We have it to do, we can’t build up Zion sitting on a hemlock slab singing ourselves away to everlasting bliss; we have to cultivate the earth, to take the rocks and elements out of the mountains and rear Temples to the Most High God; and this temporal work is demanded at our hands by the God of heaven…. This is the great dispensation in which the Zion of God must be built up, and we as Latter-day Saints have it to build…. We are obliged to build cities, towns and villages, and we are obliged to gather the people from every nation under heaven to the Zion of God, that they may be taught in the ways of the Lord.
– Wilford Woodruff, 10/8/1873