This has been one of the most interesting

This has been one of the most interesting conferences to me that I ever attended. Perhaps I can consistently assign as a reason for this that so many historical events have been alluded to and so much has been said concerning record-keeping that has appealed to me ; and I feel impressed, after listening to the ¶

historical and interesting discourse of President Samuel E. Woolley of the Hawaiian mission, to say a few words in regard to history-making and record-keeping, and explain briefly, if I can, how we all are indebted to history for what we know concerning God, our eternal Father, and his dealings with mankind in times that have passed. ¶

I hold in my hand one of the standard works of the Church called The Pearl of Great Price, and I find that this little book gives us some important historical information concerning the creation of the world and other things, in addition to that which is contained in the Bible. In the second chapter, (in the Book of Moses), I read concerning the creation of the world the following : "And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Behold I reveal unto you concerning this heaven and this earth ; write the words which I speak." The Lord then proceeded to reveal to Moses the history of the earth upon which we live, and Moses wrote it. By this means not only Moses, but all of us who are permitted to read the words that Moses wrote after the dictation of the Lord himself, came to an understanding of how the earth was formed or created, and later on why it was formed. It tells us that we were intelligences or spirits living with God our Father, and that the Lord looked out into space and said : "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these [God's children] may dwell ; and we will prove them herewith to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them" (Book of Abraham 3:24, 25). That was the beginning of the earth on which we live. ¶

Take the Bible, both the New and the Old Testaments, and you will find that it is the historical part of it that makes us wise unto salvation, as much so, perhaps, as that which we call the Prophets or the Psalms, or anything else contained in the books : for this reason, that if we were not posted historically, and did not know under what circumstances these sayings were made, we would never comprehend them, and they would consequently do us but very little good. Through reading Bible history we learn something about the children of Israel, how they spent forty years in the wilderness, and how they finally crossed the Jordan and reached the promised land. Reading further, we learn something about the statutes and commandments which the Lord gave unto ' the children of Israel, and how they prospered for a season in the promised land. Thus knowing their history we understand the meaning of the predictions of their prophets and their fulfilment. ¶

Next we may consider the Book of Mormon. Here we find that the very first line written in that sacred volume is history commencing as follows : "I Nephi having been born of goodly parents," etc. And so Nephi commences to tell about his parentage and the beautiful history of his father Lehi who had "'dwelt in Jerusalem all his days," and how Lehi was commanded by the Lord to lead his family to this land (America), whence even the Hawaiians have come, of which we have heard something today. The historians among the Nephites were very diligent in keeping records. Yet, on a certain occasion Christ ¶

himself drew attention to an important omission in their records. I will read the following from the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi, 23, 7 to 13 inclusive) : ¶

"And it came to pass that he [Jesus] said unto Nephi, Bring forth the record which ye have kept. ¶

"And when Nephi had brought forth the records, and laid them before him, he cast his eyes upon them and said, ¶

"Verily I say unto you I commanded my servant Samuel, the Lamanite, that he should testify unto this people, that at the day that the Father should glorify his name in me. that there were many saints who should arise from the dead, and should appear unto many, and should minister unto them. And he said unto them, were it not so? ¶

"And his disciples answered him and said, Yea, Lord, Samuel did prophesy according to thy words, and they were all fulfilled. ¶

"And Jesus said unto them, How be it that ye have not written this thing, that many saints did arise and appear unto many, and did minister unto them ? ¶

"And it came to pass that Nephi remembered that this thing had not been written. ¶

"And it came to pass that Jesus commanded that it should be' written; therefore it was written according as he commanded." ¶

Referring to modern revelation given in our own time we learn that when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, on the 6th day of April. 1830, with six members, the very first thing God told his servants after the organization was the following: "Behold, there shall be a record kept among you" (Doc. and Cov. 21:130). The Lord did not neglect the importance of record-keeping. I have sometimes thought that on that occasion he remembered the important history of the past, and the apparent neglect in recording events at the time they took place in the days of ¶

the Savior. We cannot, of course, tell exactly what was originally written by those who were associated with the Christ in his ministry in Galilee, Samaria and Judea, but this much we do know, that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not write the histories or gospels attributed to them until forty or fifty years after the events narrated by them had occurred ; and for good and sufficient reasons learned men in the Christian world have during the past eighteen hundred years been trying to harmonize these four gospels, which in quite a number of instances seem to be more or less contradictory or inaccurate. The narratives were apparently written from memory many years after the events recorded took place. Consequently there is in the gospels mentioned a lack of important dates in relation to the ministry of the Savior and the early events connected with the Christian Church. In opening the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times in our day the Lord seems to guard against the repetition of what was an apparent neglect centuries before, for the very first commandment the Lord gave to his Church as an organized body in our day was, as stated, in regard to record-keeping, and Oliver Cowdery was appointed to be the first recorder of that Church which by divine command and authority was established upon the earth through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith the Prophet. When Oliver Cowdery subsequently was called to another work, a special revelation was given through Joseph the Prophet calling John Whitmer. one of the eight witnesses to the Book of Mormon, to be a regular Church historian. He was commanded to write and ¶

keep a regular history and assist Joseph Smith in transcribing "all things which shall be given you" (Doc. and Cov. 47:1-4). And the Lord said further: "And again I say unto you that it shall be appointed unto him to keep the Church records and history continually." Had this not been a matter of great importance, the Lord, it seems to me, would not have commanded it. ¶

