I rejoice with you, my brethren

I rejoice with you, my brethren and sisters and friends, in the glory and beauty of this beautiful Easter morn, and for the hope and the assurance which it brings unto us. It has been nearly eighty-five years now since the inauguration of these conferences, such as we are participating in today. And during that time the people of the Church have become firmly established in the faith. They have stronger assurances and more evidences of the ¶

divinity of the work than ever before. ¶

Men have examined, from the standpoint of reason and philosophy, in later years as never before perhaps in the history of the world, the great problems of life, particularly the immortality of the spirit. And it is interesting for us to know that their deductions are in confirmation of the teachings of the Church. I rejoice with you that our Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son in the flesh to dwell upon the earth, and to give us an example of the perfect life, and also that He permitted that He should die for the sins of the world, and that He might be resurrected, as a concrete example of the great doctrine of the immortality of the spirit and the resurrection of the body. ¶

In the examination of this question of the immortality of the spirit, from the standpoint of reason and science and philosophy, men have considered the analogies we find in nature to those of the resurrection, and I think that the argument has not been stated more beautifully than by the present Secretary of this great Republic of ours. His words are familiar to many of you. They may seem trite even to some of you who are very familiar with them, but I think it would not be inappropriate upon this Easter morn, to read this brief and concise argument, by way of analogy with things we find in nature. He says : ¶

"If the Father deign to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn, and to make it burst forth from its prison walls with new life, will He refuse the word of hope to the sons of men when the frost of winter comes? If matter, mute and inanimate, when touched by the forces of nature to a multitude of forms can never die, will the spirit of ¶

man surfer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit, like a royal guest, to this tenement of clay? No, I am as sure that there is another life as I am that I live this day. In Cairo I secured a few grains of wheat that had slumbered for more than three thousand years in an Egyptian tomb. As I looked upon them this thought came into my mind: If one of these grains had been planted on the banks of the Nile the year after it grew, and if all its lineal descendants had been planted and replanted from that time till now, its progeny now would be sufficiently numerous to feed the teeming millions of the world. There is in a grain of wheat an invisible something that has power to discard the body which we see, and from earth and air fashion a new body so much like that one that we cannot tell the one from the other. And if this invisible germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass unnumbered through three thousand resurrections, I shall not doubt that my soul has power to clothe itself with a body suited to its new existence, when this earthly form has crumbled into dust. If He stoops to give the rosebush, whose withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? Will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man made in the image of his Creator? ¶

In a little while we shall see the worm weave about itself a shroud, and appear lifeless. But not so. In a short time the cerement will be broken, and instead of the ugly worm, a beautiful winged creature will burst from the prison house, and with beautiful wings will flit from flower to flower. ¶

Some one has stated this argument in the form of a question which really answers itself: "Shall man alone, for whom all else survives, no resurrection know? Shall man alone, imperial man, be sown in barren ground, less privileged than the grain on which he feeds?" As I say, the question really conveys its own answer. But philosophers have gone deeper than these mere analogies of nature, and they have examined the arguments made of old to test them and to see whether they hold good in the light of modern reason and science. The lines of the poet Addison, which immortalize the argument of Plato, have been so examined. Addison says : ¶

"Plato, thou reasonest well; it must be so" — [That is, it must be that the spirit is immortal, and survives the death of the body.] Else whence this pleasing hope, This fond desire, this longing after immortality? Why shrinks the soul back upon itself, And startles at destruction? Or whence ¶

This secret dread and inward horror of falling into naught?" ¶

And he answers: ¶

" 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us. 'Tis heaven itself that points out an ¶

hereafter. And intimates eternity to man; Eternity, thou dreadful pleasing ¶

thought." ¶

As I say, the argument of the philosopher Plato embodied in these lines of the poet has been re-examined, and has been found to be sound. Of course there would not be planted in the human soul for a vain purpose the strongest desire that exists. It would not be planted there only to be mocked. ¶

One of the syllogysms upon the subject of the immortality of the spirit has for its terms the assumption of a reasonable universe, of a perfect Deity, and of the high value of human life. And. assuming these premises, then the conclusion follows, with almost inevitable necessity, that man was not given life for a mere day. If we predicate the existence of a rational universe, peopled with creatures whose life is of high value, presided over by an allwise and perfect Father, then we can conclude that we are not mere creatures of a day, that we are not chance creatures, to live for a brief span and then pass into nothingness ; but we can rely upon the conviction that came to the Prophet Job of old, when he exclaimed : "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." ¶

And why should there not be a resurrection of the body? Why should we not believe that the spirit is immortal? One of the greatest philosophers that America has produced, John Fisk, in a work dedicated to his own children, makes the assertion that the assumption which some people indulge, that the spirit does not survive the death of the body is the most colossal instance of baseless assumption known to all the history of philosophy. ¶

