The Need for True Leadership

Of the First Council of the Seventy ¶

I had rather half-heartedly cherished the idea that the broadcast tomorrow morning would be accepted as my contribution to this Conference. It was almost the case six months ago, but five minutes at the last of the closing session saved the establishment of such a precedent, I am sorry to say. ¶

Usually when I occupy this position, which is at least once a week and often two or three times a week, I have the benefit of a radio script in front of me. It is much more comfortable, but not nearly so spontaneous. I ask at this time that if the Lord has a message that He would like me to speak, He will prompt it. I feel very weak in addressing this congregation. ¶

The Need Felt for True Leadership

In our conduct of the Tabernacle Choir broadcast over the nation-wide Columbia network each Sunday morning, and over the nation-wide Canadian Radio Commission stations, and also by short wave and by electrical transcription across the seas and into other continents, we receive mail postmarked from almost every section of the globe, and literally from every nook and corner of America. ¶

This mail reveals that people are hungry for leadership, that they are searching earnestly for a foundation on which to place their feet, for a fixed destination toward which to strive, and that they are sick to death of the confusion and the contradiction that they see about them. This hunger for leadership in one sense is a very happy thing, and in another sense it may be a very dangerous thing. When people are in that frame of mind it makes it much easier for a false leader to win their following. ¶

I am impressed with the fact that our responsibility in this Church is the responsibility of leadership, and that we must take it, whatever it may cost us, because the Lord has told us that we have been sent to be a light unto the world and to be saviors of men; and if we don't give this leadership, others will assume it, to the sorrow of mankind and to our own condemnation. I feel sure that this leadership must enter into all of the activities of living. ¶

President Clark mentioned here, yesterday morning, the fact that our fathers and grandfathers had prayed over the land and the water and the air, and all of the physical elements of production, much to their credit and to their blessing. I feel sure that we need to pray over a good many other things, including our scholarship, our academic activities, our political activities, our social activities. I am sure that we need to pray over every phase of thought and of life. ¶

It is a very difficult thing to take leadership in this day -- so much is being discovered; so much is happening; so confused are the issues, I think it safe to say, without contradiction, that in a public sense we can't be sure of much of what we hear or much of what we see or much of what we read; that the phrase, "evil and designing men," has a much broader application, than the limited sense in which we use it in connection with the Word of Wisdom. Those things that are printed and spoken to shape our thinking, in all fields of communication and human contact, are largely designed and colored and adulterated and modified to bring men into the line of thought of other men, often without regard to the facts or the truth of the matter in question. It is very difficult to know, and I think man unaided, of himself, and without some Higher Help, cannot know what to believe and what not to believe of the maze of material that daily passes before our eyes and comes within the range of our hearing. ¶

The Search for Truth

A cherished friend of mine, whose life paralleled mine for many years, up to a few years ago, when there was a parting of the ways, is now in one of America's greatest institutions of learning, and has achieved international eminence in his scientific field. A few weeks ago he wrote me and said: "I am conducting researches in many fields, and I am just beginning to learn the high cost of finding out the truth about anything." ¶

And he continued: "The problem is so complex that all we can do is arrive at half-truths and first approximations." ¶

I wrote him back and said: "It must be a great comfort to you, in your work, to know that you are a member of a Church that will accept everything of truth that you ever find in your researches, in whatever field of thought or activity, and all that we ask of you is to pursue them beyond that stage of half-truth and first approximations of which you have spoken, and conduct them to their final end, where there will be no question about their eternal verity -- to that point where the generations to come will not of necessity repudiate them." ¶

I have a strong feeling that our young people who go into our universities and colleges should have before them constantly the promise of Moroni, that "by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things," which is repeated in substance in the Doctrine and Covenants to the effect that "the Holy Ghost... showeth all things and teacheth the peaceable things of the kingdom." I never remember having gone into an examination of any consequence in my life without making it a matter of prayer. I know that the young man or young woman who approaches any problem in the academic field, or any other field, would have a great advantage if he would keep as his constant companion the spirit of our Father in heaven, which would give him an active sense of warm assurance when he was in the presence of truth, and would give him a contrary feeling when he was not in the presence of truth. It wouldn't give him knowledge without study, or discovery without search, or truth without effort, but, granted that he pursued his work intelligently and diligently, he would have a great advantage in all of his findings and doings, academically and otherwise, if he made the spirit of all truth his constant guide. ¶

Strength Comes Through Prayer

This is the thing the Latter-day Saints have that helps them to take leadership regardless of the confusion and the contradiction about us. I know that in my home my widowed mother was constantly in an attitude of prayer. My most vivid memory of her -- and I cherish it dearly -- is a memory of her on her knees, pleading with the Lord, her Father in heaven, for a solution to the many problems and difficulties that beset her life. I suppose that I had had as much formal education by the time I was fourteen years old, in terms of days spent in school, as she had had in all her life, and yet after I had had the privilege of acquiring university degrees I could still go to her when I was troubled, and find the right counsel and the right answers to whatever was confronting me, and I am grateful to have had such a mother and such a home, and to have had evidence of the effectiveness of that approach, that promise which through prayer and through diligence and through walking in the ways of our Father, makes it possible for the Latter-day Saints to assume leadership, and we can do it in no other way, except by keeping constantly in touch with the spirit of our Father in heaven, by which we may know the truth of all things. ¶