Report on the California Mission

The congregation sang the hymn, "Be it my only wisdom here." ¶

The congregation sang the hymn, "Guide us, O Thou great Jehovah." ¶

(President of California Mission.) I sincerely desire your prayers of faith, my brethren and sisters, in my behalf, that the time I occupy shall be of mutual worth and advantage. I rejoice in the testimony of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, sensing the fact that it is "the power of God unto salvation." I rejoice in the labors which have been assigned to me, and in the companionship of some of the bright and noble spirits with which God has blessed the fathers and mothers of Zion, my companions in the mission field. I note the faces of some of the parents of my companions in this audience. I note, too, some of my brethren who have been honorably released and returned home to their loved ones and the home circle. ¶

The work in our mission is going on apace. We have been able to do a little better this year than last, despite the fact that there have been some contingencies arise that have, in a way, deprived us of accomplishing all we might have done. There is a very unsettled condition, politically and socially, in some parts of California. You who have read the papers know something of the conditions that have obtained in the city of San Francisco, since the Lord visited that place with an earthquake, eighteen months ago, The conditions that prevail there now are very deplorable, from a social and civil standpoint. This has hampered our work in what was the biggest city and the best field that we had in the mission. In Los Angeles, a new survey of the city streets and the removal of some buildings, made it obligatory upon us to vacate the church that we had occupied for some four years. This upset the work a little while, in that city. Also, during the month of August, when we have very peculiar weather, several of the Elders, nearly every Elder, I might say, in the mission suffered from an attack of the 'grip.' One of our brethren, a dearly beloved Elder, died after 40 hours of illness. This was a sad blow to us in our field, being the first of the kind that I have met in my experience. Other matters, such as the burning of all our tracts forwarded from the Southern States mission, in a railroad wreck ; the fact that the enemy had aroused the animosity, of some of the police officers in two of the leading cities, Sacramento and Los Angeles, who forbade us the occupation of corners where we had been used to holding our street meetings, and sent us into some of the larger alleys, also handicapped us for a short period. But during the Irrigation Congress, when the Ogden Tabernacle Choir visited us, and sang for the people there, the prejudice was largely removed, and our conditions are much more favorable today, and we are going on, as I said in the beginning, better than we did last season. We have not as yet been able, seemingly, to resort to the successful way of selling books as have some of our brethren in eastern fields. If you offer a book to the average Californian, he wants to know if there is any money in it, before he buys or accepts it; and if you make answer, as President Joseph F. Smith did one time when this same question was put to him as a boy missionary in that state, in the early fifties, that "it has in it the eternal riches of heaven," they will reply that California is a good enough heaven for them. But there are some of our Elders who made a very excellent record last month in the sale of books, and it encouraged us, and we hope to emulate the example of our more successful brethren in the eastern states missions. ¶

