The discourse is found in a small book measuring 5⅝ × 3⅝ × ⅜ inches (14 × 9 × 1 cm), with forty-six leaves. The pages are ruled with twenty blue horizontal lines, now faded. The volume is loosely sewn together with thread and lacks a cover. The book has sixty-three inscribed pages. paginated the first nineteen pages, although the first leaf, which presumably included pages 1 and 2, is now missing, as are the leaves containing pages 9 and 10 and pages 15 and 16. The numbered pages include inscriptions in black ink and graphite by Howard Coray and his wife, Martha Jane Knowlton Coray; some of the inscriptions are dated 1854 and 1855. Between August and October 1853, Howard Coray turned the book over and inscribed journal entries and financial notations on four leaves in the verso of the notebook, although it is likely that at least one leaf is missing. Beginning on the fifth extant leaf in the reverse of the notebook, Martha and Howard Coray transcribed copies of four accounts of discourses that JS delivered between 1840 and 1843, as well as a copy of Martha Coray’s patriarchal blessing.

The volume likely remained in the possession of the Coray family until at least July 1902. or his descendants apparently gave the book to Joseph F. Smith sometime prior to Smith’s death in 1918. By 1979 historians discovered the book filed among the Joseph F. Smith Papers in the Church Historical Department (now CHL).