My Platform of Faith

a restraining collar and cater to popular sentiments. I would like my preaching to have color, thrill, feel homelike, and revive old memories, and myself feel free as a colt in a pasture. Now, if I can't feel that way among the Latter-day Saints, where on earth can I go that I will feel free ? ¶

For the past month or so, I have been reading political platforms, and promises, and pledges enough to last the people of these United States for a thousand years, if they are carried out. (Laughter.) I don't believe in making many promises or pledges, but when you do make them, and issue a platform, I say try and live up to it. I have a platform on which my feet are placed, and I hope they are planted on a rock foundation, so that when the storms come and trouble finds its way amongst us, that T can discern the difference between truth and error, between light and darkness. This is my platform : My faith is that God is the Father of all, and Christ is the Redeemer and Helper of all. I believe in Christ's religion as He taught it ; and I discover that F:z doctrines never change. I further believe that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God, and that this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as revealed by the Savior and His authorized servants to the Prophet, Joseph Smith ; that the Priesthood of God is the Constitution of the Church, and the present living prophets, and those associated with them, are true disciples of Christ, devoted to the interests of the people. I hope, brethren, you believe that this is my platform. I hope my long pilgrimage in this Church has impressed you that I am honest, earnest, and fervent in my convictions ; that I have implicit and perfect confidence in God and in His Son Jesus Christ. God rises above men. We are like Him, but He is perfect and that is why I have faith in Him, knowing that I will be rewarded for all of my faithful labors, and for all of my mistakes I will have to be resposible. ¶

Brethren and sisters, I have been thinking for quite a while about certain things, and I have been boiling it down, like my father used to boil down the sugar cane juice, until I have got it down to about what I want to say to you today. Jesus Christ found a certain class of people when He came on the earth, a class who were doing a great deal of mischief among the children of men. If I were to put up an appeal to the Lord for the present generation, I would say, "Give us MEN, men like our fathers, and women like our mothers, men and women who had faith in God, whose religion was love and sacrifice, and who were willing to lay clown everything for God." They were men who were clean ; who were pure ; who were courageous, and who were not afraid to do right when they knew it was right. Now, that is the kind of men we. want. That is the kind of men we hope that our children will be. But, there is another class of men, T call them Half-Way Men ; T pray God I may never be found among them. I would rather be dead than to be numbered among half-way men, persons who have plaster cast expressions on their faces, and are without hearts, without souls, without love and bigness. They are the hypocritical class, such as were found among men when Jesus was on the earth. They have the gall and nerve to want everything on earth as a reward for their assumed ¶

generosity. They call it alms-giving or helping the poor ; some call it religion, but that is a misnomer. That kind of people are a spineless class, self-righteous, intolerant, and the cause of endless mischief. They never fight in the open. "They are demagogues and place hunters. They are perched upon every anthill, croaking out their stump speeches for this or for that man to hold office. They never give it a thought whether such a man will do good for the people or not." They are parasites who fed and fatten upon the people. "They want us to beat in the brush while they bag the game." Some of this is not original, but it is mighty good. (Laughter.) When it comes to self-sacrifice, fighting for the truth, they are like the dying man who was asked by the minister, "Will you denounce the devil and all his workings?" The dying man looked up in a feeble and distressed way and said, "Please don't ask me to do that. I am going to a strange country, and I don't want to make any enemies." (Laughter.) "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top" won't work out our problems. There is no use crying "All is well in Zion," because it is not true. The question is, who is for God and who is against Him? This puts me in mind of another story. In the midst of an election in Denver, a little girl sat in a church with her suffragette mother, listening to a minister who was preaching with much earnestness and emphatic gestures. When he had finished the little girl turned to her mother and asked: "Mother, was he for or against God?" ¶