If it were not for records and historians, we would have no Bible, we would have no account of the ministry of John the Baptist or of Jesus Christ. We would have no Acts of the Apostles. We would have nothing except vague tradition in regard to Christianity as it was established upon the earth 1800 years ago. If it were not for historians, we would never have had the Book of Mormon. We would not have known much that could be relied on as truth about Joseph the Prophet. We would have had something handed down to us in a more or less vague and unreliable form. With all respect to our old veterans with their grey hairs, and their unquestioned honesty — those who try to relate interesting narratives concerning Joseph the Prophet and the early days of the Church — can not. with all their endeavors relate facts just as they happened : they find it impossible to do so correctly, when it comes to details. Their memory does not permit them to tell the perfect, accurate story. But we can use their stories by comparing them with the records of the Church written by Oliver Cowdery. John Whitmer, Willard Richards. George A. Smith and many others, down to our own day. ¶

I refer you to this, my brethren and sisters, because there has been also in our day an apparent neglect in record-keeping. Interest seems to have been lost to a great extent at present in regard to the history of this most wonderful people, the Latter-day Saints. Let me here interpolate that there has never been another such a people upon the earth since it was first created. I make no exception to this far-reaching assertion. We have read about the Israelites in the Old Testament, the early Christians in the New Testament, the Nephites upon this continent in the Book of Mormon, and many other peoples who have dwelt upon the face of the earth in various ages. All these people had their experiences in their day and generations, but they are no more in existence ; history tells us that their activities at length came to an end. But the dispensation to which we belong will, according to promise, he continued forever. We shall as an organization remain in existence throughout all time to come, and it will be just as President Woolley has said that we shall be here after every other religious denomination shall have ceased to exist. Earth itself may pass away, or undergo a radical change, when cleansed by fire, but the Church of Jesus Christ shall no more pass out of existence, for out of this Church organization shall eventually grow the kingdom of God, over which Christ shall reign as the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¶

And now I desire to say a few words in regard to the labors performed of late years at the Historian's Office, and give a little additional information on the matter which President Anthon H. Lund alluded to in his address delivered in the first session of this general conference. We have been very ¶

busy at the Historian's Office, and also on the outside, gathering together and putting into shape that which will form the basis of the authentic history of the Church. Some of us have traveled in all parts of the world gathering historical information for that purpose, and during these journeys most important data have been collected and thousands of records have been perused. Records have been kept from the beginning both at Church headquarters, in the different missionary fields, and in the stakes of Zion, but in many instances they have been kept imperfectly. Even John Whitmer, the first Church historian, was not faithful in his special calling very long. He apostatized and when he left the Church he refused to give up the records he had kept to the proper Church authorities ; hence for a number of years we did not have the full records concerning the days of Kirtland and Missouri. On one of my special missions to the East I was prompted to go to a certain place in Missouri, where I found the old Whitmer record. I succeeded in obtaining a complete copy of the same which contains some important data in addition to that which the Church already had. The Whitmer record is not very lengthy, but it covers a period of Church history of which we cannot learn too much. I may here add that we have obtained from other odd sources of information many things of a historical nature which have since proved to be of great value. For this I feel truly thankful, because the sources of such information are now in some instances closed. Many of those who were alive forty or fifty years ago, and who could give us valuable information then, are with us no more, and in other instances records from which we made gleanings a long time ago have since been destroyed or lost. ¶