I rejoice in the testimonies that have been borne by the brethren at this conference, and in the spirit of the conference. The remarks of President Smith and of the brethren who followed in the same line of thought, in relation to the proper development of our youth, the care of our children, the education of the sons of men, recalling to my mind some of the statements made by the leading educators of America, in the late National Educators' Association that met in the city of Los Angeles. President Shafer, in opening that Congress, spoke of the proud record that had been made by the United States in the past fifty years, since that Association was instituted. He called attention to the fact that there were some undesirable features in our educational system, and also that there were coming to our land people who seemed not to appreciate its institutions, its freedom and its liberty. To correct this, he thought it would be necessary to teach a little more of Christian doctrine in the schools, or at least, he went so far as to say this, that it was necessary for the perpetuity of the institutions of our government that there should be Christian training of the youth of our country. He made a protest, too, in a measure, against the teaching that the only heroes of our nation, the only names that become immortal, almost, in the pages of history are those of men who have won their laurels upon the battleship, or upon the field of blood ; that when our boys and girls open the pages of history, the names there placed and decorated with laurels of immortality are the warriors of our country. He wished the teachers of America to teach the youth thereof that in the field of industry, or of art, commerce, or science, there was greater room to immortalize one than upon the battle field. We know ourselves; my brethren and sisters, those who have grown aged, or to mature years, that the arts of peace have their heroes no less than the arts of war. But this does not occur to the average student in the schools of the day. They do not read much of what the great statesmen and social reformers of the world have done. They are but little acquainted with what Franklin, Stephenson, Watt, Howe, Edison and Marconi, have done for the people of this world. Possibly it is because they have been, some of them, contemporaneous with us, and others have left this stage of action but a few years since. I thought when the doctor was speaking of girls who ofttimes wish that they were men, because of having read history such as I have spoken of, that it would be an advantage to them if all read the life of Florence Nightingale, and what she did to immortalize her name. At a dinner party given by Lord Stratford, in commemoration of the Crimean war, when he gathered his old associates about him, at the wine cup after dinner, he proposed that each man present should write upon a slip of paper the name of the one whom he felt should be crowned with immortality, that they might have a concensus of opinion in relation to that person whose name should go down in the annals of history. Strange to say, when a collection of the papers was made, they all bore the same name, and instead of it being one of the old warriors, one of the great chiefs of martial strife, it bore the name of a weak woman — Florence Nightingale. I thought what an angel of peace and mercy she must have been to the soldiers of that day, that they should recognize her as the superior, in that sense, of all who had taken part in that strife. She was spoken of affectionately by one of the old soldiers, who lay in a sick ward in the hospital. He said she came, and in fact was known, as the angel of light. He said, "She could not speak to us all, as she went through the wards where were so many suffering, prostrate forms ; she could not lay her hand upon the burning brow of every sick soldier, but where she could not go, her shadow fell, and kissing her shadow we could turn our faces to the wall content to die in the peace of her presence." I thought, if a few such examples as this were portrayed and held forth before the young women of America they would not wish themselves unsexed; and, if they could have heard the remarks made by Elders Clawson and George Albert Smith yesterday, they would not seek for the warrior's crown, but for that which is most regal above all, the crown of sweet maternity. ¶

There were two other great educators, who, in dealing with their state papers in relation to the matters of education and its bearing upon commerce and upon civilization, Professors Storm, of Iowa, and W. O. Thompson, of the State University of Ohio, each called attention to the fact that they were treating the topic from the view point that was assigned them, but they wanted men and women to understand that there could be no true civilization, no true education, aside from a deep-seated religious conviction and Christian training. The sentiment of that gathering seemed to me to be this, that we are a Christian nation, a Christian people ; that .it was Christian fathers who sought out this land as a haven of rest wherein they might worship God according to the dictates of their conscience, untrammeled by the oppression and fears of the old world and its priestcraft; that the very organic act that secures to our people their rights and privileges was conceived, founded and made under Christian inspiration, and that because of a few who doubted the fact that there is a God over all. and because there are some of the House of Judah who do not believe in the teachings of the New Testament — because these individuals are citizens of our great republic we have listened to their protest, and permitted the withdrawal from the schools of the republic the great text-book, the book of books, the Bible, and the young of our nation are growing up unfamiliar with its characters and with the ideals which it holds out to men. So there was a great discussion precipitated as to whether the Bible should not be admitted again to the schools as a text-book, it being thoroughly understood that there should not be any teaching, in a religious sense, of any of the creeds, but that it should be placed in the hands of the people, that they may become familiar with its sacred history. In one of the side meetings that was held, reviewing the statements that I have made in brief, the question arose, How shall we teach the youth, what shall form the basis of their education in a religious sense, and upon what shall they found their faith ? There were many views entertained and expressed, but none seemed satisfactory, and finally an appeal was made to the most learned of all, Dr. William T. Harris, the great psychologist of Washington, D. C., to express his opinion as to the basis for proper religious training and belief. If there be a man in the pedagogical world prepared to answer that philosophically, it is Dr. Harris, a man acquainted with the workings of the mind, an authority upon psychic phenomena, a man familiar with the emotions of the soul and the workings of the heart. As he drew up his bent form — for he is an old man — he expressed himself in this wise : ¶

