“With Consoling Words”

Emma Hale Smith (1804-1879) was ever anxious to ameliorate the sufferings of others, even at the greatest personal cost. “Whatever [Emma's] hands found to do, she did with her might,” Emma's mother-in-law, Lucy Mack Smith, remembered, “and, although her strength was exhausted, still her spirits were the same, which, in fact, was always the case with her, even under the most trying circumstances.  I have never seen a woman in my life, who would endure every species of fatigue and hardship, from month to month, and from year to year, with that unflinching courage, zeal, and patience, which she has ever done.”¹

During her husband's darkest days unjustly imprisoned in Liberty Jail,² Emma, did not fail in “the office of thy calling [to] be for a comfort unto my servant, Joseph Smith, Jun., thy husband, in his afflictions, with consoling words.”³  Despite what she herself described as a “heart convulsed with anxiety,” professing “no one but God, knows the reflections of my mind and the feelings of my heart,”⁴ she did everything in her power to alleviate her husband's anguish—describing herself, “willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven, that I should for your sake.”⁵  Even in the face of her own exquisite challenges, Emma made the arduous journey to the Liberty Jail three times and willingly accepted incarceration within the prison's cruel confines in order to be with her beloved companion.⁶  When expulsion from Far West and relocation as a refugee in Illinois prevented her comforting him in person, she sent what aid she could by messenger, defying the, “walls, bars, and bolts, rolling rivers, running streams, rising hills, sinking valleys and spreading prairies” she described separating her from her beloved husband.

This simple portrait of Sister Emma⁷—with hands clasped in prayerful petition as she ponders what “consoling words” she might impart to her absent husband—is the artist's tribute to the selfless sacrifices of a woman who though, “tossed upon the ocean of uncertainty&ellip;breasted the storms of persecution, and buffeted the rage of men and devils, which would have bourne down almost any other woman”⁸ and was, through her faith in Christ, “able to get good out of every condition.”⁹