Gratitude for the Gospel and Report on the Salt Lake Stake

At the conclusion of each meeting of this conference I have felt in my heart a deep sense of gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the personal assurance he has given me of His presence with the Saints in this great conference. I don't know that the Church ever saw more splendid exhibitions of unity, perfect harmony of feeling, a more magnificent display of priestly influence than that which has been exhibited during this conference. The days of small things are past. The Kingdom of God shall not again be reduced to anything like its infancy; year by year we see it moving onward, increasing in strength and power, increasing in intelligence and in the virtues of the Gospel, until it has become a light unto the world placed upon a hill top, and it cannot be hid. No matter what circumstances may surround the Church, no matter what attitude the world may maintain toward it, no matter how devoutly some work for its destruction, all the world must admit that "Mormonism" is moving steadily onward in the face of the opposition of the world. ¶

I rejoice in this exhibition of power and progressiveness, because the work of God is dear to me, and is, in fact, the dearest thing I know. There is nothing on earth which has from me such reverence, such an abiding confidence, as this latter-day work. ¶

I can easily conceive of institutions of 'the earth going to pieces, of nations falling, of races being annihilated or absorbed by greater nations. But it is not within the scope of my mentaility to conceive of the destruction and annihilation of the work of God. Where that conviction or that feeling comes from, I leave you to judge. Whether it be from a steady growth of faith, from tradition or parental teachings, I am not, perhaps, prepared to say definitely. But there appears to me to be nothing on earth so strong, and so abiding, and so certain of triumph as the work of God. This too in the face of all the predictions that are made to the contrary. ¶

The remarks of Elder Stohl regarding the compliment which is paid by our friends, the enemy, to the Latter-day Saints as a people, wherein they say, "we have nothing against you Mormon people; in fact you are a very good people; you are industrious, you are honorable; you are, indeed, a good people; but your leaders are bad!" What a silly piece of sophistry this is. "Your leaders are bad, but you are good." Do you pluck grapes from thistles? Where do these leaders come from, are they not the fruit and the product of the people? When we desire to install one in any quorum to preside, do we go outside of the Church to find him? Invariably they are taken from the rank and file of the priesthood, from the people, and they are the fruit, the outgrowth of the people. What gives me great encouragement is that the people and the leaders are one, and that the people are like the leaders; if the leaders are corrupt and bad, then so are the people. If the people are good, then so are the leaders, they are the same kith and kin. The same spirit characterizes them that characterizes the people as a whole. What finer compliment could be paid to men than to say, that the great body of industrious, honest people known as the Latter-day Saints have unlimited confidence in their leaders? This is the compliment which the opposition pay to the leaders, when they say they are bad, for the people, four hundred thousand strong, represented by leading men from every ward and quorum in Zion, assemble and lift their hands, 10,000 strong, to support those leaders whom the world say are corrupt. I wonder if as much could be said of the leaders of the opposition, if there are people who have confidence in them to trust their tithes, and if necessary their lives, in the hands of those leaders? From my personal acquaintanceship with some of these men, I doubt if anybody on earth has confidence in them; I know I have not. I have traveled with them, corresponded with them, conversed with them, and have had business associations with some of them for years, but I have absolutely no confidence in them, and I know whereof I speak. Among us things are altogether different. It is the most inconsistent proposition I ever heard made that a people have bad leaders when those leaders are taken from and out of the people. Now to a stranger, and perhaps to some of our old members, these compliments which we pay to ourselves may be a little offensive. I admit we might go to the extreme in defending ourselves, but we must not forget, my brethren and sisters, that we are put on the defensive. The war which is waged against the Latter-day Saints compels them to speak in their own defense, or they stand condemned in silence; and since it is their right to speak no one can object to their speaking if they wish to. We do not look upon our leaders as being without blemish and perfect. We know they have weaknesses, and for their weaknesses we have sympathy and charity, because like weaknesses exist in us. If the leaders and the people were perfect there would be no use for the Gospel, so far as we are concerned, for the Gospel is the power of God unto perfection, or salvation. It is a means to an end, and it has imperfect beings to deal with, and that is why we have the Gospel to correct our evils and improve our lives. We do not admit, however, that the leaders of our people, or that the people themselves, are in the slightest degree below the average of Christian morality and discipleship. I was thinking while the brethren were speaking of a familiar passage found in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. They are a few of the sentences which fell from the Savior's lips while delivering His great sermon on the mount. Let me read three verses: ¶

