Blessings Promised Those Who Live the Gospel

I have rejoiced exceedingly in the rich outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord in our meetings of this Conference. I am very grateful for the address of the First Presidency that I had the privilege of reading here at the beginning of the Conference. I am very grateful for the remarkable and wonderful talks of President Clark and President McKay, and I am grateful for all the other fine speeches that we have had. ¶

Conferences Blessed of the Lord

Year after year it has seemed to me that each Conference we have had has been almost superior, at least fully the equal of any that have gone before, and each year I have wondered if we would reach the same heights of inspiration and blessings of the Lord in our Conferences, and I feel that we have not been lacking in this great Conference. In my judgment the Lord has seen fit to pour out his Spirit in great abundance upon us in these times. ¶

Plans Laid by Joseph Smith Carried Out

I am truly grateful for the safe arrival of our missionaries from Europe. Nearly all of them are here now. I am very grateful indeed for every blessing that the Lord has seen fit to bestow upon his people. We have been a blessed people from the day that we arrived in this section of the country. The Lord led the people here under the inspiration of Brigham Young, and the Lord has blessed the individual management of the various presidents of this Church from the days of Brigham Young until now. The reason that the Lord has blessed us is that we as a people have tried to carry out the advice, counsel, and plans of the Prophet Joseph Smith. In no one thing did Brigham Young attempt to claim that in the organization set up and the plans that were made he was doing anything more than building upon the foundation laid by the Prophet Joseph Smith, under the inspiration of the Lord. ¶

When we stop to think of the marvelous work that the Prophet Joseph did, sometimes I wonder how any man of intelligence can look into the life of that man, can know of his imprisonment, of the drivings, of the persecutions, of the tarring and feathering, of the sentence of death having been passed upon him, and then read the wonderful things that we have in the Doctrine and Covenants -- I cannot understand how any reasonable man can fail to acknowledge the inspiration of the Lord in his accomplishments. I cannot understand how any intelligent man could think that any man without the help of the Lord could have produced the Book of Mormon which has been before us now for more than a hundred years and has stood the test during all that period of time, notwithstanding the ridicule that has been brought against it, for one reason and then another. Today that book which was translated by Joseph Smith as the instrumentality of the Lord stands out supreme. ¶

It is today the greatest missionary that we have for proclaiming this Gospel, there is nothing else to compare with it. ¶

I rejoice in my acquaintance with Brigham Young as a child and later as a man. He loved little children dearly, as did my father, from what everyone tells me. Father made the remark that he did not believe anyone loved little children more than did he. ¶

I was about to say something, but I do not think it is worthy of it, relative to remarks made about my father. It takes dogs to bark, of course they are necessary, and it is just as well to let them bark, because barking does not hurt anybody, just so long as we keep the dogs far enough away that they do not bite. ¶

Commendation for Choirs

I rejoice in our wonderful Choir. I rejoice in the fine management of this Choir and our fine organists. I rejoice in our having such fine groups of singers in different parts of Utah that we can bring here to sing for us. I do not think there is another people in the world of the same number that can begin to compare with our people as congregational singers. I do not think we can find them anywhere else. ¶

Choir at the World's Fair in 1893

I rejoice in the statement made that if we had had justice given to us way back in 1893 we would have won the first prize for the best chorus of 250 voices. The manager of one of the greatest booking agencies in New York -- Major Pond -- said after the contest: ¶

"My, I am glad I was not the judge, I would have had to give the prize to those awful Mormons." ¶

The Scranton Choir engaged fifty voices from Wales because they were afraid of our choir. The Choir was permitted to give concerts to help pay their expenses before the contest, and the Pennsylvania people were so frightened that they hired the fifty best voices from Wales to help them out, and the Major said: "Those fifty voices upset the perfect harmony of the four parts, and it was not so good a choir with those voices as it was without them." And that is the exact criticism that I received from one of my lifelong nearest and dearest and most closely associated friends, the late Horace G. Whitney, who managed the Choir upon that occasion. I was in New York, the panic was on, and I was there laboring to obtain money with which to keep myself and others alive financially. Horace wrote to me and said: ¶

