Remarks

I rejoice this day in the testimony of the truth that has been revealed from heaven through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith; in the truth of that gospel which has been restored to the earth, which I bear witness is the power of God unto salvation. The fool hath said in his heart, "there is no God." There are many who are willing to believe that there is some vague essence existing in the universe which they are pleased to call God, but at any near approach of that divine being, by whose power the earth and the heavens have been created, they begin to deny him. The poet has told us that "distance lends enchantment to the view,"and so I think it is with reference to the faith of many men and women upon the face of the earth. -- ¶

The farther away and more remote they can locate their Supreme Being, the better satisfied they are; but when he reveals himself to man in the day and age in which we live, then they begin to deny him. When God manifested himself in the flesh in the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, God was made manifest. He came near unto men and only those who had in their hearts a love of God were willing to accept of him as in very deed the Son of God, the creator of heaven and earth. Mankind are in darkness to a very great extent in their search after God. ¶

I rejoice in the efforts that are made by honest investigators endeavoring to find out something of the secrets of life. I have no desire whatever to criticize all such honest investigation. May the truth dawn upon their minds, and may the inspiration of the Almighty assist them in their honest endeavor to find out the truths of heaven. But if they desire to know the truth, they can only learn it by securing the Spirit of God that comes from his presence and reveals these secrets unto the children of men. But if we possess his holy Spirit, then may we attain to this divine knowledge, and not otherwise. ¶

My heart goes out in love and admiration and in adoration unto my heavenly Father, when I look out upon this beautiful world, and particularly at this season of the year when we see the buds swelling upon the trees, about to burst into a new life, when we see the grass coming out of the ground, vegetation making itself manifest, and when a few days hence all nature will be alive, quickened by the power of God. And my heart goes out in worship and adoration to the giver of this life, the creator of all things. I am inclined to refer to a couple of paragraphs which I committed to memory when I was a boy. They seem to carry the expression of thought that is now in my heart. The paragraphs referred to were written in the German language, and I committed them to memory while I was engaged in the study of that language. I will endeavor to give a free translation of them: ¶

" Things that are useful, benevolent and indispensable; things which pertain to our clothing, to our nourishment and to our shelter, and generally speaking that pertain to the sustaining of living creatures, we find in nature. Water quenches our thirst. All kinds of fruits satisfy our hunger. We find materials for the building of our homes, and for the clothing of our bodies. An Almighty hand distributes among us the things that we need; but also things that are beautiful, grand and glorious hath God created; things which we view with wondering ecstasy, things that arouse our admiration and fill our hearts with joy -- the splendor of the starry heavens, the morning and the evening red, the different forms and colors of the clouds, the beautiful green of the meadows, the blossoms and the flowers show us a beauty and a splendor which touch our hearts and lift up our souls in grateful adoration to God that he hath so beautifully and so inimitably adorned his great creation work." ¶

These are the thoughts that come into my heart when I look out upon this wonderful world in which we live, and I feel to worship ¶

and adore my heavenly Father as the Creator of all things that are, in this world in which we live today. How I marvel at the infidelity, at the atheism, the agnosticism, that prevail among mankind, when they stand in the midst of these wonderful things that ought to fill their hearts with faith in God, and to turn them to him, to worship him in spirit and in truth. ¶

When I look out upon this vast congregation before me now and realize that here are many thousands of living human beings whose faces are directed towards me, and who hearken to the words which I now speak, my heart is filled with wonder to think what miracle stands before me when so many can be attracted, and possibly interested, in the words that I now speak. Oh, how I feel that God has manifested himself in his very children that dwell upon the face of the earth, living, intelligent beings, having the power to understand and to think and to receive knowledge and understanding or instruction. ¶

