(President of the Bureau of Information.)

(President of the Bureau of Information.) ¶

My brethren and sisters: This brings our conference to a close, in connection with the other meetings that are now being held. While I have sat here and also in the tabernacle, I have wondered what the result of this great conference will be. Have we come just to listen and go home in the same condition that we came ? There may be some, but the great mass of the people, I trust, are inspired by the exercises of this conference to go home and live according to all the teachings that have been given. "Let your light so shine that others, seeing your good works, may be led to glorify our Father which is in heaven." ¶

Upon this block we entertain the strangers from all parts of the world. During the past week, a gentleman entered the building here, a perfect stranger, coming from the state of Ohio. He wanted to learn about our people, and after he had been entertained, he said, "I have working for me at my home a member of your Church, and I want to say that if all your members are as honest, as true, as devoted, and as trustworthy as that man, you need to be proud." ¶

Well, we are proud. With all our shortcomings, we may be proud of our people ; and I trust that the record we are making will continue. ¶

Brother Herrick referred especially to the necessity of training ¶

our youth in virtue, in godliness. I visited a southern stake of Zion, just recently, in conection with our Church work, and met a poor widow there, who had raised to manhood and womanhood a splendid family, and when she was speaking to me, she said that the remark of one of her boys had been worth all her efforts. "Last Christmas," she said, "I did not have the means to distribute the tokens to my children that I would like, and to my youngest son, who was married, I said, 'My boy, O my heart aches that I cannot give to you and to the rest of my children some substantial token at Christmas time of my love for you.' And the young man stood there looking his mother in the eyes, and said, 'Why, mother, you have given unto me something more than all the Christmas gifts that I could possibly obtain. You have given me a good training, a good education, and more than all, a clean body — and, mother, I thank you for that precious gift that has come unto me. and I want to live to be worthy of such a mother.' " ¶

May God bless us, my brethren and sisters. Let us go to our homes with renewed determination, as a result of this conference, to serve God, to be honest, true, chaste, virtuous, according to the declaration in our Articles of Faith, doing good unto all men. God bless you. Amen. ¶