Truth and Salvation

My brethren and sisters, may the Lord move me and you with the spirit of truth during the time that I shall stand before you. ¶

COMPLIMENTS SINGERS AND MUSICIANS ¶

May I first renew my compliment to our great choir, the organist, the leader of the choir, and to Brother Richard Evans for the beautiful sermonettes, who Sunday by Sunday spread abroad over the whole earth, a message of love, of good-will, of righteousness. From the ends of the earth I personally have heard words of praise for their great work. I think I never heard them do better than they have done this morning. It was a wonderful tribute, I thought, to Brother Evan Stephens that the choir could begin with that great fiery challenge from Wagner and pass through that to the beautiful chaste and pure Easter song of Evan Stephens, and have it so completely in harmony. I am much impressed, as always, with the wonderful spirit which manifests itself among the singing people of Zion. ¶

AS A RESULT OF PURITY AND CHASTITY ¶

Only out of purity and chastity, only out of lives of righteousness could there come to us the beautiful singing which we have at all times and particularly at this conference. I hope that always they may continue their work. It must be from time to time_ a drudgery ; I appreciate how they must prod themselves in order that they may do their work. But it is as sure as that they live that if they shall do it in a spirit of humility, if they shall work day by day and week by week, if they shall live lives of purity and chastity, they shall exert a power for good in the world which can not be measured. ¶

Brother George S. Romney has informed us of the broadcast which is being made in Chicago by one of our choirs ; Brother Edward P. Kimball is making a broadcast in the city of Washington over another system. These are great missionary instrumentalities, and they call from us, the body of the Church, the fullest possible support. ¶

"THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" ¶

I wish today to refer in what I shall have to say to one of the things to which President Grant referred in his opening address, and to that which others have referred to during the course of this conference. I mean the Truth. The Savior, speaking to the Jews who believed on him, after he had dispersed by a mere question those who accused the woman taken in adultery, said to the Jews : "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." ¶

As has been intimated already at this conference, there is creeping amongst us now as always, and probably no more now than always, error ; and error is sin. We should be on our watch against error in whatever guise it may come. It would be easy to meet and overcome error if it came branded as such. The great body of the Church, I am grateful to the Lord to say, is able to detect error and sin no matter in what clothing it may come. There are a few, however, who need your assistance, and mine, and to them should always be open the arms of forgiveness, and to ¶

them should always be available kind words, admonition, kind thoughts, and sound advice. ¶

SHEEP WHO STRAY AWAY ¶

You remember the parable of the lost sheep, and you recall the conclusion of that as stated by the Savior when he said that there was more rejoicing in heaven over the one sinner that was saved than the ninety-nine who had already followed along in the paths of righteousness. That by no means, in my judgment, should be taken to indicate that more is thought of the one repentant sinner than of the ninety-nine righteous. But all of us have had enough experience in life to know the joy and the gratitude that come into our hearts when a friend or relative or member of the family, who has been somewhat wayward and gone astray, once more comes back into the fold of truth. And it is in that way that the parable is to be taken. ¶

In the few minutes which I have at my disposal I want to address my remarks primarily to those who are wandering away in the domain of error, those few sheep who seem to be getting away from the flock, so nearly beyond recall that they may become lost. It is to them I want to say a few words. ¶

SHOULD NOT CHALLENGE TRUTH ¶

There are a few truths to which I wish to refer, but first let me say let us not put ourselves in the attitude of challenging truth. How poor and weak are we, how ineffective are we, how limited in our knowledge are we, that we should ever presume to challenge truth. But truth, on the other hand, mighty and eternal in its nature, challenges positively, day by day and hour by hour, every one of us to live in accordance therewith. ¶

THE TRUTH THAT THERE IS TRUTH ¶

The first truth to which I wish to refer is the truth that truth is true. There is some dissemination of doctrine amongst us that all is relative and that we have no truth in the absolute. We may not have in all its fulness the ultimate truth ; I doubt that if we had it, we could understand it. But, my brethren and sisters, what we do have is this : So far as the Lord has spoken he has given us the truth. He has not taught us error. So the first great truth to which I call your attention, the first truth that I want the youth of Zion to have burned into their hearts, is the truth that there is truth. ¶

THE ONLY SOURCE OF SALVATION ¶

The second truth that I want to call to your attention is the truth that salvation, exaltation, can come only by obedience to the laws and commandments of the Lord, can come only through the atonement of the Savior, and that he is the truth. ¶

Jesus speaking to the Pharisees, after freeing the woman taken in adultery, said : ¶

I am the light of the world ; he that f olloweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12.) ¶

To Martha — she of the almost full knowledge — Christ said : ¶

... I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : ¶

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou ¶

this? ¶

She said unto him, Yea, Lord : I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. (John 11:25-27.) ¶

To the Apostles in the Passover Chamber, the Savior said : ¶

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? ¶

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life : no man Cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:5-6.) ¶

Peter, defending himself before the Sanhedrin, said : ¶

Neither is there salvation in any other : for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts1 4:12.) ¶

