Education and the Future of the Church

ELDER JOSEPH F. MERRILL ¶

Commissioner of Education ¶

My brethren and sisters: Unlike nearly all who have spoken, this call to address you is wholly unexpected to me. ¶

May I say that I too rejoice at the opportunity of witnessing what we have beheld since this great conference began. Many thoughts have passed through my mind as they have through yours. I have heard the brethren this morning speak of some of the evidences of this work. Those evidences have of course appealed to you, and there are others perhaps that appeal to you, that have not been mentioned. ¶

It is written in Joel 2:28 that the Spirit of God would be poured out upon all flesh. Elder Whitney has said this morning that we live in a marvelous age. Our poetic prophet, Parley P. Pratt, sang in the first hymn that is published in the hymn book, of the marvelous days that were about to be opened up. ¶

I wonder if there has been any evidence in what has transpired in the past one hundred years that bears testimony to the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that the Spirit of God would be poured out upon all flesh. In that super-excellent address of the First Presidency that was read by President Grant at the opening of this conference, an outline of the marvelous developments of the century was made. These developments have been referred to by other speakers of this conference as witnesses of the fact that the Spirit of God has been poured out upon all flesh, and I doubt that even Parley P. Pratt foresaw the glorious effulgence of this day of which he sung. ¶

Is this work divine? May I say to you that we believe of all the ¶

blessings that have come to us in the century the greatest is the witness that has come to us of the nature of our Father and God, the personal being that he is. With this work there came into the world at that time a conception of Deity that makes it easy for us to believe and to have faith and for us to serve. Has there been any philosopher, any philanthropist, any sociologist, that has ever proposed anything that has been as marvelous as the effect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the lives of its members? If we are true Latter-day Saints we live on a plane of morality and virtue, of personal purity and of brotherly service to our fellowmen, that no other doctrine has yet lifted mortal up to. Is this an evidence of the divinity that has been in this Church and has been guiding it, and was in the beginning of its establishment? ¶

May I say that I should like to hold up to you what is another most outstanding physical evidence to the world of the divinity of this work, the Book of Mormon. It stands today, as it has stood for one hundred years, a challenge to the world and to the scholarship of the world and the archaeologists of the world, and it has met that challenge. If this book is true, then God is a personal being, there are angels in heaven that are personal beings, and they have visited the earth; and if this book is not true Mormonism originated in a fraud. And so I say that to him who has not been granted faith to see and faith to believe, here is an outstanding physical evidence that challenges the reason of every sane individual, and we hold it up today as we have held it during the century as an evidence to all such and as testimony to ourselves that this Church is what it claims to be. And this, my brethren and sisters, is a testimony which is greater than any other physical evidence, I think, that we have that this work is of divine origin. Let us prize this incomparable book. But the greatest of all witnesses, as Elder Whitney has said this morning, is the witness of the Holy Spirit. This is an evidence that perhaps we cannot give to others, but we who have received it know it is the greatest, the surest, the most convincing. And my testimony to you at this time is that I do know, because I have received the witness of that Spirit and independent of any and all other evidence I declare to you that this is the Church and kingdom of God. ¶

May the Lord help us ever, all who have this witness* and others who believe, to show our faith and testimony by the manner of our service, by the character and the kind of lives we live, that we may be as a light upon a hill, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