The work of the Restoration is in reality great and marvelous. It is, to those who take the time to view it properly and ponder its significance, breathtaking.
The great ones of the earth shall yet rise up and acknowledge Joseph Smith and Mormonism as a preeminent blessing to the world. A number of prominent persons over the years have made such acknowledgments.
Josiah Quincy, a man who became the mayor of Boston, visited Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. He later wrote:
“It is by no means improbable that some future textbook, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?
“And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants.”
(Figures of the Past, Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883, pp. 376-77.)
It is reported that Count Leo Tolstoy, in speaking of the Mormons, said:
“Their principles teach the people not only of heaven and its attendant glories, but how to live so that their social and economic relations with each other are placed on a sound basis. If the people follow the teachings of this church, nothing can stop their progress-it will be limitless.
“There have been great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity. If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.”
(Thomas J. Yates, Improvement Era, February 1939, p. 94.)