I bring you greetings, my brethren and sisters

I bring you greetings, my brethren and sisters, from California, from your soldier boys, for there are a great many of them now gathered in that part of the United States. I am proud to say that those who have received the proper training at home are to be found with us whenever opportunity affords, renewing their covenants at the communion table, singing the songs of Zion, and praying that they may bear with honor the names of the fathers who have begotten and the mothers who have given them birth. I know the hearts of the mothers are wrung with fear and concern, not so much that their sons may lose their lives, but that they might be sullied, and lose their virtue by contact with the world. I want to say that I have no fears for those who have been trained aright, for set deep in their hearts is a love for God and godliness that will secure them in the truth. I have found in the world a sobering of the thought of men ; I mean, they are thinking less of the pleasures of the world, as a whole, than they were inclined to do two or three years ago ; men who would have blushed at one time to acknowledge the hand of God in their every day lives now express a belief in him and his divine providence; they pay homage to him, where once they would rail, were cynical or without belief. ¶

The wonderful testimonies that have been uttered at this conference, the words of admonition that we have received, have sunk deep into my soul. When I heard read, by Elder Hart, the remarks of the Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane, of California, as I heard them from his own lips the other night, I thought how wondrous after all are the children of our God, and some words of the Psalmist came to my mind, and I want to read them to you : ¶

"O Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, who hast set thy glory above the heavens. ¶

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. ¶

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, the stars, which thou hast ordained; ¶

"What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? ¶

"For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. ¶

"Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; ¶

"All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; ¶

"The fowl of the air and the fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. ¶

"O Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" ¶

And I contrasted these words of David with the remarks made this morning by Elders Ivins and Joseph F. Smith, Jr., in speaking of the ¶

vain philosophy of men, wherein they would have us not born of God but come out of the "lower protoplasm'' of life, drag ourselves up out of the sea, dry ourselves in the sand, clamber up into a tree, and then, after some ages have passed, drop down, stand erect and become a man. I thought of what Mr. Lane said the other night when visited by the ambassadors from abroad, and they laid before the Cabinet and the President of our nation some of the great things that concerned us in the world's war, how they admonished these gentlemen, our leaders, how many years it would take to perfect an engine for an aeroplane, how many years it would be necessary to provide the needed munitions of war, raise the men, drill them, and build the ships which are necessary. Mr. Lane reported they said of the engine for our aeroplane, "It is too heavy and that it would take at least a year to make such an engine as would be needed." He said, "to show the unification and co-operation of this great land of ours," we called upon the workmen of the east and the middle west and the western seaboard for their assistance. We locked up two expert engine men in a room at Washington and asked them to give us the benefit of the best products of their combined skill in an aero-motor ; and in thirty days was mobilized from all parts of this Union the new, well-built engine, perfect in all its details and surpassing those of the old world in every point, so we are advised." ¶

How great is the ingenuity of man, when God gives him wisdom, even in works for the destruction of the human family. How I would that they would turn their wondrous powers to the industry and ¶

the peace of the world ! And they will, as sure as the day follows the night, when this madness that has blinded the vision of the rulers of the earth has passed away, and they recognize that the Redeemer is the only king of the earth, and they accept him and his rule, and obey his word. ¶

But, to the thought that I had in my mind. To think, not only in connection with this wonderful incident I have mentioned, but with the other and greater obligations that rest upon the Nation, its powers and the intelligence of its citizens if bent upon this one end, that we shall lead in the cause of right. So we have demonstrated what man may be and what he can do when he has an incentive for doing. Truly the Lord God hath "made him a little lower than the angels." He hath set his feet upon the nethermost parts of the earth. There is no land nor clime unknown to him today, nor creature, nor denizen of the seas. He has harnessed up the silent forces of the universe to do his bidding. He flies, as Isaiah said that he should, "as a dove to his cote." ¶

Think you, then, that all these wonderful powers and possibilities, God-given, shall find an end with this mean and rude existence, rude because it lacks perfection? Think you that there shall be no recompense for the mothers' travail, for her sacrifices and for her tears ; that there shall be no reward for the father's labors, for his toil, for the burdens that he has borne and for the battles that he has fought ? that the fond ideals and hopes that we entertain for our boys and girls shall come to naught, and all shall be vanity of vanity, as declared by Solomon, who in his old age went ¶

after false gods and strange women, and perverted the way of truth? Think you that our soldier boys, who have gone to the front, shall find an end to their activities should they lay down their lives for their country ? No, it is not so. They are not of the low and the mean of the earth. They reach out in their aspirations and ideals and purposes into infinitude, and infinite love and eternal life alone can bring to them a full fruition. ¶

