Conference Address

I wish to take for my text this afternoon, the words of the prophet Isaiah, wherein he says : ¶

For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. ¶

The ancient prophet of Israel was undoubtedly looking toward the future of his own people when he uttered these words; he was also noting the righteousness of all nations of the future as they looked to God for wisdom and divine direction. His words may be well listened to today by the people of our own nation, for the Lord will yet cause righteousness to spring forth in this our land. ¶

The government of the United States has passed through many crises since the adoption of the Constitution in 1787. The one hundred and forty-seven years of our national existence have witnessed times of serious political struggles; periods of social and economic strife and unrest. The World War left the nations of the world with intricate problems. The largest armies of all history had marched to battle, and nations were put to the test of preserving their integrity. Kings and ¶

emperors were dethroned; governments were overthrown, and political life came to be anything but the thoughtful study of the science of government. In our own country particularly, laws have been enacted by state legislatures and Congress that have little bearing on the economic and social questions of the day, and as a result, we are lost in a veritable chaos of laws that are never enforced, and which have helped to bring about a disregard for law and order. ¶

The present hour witnesses a crisis, the like of which we have never known before in our history. The fine morale of the nation has been broken, and this has brought about a condition of bitterness and hate, for people have lost their regard for the power of government and for the sanctity of the law. Envy and jealousy, and hate of neighbor for neighbor have crowded out our nobler altruistic feelings. Groups of men, unmindful of human rights, are clamoring for changes in our government. Our resources are being wasted. The looting of the public wealth has become a recognized industry, and the men who practice it are as highly trained as men in the skilled employments and professions. The sorrowful thing is that these men are entrenched behind the walls of political trickery. One of the greatest plagues today is the disregard for authority and law in government, and there is growing up in our social world an aversion toward hard work. Can it be that modern thought is discarding the influence of Providence in the affairs of men? The truth that government is instituted by the hand of God was uppermost in the minds of our forebears when the Constitution was formulated ; this thought inspired the very lives of Washington and Lincoln; and Jesus Christ our Lord taught us that governments without the spirit of humble faith in the Master, cannot live. ¶

The Declaration of Independence expresses the power of the Creator in three different places, and in words that speak of the divine in man. It says : ¶

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ¶

This document and the -Constitution of our country in their very spirit recognize the divine truth that government should be the expression of all that is noblest and true in the life of man. In the settlements of the frontiers of America, groups of religious men carried the spirit of religion into ■ the unconquered lands, and the very fabric of our government was made up of many beliefs in the ways of providence. America for this reason has a rich background of the ideals of human liberty. All through our history the people have held to the belief in the divine guidance of the Master. Yet when we weigh the influence of social conditions today, we may well fear that we are slowly discarding our faith in the directive hand of an all-wise providence. Can there be any nobler truth than that the Lord does rule in the affairs of men? Is his power not seen in the onward march of civilization? Yet are we ¶

coming to the destructive belief that man and not God must ultimately rule in the affairs of man. Is the wisdom of man the only power that will solve our problems ? At times, such a thought was prevalent in the days of ancient Israel, but the Lord through his prophets guided Israel, and we have Isaiah saying: ¶

For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. ¶

The question, then: "Whither are we going?" is a reasonable one. ¶

Many of the panaceas that we hear of on every hand will not solve our problems. Would that we might have some of the old time religious strength back again! The old Puritan idealism of our pioneer parents was hard and stern at times, but those men and women of early days knew that they must not waste their vital, energies on profitless adventures. They were men of self-discipline, and they taught their children to hold themselves aloof from the moral degenerations that would sap the strength of life. ¶

The youth of today have a magnificent vitality, but Dr. Glen Frank has pointed out that "if there is a central weakness at the heart of this vitality, it is that youth is blind to the necessity of conserving its vital energies." What the youth of America needs is the husbanding of vital energies by the cultivation of clean habits, which alone "make intelligence and intensity of application possible and productive." All this is another way of saying that "education rightly conceived contributes to a religion of maturity. While it is vital that we keep Church and State apart, a divorce between education and religion will be fatal to our national life." ¶

