I am a rough stone. The sound of the hammer and chisel is continually upon me. I desire the voice of the Lord to ring in my ears, and I am willing to bear the consequence.
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"It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know... that he was once a man like us...."
"There is an infinite number of holy personages, drawn from worlds without number, who have passed on to exaltation and are thus gods."
"I have been called of God to lay the foundation of a great work."
"I will preach on the stand what I preach in the pulpit."
"And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men."
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The metaphor of a rough stone shaped by hammer and chisel describes personal transformation through suffering and divine refinement. The speaker admits raw imperfection and welcomes the painful, grinding process of being shaped by a higher force. Seeking God's direct voice while accepting whatever hardship follows is the core declaration — faith not as comfort, but as willingness to be fundamentally remade at personal cost.
Smith founded the LDS Church in 1830 with minimal formal education, born into poverty on a Vermont farm. He endured mob violence, repeated imprisonment, and the forced exile of his followers from Missouri and Illinois. His self-image as a rough stone being divinely polished matches his biography: relentless persecution paired with unshakable conviction that God was actively shaping him through each trial, culminating in his assassination in Carthage Jail in 1844.
Smith lived during the Second Great Awakening, an era of explosive religious revival across America from the 1790s through the 1840s. Competing denominations fought for converts, and frontier communities craved direct spiritual experience over formal doctrine. Upstate New York, where Smith grew up, was dubbed the burned-over district for its intense revivalism. Claims of direct divine contact were both culturally resonant and socially dangerous, making willingness to bear consequences an especially loaded and personally costly declaration.
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