In all creation, aside from humankind, everything seems to come to a fulness of its creation here. The whole earth, with its rocks, its crystals, its metals, and its flowers that bud and blow, its trees that live and bear, and all the brute creation, the fowls of the air and the fishes of the deep, all answer the end of their creation here ; they meet their complement, they have their companions, they are provided for in their habitat, and need and have no care nor thought of the morrow. But man, "created in the image of God, though he come from the cave man and through the stone and the iron age," if he does not come to his fulness here and may not, in this narrow vale, make a complement of all his attributes, the very longing set in his soul, the very yearning for eternal life, the very capabilities within him that are of divine parentage and birth, means that there shall yet be some other sphere for him to function in, that he may become fairly and fully what God hath ordained he should, through faithfulness, — a creator himself. ¶

So, men of the world who know not the gospel revealed to us, and who do not know of the restored priesthood of the Son of God, in their research by the scalpel and the knife, in the chemist's smelting pot, in their deep searching of the soul's emotions, have tried to determine, and have satisfied themselves that life goes on forever. Bottomley, one of England's greatest editors and writers, briefly speaking of the soldier, along with Oliver Lodge, who is perhaps accepted as the greatest psychologist living, and who has lost a boy "somewhere in France," — each in turn have said that they know that England's boys who went to the front, are alive, and are active even in that other sphere ; that their eyes are fixed upon the battle fields at the front, that their hearts yearn for their companions, and for the cause of universal autonomy, and honor and freedom among the sons of men. This from those men, who have had no testimony such as the lowliest of the Latter-day Saints have received. One of the great testimonies that has come to me in the mission field is the fact that God reveals the truth to the lowliest of his children, to those whom we may look upon as not even as intelligent as the majority of their fellows — even as wayfaring men and foolish, yet they know the truth where the savant, the scholar or the scientist falls short because of the latter's egotism and the dogmatism of men. What great cause there is in this for us to rejoice. Just as I read unto you here, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God hath ordained strength.'' And God hath not chosen many of the great and mighty ones of the earth. He hath revealed his secrets unto babes and sucklings. Praise God, brethren and sisters, that you know the truth ; that you are in touch with the powers of heaven; that you know that God hears and answers prayers ; that you know that Jesus ¶

Christ is the Redeemer of mankind, our Mediator with the Father ; that God so loved us that he gave his Son, a precious gift, that by him and through him we might learn to live and, if needs be, die; that we are joint heirs with Christ to the glories of our Father's kingdom, if we but keep the faith, if we but love God with all of our heart and soul and mind. Thank God that we are among those babes and sucklings, or the "wayfaring'' to whom this wonderful secret, these precious words of truth, have come, yet men in the world, in their egotism and in their vain and vague philosophies, have shut themselves away from God just as the poet Holland has said in a beautiful poem : ¶

"So, with reason's hand I closed the adamantine gates, Which faith alone unlocks, and shut Myself away from God, the warder Of a horde of passions that in Darkness groaned and fought, Or upon each other gnawed For the nourishment I desired." ¶

That is the state of the unbeliever, his feelings and emotions God-given nevertheless. Not any of the lower creatures of the earth reach out for immortality. Man alone reaches out for eternity and demands a hereafter and an uplift to all of -the children of men. But man in the world has stultified himself and shut himself away from God, and how happy even he is when again, through faith, suffering, and chastisement he finds the Lord, when again he has found himself and become what is called in the earth, a "Christian." ¶

May the blessings of heaven be with you, you mothers of men who have given of your heart's best love to maintain the honor of our country and its sacred liberty and name, that neither kingcraft nor any king shall find place here, and that righteousness and truth shall be defended and protected in every land and clime, until all nations shall recognize their King and their God in Christ. Bless you, you fathers, who maintain our boys in the mission field, and enable them to lift up the voice as with a trump to those who sit in darkness and know not the truth. Bless you, my brethren and sisters. May we come to a realization of what God has designed us eventually to be, and shine as the stars in the firmament of heaven, I pray in the name of Christ. Amen. ¶