We have endeavored to go back to the beginning. We have lived long enough and labored long enough to be convinced of this fact, that events which originally seemed trivial and unimportant at the time they happened have, as years rolled on, become matters of the greatest importance, owing to the great results that in many instances came from small beginnings. Referring to the beginning, for instance, there wasn't much stir in the United States when six men quietly assembled in the attic story of Father Peter Whitmer's log house in the little obscure village of Fayette, Seneca county, New York, on that now memorable day, April 6, 1830 ; but look at that event now in the light of history. How many thousands of people are not now deeply interested in that little meeting in which the Church to which we belong was first organized ? When the Church was very small, even its early members did not pay much attention to a number of commonplace incidents that happened. When Brigham Young became a convert to the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph, no one except those immediately concerned paid any attention to it, but as the Church grew and President Brigham Young became one of the greatest pioneers and leaders that the world has ever known, then we began to look at President Brigham Young's conversion to "Mormonism" as a matter of unusual importance, and so with many other things because of the great results that followed. Consequently we historians of a later day naturally go into the history of the Church deeper than those historians who have preceded us. We have gone over the same ground that was covered by Willard Richards, George A. Smith, and other historians, and have added a great many details that had been overlooked by them, or considered matters of so little importance that they were given no place in Church history. Thus we have, from the earlier records kept in the different branches and organizations of the Church and from thousands of letters and documents on file, culled a vast amount of historical information that had not hitherto been considered worthy of record. We have gone over some of these old records repeatedly and have also entered into the study of the records kept in the various organizations and branches of the Church in its missionary fields, throughout the entire world, and in some instances we have had to lay the very foundation historically for some of our missions. For instance, when I visited Hawaii, in 1895, I did not find anything at all in the shape of official documents pertaining to that mission for the first ten years of its existence. All the public records which had been kept prior to the Gibson episode had been lost, but with much patience and labor we went to work gathering from old letters, and the files of the Deseret News, material which, when put together, forms a very acceptable record pertaining to the founding of the Hawaiian Mission. We have at the Historian's Office already upwards of 700 large volumes, of manuscript history completed. We do not expect any one of you ever to read all of these lengthy manuscript histories, but they are all very important as works of reference. These volumes and the many that hereafter will be added may consistently be termed the "fathers" of the new dispensation, and be classed with the so-called "fathers" of the early Christian Church. We have recorded nearly everything that has happened since the organization of the Church, in 1830, under proper date; and we are still recording events as they occur daily, just as regularly as the sun rises and sets, and as the Church is now represented in nearly all parts of the world it may be said that we historians make a journey around the world once in twenty-four hours, not physically, of course, but in our minds, and in our researches. This compilation of historical events is what we call the Journal History of the Church. ¶

In addition to that we have gone into the great world-field, as it were, and have undertaken to write a separate history of every mission that has been established in any part of the world, together with its conferences and branches. This has meant for me personally two complete trips around the world. Once I went west and returned from the east and thus lost a day of my short span of life; and when I had occasion to go around the globe a second time I started east and came back from the west thereby regaining the day I had lost on my first tour of circumnavigation. My journeyings were chiefly in the interest of Church history. Following in the wake of the missionaries who had preceded me, I succeeded in obtaining much valuable information from many different sources, and in addition to that I gathered up thousands of records which had accumulated in the various missionary fields and sent them to Church headquarters, where they are now safely stored in the Historian's Office. Many of these records are in my estimation worth their weight in gold to the historians and also to the Church at large. ¶

We have also gone into the different stakes of Zion for historical purposes, and we have gathered material for and written the history of every stake more or less completely, commencing with the organization of the stake at Kirtland, Ohio, the stake in Missouri, the stake in Nauvoo, Illinois, etc., and we have continued this work down to the present time, but more particularly to the close of the Nineteenth Century. Even all the stakes of Zion as they are now organized have had attention. And we have done more than that. We have gone into the details of every bishop's ward in the Church, and as we now have about eight hundred such organized wards in the different stakes of Zion, the work is immense, and we have paid attention to all of them, particularly the older ones. Thus we have written the history of every settlement of the Saints in the Rocky Mountain country, extending as they do from Mexico on the south to Canada on the north. We have visited every nook and corner in the mountains and have gathered and written something in the shape of history of everything that has an existence within the meaning of Church organizations. I believe I can say truthfully that no organization dating back to the Nineteenth century has been entirely neglected, though in some instances we have been enabled to write much better histories than in other cases, owing to the ¶

difference in the sources from which we have obtained information. ¶

In most of the wards we have also written histories of the Relief Societies, Sunday Schools, Young Men's and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations, Primary Association, Religion Classes, etc., not to speak of the various quorums of the Priesthood, bringing the historical thread down to the close of the century. Thus we have been enabled to give proper credit to the faithful members of the Church who have labored in the different quorums and auxiliary associations from the beginning. In doing this vast labor our chief aim has been to obtain accurate data and write histories that are absolutely true and reliable in all their details. But we shall not be satisfied with our labors until we have made one more visit to all the stakes and wards throughout the Church for the purpose of reading to the old settlers, and all others who are interested, that which we have written, in order to insure accuracy and correct all possible errors that may have crept in. In this our next visit we look for a full-hearted response and co-operation on the part of all the people. Let no one, no matter how busy they may be with other things, let the opportunity pass, but meet with us and become convinced, so far as they are able, to lend aid and assistance, that the histories made concerning them and their settlements are correct. ¶

