At a conference in Norton, Ohio: "Bro. Joseph Smith Jun. then delivered a short prophecy, that if Zion was not delivered [in Jackson County, Missouri] the time was near when all of this Church, wherever they might be found, would be persecuted and distroyed [sic] in like manner."
At this conference, "President Smith then laid hands on certain children, and blessed them in the name of the Lord," which may have been the first time small children were blessed. Giving names and blessings to infants would become standard practice two decades later.
Joseph also preached, "It is very difficult for us to communicate to the Churches all that God has revealed to us, in consequence of tradition; for we are differently situated from any other people that ever existed upon this Earth. Consequently those former revelations cannot be suited to our condition, because they were given to other people who were before us. This statement of 'theocratic situation ethics' is further expounded in Smith's letter to Nancy Rigdon eight years later: "That which is wrong under one circumstance may be, and often is, right in another."
[Source: On This Day in Mormon History, http://onthisdayinmormonhistory.blogspot.com, based on Michael Quinn's Mormon Hierarchy vols 1 & 2]
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