The Making of Character and the Teachings of the Living God

AFTERNOON SESSION. ¶

Conference was resumed at 2 p.m. President Joseph F. Smith called the meeting to order. ¶

The congregation sang the hymn: ¶

Guide us, O Thou great Jehovah, Lead us to the promised land, We are weak, but Thou art able — Hold us with Thy powerful hand. ¶

Prayer was offered by Elder Wm. T. Jack. ¶

The congregation sang the hymn: ¶

The Spirit of God like a fire is burning! The latter-day glory begins to come forth; The visions and blessings of old are returning, And angels are coming to visit the earth. ¶

I believe, my brethren and sisters, some great men have said that one-third of an individual's character is formed before he comes into the world; that the prenatal influences which have gone into the building up of his personality have predisposed him to certain lines of thought and activity, after he has been born among the children of men. It is said, also, that one-third of one's character is due to his own self-effort; the things that he accomplishes, or strives to accomplish, go into the making of his character; and that one-third of his being is made up from the environment with which he is associated during his sojourn here upon the earth; that men with whom he associates and whom he meets from day to day have some influence in the shaping of his character. If that doctrine is true, I ought to be at least one-third good, because I have grown up under the teachings, the testimony and the influence of men and women of God. As I have listened to the testimony and the teachings of the servants of God, during this conference, I felt that every young man in Israel ought to feel as I did, that we ought to be partly good at any rate, by reason of the testimony and teachings that come to us from the servants of the living God. ¶

I can never remember the time in my life when there was not taught to me, at my mother's knee, and later on in all of the organizations of this Church, to reverence and revere the priesthood of the living God. I am glad that I can say to you that my parents were members of this Church; that my grandparents were associate with the organization of this Church in the very beginning; that they walked and talked and labored with the Prophet Joseph Smith, and with his associates, in the beginning of the organization of this Church. I cannot remember the day when I have ever heard one of these progenitors of mine speak a disrespectful word of one of the leaders of Israel; and so I want to say that my training predisposes me to accept the testimony and the teachings of my brethren who teach us the word of the Lord from day to day, the general authorities of the Church who come into our stakes occasionally to give us the word of the Lord, and those who preach to us from this pulpit during the general conference of the Church. ¶

I have heard it said many times, by men who are older than I am, that we young men of Israel today are living in an especially favored dispensation; that we have been blessed above our fathers and mothers who came here, who sought out this land and who established this empire in the Rocky Mountains. I sometimes have doubts in my own mind whether or not we are so especially favored as they would have us believe that we are. My father, my grandfather, and my grandmother walked and talked with the Prophet Joseph Smith; they received his testimony and his teachings; and I don't believe that there was any power in the world that could have persuaded them to turn against the truths of the gospel. It is true that we have more of book learning, and have greater opportunities to study the sciences and the arts. It is quite true that young men in Israel today are surrounded by opportunities for intellectual growth and advancement which our parents did not receive; but I want to call attention to the fact, this afternoon, that the Prophet of the Lord, seventy and eighty years ago, was teaching to the Latter-day Saints some of the greatest truths that have ever been revealed to the world, before they had ever been dreamed of by the men who are writing the books of science of the present day. I am not so certain but that those men and women who received those divine truths direct from the testimony and teachings of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, were in a much better position intellectually, as well as in all other ways, than are the boys and girls who seek to learn those same truths today from books that have been written. I know of one thing, that the testimony of the truth was just as strongly in the hearts of our parents as we can hope to have it in our hearts today. I hope and pray that the lives of Latter-day Saints today, the lives of young men in the Church today, could as nearly conform to the teachings of the servants of God as did the life and character and testimony and teaching of our fathers and mothers, who have preceded us. ¶

I find that there is a spirit, occasionally, in the hearts of young people in the Church today, to treat lightly some of the things that ought to be held very sacred by them. I find, occasionally, not frequently, because I believe I come from a section of this Church where men are living their religion quite as faithfully and quite as well as the average Latter-day Saints; but I find a disposition among some of our boys and girls to speak lightly of some of the doctrines of the Church, to speak lightly of an appointment to perform a special mission or a special duty in the Church. I find in their hearts occasionally, as I minister among them, a disposition to treat lightly a call to perform a special service for the Church among the Latter-day Saints today. Now, as I recall the history of this Church in the past, it was not so when the Prophet of the Lord spoke. I remember an instance in the history of the Church where the Prophet declared that the quorum of the Twelve Apostles should depart for foreign lands to open up missions and to preach the gospel, and where it appeared to be a physical impossibility, on account of the sickness of those men, to accomplish that which the Prophet had declared should be accomplished; and the enemies of this people were gloating over the fact that the time had come to prove that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of the living God. But the time arrived, and when it did arrive, these men of God of a former generation had gotten up from their beds, had left their wives and families, some of them in very great distress, had assembled themselves together upon the site of the temple, had prayed to the Lord and had gone forth in the accomplishment of that which the Lord had required of them. I wonder sometimes if there is the same spirit of determination, the same desire to serve our Father in heaven, the same desire to go forth in the accomplishment of those things which He has for men to accomplish today, in the hearts of our boys and girls, as there was in that day. I very sincerely hope that it is true. I very sincerely believe also that when the young men of this Church are put to the test, that they will prove faithful and true. ¶

I know that God has established this work in the hearts of the children of men. I know that it is true, and I know that that same testimony is lying, sometimes a little dormant, but always in the hearts of the men and women and young people in this Church who are striving to live their religion. I believe that this Church is a Church of service; that no men can hope to succeed, that no woman can hope to succeed, that no individual in the world will be happy or contented in the Church unless they are devoting themselves to the building up and strengthening of the Church. That is the way it is in our stake of Zion. Those individuals that are busy, those who are attending to their duties, are the individuals who are happy, who are contented, who have no fault to find with their bishop, who haven't any fault to find with the presidency of the stake, or the general authorities of the Church who come into our midst to instruct us. They have no fault to find with their ward teachers; and I am very grateful for the fact that I believe there is a revival of the feeling that there is a necessity for the work of teaching among the Latter-day Saints. We find that it is so in our stake; and those wards of our stake of Zion where one hundred per cent of the people are visited each month are the wards that have no trouble in them, where the people are united, and where the Latter-day Saints are working together unitedly, helpfully, and successfully for the accomplishment of the work of God, as I believe they ever did in the history of this Church. But if I find an individual who is indifferent, an individual who is lukewarm, I soon discover that he is not attending his sacrament meetings, and not attending to the duty that the Bishop has asked him to perform in the Church. ¶

Now, I very greatly rejoice in a testimony of the truth of this gospel. It is more priceless to me than all the wealth of the world possibly could be, and I pray that it may be so in the hearts of my brethren and sisters; that we may, during the sessions of this conference, receive the testimony of these men of God who have been called here to act as prophets and apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we go to our homes in the different stakes in Zion, I trust we may take home their teachings, and let us talk about it around the firesides, as our parents used to talk about it in the generation that is past. I very well remember in my boyhood days that there was not a subject of more engrossing interest, not a subject that would bring together the family of my father any more interestedly than one in which we met together to discuss and talk over the teachings of the servants of the living God. ¶

May God help us to be faithful and true, as young men in Israel, and to accomplish the full purpose and destiny of our mission here upon the earth, is my prayer for each one in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