What's happening
This is a two-verse revelation, easy to read past, that quietly establishes one of the governing principles of the entire Church: that all things shall be done by common consent.
It comes in the same July 1830 cluster as Sections 24 and 25, given at Harmony to Joseph, Oliver, and John Whitmer. The first verse is ordinary, even mundane — practical instructions on how to spend their time in the weeks before the next conference: study the scriptures, preach, confirm the Colesville Saints, and work the land as needed. It is the kind of housekeeping counsel that fills much of early Church administration. But the second verse drops in a principle that would shape the Church forever after, and it does so almost in passing.
Study, preach, and labor (verse 1)
Behold, I say unto you that you shall let your time be devoted to the studying of the scriptures, and to preaching, and to confirming the church at Colesville... and to performing your labors on the land, such as is required, until after you shall go to the west to hold the next conference; and then it shall be made known what you shall do. — D&C 26:1
Notice the ordinary holiness of this list. Before any grand assignment, the Lord tells His leaders to study the scriptures, preach, strengthen the Saints, and do their farm work such as is required. The spiritual and the temporal sit side by side without embarrassment — searching the scriptures and securing the harvest are both part of a faithful week. And the horizon is short: do this until... the next conference; and then it shall be made known what you shall do. The Lord gives them enough light for the next stretch of road and no more. Much of discipleship is exactly this: faithful work in the ordinary interval, trusting that the next step will be made known when its time comes.
All things by common consent (verse 2)
And all things shall be done by common consent in the church, by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith. Amen. — D&C 26:2
This single sentence is one of the constitutional pillars of the Church. Common consent means that the decisions and officers and revelations of the Church are submitted to the body of the members for their sustaining vote. It is the principle that was already in motion when the Articles and Covenants were received by unanimous voice at the June 1830 conference (Section 20), and when no one was to be ordained in a branch without the vote of that church (D&C 20:65). Here it is stated as a standing law: all things shall be done by common consent.
It is worth being clear about what this is and is not. It is not democracy in the sense of the people generating the doctrine — revelation still comes through the Lord's appointed channel (Section 21). But the Lord binds Himself, in a sense, to seek the sustaining of His people. The members do not vote on what is true; they covenant to uphold and act on it together. Authority descends from heaven and is ratified by common consent on earth — the same two-handed pattern we saw in the offices of Section 20. It guards the Church against both anarchy and tyranny: no one is forced to follow what the body has not agreed to uphold, and the body does not run ahead of revelation.
And notice the conditions attached: common consent is to operate by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith. This is not parliamentary procedure for its own sake. The sustaining vote is meant to be a spiritual act — a body of believers prayerfully uniting their faith, so that what they receive, they receive by faith, together. The vote is the visible sign of an invisible agreement of hearts.
How the section is built
Two verses, and the contrast between them is the whole lesson. Verse 1 is the near horizon: concrete, time-bound instructions — study, preach, confirm, farm — until the next conference, after which more will be revealed. Verse 2 is the standing principle: all things... by common consent... by much prayer and faith. The Lord embeds an enduring constitutional law inside a passage of routine scheduling. That placement is itself instructive: the great governing principles of the kingdom are not always announced with trumpets; sometimes they are handed over quietly, in the middle of ordinary business, to people simply trying to know what to do next week.
How this sits in the documentary record
Where this lands
It would be easy to undervalue Section 26 because it is short and its first verse is so plain. But folded into its two verses is a principle that has protected the Church for nearly two centuries: that the Lord leads His people through revelation and asks them to uphold that leadership by their own free, prayerful consent. He does not drive the kingdom forward over the heads of its members; He invites them to raise their hands and own it. That is a striking amount of trust to place in ordinary believers — and a striking restraint on the part of heaven.
The deeper note is the one in the last clause: by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith. Common consent, at its best, is not a vote in the political sense but an act of shared faith — a whole body of disciples uniting to receive together what no one of them could receive alone. The Lord could have built a kingdom run purely from the top. Instead He built one that moves forward only as its people, by much prayer and faith, agree to move with it.