One Dickinson, a European chemist, speaking on this question at Harvard, giving one of the so-called Ingersoll lectures on immortality, says that it is mere dogmatism to say that the soul does not survive the death of the body, and that it is mere prejudice or inertia to declare that we cannot determine whether or not the soul does survive the death of the body. He and other philosophers use the word "soul" in the same sense as the word "spirit" is used by the Latter-day Saints. ¶

A short time ago, in Great Britain, there was assembled a notable gathering of scientists and philosophers, the first in the British kingdom, who came to hear one of their number, Sir Oliver Lodge, speak on this subject. After a very careful ¶

examination from a scientific and philosophical viewpoint of this subject of the immortality of the spirit, Sir Oliver Lodge said, "Already the facts so examined have convinced me that memory and affection are not limited to that association with matter by which alone they can manifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists beyond the bodily death. The evidence to my mind goes to prove that discarnate intelligence under certain conditions may interact with us." ¶

Investigations along that line by this philosopher and many of his associates have firmly convinced them of this great underlying doctrine of Christianity, the immortality of the spirit, or as they express it, the immortality of the soul. ¶

There have been many books written in recent times upon this subject. Professor Schuler of Harvard has a book on the Individual, in which he treats upon the persistency and endurance of this thing we call the individual. ¶

The poet Tennyson exclaims : ¶

"O human will that shall endure When all that seems shall suffer shock." ¶

Why should not the spirit and the body be immortal? They are composed of immortal elements. There is no doctrine better established in science than that of the conservation of energy ; that energy, coarse, ordinary energy, cannot be annihilated. And what excuse would there be to suppose then that the form of energy, the highest known to the universe, the individual, should ever perish. Matter is also imperishable. There is no doctrine better established in science today than that matter cannot be annihilated. The particles of which our bodies are composed are immortal ; ¶

they cannot be destroyed. The form may be changed, but the particles themselves can never be annihilated. And it is the promise of the Father, as exemplified in the life of the Lord and Master, that these immortal elements shall be inseparably connected with the spirit ; that mortality, that corruption shall be clothed upon with incorruption. One writer of comparatively recent times publishes a book, entitled, "The Scientific Demonstration of a Future Life," in which he undertakes to prove as a matter of science that the spirit survives the death of the body. It would not be profitable to take your time to go into the contents of this book by Mr. Hudson, a' psychologist of some standing. His argument is based upon the thought that there are some faculties of the human being that do not naturally function themselves in this life, and his argument is that there must needs be a future life for these same faculties to naturally function themselves. ¶

We are accustomed to associate the manifestations of the spirit with the body in which it appears, and it is difficult for us to dissociate in our thoughts the combination that we have been thus accustomed to. United States District Judge Crosscup, in an argument some years ago with Prof. Haeckel, (who is said to be the only materialist today who has delved deeply into psychological phenomena and not convinced himself of the immortality of the spirit) Judge Crosscup says that if one's knowledge of the human voice were associated only with the telephone, if all one's information of the human voice, or of singing, had come to him by way of the telephone, it would be a very natural thing for him to associate the human voice ¶

ELDER REY L. PRATT. ¶

with the telephone, and for him to erroneously conclude that if that instrument were destroyed that the human voice itself would cease. And he says — that it is no more reasonable to assume that the manifestations of the spirit are thus inseparably connected with the human body, than to conclude in the circumstances supposed that the human voice is inseparably connected with the telephone. ¶

Philosophers have gone into the question of the relation of the brain to thought, and have discussed the question whether thought is a function of the brain and some have concluded that if thought can be in any sense considered a function of the brain it is not a function of the brain in the sense that steam is a function of the tea kettle, but rather it is a permissive function or transmissive function such as these panes of glass perform in transmitting the. rays of light and heat into this room. If the medium is obscured, the function will be imperfectly performed, and yet the window glass is not the creator of the light. Beyond the pane of glass is the great orb of day, and while this medium performs that function, either perfectly or imperfectly, according to its nature and condition of cleanliness, still the sun and not the glass is the source of light and heat. So the brain is a medium through which the spirit manifests itself. ¶

But I rejoice with you, my brethren and sisters, that it is not necessary for us to go to the, reasoning of science, or the deductions of philosophy for assurance upon this subject. It may be of interest, particularly to the young who may not be as firmly founded in the truth as some of the older brethren and sisters are. But with the older portion, they know that the Lord lives, that this is His Church, that we are His children, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He laid down His life in redemption of His children, and at the same time gave us the concrete assurance, that the body does not absolutely perish with its seeming death, that we can say of the apparently lifeless body, "not dead but sleeping," and be assured that the spirit of man endures, and shall endure for all the ages to come. ¶

May the Lord bless us, and keep us in the faith, and in the guiding, sustaining and blessed assurances which the Gospel gives unto us, is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶

A double quartet of ladies, of Taylorsville ward choir, sang, "Easter Morn." ¶