Now, we want to know who you are for. When we speak to the present generation we ask : Are we to be molded by our environment and tainted with the money devil, ¶

besmirched with graft and commercialism, swallowed up body and soul with political questions? Are we to be vanquished like the red men, forced to the wall and crushed into bent-backed humility and dull-eyed apprehension, and accept such a fate with grim stoicism and cease to try to avert our impending doom ? ¶

The "Mormon" people are a valuable heritage to the race. We have had physical vigor, which must be one of the foundations for the mental strength of any lasting race of people. Our lives have been ruled by high impulses. There is only a generation or two between us and our pioneer fathers and mothers. It is physically impossible for this type of man to be produced in any other way than developing the possibilities of this splendidly endowed earth. Buckskin men are not developed indoors. We cannot evolve men like Washington, Boone, George Rogers, David Crockett, Joseph Smith the Prophet, Brigham Young, or the other pioneers, under the present environment and educational system. "We run our children through a course of, education covering from eight to twelve years, then they are turned loose and called educated." ¶

Our children need to be taught the great problems of the day, the schools should be ringing with the hammer strokes of the world's work shops, the children will thus become trained citizens of the republic. Our citizens will hereafter be studying and battling as heroically for their civic and industrial liberties as their forefathers, the war patriots, battled for war ideals. ¶

This generation has had too much ease, too much money, too much pleasure. They have lived ¶

upon milk and honey when they ought to have been fed on bread, cresses, and cold water, and slept in the mountains. I am sorry my children have not lived on the kind of food I was brought up on ; then they would have more backbone. We should adopt a policy to stiffen their backbones, if necessary, feed them on "raw meat, cayenne pepper and green cactus diet." This world was not made just to hold people imbued with selfishness and unhappiness, with no ambition beyond eating, drinking and begetting. We ought to plan ahead, have some purpose, that is truly living. "Life means opportunity. Life means development. Life well spent means knowledge, growth, simplicity of life and complexity of thought." ¶

"The day of the Laodicians is past, because they are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot," said the voice that spoke on the Isle of Patmos, "I will spue thee out of my mouth." "There are whole men whose mere bodies are in shameful service," because of the character of their employment they do not have freedom ; they do not have liberty like the "Mormon" people do who as a rule, own, and work the soil, but are half-men, like the Laodicians, servile souls, and I sometimes feel they are an encumbrance to the earth. ¶

Now, my brethren and sisters, with the help of the Lord, let us endeavor to uplift the present generation, that they may have breathed into them the spirit of their forefathers, that they may have courage to resist evil,live a better and cleaner life, find out what is right and then stay with it. Unless this generation will get the spirit of our forefathers, what can God do to preserve the Constitution? Unless the children of this nation rise up and get away from the bondage and serfdom of luxury, of ease, of comfort— you can't evolve true men with that kind of environment — it can't be done. That is the appeal I make to the present generation; I tell you, God can do nothing with a "half-way man." You never saw one of them in your life that gave evidence of a yellow streak in him that ever amounted to anything. I sent one of my sons to do a certain thing. He did not get what he went after, but he held up his colors and fought to a finish. There never has been a time in my life when I was so proud of my boy; he did not show the yellow streak. That is the way I feel towards the kingdom of God. I don't know of a man in all the world that I could sustain easier than he who has fought his way up these mountains and over the valleys, through hardships, sufferings and privations, like the President of this Church has. If any man on this earth has a right to his position today, and has earned it, he is the man ; and there are others with him. I was conversing with a prominent stranger yesterday, and he told me he was prejudiced when he came here, and I said: "I wish you had known our leading men, I ¶

wish you had been acquainted with Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball, you would have liked them." He said, "Do you think so ?" I replied, "I know you would or else you are not a man like I am." (Laughter.) ¶

I pray God to bless you, my brethren and sisters. I may be near the finish of my labor, but let it come and let come weal or woe, life or death, if God will give me His Spirit, and I retain the courage of my convictions, I will be true to God and defend the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Lord bless you. Amen. ¶