Welcome Scrutiny and Faith

My beloved brethren and sisters, I stand before you this afternoon to add my testimony to the testimonies that have already been given from this stand. It has been my pleasure during the last two and a half years to mingle my voice together with the voices of the other mission presidents who are sitting on the lower stand this afternoon, in promulgating the Gospel in the nations of the earth. We have taken your sons and daughters and with their aid have undertaken to introduce to the people who are not acquainted with us the principles and truths of the Gospel. ¶

I wish to congratulate you upon the excellent material you have sent us in the mission field. They are wonderful young men and women. They come to us usually well established in the faith. However, occasionally there are men and women who come who might have been better prepared before leaving home. And we would appreciate it wonderfully if all these young people could be taught somewhat in the fundamental routine that they have to follow when they go into the field. It is a rare thing indeed, but it sometimes happens, that we have to teach these young men how to pray properly, how to ask a blessing on the food, and to do such simple things as they should be taught at home. If you would take that care and pains with your young men, all of them, I have no doubt but that it would establish them in the faith in such a way that when they come to us they would be all ready for service. It would help them wonderfully in the beginning of their mission. ¶

Without exception it has been my experience that these men round to and leave their missions with strong and living testimonies, having done wonderful work. It has been one of the greatest experiences of my life to labor with these young people, and it is with somewhat of a reluctant spirit that I have surrendered the reins of the Mexican Mission to President Pratt who addressed you yesterday. However, we go and we come ; when the President of the Church says go, we go ; when he says come, we come, with equal good will. I trust that in the new labors ¶

that I have to undertake I will have the Spirit of the Lord to guide and direct me, that it may be just as pleasant to me as' the work that I am now leaving behind. ¶

We have been laboring with a wonderful people, as you have been told, a vast and numerous people who need the Gospel, much more perhaps than some of our own races and nationalities do. They have been downtrodden for many years, centuries in fact, and they have come to a condition where they absolutely need the help that the Gospel can give them. Our own people on the contrary have grown up under a more liberal teaching and perhaps find themselves not quite in the same need that our neighbors on the south do. We have been trying to carry the truth to them and it has been a wonderful pleasure. ¶

I have been very much impressed with the things I have heard at this conference, and was especially pleased with the remarks that President Clark made this morning. We teach faith through the instrumentality of these young men and young women — faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the Gospel. There are some things that are not reducible to mathematical formula, and these things we must take by faith. Brother Widtsoe told us that he was a chemist in his earlier years, and one thing I remember most of all about my studies in chemistry is that the instructor began that course by telling us that it was founded upon hypotheses, and an hypothesis, he said, is a scientific guess. And to show us how the hypotheses that are fundamental to chemistry change he got out some of his old books and read to us the story of an earlier chemistry — alchemy they call it. And since my days in school these hypotheses in chemistry and physics have changed again, and they are constantly changing. ¶

Now the science that is erected upon an hypothesis is no truer than that hypothesis. If that he true, the science may be true. If that be false, the science is questionable. Before we replace the fundamental truths that we have inherited from our ancestors, religious truths that have been of so much comfort and help to those who have gone before, let us be certain that the things we put in their place are true. ¶

We maintain that the Gospel embraces all truth. That may not mean that any living man may know all truth. It may not mean that the body of the Church can properly interpret all truth, but it does mean that whenever a truth is established we should accept it as part of the Gospel. But let us scrutinize those things carefully before we turn down the beliefs of the past and accept a new thing which may be founded upon a false hypothesis. That was one of the comforts to me when I went to college. I wondered if the study of chemistry, of physics, of biology, of geology, and of zoology might upset my equilibrium. But I found so many question-marks in the foundations of all of these that I believe it did not. And I would like to recommend just that thought to you, that perhaps after all we have within the Gospel the fundamental truths and precepts upon which these very sciences will in the end find themselves standing. I have that faith. I believe that every truth that will ever come into the world is part and parcel of the plan that was laid ¶

clown by God our Father for the government of this world and man, and while he sojourns in it. ¶

I think we should not be afraid of scrutiny and of friendly criticism ; we should welcome it. Man can be saved only so far as he gains intelligence and understanding and exercises faith. Consequently, I welcome criticism if it is made in the proper light and spirit. Unfriendly criticism, inimical criticism perhaps is not to be desired because it is always prejudiced in advance and never sees a question fairly. That is the one thought and idea I had in mind in coming to this stand. I give it to you for what it is worth. ¶

I pray God our Heavenly Father that he will sustain each and all of us, that we may carry forward with our heads erect, with a firm tread, to a successful culmination of our careers. May God bless us to this end, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. ¶