Remarks

May God help us to do these things, my brethren and sisters, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶

My dear brethren and sisters, I sincerely trust that the time I may occupy may be occupied under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Lord. This is the first time that it has come to me to address a congregation in General Conference. I have sat through these conferences now for six years with a sort of safety, a safety akin to the security of the man who refused to take out any insurance because, he said, he had never died yet. And then, as a thunderbolt out of the sky comes the call from the tabernacle to come over here to join with you. I trust that I may catch the spirit of this gathering, that the spirit which has prompted both Brother Ballif and Brother Evans may be mine, to join with you in the spirit of that wonderful sermon, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." I would that we might so hunger and thirst this hour and not be disappointed. ¶

My testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ grows with the years. It is stronger as I gain more experience. I am more grateful every day that I live that I belong to this Church. I find such evidence of its truth and its divinity that I am proud, though proud in humility, for my membership in it; and, like the brethren who have preceded me, I have been a member in it all of my life. I was born into it and therefore cannot claim the distinction that attaches to conversion, but the longer I am in it the more grateful I am for my membership. Very many times of late I have been running through my consciousness to discover the reasons for that gratitude. The subject is altogether too big to be launched here in its entirety; I find evidences at every turn, but there have been running through my mind of late thoughts which go back to California. As a matter of fact, they center in an experience that I had down in the University of California. The men on the faculty of the University of California used to make the observation frequently that in view of the fact that I had come from Utah perhaps I knew something about the Mormons, and when I said, yes, I was from Utah, and made the second revelation to them that I was also a Mormon, without an exception, when they heard that word they used to exclaim, "O --, O, you are a Mormon!"It has been exclaimed so many times that it began to get into the center of my interest. Just last summer, as we climbed up Timpanogos, a visiting teacher, who was giving work in the Alpine summer school, took occasion to make an observation with reference to God and his concept of Him, and as he explained that his idea of God, of course, was an intangible sort of being, not a being at all, for that matter -- ¶

a great universal force -- he looked up and caught the expression, I suppose, on my face, and said, "O, I suppose I should not have said that to you, because you are a Mormon." As I thought of those "O's"so many times I decided that I would work out a little answer, and so now, when any of my friends say, "O, you are a Mormon?"I say, "O, yes, I am." And I am going to leave you, if I may enjoy the spirit of this gathering, a few of the O's which go into my little scheme of answer. ¶

I take it we have gathered this morning that we may think through anew the gospel plan, in order that we may build up our own testimonies. For want of a better scheme, I would like to hang a few ideas about this little scheme which I call the O's of Mormonism. ¶

The first O that makes me grateful for my membership in this Church is the O of Origin. A noted writer, who has produced one of the outstanding books in religious education in this country, says that he is not very much concerned about origins, that the origin of a church does not bother him; he does not ask, "How did it get started?"but his test of a religion or church is, "What will it do for its members?"I grant you -- and I hope to say something about that before I am through -- I grant you that what a church does for its people really is a great test of a religion, but I am not prepared to go the full limit and sav that origins do not make any difference. I find that is not true; this is a day of origins. I have been reading and rereading again that book by Dr. Wiggam, "The New Decalogue of Science,"and the whole foundation is a foundation of origins. He says that men and women become what they become essentially because of their birthright; given a noble family, in all probability out of that parenthood you will have worthy children; given inferior parenthood, and the chances are you will have inferior children; it is all largely a matter of origins. He opens one of the chapters in that book with the famous declaration that this has become a wonderful country very largely because it had its origin in a foundation of wonderful people. He pays them the tribute to say that they shot Indians through the porthole with one eye but that they taught the Bible to their children with the other; they lived on parched corn, it is true, but they preserved their parched learning, which centered in their idea of God. And America has been builded as a great commonwealth because America had a great origin. Wherever I turn, I find that origins count tremendously. I have just had the good fortune to enjoy this same trip that Brother Ballif has described, and along the way I have been struck with the thought that along with other wonders, the water supply throughout the Northwest is a very great source of satisfaction. Their water supply is pure, because its origin is right. It arises in the mountains. Very many cities in this great country of ours have the problem of a water supply, because they lack that origin. It is ¶

