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Joseph Smith said,
During this time of great excitement my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness; but though my feelings were deep and often poignant, still I kept myself aloof from all these parties, though I attended their several meetings as often as occasion would permit. In process of time my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with them; but so great were the confusion and strife among the different denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was, and so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion who was bright and who was wrong.
On December 1, 1819, the Palmyra Register noted the dedication of the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra. One Presbyterian historian, Dr. John A. Matzko, speculates:
If Joseph Smith was present that day, one month shy of his fourteenth birthday, this sermon had much to engage his imagination, tuned as it was to sonorous religious language. And he might well have attended, because the dedication of the Presbyterian Church was as much community event as religious service. If so, it would have been the only dedication of a religious structure that Joseph witnessed before the dedication of the Kirtland Temple in 1836.[1]
Notes
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