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." ¶

"Blessed are ye when men revile you, and persecute you." Have we not been taught throughout this conference, and throughout our lives for that matter, the principles of forgiveness and charity and loving kindness? If the world did not persecute us and revile us we would have nothing to forgive, and we would suffer a great loss if we had no one to offend or oppose us. "Blessed are ye when men persecute you," because you then may exercise the highest virtues in the human soul, the virtues of forgiveness and charity. Our blessed Savior, the man of sorrows, came to earth to teach us how to live that we might live more abundantly, that life might be made large and beautiful in its nature, that it might be progressive in its course; and His life above all other lives teaches us the sublime principle of forgiveness. He, however, was not always meek and submissive. Not always did he seem to allow evil and sin and iniquity to pass by unrebuked. Sometimes His soul was stirred to indignation, and in nobility, yea sublimity of character did he denounce the hypocrite, and all who loved iniquity and unrighteousness, calling them hypocrites who garnished the sepulchres and so on, made the external look clean and white and beautiful, but within they were full of dead men's bones, and their hearts were corrupt and their inner lives unholy. They were not what they seemed or professed to be. But as we reach the climax in His sublime career, I fancy He almost needed this quality of denunciation and rebuke, and in the Garden of Gethsemene, on Golgotha's hill, He opened not His mouth but to utter the sublime words which made Him very God, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." This is no doubt the highest ideal ever given to the world, and every true disciple of Christ must strive to attain to that beautiful holy type of discipleship, to forgive when offended, to be longsuffering and charitable, not only with offending brothers, but with the enemies who avow their wrath and hatred for you. Then in this light, for a moment, contemplate the unique position which the Latter-day Saints occupy in this world. Where is there such a people, who have an opportunity of forgiving and blessing those who revile and who would persecute. There is only one thing upon which the Christian world are united, and that is in persecuting and denouncing the Latter-day Saints. The love of God has been unable to unite the Christian world for two thousand years, but the hate of the work of Christ has at last united them. Now, this is rather strange doctrine, but that is how it appears to a Latter-day Saint, and we claim the right to speak as we feel, so long as we respect other people in the same capacity. ¶

I am reminded of an incident, or rather of a few remarks made by President Smith not many moths ago, during the recent tirade of slander, of which he has been the extreme object. He came into a convention of Sunday school workers, was weary and exhausted from his day's toil, but was asked to speak to the convention, and during his address he gave expression to these thoughts, these feelings, rather: "To answer our enemies in the same angry spirit with which they attack us, would be to take the poison of the adder into our own hearts, and thereby debase ourselves to their level. It is better for us to say, 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.' But," he added, "I know that they do know what they are doing." Now, President Smith (since we are not in his preesnce, we may speak freely of him, for among the other virtues which he possesses is the virtue of modesty, and in his presence I should not feel free to speak of him in this light); knowing him to some degree at least as I do, I thought I saw in such an expression as this a splendid triumph in his character, for he is not a man like our friends cut in alabaster; he is a man whose blood is warm within, filled with impulses, passions, strong in intent in his nature, and after he had endured the most furious assault which had been made, carried on for months together, he could arise in public and speak with such meekness of spirit, I thought what a splendid victory he has gained over himself. How blessed is he in being able to say, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do," and he would not debase himself to answer back in the same angry spirit which characterized the assault made upon him. And then, as this is his experience, so it is the experience of every Latter-day Saint, for we are one, and we all have similar splendid opportunities of exhibiting these true marks of discipleship, forgiveness and charity. ¶