hard to improve upon the water that nature gives us. Origin! we could spend the hour on origins. No breeder of animals but knows that he will produce the kind of stock that he breeds to. He knows that at every turn he will get in kind, and the kind of stock he raises will be determined by the origin of the stock. No man ever chooses a wife but he is tremendously impressed with the importance of origins. I cannot conceive of a man's going forward to say, "I have come to that time when I want a helpmate; I do not care at all about origins; I will just find an available girl, and quite apart from her family history and all else I will choose her." I have discovered that men of discernment choose out of worthy families. I am grateful to the comment of a brother-in-law who gave this humorous but tremendously helpful hint -- I wish I had the genius to pass it on to the boys -- he said, if he could give advice to boys he would tell them when they came to pick a helpmate, to find a worthy mother, and take any one of the daughters they could get. He was impressed that there is a tremendous force in origins. And yet some of our good friends would say that in this most vital of concerns in life, religion, the thing that binds us here and hereafter, which links up between time and eternity, it does not matter what the origin may be. I am glad to belong to a church that claims as its origin a revelation out of heaven announcing the voice of God Himself and His Son to declare His prophet, as was declared unto those of old. And that is the kind of origin I want my Church to claim. All Latter-day Saints may be grateful this morning that we belong to a church that has its origin in that divine pronouncement. The pronouncement was followed by others and with an ushering in of the power of the Priesthood and the giving of the keys of this last dispensation. Mormonism rises or falls upon that tremendous platform, that in its origin it goes back to God the Father and the Son. We could spend the morning on origins. I am simply throwing out a few hints for your more mature thinking, when you shall have left this conference. ¶

Much has been said in the writings of this Church about our wonderful second O. I want to say only a word about it. The second O is the O of Organization. It was said a number of years ago that the two most perfect organizations in the world were the German army and the Mormon Church, and as I have said to my friends rather jocularly of late, "We knew what has happened to the German army; I presume we have a pretty clear claim to the title." But I do not say it boastfully. This Church has a wonderful organization. It. is possible for a message to go forth from the President of this Church to all the stakes of Zion, out through the wards, and within a week there can be aroused the membership of more than half a million, to any word that shall be proclaimed. It was the pronouncement during all the time of the war, during the campaign of enlistment, in the raising of funds and supplies, that it was marvelous how this Church could respond. ¶

But I am not interested in that aspect of organization so much as I am in another. Not one of your speakers here this morning had announcement other than he may have picked up through the paper, and I suspect all of us were alike in not having yet read that issue, many of us being out at an early meeting long before this one was called. There are speaking at the sessions of this conference men who have had no previous notification. That lies within the genius of our organization. It is a very wholesome thing. I sometimes wish it might be extended. Nobody can be feeling absolutely safe today, because it may be his good privilege to occupy this same position. Going back to that same California experience: I took a good friend of mind down to our service at Oakland, and when the service was over he inquired, "Is that the kind of service you have regularly?"I said, "In general, that is the plan." ¶

" Will that man speak next Sunday?"and I said, " No, he won't speak next Sunday." ¶

"Who will?"v "I don't know." ¶

"Well, who will sneak the next Sunday?" "I don't know." ¶

"Do you mean to tell me that you have men speak there who are not regularly appointed to do so?"I said, "Yes, that is the scheme." ¶

Then he made the observation -- and I think he had not been particularly struck by what he had heard that evening -- "Don't you think you would get better sermons if you had one man deliver them all and if you would let him prepare them carefully?" ¶

I said, "I have just one observation to make in answer to that: I presume you might get a more finished product, but I will ask you which would make the stronger church -- to leave all the sermons to one man and let him prepare them carefully, or to have a church membership any man in which knows that on Sunday he may be called to fill that responsibility? I will leave it with you as a question, which will build greater strength on the part of the members of our Church, your plan or ours?" ¶

He said nothing, but the next day he came over to my desk and said, "I have been thinking over your question ever since you asked it last night, and you win; yours will build a strength which cannot be built in the other plan." That is the genius of this organization. I am delighted when I think that there is no caste or class or family control in this organization. Nobody knows who shall be called next to responsibilities in wards, stakes, or general positions. The membership in this Church has in its own being the potentiality of its own leadership. Let me put it the other way, the strength of a democracy lies in the fact that its leadership is always inherent; given great numbers, you have the chance for great leadership. It can come up from within. I say the second great O in this Church ¶

is the O of Organization, and I am mighty happy in my membership in that organization. ¶

But, let me run on, because I should like to expose you for a minute or two to two other O's that you may think about them. The third O grows out of the second. It is very much like the second, except that it is a double-headed one. I have said very many times,' that it is as if it were a double link in a chain; the two segments always go together. I know of no way of separating them, and I should not want to if I could. One of the very great things that attaches to this organization lies in the fact that that organization presumes obligation on the part of all of the membership of this Church. And then I am struck with the companion thought -- a man never encounters an Obligation in his life but he finds in it his Opportunity. Up in the northwest recently a young man was called into a bishopric, and under the suddenness of that call he felt depressed. He said* "I doubt that I shall ever be able to respond under this obligation." It occurred to me that the obligation that was placed upon him as a new bishop in this Church was the opportunity that opened the door to a great life for him. And at every turn in this Church I find that these two third O's go together. I call them the O's of Obligation-Opportunity. Nobody ever joined this Church because he anticipated having an easy time. I cannot imagine any one's coming into membership in this Church feeling that he was thereby opening the door of an easy access. The gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Latter-day Saints, presumes obligation, and with it opportunity. From the time a boy is a deacon he is called to fill responsible positions, and from then on up until his declining years, he finds an office that is imposing obligation upon him. He is asked, and so are the women in this Church, to respond to calls, and no man living fully to his duty is free from obligation. ¶

