Conference Address

This thought has been running through my mind, "Why do I live?" It is bothering me a good deal. Brother Francis M. Lyman said : "Death is nothing, if you can get dead. Why fear death?" I haven't gotten rid of that fear yet. ¶

Brethren and sisters, I would like to feel that I am one of your number and I am one of your brothers, and I have tried as best I could, up to the present date, to fulfill my mission and complete my labors. I am not afraid of the Lord, but I am afraid of the location. I do not know where I will be located. I hope it will be a good place. ¶

I have in my pocket a paper— I haven't got it in my mind ; I wish ¶

I did. There is a book published called "J. Golden Kimball," and it has been sold among some of the people. In this book Claude Richards has preserved some of the talks that I have made — most of them talks that I have made in the Tabernacle. I am very glad some of the talks I have made outside were not printed. We will forget them. I discover in checking up on these talks that there have been forty-eight made by me during General Church Conferences. Out of that number I have selected one which I shall not attempt to read, but I would like to have the permission of the Presidency of the Church, after this talk has been edited and looked over, to publish it in the Conference Pamphlet as the talk that I would like to make on this occasion. I feel that it is so important to me and to the young people that it should be cried out from the housetops. ¶

TALK BY ELDER J. GOLDEN KIMBALL October, 1926—11 Years Ago ¶

"No man knoweth how much good he does, so that I feel to encourage the Priesthood of God. We never know how much good we do when we speak in the name of the Lord. I don't believe, I can't believe, that I ever converted a man in my life, but I have taught the truth, I have preached the Gospel, and my voice has been heard from Canada to Mexico more times than once. I was in the General Board of the Young Men's Associations for thirty years and I have never had greater joy or greater happiness than in lifting up my voice among the rising generation. How much good we do, as I stated before, no man knoweth. I claim that every man fills his niche when he is called of God and set apart and ordained to an office. He may not fill it in the way someone else would fill it, but if he is a man of courage he will fill it in his own way, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. ¶

Like my father, I have no apology to make for my origin. I was told once that my trouble was I was trying to be like my father. Well, thank God I can try to be like him a little, but I was too young when my father died to remember his mannerisms and his method of speech. ¶

LUXURY A DANGER TO RISING GENERATION ¶

My brethren and sisters, I want to lift up a danger signal to the rising generation. In doing it I want to be very careful of the way in which I express it; I shall attempt to read it, although it is against my grain to do so. ¶

This great country, North and South America, the Prophet Joseph Smith declared, is Zion, the land of the pure in heart. It would seem to me that a great responsibility rests particularly with the young men and women of this generation. ¶

The question naturally arises: What is the trend of the times for modern sons and daughters of Zion? Riches and culture, ease and luxury. Everything is money and money is everything. The golden key unlocks all doors, that is, it prys them open. ¶

Plenty of money entitles you to anything : honor, society, and emoluments. The rising generation who are poor look upon this pleasureloving people with envy and a yearning for worldly things. And as the spirit of the age in which we live takes hold of them, they assert their individual independence and break away from what are called "old-fogy ideas, old bigotries, old superstitions." They go recklessly wild, at sixty miles an hour, claiming what is termed the "new liberty of the twentieth century," and run daringly into forbidden pastures. Today all over America we see everywhere among the rich and poor, the cultured, educated, and ignorant, the indications of the sensual tendencies of the age, and we forget for the moment the degradation and destruction to which such a life leads. ¶

SENSUAL PLEASURE ¶

No single instance can be given as evidence that unlawful sensual pleasure can be indulged in without paying for it a thousand times in pain and remorse. ¶

The danger signals are set up at the gate of the garden of sensual pleasure. The angel stands with his sword of flame, and no man, woman, youth, or maiden enters unsmitten of him. "In the path of sensuality in all its multitplied forms our Heavenly Father has placed barriers mountain high to stop us and frighten us back from ruin, disease, and degradation." ¶

As wealth increases in any country and with any people, the tendency to sensuality (through the many temptations of ease, idleness, and gratification of one's appetite, the elevation of fashion, style, and living beyond a certain point of safety and security) is the cause of the downfall of hundreds of thousands of God's children. ¶

That "money-devil," if not used in doing good, is the lion right across the highway of our future, standing, teasing, menacing — just at the forks of the road, to lead us to ruin and unhappiness. If the roofs could be lifted off the palaces of the rich, what sights might not be seen, what skeletons in the closets, what sorrows, what shams, what sights. — -Watson. ¶

