are thought to be false prophets, and are, therefore, persecuted, and are now driven into the wilderness; but how can this be? Can false prophets perform miracles? Never! never! If they can, then God is not righteous to allow them to do all this; but, since they do perform these things here, wherefore they are not false.

Now, the Church has sent me to open a branch in Calcutta, if God will. The Saviour says to go and preach the gospel. it is a glorious work, brothers; and I mean to open a church here, which I hope will be filled, and the Gospel go rolling through India.

Now, I believe that the children is safe, because they don’t sin; where there is no transgression, there is no law; for to break the law is transgression, which brings sin, and sin brings condemnation; therefore, children is safe. Some of the clergy here don’t think that children who don’t get baptized are safe; because, they say, unbaptized children don’t go to heaven; but this is not true. Now, brothers, we are justified and sanctified by Christ; the justification of the Lord is just and true, and the sanctification of the Lord is just and true. I know that some will fall away, but this should not be done. Now, we believe the children of Israel will be gathered into Palestine in Jerusalem, but the saints are in the wilderness. Come, brothers, we will all go to the mountains of Ephraim, to our mother in the wilderness. I am sent to you to preach the Gospel, and call upon you to believe the gospel. I have told these truths, and you are held by it form this time forth. if you believe, you will, like the saints, cast out devils, be bit by serpents, and they will not harm you – drink poison, and it will not kill you – and you will do everything, and feel nothing.

I am called to be the minister of the gospel to you all present; and, if you want to be baptized, I am willing. Some thinks that the soul of man dies. Adam was a living soul, and, therefore, this cannot be. Adam sinned, and all mankind fell, but Christ has raised them up again. Now, if we did not sin, we would not want belief and baptism to save us; but, since we have sinned, they are necessary. At the last day, the soul shall be united to the body, and shall rise. Good souls shall go to heaven, and bad souls shall be shut up in the prison of conscience. The first death is spiritual, the second is natural; the first life is natural, and the second spiritual; therefore, it is fulfilled out “the first is last, and the last first.”

The people called Christians here do not believe in the gift of the spirit. The Apostles were required to wait for the Comforter, which was given in the day of Pentecost. Jesus was then considered to be the greatest impostor by those people; but then, when they came to consider, they believed on him, and three thousand of them was baptized unto repentance. I have the power to do the same, that is, if you will allow it, brothers; and if you do, I will dip you all. I am always ready, brothers, to do anything for you at one moment’s warning. Where shall we go – where shall we go? Shall we go to those people who have become theologians by learning in great colleges, who don’t believe in the gift of the Spirit, who persecute the saints, and have sent them into the wilderness; and are killing them, and would kill us all, brothers? No, no. if any man preach any other Gospel, let him be accursed.

The New Testament is a very good guide where the Spirit of God teaches – no fear, brothers, of the spirit of man dying – no unbaptized person can go to heaven – some people thinks that the thief was not baptized; but the Scriptures does not say that he was not baptized. They say that he went to heaven, when Christ says, “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” No such thing. peter tells you that Christ went into the bowels of the earth. Where, then could he have gone to, but to preach to the damned? There, then, the thief must have been, for Jesus told Mary that he did not go to his Father; and hence, the thief did not go to heaven.

The sons of perdition are going about to hinder the people of God, and they will try to do so to us; but they will be shut up by Michael with the devil for one thousand years, and there will be peace and joy for the Latter-day Saints.

Ponder on these few words I tell you to-night. God is sure. His word is sure; now soon shall the Church of god go into Jerusalem, and the new Jerusalem will be built by the children of Israel, and the Gentile saints will assist them.