Jedediah M. Grant Preaches a Masterful Sermon from a Blank Sheet of Paper (c. 1839–1840)

During Jedediah M. Grant's mission to the Southern States in the early 1840s, he became renowned as one of the most powerful and persuasive preachers in early LDS missionary history. His sermons were entirely spontaneous — he never prepared them in advance, relying instead on the Spirit to fill his mind with truths from the scriptures.

A group of skeptical Southerners — whose own ministers labored for days preparing their sermons — refused to believe that Grant never studied up a sermon. They devised what they believed would be a humiliating public test. They challenged him to preach to them at an appointed date in the courthouse at Jeffersonville, Virginia, from a text that they would furnish on the spot.

Their plan was to hand him a blank sheet of paper in front of his audience and make a fool of him.

On the appointed day, before a full courthouse audience, they handed Elder Grant a piece of blank paper.

Without hesitation, Grant turned the mockery into a masterpiece. He reportedly declared something to the effect: 'You sectarians believe that out of nothing God created all things — and now you wish me to create a sermon from nothing, for this paper is blank.' Then, spontaneously and without a moment's pause, he proceeded to deliver a marvelous sermon on the blankness and emptiness of Protestant doctrine compared to the fullness of the restored gospel.

The result was the opposite of what his opponents intended. The congregation was won over almost entirely. So moved was one well-wisher by the young Elder's remarkable gifts and evident poverty (his clothing was badly frayed) that he suggested the congregation take up a collection. The audience responded generously — and the sum collected provided Brother Grant not only with a fine new suit of clothes, but with a horse and saddle as well.

Stories of Grant's unforgettable sermons in the Southern States Mission circulated for years and decades after his departure from the mission field. He went on to become the Second Counselor in the First Presidency under Brigham Young and the first mayor of Salt Lake City — dying at age 40 in 1856.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Gene A. Sessions, 'The Holding Forth of Jeddy Grant,' Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter 1979), pp. 62-63.):

The scene is Jeffersonville, the seat of Tazewell County, Virginia, sometime in the late 1830s. A large congregation of lawyers and ministers has assembled in the courthouse for an unusual sermon to be delivered by a brash young Mormonite missionary from Ohio. The courthouse is packed and buzzing as lanky Jedediah Morgan Grant, gaunt, and threadbare, strides to the stand. A clerk, appointed for the occasion, steps up and hands Jeddy a folded piece of paper on which is written the text for his sermon. The audience titters as the green preacher opens the paper—only to find it blank! ... they would choose, but of all texts this is my favorite one. You see the paper is blank. . . . You sectarians down there believe that out of nothing God created all things, and now you wish me to create a sermon out of nothing, for this paper is blank. Now, you sectarians believe in a God that has neither body, parts nor passions. Such a God I conceive to be a perfect blank, just as you find my text is.