In our work of revision we desire to guard particularly against errors in names. I have frequently said that my hair turned grey because of the difficulties I met with in my historical labors in finding out the correct names of the brethren and sisters concerned in the histories that I was writing. My hair from my childhood days being somewhat flaxen in color, I did not anticipate that it would ever turn silver grey, but it did, and I think it was partly due to the fact that I met so many people in my travels, — intelligent people, too — who did not seem to know their own names. ¶

Let me explain further. The whole history of the Church is as a matter of course based upon the actions and experiences of men and women who have taken more or less active parts in public matters, both at home and abroad. We have tried to give these faithful men and women due credit in their own names, and have endeavored to rule out nick names, pet names, abbreviated names or initials, misspelled names, and names of foreigners who on their arrival in this country have anglicized their original names and thus have become known as different individuals. The changing and corruption of names have been a matter of much annoyance to the historians, as we often have met with men who while filling missions abroad would be known by one name and while filling positions at home in the wards and stakes of Zion would be known by some other name. Now, this is all wrong. A person should endeavor to have everything he does in the interest of his own as well as the public good credited up to his own name, and not alienate himself from the works of his life by giving credit to some myth or to something that cannot be identified. Let me suggest to you, brethren, when you fill a mission, that you fill it in your own name. When you pay your tithing or donations, pay it in your own name, and when you fill any office or position of any kind whatever, see that your own name is given the credit for the same. We may need all the credit we can get when we appear before the righteous judge of all. There should not be the least deviation in the writing of names for historical purposes, and let me say to all : Do not go through the world with a pet name or a nick name ; use your real name invariably, especially for public purposes— the name you had given you when you were blessed by the elders of the Church as little children, which name at that time undoubtedly became a matter of record. This means more to you than you perhaps imagine, though you may think it is merely a technical matter ; but let me assure you that it means your very identity as an individual, historically. If you insist to go through life with false or corrupted names, you will undoubtedly regret it. For historical purposes "Harry" should never be substituted for "Henry," nor "Lizzie" for "Elizabeth," "Bob" for "Robert," "Dick" for "Richard," "Polly" for "Mary," etc., and family names should be scrupulously guarded. We do not like to see the beautiful Swedish name of "Soborg" changed to "Seamountain" nor "Jorgensen" to "Yorgason." Natives of Germany, Scandinavia, Holland and other foreign countries should retain the original way of spelling their names, and also, if possible, the pronunciation ; otherwise their identity may become lost and be ruled out of history altogether. No matter how many positions you have filled in the Church, or how much good you have done in life, it will not count to your credit in the records kept in mortality, unless you do what you do in your own name. We cannot afford to falsify the records. Yet in some instances this has been done to such an extent that I sometimes wonder if the angels themselves will know who we are. ¶

In conclusion I desire to impress you with the importance of keeping individual records. The public records are in many instances well kept and preserved, but in other instances they are imperfectly kept and not preserved at all. In such instances the parties interested may lose their credit, unless they have kept individual records, to which reference can be made. If we have been called by the Lord to labor in his vineyard, and thus been privileged to take part in this great Latter-day work, it is but proper and right that history should give us credit. I therefore suggest to you all, brethren and sisters, that you be not afraid or be too modest to make records of your own. In saying this I appeal to all of you who are old enough to understand what I say. Remember the old saying, "that what you do yourselves is sure, but what you trust to others may prove disappointing;" also "if life is worth living, its deeds are worth recording." So let us keep individual records. If you cannot keep a daily journal, like some of us, who have kept journals nearly all through life, then write at least some of the most important events of your lives. Some of you old veterans that I now see before me will, like myself, pass away before very long, but before going to the great beyond write down some of the experiences you have had in your life with good ink and on good paper, that it may be left for your ¶

posterity. This will serve a better purpose to perpetuate your memory than a costly stone monument, and by doing this it may be said of you, as was said of Abel of old, "though dead, he yet speaketh." ¶

Among our many other duties, brethren and sisters, let us therefore remember this essential duty of record-keeping. In the midst of our busy lives do not let us be too modest nor too negligent, to record some of the things the Lord has permitted us to do in connection with his great latter-day work. I believe it would be perfectly right for us to overcome our modesty or negligence to such an extent that we record something about ourselves, and not rely altogether upon the angels above us "who are silent notes taking of every action," remembering that we mortals do not have access to the records made above. ¶

Joseph Smith the Prophet, in one of his letters to the Church, said : "Whatsoever you record on earth shall be recorded in heaven ; and whatsoever you do not record on earth shall not be recorded in heaven" (Doc. and Cov. 128:8). While this was written originally in reference to baptism for the dead, it can apply, I think, to record-keeping altogether. ¶

Then, brethren and sisters, endeavor to make records for yourselves, and aim to become true and accurate historians at the same time, not forgetting that we should all live lives and perform deeds worthy of recording. God bless you. Amen. ¶

Selma Pearson sang a solo entitled, "Let us have Peace." ¶