"Heber, I would have been satisfied had they put the $1000.00 and the $5000.00 prizes together and divided the amount, but it was an outrage to give the first prize to the other choir; we were better than the other choir." ¶

I wrote and said: "My dear Bud: You know they say, love is blind, cannot smell nor hear. You came up as a child under Stephens' training. You learned to love him with all your heart, you love the choir, and I shall have to vote, seeing you would have been satisfied with half the amount if they had put the two prizes together -- I shall have to vote with the committee that gave it to Scranton." ¶

Two days later -- being in New York at the time, and being the president of the Salt Lake Theatre and familiar with musical people, -- I learned of Major Pond's criticism. So I wrote to Bud: "You can hear, and you can smell, and you made a fair decision." ¶

Grateful for Work of Church Musicians

I rejoice in the splendid work that has been done. I feel a debt of gratitude to our singers. I feel a debt of gratitude to Evan Stephens, George Careless, to Ebenezer Beesley, Joseph Daynes, and others who have given us the beautiful music that we have. I am grateful to them. These selections lift us up, and they build us up. The Lord says that the song of the righteous is a prayer unto him, and I love to hear these beautiful prayers. I never get tired of them. I want you to know that I am sure I sing or repeat this song to myself ("God Moves in a Mysterious Way") four or five times a week regularly, and I never hear it, I never sing it and I never read it that I do not thank God for the splendid words. There is nothing truer than the last verse: ¶

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And He will make it plain. ¶

A Mighty People

God predicted things through the Prophet Joseph Smith that have been fulfilled. He said that "the Saints should continue to suffer much affliction and would be driven to the Rocky Mountains. Many would apostatize, others would be put to death by our persecutors or lose their lives in consequence of exposure or disease, and some would go to assist in making settlements and building cities and see the Saints become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains." ¶

Are we a mighty people? We are. 6800 men holding the priesthood were in this building last night. No other people in the world like us; no other people with the power that we have here, because we are following a prophet of the living God, the man whom God chose to organize this Church, and whom he visited and to whom he introduced his beloved Son. I have met hundreds of men who have said, "If it were not for Joseph Smith I could accept your religion." Any man who does not believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet of the true and the living God has no right to be in this Church. That revelation to Joseph Smith is the foundation stone. If Joseph Smith did not have that interview with God and Jesus Christ the whole Mormon fabric is a failure and a fraud. It is not worth anything on earth. But God did come, God did introduce his Son, God did inspire that man to organize the Church of Jesus Christ, and all the opposition of the world is not able to withstand the truth. It is flourishing, it is growing, and it will grow more. I know beyond a shadow of doubt of the divinity of this work in which we are engaged. It is one of the joys of my life at home and abroad, in private and in public to testify that I know as well as I know that I live, that God lives, that he hears and answers our prayers. He has heard and answered mine from childhood until the present day. He heard and answered the prayers of that beloved mother of mine. Under the inspiration of the living God she planted in my heart a love of truth, a love, of God, a love of the Prophet Joseph. Her description of that man was that he was one of the finest, one of the most wonderful men she had ever laid eyes upon. She knew as she knew that she lived that he was a prophet of God. And she knew that Brigham Young was his successor. Why? Because she was in Nauvoo when Brigham Young stood up and was transfigured in voice and form before the people, and the mantle of the Prophet Joseph fell upon him when Sidney Rigdon, in good plain English, tried to steal the Church. ¶

Blessings Promised Those Who Live the Gospel

May the Lord bless us and guide us by his Spirit. So far as I am entitled to do so I pray God for his Spirit to bless each and all of you. I pray God for you one and all to love this Gospel, to think of it as of more value than anything else in all the world, and that is what it is. To know that if we keep the commandments of God we shall go back into his presence; to know that we are joint heirs with Jesus Christ if we only live the Gospel; to know that this is truly the Gospel of Jesus Christ is worth more than anything else in all the wide world. ¶

I pray God to bless each and every one of us who have the knowledge of the divinity of this work. May we grow and increase in that knowledge, and above all, may we live it, that our lives may proclaim it, I ask it in the name of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, Amen. ¶