Closing Remarks at Sunday School Union Meeting

I desire to say just a few words. The benefit of our Sunday school work to our children and the rising generation cannot, I think, be too highly regarded by the Latter-day Saints, and more especially by those who are rearing children, and who desire to have their children brought up and to grow up in the way they should go. ¶

One of our brethren, reporting his labors as stake superintendent of Sunday schools, made a remark something like this, that they had everything in excellent condition, but their greatest trouble was to get the boys to attend school. Now it occurred very forcibly to my mind while our brother was giving utterance to these words that this difficulty can be easily overcome, if the fathers and the mothers will take sufficient interest in their boys and in their girls to see to it that they attend the Sabbath school. But if the fathers and the mothers are indifferent to the welfare of their children, and indifferent to the efforts that are being made by the teachers of the Sunday schools for the benefit of their children, and allow their children to roam about unguarded, uninstructed, unwatched, on the Sabbath day as they please, then it is a task indeed to get these children to go to school. It does seem to me that if all who have children would take sufficient interest in them to see that they all attend the Sunday schools, our schools would be well filled and our children would enjoy greater opportunities than many of them do today. It shows a woeful neglect and deplorable carelessness or thoughtlessness on the part of the parents when their children are not encouraged and urged, with all kindness and yet with all parental firmness, to go to the schools that are instituted in the Church for their guidance and instruction, and to help the parents bring up their children in the way they should go. I pray you, my brethren and sisters who have children in Zion, and upon whom rests the greater responsibility, teach them the principles of the Gospel, teach them to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in baptism for the remission of sins when they shall reach the age of eight years. They must be taught in the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by their parents, or the blood of the children will be upon the skirts of those parents. It seems to me so plain a duty and so necessary for them to see to it that their children avail themselves of the opportunities that are afforded them in having them taught and instructed in these principles in the Sunday schools that are established in the Church and conducted Sunday after Sunday for the benefit of their children. I should feel contemptible, I was going to say, in my own mind, in my own feelings, if I had children who were neglected by their parents in regard to these matters. Our little ones are only too anxious to go to Sunday school, no matter what may occur, whether it rains or is cold or pleasant or what not; whether they are sick or well they cannot be kept from the Sunday school unless there is great cause for it. And I will add this, if the Latter-day Saints will take an interest in their children, the interest which they ought to do, some of the conduct exhibited by some of the children, I suppose of the Latter-day Saints, which we have witnessed this evening as we came to this meeting, would never occur, and would not be seen in the cities of Zion. The first thing that met my eye as we came down the street was a crowd of boys puffing tobacco on the sidewalk. Who are they? Are they the children of the Latter-day Saints? No, I hope not — I hope not, for the good name of the Latter-day Saints, for our sake and credit as teachers, as children of God, as parents in Israel, who have the interest and welfare of our children at heart. I should pray that these boys that I saw on the street with their mouths and their breath befouled by tobacco smoke are not theirs. I hope they are not the children of Latter-day Saints. May be they are. If they are, I am sorry for it. Language was heard, profanity, taking the name of God in vain, on the Sabbath day, by this Temple block, near the walls of this sacred building, where we meet to worship God and to pay our deference to Him and to acknowledge His hand and His mercies toward us here tonight. We heard the voice of profanity from the lips of children. Who are they? Are they yours, Latter-day Saints? Are they the children of men and women that have embraced the Gospel of eternal truth? If so, shame upon their parents as well as upon the children. That is my judgment and my verdict upon them. And if these children were taught and kept under proper influences and under the proper guiding eye of their parents they never would be left to do such things as these, nor would they ever do it, because they would be ashamed, and they would think too much of their parents to do it. But of course where children see their parents do those things, where children hear their parents do such things, you cannot blame the children so much for following in the footsteps of their parents or for emulating their example. The object of our Sunday schools and the object of our Church schools, the great, the paramount object, is to teach our children the truth, teach them to be honorable, pure minded, virtuous, honest and upright, and enable them by our advice and counsel and by our guardianship over them until they reach the years of accountability to become the honorable of the earth, the good and the pure among mankind, the virtuous and the upright, and those who shall be worthy to enter the house of God and not be ashamed of themselves in the presence of angels if they should come to visit them. Now I felt to make these few remarks, my brethren and sisters, tonight; and I say it is my judgment, and I think it must be the judgment of every intelligent man, that if the parents of children in this community would see to it that their children were kept under proper restraints and were properly admonished and taught, properly guarded in their youth, and sent to school under the influence of good teachers, which it is their duty to do, and is the best thing to do, the only thing to do for our children, that the evils of which I have spoken would not be witnessed in our midst. ¶

The Lord bless you and those who labor in the Sunday school cause, as well as in all departments of education for our youth, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