We all must discover the beauties of the inner light, which is the divine gift of God to man. It is the divine spirit that really makes life fine and noble. Our government can only live as it produces good citizens who know that the Golden Rule is still golden, and that the Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments are still the guiding forces of morality both for the individual and for society. Robert Louis Stevenson uses an expression in one of his essays that has a forceful meaning. He says that we must put into our thinking more of what he calls the "purple." To solve our problems, we must have that fine discernment of issues that give us simplicity instead of confusion. What care we if that solution comes by way of the street or the school. "Wisdom is justified of all of her children." The home, the church, and the state must teach the greater sacrifice and the higher laws. So let the search for truth go on, but let brotherly righteousness have its day among us as we search for truth. ¶

Every reform must be vested with sacredness, and a nation that is great is not incompatible with righteousness. The spirit of progress and nationality must be related to the divine purposes. There is a call of God to the nations as well as there is to men. The nation which has the bravest, the most trustworthy, the most thoroughly developed ¶

conscience will have the right of way in the onward march of civilization. "Open ye the gates," runs a joyous prophecy, "that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in." How majestically true is one of our teachings as we have it from the prophet Joseph Smith, when he wrote: ¶

We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society. ¶

The tendency to rule God out of the affairs of life is a tragic thing. Why should he not make his habitation wherever men build their homes, and do their work, and fight their battles? The American people in the beginning stood committed to a serious business, and that was to establish a free government among all its citizenry. This ideal had deep meaning. It was the greatest experiment in government in all history, and the basis of it was the Constitution of the United States. It made of our nation the keeper and exponent of the great ideas and ideals of the world. Thus America has contributed mightily to the spiritual forces of the world, and it has given a new conception to all peoples of Christ and his mission. It has said to every man and woman: "You are a child of God. Enter. We will do our best. There shall be no king. There shall be no subject. There shall be no master. There shall be no slave." This is one of the gifts of the Father of us all. It is not gold, nor silver, nor fame which makes success. "It is truth, honor, and justice. It is faith, hope, and love." "It is," as an old French writer once said, "on the virtues of mankind and the freedom of mankind that the future of mankind is to be builded." ¶

What we need today is a group of high-souled men, men of vision and high morals, to put our nation in order, and to bring back that old-fashioned conscience of the nation, which recognizes the fact that the highest laws are the laws of God. Every man should put himself clearly and openly into some relationship of responsibility, for we are today beset with the mob spirit, which always acts apart from the organization of government. This is why the mob spirit is wrong. We should honor our past in the present; our dead in the living. What I want to hold up before us all is the conscience of our nation and government. Moral integrity, moral purposes, moral restraint are the necessities of the hour. If these things can be brought about, the nations of the world will have this to say of us: "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." Ideals must be established in the minds of the rising generation. While we realize that the age in which we live is new, the youth will never find anything more true and noble than the spirit of pioneer America, when the first impulse was the joy of enterprise, initiative, and newly awakened powers. Honesty of purpose must be re-established; honesty of endeavor, honesty of word, honesty in our relationship with our fellow-men. "Look unto the rock, whence ye are hewn," wrote Isaiah of old ; and Solomon in his wisdom ¶

said: "Remove not the ancient land-mark, which thy fathers have set." ¶

We must hark back to the finer fundamentals of life, we must make every law and principle of right effective in our very lives. The end of the State is not to live, but to live nobly, and this can only be done as we realize the truth of truths, that the teachings of the Master must become the guiding stars of our lives. "For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." ¶

I pray that we American people may see anew the importance of justice and truth, and that we may rise above the ignorance and degraded politics of the present, and come into the light of the new day; andi dedicate our lives to more glorious purposes : to the will of the Master, to the purposes of our Lord. Amen. ¶