The Lord has spoken in equally positive terms in our own time, repeating in the early days of the Church, over and over again, those expressions which he had used while upon the earth. ¶

THE GREAT TRUTH OF MODERN REVELATION ¶

Jesus is the Messiah, he is the Savior of the world. Through his atoning blood, his suffering, his death and his resurrection, we may become perfect beings, and in no other way and by no other means. That is the great truth which permeates everything which God has said to his children on this earth. Without that we would be as dead bodies and dead spirits, shut off from true salvation, from exaltation, from eternal progression, the great new truth of modem revelation. We must never forget that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of the world. There is no escape from this, my brethren and sisters. Turn, twist, philosophize, mass sophistries as we will, this great truth remains. ¶

MEN WHO ARE NOT LEARNED ¶

For the third point that I want to make to you, I want to read you what the Savior said at the Feast of the Tabernacle, when he began teaching the people openly. The Jews had sought him, and the Jews had marvelled, saying: "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?" ¶

Let us pause here a moment, for this is the challenge of today. How can men teach the word of God who are not learned ? My brethren and sisters, some of the greatest achievements in pure thought (the nearest kin to pure religion) that have ever been made in the history of the world, have been made by men who did not know the chemical formula for water, nor the mathematical formula expressing the law which controls falling bodies. How difficult would have been the work ¶

of Christ himself had he had to depend upon the learned. The lowly only were his reliance ; the learned sought him by night or not at all. ¶

"The glory of God is intelligence." Intelligence is given to us to use, to cultivate, and to develop. Knowledge is the handmaid of intelligence and priceless heyond all words, and knowledge implies within it not alone learning but experience. Mere learning without knowledge in the true sense is of no avail. The Pharisees who made this inquiry knew that the Savior had not attended the school of Gamaliel, but the Lord did not need to master any curriculum ; the full truth does not lie in any one curriculum. Learning is beyond price if it be accompanied by the spirit which should follow it. But if the Gospel is only for the learned, how few there are of us who could have any use for it. ¶

MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL LEARNING ¶

Now, I am not arguing against learning, I am only asking that the youth of Zion be relieved from the thought which is growing in their minds that a partial mastering of one curriculum is the full truth. There is spiritual learning just as there is material learning, and the one without the other is not complete ; yet, speaking for myself, if I could have only one sort of learning, that which I would take would be the learning of the spirit, because in the hereafter I shall have opportunity in the eternities which are to come to get the other, and without spiritual learning here my handicaps in the hereafter would be all but overwhelming. ¶

Rut the Lord has so made it today that we and our children may have both, and that is one of the great glories and blessings which we have today, that we may be learned in the sciences and the arts, and we may also be learned in the spirit. In other words, we may have true knowledge. ¶

THE CHALLENGE OF EXPERIMENTATION ¶

Answering the Pharisees, the Lord said : "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." ¶

I call to the attention of the young people of the Church that this truth of the Master is the challenge of science — the challenge of experimentation. The Lord does not ask us to take his truths without trial. He asks us to test them. Just as a great scientist may announce a great discovery and just as that discovery must be proved, or disproved, by related experiments by the discoverer and by others before it may be wisely accepted or rejected, so the Son of God invites us to test his truths. So I plead with my young brethren and sisters to test the principles of the Gospel. Do not throw them over until you have tried them. No chemist ever is satisfied with one experiment, even though it give an affirmative result. Certainly he is never satisfied with one experiment if it gives a negative result. ¶

So to the youth of Zion I say, Try the Lord, experiment with his principles, nor may you be content with one experiment, particularly if it ¶

does not give an affirmative result. And just as a scientific experiment must be performed under proper conditions of heat and light and pressure and absolute cleanliness, so the spiritual experiment must be performed with a pure heart, with a desire to know the truth, with a clean body and a clean mind, in order that the one exerimenting may not shut himself off from the very things he desires to know. ¶

NO COMPROMISE WITH ERROR ¶

Allow me just one more word before closing, — a word of distinction and of admonition : The Church must always war on error. There can be no compromise on the part of the Church with error. To the repentant sinner the Church, and we individuals, have all forgiveness ; to the repentant sinner we open our arms in welcome; but against the sin which he commits the Church must always war. ¶

PRAYS FOR UNDERSTANDING OF SPIRITUAL TRUTHS ¶

My brethren and sisters, my time is gone. I hope the Lord will give me knowledge, will increase my knowledge of the simple things, the simple spiritual truths. ¶

May the Lord give me his power and his spirit, let me understand as fully as I can with my finite mind, faith; let me understand as fully as that same mind can, repentance. May I measurably understand the Lord and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, may I understand my existence here, my existence before I came here, the existence which I am to have after I go hence. Give me, our Heavenly Father, some knowledge of these things, and I shall be content, for out of these truths I know, that with a life of righteousness, I may go back into thy presence. ¶

May the Lord bless us always, and ever may he teach us how to reach after those who are wandering from the flock. May he give us love and charity and forgiveness, may he fill our hearts with devotion to him, I ask in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶

. PRESIDENT ANTHONY W. IVINS ¶

First Counselor in the First Presidency ¶