Introduction to Joseph Smith’s Discourses

Back to List of Joseph Smith Discourses

Throughout his lifetime JS gave many sermons, speeches, and other public addresses before church audiences and in civic and ecclesiastical settings. The Joseph Smith Papers Project has designated all these addresses as “discourses.” The tool on this page presents all of JS’s known discourses in chronological order. Also included are remarks and instructions, which were more private addresses delivered with varying degrees of formality.

On only two known occasions did JS produce notes or an outline for one of his discourses: the prayer of dedication at the house of the Lord in Kirtland, Ohio, on 27 March 1836 and instruction given at a church conference on 5 October 1840. In all other cases, the only records available of the text of a discourse are notes taken by those in the audience, either at the time of the discourse or shortly thereafter. These notes are often fragmentary rather than a word-for-word transcript of the address. In many instances, scribes recorded little more than the fact that JS gave a discourse. All of JS’s known discourses are presented in this list. By default, this list suppresses discourses that are known to have existed but were not recorded; users can view these nonextant discourses in the list by checking the box next to “Include nonextant discourses” on the left. For more on discourses as a genre, see the introduction to the Documents series.

Each entry here provides the date and location of a discourse, when known. Entries may also include additional information contextualizing the discourse and a list of topics found in the discourse. Users can search by topic using the “Keywords” search box.

Generally, each entry in the list links to only one version of each discourse, which is usually the version of the discourse presented in the Joseph Smith Papers print edition (the “featured” version). This version represents the earliest or most complete version and includes full annotation. Sometimes, especially in the 1840s, more than one featured version was presented in print with full annotation, and all those are presented here. Researchers wishing to view other records of the same discourse may click on the link to the featured version and select from the “Additional Versions” dropdown list at the top of the page. They may also consult the main calendar of documents, which includes all JS discourses arranged chronologically with the rest of the Joseph Smith Papers corpus.