Men have endeavored to find out the origin of life. May they succeed in their honest endeavors to do so. Men have tried to prove that human beings have descended from lower orders of life. There has never been any satisfactory discovery to indicate that the human family have ever been anything else than human beings, the children of God, but, on the contrary they have always found that all life proceeds from some similar anterior life. With all due respect to what they have observed in the law of differentiation or of natural selection, they have never been able to satisfactorily show any change of species. Men have been formed and fashioned in the image of their great Creator. But even in the investigations which learned men have made, when they go back to the protoplasm, or the small cells to which they sometimes refer, even then the mystery of life is just as great as it was in the beginning. This world is teeming with this wonderful phenomenon of life. It is everywhere abundant. It manifests itself in the vegetation, in the grass, the trees and the flowers, in the animals that creep upon the earth, in the fowls of heaven, the fishes of the seas, and the beasts of the field as they are found upon the earth, and also in mankind. Mr. H. G. Wells in his " Outline of History" points out that this thing that we call life, this phenomenon, is within certain restricted areas to be found upon the earth, a few hundred feet beneath the surface, a few thousand feet into the air, and out into the streams of water and in the mighty ocean, but beyond these limitations there is no such thing as life, at least so far as the scientific world has any knowledge whatever; but within those limitations the world is teeming with life. Whence came it? We read and understand, and the philosophers and scientists tell us -- and truly, too, I think -- that there was a time when this earth upon which we live was a molten fiery mass, where the heat was so intense that no living thing could exist upon it. Then whence came all this life now manifest among us? Did it come by spontaneous generation? Did it create itself? Impossible! This same author points out that there are certain characteristics of life, one of them being that things ¶

that live have some motion of their own accord. It may be merely the movement of the roots of a blade of grass, but there is some self motion. Another characteristic is that all things that live must be nourished, receive nourishment or they will die, another is that living things will grow. Another characteristic is that having attained their maturity they propagate and reproduce their own kind, not any other kind. And still another characteristic of things that live is that they will die; all things that live must die. These are the characteristics of living things, different from the things that have no life, like the rocks, the metals, the gold, the silver, the copper, the lead, and the tin that have no life. Well, whence came this life that we see in abundance, this whole world teeming with it everywhere? Inasmuch as at one time, it could not have existed upon the earth; and go back as far as they will, scientists do not explain the origin of life, but they freely admit: we do not know the origin of life, then let us go to the good book and there we shall find the only rational explanation of it: ¶

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,"and all things that in them are. ¶

And he "created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." ¶

There is the testimony of Moses, the Prophet of God, bearing witness to the fact that God is our Creator. ¶

Again in the days when the Savior came and administered in this world among men, Peter declared to him when he was asked, " Whom say ye that I am?"" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." ¶

That was his testimony. He knew that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Savior told him: " Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." But some people tell us that Jesus never claimed that he was the Son of God, that he never said it, and yet he declares here that Peter had received this knowledge from the revelation of God the Father to him. And again when Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary died, Jesus was away, but he came up and he was met by Martha who came out to meet him and said: " Lord, if thou hadst been here, he had not died." And the Savior replied: " He shall live again." Martha said: " Yea, Lord, we know in that last day in the resurrection from the dead." And the Savior made this notable remark: "I am the resurrection and the life, and he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." And then he declared: " He that believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this?" said he to Martha, and she replied, bearing her splendid testimony: " Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Joseph Smith received a revelation contained in Section 88 of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and after setting forth the fact that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man, this revelation reads: " And the resurrection of the body is the redemption of the soul." Then the next paragraph explains how the redemption of the soul is brought about, who brings it to pass. " And,"declares the Lord to Joseph Smith, in entirely different words, but telling the same story: " And the redemption of the soul,"or the resurrection of the body, "is through him who quickeneth all things." He quickeneth the grass and makes it grow. He causes the buds to swell and burst with new life, and causes the animal creation to live upon the earth. He gives unto us the breath of life. He quickeneth all things, the Savior of the world. Hence he is called the Redeemer of mankind. So here we find Moses, the Savior of the world, Peter, Martha, and Joseph Smith the prophet, giving utterance to the same thing, truly in different language, under different circumstances, but all bearing record to the self same truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Redeemer of the world, the very Son of God. That is the testimony of the Latter-day Saints, and I bear witness to the testimony that now burns in my heart that this is the truth, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. ¶