When we open our eyes to the danger that menaces the rising generation, life would seem to be a very dangerous sea if we take note of the ruined thousands that strew its shores. ¶

DEATH NOT A CALAMITY ¶

We, therefore, cannot look upon death as a great sorrow and calamity when it involves no stain of honor and no loss of character. We wisely conclude the hand of Providence is in it, and good must come out of it, and we are comforted. ¶

When we contemplate and think of our young men and women with their bright hopes of love, of truth and purity, of goodly gifts from God, of mind, of all sweet affections and aspirations, gone down, blotted out and spoiled, we cannot feel otherwise — be as hopeful and cheerful ¶

as we may — that life is dangerous unless we are guided and influenced by the Holy Spirit and directed by steady hands, by men and women as teachers of virtue, truth and happiness, who are not afraid to speak in the name of the Lord. ¶

BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM ¶

The fruit of religion manifests itself in the lives of men. "By their fruits ye shall know them." There can be no deception by men who love God. and keep his commandments. We are one and all God's children. He created us and he never created a failure, and he created you. ¶

HAPPINESS THE DESIGN OF OUR CREATOR ¶

"Men are that they might have joy." "Happiness is the object and design of our creation and will be to the end of our existence if we pursue the path that leads to it. This path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness." To keep God's commandments we must know them. To know them we must read the scriptures and repent and be in tune with the Holy Spirit and he will lead us into all truth and show us things to come. I promise you that you shall hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." ¶

TEMPTATIONS ¶

Remember this always : Temptation somewhere in the life of all finds us, as this life is a testing time. Therefore, watch and pray and ask God to leave us not in temptation and deliver us from evil, as temptation is ever lying in wait, and in a thousand forms is temptation repeated. There is divine wisdom in praying always and avoiding the very appearance of evil. ¶

A HELPING HAND ¶

There is very little use of preaching religion or morals, or honesty, virtue, and truthfulness to those whose motives and tendencies all point toward vice and sensuality unless they repent and sin no more. These wild, reckless, dissipated young people will not come to us, so we must reach out a helping hand and go to them. ¶

RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS ¶

This great change for the uplift and betterment of this great country — Zion, the pure in heart — rests very largely, almost entirely, with the home and the parents. ¶

BACK TO CHRIST'S RELIGION ¶

We must, for the safety of the youth of Zion, come back to Jesus Christ's religion and its spiritual forces. We must teach the gospel of repentance and forgiveness which has made men's and women's lives happier, tasks lighter, judgment steadier, as it truly comforts the disconsolate, forgotten sinners, and leads them to a clear life of virtue, love, and happiness. No child of God can escape Christ's religion. Intelligence and knowledge of the right kind walk ever close to religion. ¶

ADVICE TO PARENTS ¶

My conclusion is : There is just one great, big, life-and-death duty of the parents of children, the church and the state, and that is to keep every boy and girl under proper schooling and give to them "love, pleasure, work, and worship." ¶

You good people and parents living on your farms in the country, I plead with you not to send your children to cities, where the beautiful spirit of things God created perishes. Let them live in the open, in the beautiful valleys, on the mountains, in God's sunshine, near streams, rivers, and trees and let his Spirit teach them of the things of God. ¶

HAVE GIVEN BEST EFFORT ¶

My testimony, brethren and sisters, in all confidence, is that I know this work is true. I have tested it out. I have found God. I am a man of weakness ; I am a man full of faults ; but God knows I have given him the best effort there was in me. ¶

GOD LIVES ¶

I know God lives, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world. And when men have tempted me to deny this — which they have tried to do — I have talked to some of them, learned men, I have talked to doctors, I have talked to young men who have gone out and filled missions, come home and got education, and they have tried to burn all my bridges behind me but, thank God, I had a testimony and I know ! I have told them : "In what you offer me there is no happiness." ¶

JOSEPH A TRUE PROPHET ¶

If any man can prove to me that Joseph Smith is not a prophet of God, he has taken everything; he has burned every bridge behind me. I never saw the Prophet, but I have heard my father talk about him and I have read his revelations and his prophecies, and I know they are true. He is a Prophet of God. I sustain the Church and uphold the hands of the Priesthood as best I know how. God bless you. Amen. ¶

The Singing Mothers and the congregation sang the hymn, "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet." ¶