The Integrity of His Heart

In her history, Lucy Mack Smith described Joseph Smith’s problem with his leg as a young boy and Hyrum’s role in helping alleviate Joseph’s pain. Before the famous surgery as the family tried to help him with the pain, Hyrum volunteered to take the place of their mother when she became ill caring for Joseph. She wrote, “Hyrum Smith, who was always rather remarkable for his tenderness and sympathy, now desired that he might take my place. As he was a very trusty, good boy we concluded that he might; and, in order to make the task as easy for him as possible, we laid Joseph upon a low bed; and Hyrum, for some length of time, sat beside him almost day and night, holding the affected part of his leg in his hands; and pressing it between them in order that his afflicted brother might, the better be enabled to endure the pain, which was so excrutiating, that he was scarcely able to bear it.” What a powerful image of the love of a brother! In a recent podcast, Hank Smith connected this story with one about 30 years later: “Here's Hyrum holding Joseph, and then you took us to Carthage Jail, where Joseph is holding Hyrum. This is a story of loyalty and goodness.” In Carthage Hyrum fell first, and Joseph cried out, “Brother Hyrum!” undoubtedly running to hold him for a brief moment as he sought to defend his friends. This ultimately led Joseph to jump out the window, protecting their lives. But he could not save Hyrum, and together they departed this life, “seal[ing] [their] mission and [their] works with [their] own blood” (Doctrine and Covenants 135:3).

                We often remember the suffering of the Prophet Joseph in Liberty Jail and his death in Carthage Jail, but we too often gloss over the fact that Hyrum was there suffering with him as well. In fact, the time of 1837-1838 must have been terribly difficult for Hyrum. In the fall of 1837 he left Kirtland for Far West with Joseph, hesitant to leave his wife who was about to have their 6^th child. One account relates that he “felt he had to go. He arrived in Far West on 30 October 1837. Immediately, he and the others began the challenging work of preparing for Church expansion in Missouri. A few days after his arrival, Hyrum received a letter from his brother Samuel in Kirtland, dated 13 October, nearly a month earlier: ‘Dear Brother [Hyrum], Jerusha … died this evening about half past seven o’clock. She was delivered of a daughter on the first or second of this month. She has been very low ever since.’ Samuel included part of a letter that his younger brother Don Carlos had penned on 9 October: ‘I called the family together. … [Jerusha] told the children to tell their father that the Lord had taken their mother and left them for you to take care of.’… Hyrum was distraught. Jerusha had been his love, his helpmeet, his strength. With deep sadness, on 13 November, only two weeks after his arrival, Hyrum started home and arrived in Kirtland in early December.” Joseph instructed Hyrum to marry Mary Fielding, which he did. He later wrote, “It was not because I had less love or regard for Jerusha, that I married so soon, but it was for the sake of my children.” They were soon thrown into the figurative fire as they passed through “many privations and must fatigue” to leave their home for Missouri in early 1838 with their six children. Their problems only grew from there, and “on 1 November 1838 a company of militia came for Hyrum. Mary, who was ill and only days away from delivering her first child, particularly needed him. Hyrum told them the situation, but they said they did not care and said he must go. To other questions they gave no answer but, as Hyrum later testified before the Nauvoo Municipal Court, they ‘forced me along with the point of the bayonet into the camp, and put me under the same guard with my brother Joseph.’ Within a month of Hyrum’s arrest, Joseph F. Smith was born.” And so, he missed the birth of two children in a year’s time, and he was unable in both cases to help his suffering wife. He wrote of the jail experience that they “endured almost everything but death, from the nauseous cell, and the wretched food.” What terrible suffering Hyrum endured for the gospel’s sake!

                Hyrum wrote after Carthage, “I had been abused and thrust into a dungeon, and confined for months on account of my faith, and the ‘testimony of Jesus Christ.’ However I thank God that I felt a determination to die, rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled [the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated], and which I had borne testimony to, wherever my lot had been cast; and I can assure my beloved brethren that I was enabled to bear as strong a testimony, when nothing but death presented itself, as ever I did in my life.” It is no wonder that the Lord would say in 1841, “And again, verily I say unto you, blessed is my servant Hyrum Smith; for I, the Lord, love him because of the integrity of his heart, and because he loveth that which is right before me, saith the Lord” (Doctrine and Covenants 124:15). His is a powerful example to all of us of how we should be true to the Lord and His prophet.