C'est une surprise mais je suppose que

[FR] This is a surprise but I suppose it should not be. ¶

[FR] I am happy in the performance of my duties as a missionary. As Brother Allred spoke I could not help but think that I was never busier or more intensively occupied in my life. But the joy that has come to me in that labor of love, is greater than that realized in any other undertaking. ¶

[FR] This is a glorious work ! It is my privilege to labor with a splendid band of young missionaries, who have been an inspiration to me, especially as I have heard them report their labors in the mission field. I have felt that their experiences are similar to those of the seventies in the days of the Savior. When they returned and reported to him their labors and what they had witnessed, he said : "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." ¶

[FR] These young people are not wise in this world's learning, or experienced; they are youthful, inexperienced, frequently uneducated, and crude, but enjoying an experience and receiving an education superior to that obtained anywhere else. We value the privilege of educating our children in the great universities of the world, preparing them for life's duties ; but is it not far more important that they should be prepared both for this life's duties and those of the life to come, the eternities ? ¶

[FR] It is the greatest university training, to be thus divinely inspired, guided and educated. It is more than what people call religious training. There is in it also a most practical training for life's secular duties as well. It develops more than any college work will, initiative, self reliance, leadership, moral character, virtue, love of fellowmen, and above all the love of God, and a knowledge of him. ¶

I should be glad indeed to relate some of the really marvelous experiences of these young people. The Savior said, "This is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God and Jésus-Christ whom thou hast sent." That is what these young people are learning and of which they are testifying. Many of them are able to say, with clear consciences and fervor, that they know that God lives, that he is their Father, and that Jésus-Christ is their Savior. ¶

[FR] I read the Monday morning New York papers, giving an account of the Sunday discourses of the learned "Divines" of that great city. Rarely does some one of them fail to say something indicating a need of a new or different religion. Some openly advocate, even orthodox preachers, that there must be a broad rational religion in which all can unite. In other words, that the gate should be wide, easy to find, and the way broad and easy to walk in, to eternal life. ¶

[FR] These young people are testifying that there is "One Lord, one faith, one baptism;" that the way to eternal life is not to be so easily found, "because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." ¶

Not long since that very noted preacher Dr. Emerson Fosdick, of the Park Avenue Baptist Église, one of the most noted New York preachers, said, "Religion in this country, with its conflicting creeds, is a good deal of a mess. That many people are confused over it, looking at it as a kind of jungle without a road through it, everybody knows. And thus to be bewildered about religion is to many a source of mental and spiritual agony. The wish for certainty in religion is one of the most important desires of man. We can stand having all sorts of things shifting on every side of us, but when the solid ground itself shakes it is intolerable. Though we can welcome change in many realms, scientific, cultural and economic, when our basic ideas of what life is all about begin to vacillate, that means spiritual vertigo" — or stomach ache. ¶

Only a week or two since Dr. Beck, in the Unitarian Église, said that "Ghosts of the past are all that keep Christianity together today." ¶

Fifty years ago or more when I was a boy, and when spiritualism was being introduced, I heard the elders of the Église say that the time would come when all of the great truths of the Évangile would in some way be more or less duplicated, as spiritualism was then attempting to duplicate one of the features of the truth revealed in our time. Later came a science of healing by faith and a popular religion, its chief corner stone being healing by faith. ¶

Not long since, in Washington, a great conclave or general convention of the Protestant-Episcopal Église was held, in which there was a somewhat remarkable report made by a very dignified commission which had been appointed by that Église six years before to study the merits of faith or spiritual healing. That commission consisted of a number of noted bishops and deputies, among whom were three distinguished physicians, one Charles H. Mayo of Mayo Brothers, than whom there are no more distinguished physicians. This commission, after studying the subject for six years, made report confirming what the Prophet Joseph Smith learned in a day, in which they said that, "Christian healing has passed beyond the stage of experiment and its value cannot be questioned." ¶

Three conclusions were drawn by the commission, and the report asked the general convention to "thankfully recognize the deepening of the spiritual life of the Église which had come through the growing recognition of the healing power of God." ¶

[FR] The conclusions were, "that throughout the world spiritual healing is no longer the hope of a few, but the belief and practice of a large and rapidly increasing number of persons ;" that such healing is an experience of mankind that can no longer be questioned; that while faith in any supposed remedy produces some effect, faith in God, as revealed in Christ, is followed by results which are more sure, more lasting and of a more evidently spiritual character. ¶

What is called spiritual healing is rapidly becoming popular in many of the Églisees. ¶

Today, as we are commencing to rely more than formerly upon the power of the physician, should there not be a revival among us of that deep and profound faith which has so notably characterized Saints des Derniers Jours, so much in advance of all the Églisees? ¶

I am trespassing on the time allotted me. May the Lord help us to enjoy the blessings of the glorious Évangile of Jésus-Christ and its work in which we are engaged and which means so much to us, is my desire in the name of Jesus, Amen. ¶