"For the proper training and for a deep-seated religious conviction, that the interests of our country may be conserved and its institutions perpetuated, it is absolutely necessary that our young shall be inculcated and have the proper conception of a personal God." ¶

Tears of joy ran down my cheeks, my brethren and sisters, when I heard this. I felt, O how the little leaven is leavening the entire lump. If the spirit of this convention shall go forth into the schools of these United States, ten years hence the Elders will not meet the objection to the teachings of Holy Writ, and of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they do today. The experience I have in our field is this, that it does but little good to quote the Scriptures to the people, until you have convinced them that they are of worth and true. It is a proposition of "Show me by your philosophy or by your reason or logic how this can be true, and how this will benefit me and mine; what are the results of your ethics, the fruits of your religion or mode of worship, and your lives, what are they?" Then when we meet these people, we have to take them to the school of theology to be instructed ; we teach them that this is the religion that is told of in the Scriptures, in fact that it is scriptural, and then only do they seem to care for the scriptural proof. But it seems to me that conditions would be very different indeed if this spirit that I have spoken of should go out among all the people of these United States. ¶

I have often heard Elder Heber J. Grant speak of one of his renowned friends in writing to him about religion, unable to comprehend it, not a devotee or member of any church, but viewing the economics of "Mormonism," he said: "Heber, if there is anything in religion, there is everything in it." I have often quoted that, and yet until late years never understood its weight, and possibly now do not comprehend its full import. If we review the history of this world and its people, we cannot help but see that those who have lent themselves to religious training and impulse are the people who have blazed the way for education and civilization. They are the people who have conserved the best interests of the world, and have lived longest as nations of the earth. We speak of Egypt as the cradle of civilization. Egypt had the Gospel preached to her, but fell by the way, and her glory is known only in her works, the pyramids of Gheza and Cheops, the temple of Carnack, which come down to us from the distant past, and her sphinx that speaks with mute tongue of the long silent dead. The same may be said of Chaldea and Babylon, almost the same of Greece and of Rome. We go to those old countries to study their architecture, their art in painting and sculpture, in rhetoric and verse, but the sons and daughters of those lands are strangers to the tongues in which their ancestors spoke and sang. Each in turn had some of the princes of the House of Judah declare the Gospel of the one God unto them, whether they had Jesus Christ preach to them or not. Upon the ruins of the civilization of Greece, the Apostle Paul declared unto them the God that the degenerate Greeks ignorantly worshiped. Peter proclaimed the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the households of the Caesars, as doubtless Paul did also, and their teachings were rejected. But those stiffnecked people of the House of Israel, though they were rebellious and received only a part, a law of carnal commandments, to be to them a school-master to bring them to Christ, they were in subjection to Egypt, to Babylon and to Rome yet preserved their education, language, customs, individuality and their name to this very day. The Jew, disliked even to this time, driven, oppressed, scattered and peeled still they are the one nation of all people who have been preserved from time immemorial, because they have given themselves, in part to the teachings of God. Today, before any civilized nation of Europe, and possibly America, can declare war, they must ask the Jew, the Baron Rothschild, and their fellows, who hold the purse strings of the world, in fulfilment of prophecy which said that they should suck the milk of the Gentiles. If religion would do this for a people only half understood, and having only a lower law which was to bring them as a schoolmaster to Christ, it must appeal to every thinking man that a religion having as its basis the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of God unto salvation, will best subserve the interests of government in the world, and preserve its people, and prepare them for the reign of peace and righteousness when Christ shall come with the holy Saints and dwell upon the earth. That that epoch may be hastened, that we may participate in its blessings and rejoice with all those who love the truth who love liberty, who love equality before the Lord, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