There came into my office only within the last two weeks, a young man who had been called to go upon a mission to a foreign land. He came out of a familv that had not been well to do, and which had no funds to see him through the call. He had been working for two years to lay by a little sum to go to college, and there had come the call to go on a mission. He said, "It is the biggest obligation that has ever come my way, and I am wondering just what I ought to do. I have a mind to go through college. I would like to complete my training. I have saved enough. Should I go on a mission? I would like your judgment." ¶

In the face of that obligation, calling for the expenditure of all that he had saved during two hard years of labor, that boy was willing to lay his all upon the altar. I am happv to announce to this congregation that he has left for his mission and will have spent all of his savings under that obligation before he returns, but I promised him that that obligation will be an opportunity greater than he could get in any college in all the world. I say it as a school man, and I am as satisfied as I stand "here that there will come out of ¶

that obligation and his rising to it a blessing which will cause him to pronounce it not an obligation but a tremendous opportunity. And the Church at every turn offers them to you and to me. ¶

I see that I have run to within the margin of my time. I should like just to leave you with the fourth O of this little scheme, in order that you may run it through to your satisfaction. I must advert to the man I quoted in the beginning. After all, the test of a religion does lie in the kind of men and women it helps to make; so that my last O, of necessity, is the O of Outcome, or Output, if you prefer it. I am very happy to have my Church judged by the kind of men and women it produces. I have said it many times, and I like to repeat it, it is a tremendous challenge: if I could not discuss the gospel with friends, I would ask them just to do two things: let them find a representative group of young men and women who have been taught the gospel and have formed their habits of life under its inspiration; let them see that group of boys and girls as one side of the picture; and then let them find as they could in this audience this morning, men and women, silvered with years, who have spent their lives in the gospel, who have subscribed to its principles, who have loved and lived it; and I am willing to leave those two groups as my evidence to the world that this gospel is the power of God unto salvation. ¶

I am happy, as I stand here, to know that this Church has produced clean men and women. When our young men went up to Camp Lewis, through which place I have had the privilege to go within the last two weeks, fifteen hundred of them reported for examination, and out of fifteen hundred only three gave any evidence whatever of social disease. I am proud to know that Utah ranked with three other states in this Union, the cleanest states morally that sent boys to the front. I am willing to be judged by the fruit of the tree. I am glad to know that we have one of the highest birth rates in the world today, 33 to the thousand. A high birth rate almost always carries with it a high death rate. Though we have a birth rate of 33, our death rate is only 7 to the thousand, one of the lowest in the world. I read that with pride when I read that Frances' death rate is 17 to the thousand, with an infant mortality of 96 to the thousand -- almost one in 10 born to die within the first years of its career. I am glad to know that we lead Europe. I have quoted France -- 17 to the thousand; England follows, as I recall, with 11.6. Our death rate, in spite of our high birth rate, is only 7 to the thousand. We have a divorce record of which any people in the world could be proud. We have been charged with immorality, with a lack of standard of virtue, and yet I am glad to proclaim to the world that with all of our membership, numbering beyond a half million, there have been within the past year only 256 cases of divorce. I only regret them, but they constitute the barest fraction of a per cent of our total population. That kind of record cannot be held up to the world by a people whose lives have ¶

not been based upon sound principles. I am happy to testify that judged by its fruit, the gospel of Jesus Christ has produced worthy men and women. ¶

I -just find in that a tremendous challenge to all of us. I wish we had the power so to live that men and women seeing us could come, as they have come on hundreds of occasions, to marvel at this work. May I close with the thought that was given me in California as I met people there who had been converted to our Church. I took occasion to ask them what it was that brought them into the Church. First of all, thev said, they became interested in this gospel, because of the young men and young women who proclaimed its message. "Any church that will produce that type of men and women is a good enough church for me." God bless us with the strength to live this gospel, that wherever we go men and women will say of us that as members of that Church we are an Outcome that does honor to the Church. ¶

And so, my brethren and sisters, when my friends exclaim, "O, you are from Utah?"or "O, you are a 'Mormon'?"I say, ''O, yes, thank God that I am." And O that he would give us the power to live/to all of its possibilities, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