There is still another phase of this opposition which is developing quite a philosophy among us, the philosophy concerning opposition, for the. Book of Mormon has told us that there must be opposition in all things. We begin to appreciate the benefits of opposition. We now see that the curse that seeming curse, which was pronounced upon Father Adam and Mother Eve, was a blessing in disguise, and today the disguise is removed and we see it plainly. The. Lord, when He cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, told them to subdue the earth and conquer it, and have dominion. That was no curse. That was the greatest blessing which ever came, to the human race, when He told them to get to work, to conquer and subdue the earth, He showed them the pathway to dominion, to sovereignty, to power. What a splendid journey mankind has traveled from that day to this! How the earth is his, and serves his purpose; how the beasts of the field and all the creatures of the earth are a service to man, because he has conquered the earth and made it his. So down through all the vicissitudes of human life, opposition, resistance has been a cause of development in men of powers and faculties which they would not have known had it not been for this opposition. Does not the eagle dash his beak harshly on a rock before the Igneuman comes; but with the fight he takes on new life, increased powers are developed, and he is made stronger and heroic for the viscissitudes through which he has passed. In national life the same principle holds. Where will you go for your ideals as American citizens, to which particular period will you appeal for the highest types of American citizenship, for the finest samples of patriotism? You will not go to the long period of prosperity. You will go back to the dark days, to the crisis in national history to a Nathan Hale, or an Ethan Allen, who, when being led to the scaffold and asked if he had anything to say, his words were, "My only regret is that I have but one life to give to my country." You will go back to Washington who, with his sons at Valley Forge, faced the thrills and difficulties of adverse wintry elements, scantily clad, foraging for food, but forced his way to victorious deliverance. You will go back to the critical period of Lincoln for another ideal. And so we must always go to the dark hour, the day of adversity, to discover our real strength, and see the development of the highest principles and virtues within us. And with us as a people does not the same principle hold? Since we have endured the hardships of expulsion from Missouri and Illinois we could be no more paralyzed or frightened by such things, because the work of God has triumphed over these things, and grown stronger withal. In fact, I believe we may lay down as a fundamental principle in human experience, one which history will bear out satisfactorily, that men seldom do great things voluntarily, that the greatest achievements in the world have come out of necessity. Men do things because they have to; at least that has been our experience. Locally, what has been our history in this respect. We have spoken of the increased number, the increase of territory which is occupied by our people. We speak with pleasure and pride of the vast expanse of territory occupied by the Saints of God. We point to Mexico on the south and to Canada on the north, and the splendid stretch of land between that is more or less within the domain of Mormonism. How did we happen to acquire our foothold and standing in Mexico? Not because we wanted to, but because we were compelled to, because things were uncomfortable in Utah, and we had to go to Mexico. How did we discover and acquire our foothold and promising commonwealths and prosperity in the Gem state on the north? Not because we wanted to go to Idaho, but because under peculiar existing circumstances we had to go to Idaho, and the same thing may be said of Canada as well. So that opposition and necessity have brought to us the greatest blessings we know; and if we ever move from here, in part or in whole, (I don't see how that will be) history suggests that we thereby might move another step forward because it will be conformable for us to do it. So that we have nothing to fear in opposition, but we need to rejoice and be exceeding glad because of the blessings which come to us by reason thereof. ¶

I am reminded of the words of the Prophet Joseph, which let me read in conclusion, because they are a source of encouragement to me, and they will be to all Latter-day Saints; and if he who had passed through the trying ordeals that he experienced, if he could speak this way, surely we, seventy years later with all the splendid achievements passed before us, we may also echo his words. Said he: ¶

"No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecution may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may vent her venom, but the truth will go forth, nobly, boldly and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done." Amen. ¶