Add to Your Faith Virtue

Many of the brethren with whom I have had the privilege of being associated have known for a considerable time that I have never been blessed with a particularly strong physical body. They may have wondered a good many times why such was the case. I think I can satisfy that curiosity. About twenty-five years ago, ,soon after I returned from a mission, the president of the Salt Lake stake — the Salt Lake stake at that time included all of Salt Lake county, including Salt Lake City — called upon me along with one of my intimate associates, who had just returned from a mission, to report from this stand. The shock that came to me upon that occasion has stayed with me to the present, and if you read tomorrow that something more drastic than that has come to me, you may know the reason of it. ¶

I presume that every president of a stake feels somewhat as do I in relation to his particular work, concerned of course about the Church in general, but more directly concerned relative to the affairs within his own borders, and the responsibilities that are upon him to know whether or not he is rightly and justly feeding the sheep within that fold; whether or not that, as the president of that corporation, if you please, he is managing the affairs of that organization in such a way and in such a manner that every one of the stockholders therein, the members of the Church, are receiving a goodly dividend because of his honest and efficient efforts in the work to which he has been called. Aside from, the fundamental principles of adoption, the truths and ordinances that have been required, that give us birth, standing, and fellowship in the Church of Christ, my mind, among my own people, often runs to the passage of scripture recorded in Matthew, the words of Christ, wherein he says : ¶

"Ye have heard that it hath been said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. ¶

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; ¶

"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." ¶

The Apostle Paul took up the trend of that thought in his epistle to the Ephesians and said unto them: ¶

"Be kind one to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." ¶

We find the same thought also recorded in the writing of the Apostle Peter ; he echoed the same principles in his declaration that we find recorded in the second epistle, in which he said : ¶

"And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; ¶

"And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. ¶

"For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." ¶

One of the great thoughts in my ministry among the people aside from that to which I have already alluded is whether or not I am able to draw these things rightly and properly to their view ; whether we proceed from day to day, so that all of us shall be cultivated the more thorough1/ in these principles calculated to lead us more closely together here, and give for us in the world to come the best and the brightest that God has ever provided for his people. ¶

I am grateful and thankful for my opportunities and privileges. I am grateful and thankful that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am grateful for the faith and prayers of the people in behalf of those who preside over them. I am reminded now of a prayer offered in behalf of a president of. a stake, in which a good Scandinavian lady arose and said : "Oh, Lord, bless our president that he may be honest, from time to time." I pray that the blessings Df the Lord may be with one and all, and particularly with the brethren who have been chosen to lead this great, mighty, and wonderful organization in the world, which I bear my testimony to you is the Church and kingdom of God, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