Unity an Essential Principle

My dear brethren, and my brethren and sisters who have joined this conference by radio, it is a great honor and a grave responsibility to bear one's testimony to this congregation. Yesterday morning, just before coming over to conference, a man walked into my office whom I had not seen for a number of years. I think I shall name him : President Edward L. Clissold from the Hawaiian Islands. We were boyhood chums together; went through grade school together; were on missions together ; and as I shook his hand and felt the strength of those long years of friendship and common ideals, I was singularly impressed with the power of unity ; and during the morning session yesterday, as we listened to the message of the living prophet of Almighty God, I was impressed again with his iteration of the need for unity. ¶

Unity An Essential Principle

We are gathered here together at a particularly significant season, even though it be more or less paganistically celebrated by the Christian world; a season whose significance is genuinely appreciated only by Latter-day Saints. The Savior not long before he went to His crucifixion admonished the Twelve and then He prayed to His Father in Heaven, and among other things He said these words : Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are ; . . . and for their sakes I sanctify myself that they might also be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which believe on me through their word, that they may all be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us ; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one : I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one ; that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. ¶

Disunity is forever a destructive force whether it be war among nations ; whether it be civil strife within the state ; whether it be schism within the Church, discord within the family, or even turmoil and conflict within the soul of the individual person ; for a man divided against himself can no more stand than a divided house. A society cannot be unified except as its members are one together and except as individually they are one with themselves. The matter of wholeness is essential. ¶

Causes for Delinquency ¶

Modern psychologists have said much in recent years about the integrated personality, and our hospitals for mental defectives are full of persons suffering from conflicts within themselves. They are not whole. It is profoundly significant that this word "whole" is used frequently as a synonym for "health." You remember when the Pharisees saw the Savior sitting at meat with Publicans, sinners, and so on, they found fault with Him, and He told them that the whole have no need of a physician. It is the basic business of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bring about a oneness, a wholeness in the individual, a wholeness collectively among the children of God. I should like to leave this one idea this afternoon in the matter of helping the individual to be whole. ¶

We have heard a good deal about juvenile delinquency, a grave problem ; and one of the alarming, particularly alarming, aspects of our present juvenile delinquency is that not so great a percentage of it any longer comes from the broken home. While the broken home is still a tremendous contributing factor, we are alarmed to find out that among the so-called "best families" many young persons are running amuck. I am of the opinion that much of this delinquency is the result of conflicts within the individual souls of the young people. What of parents who actually foster and abet internal conflict in their children? I am speaking of Latter-day Saints, or at least members of the Church, who, through certain Church loyalty, send their children to their Church meetings, their Primary and their M.I.A. and their Sunday School ; who have their sons go to Priesthood meetings and in due course encourage them to receive the Priesthood and yet who, in their own homes, do not set worthy examples. In such case, the youngster goes to Sunday School and is taught that he should be loyal to the Church ; he is taught the principles of the Gospel. He comes home only to find those principles disobeyed in his home. Moreover, the Church teaches him the words of the Savior "Honor thy father and thy mother !" Here he is faced with a divided loyalty. If he is loyal to his parents, how can he be loyal to the Church which teaches doctrines and advocates conduct which his parents by their very lives reject? ¶

Many parents, in so simple a thing as keeping the Word of Wisdom excuse themselves sometimes on the basis of social exigency, sometimes on the basis of business exigency. There is only one basis for it and that is either a lack of belief or moral cowardice. No parent would deliberately subject his child to physical suffering. Any parent who would do that we would say is cruel, and yet it is just as much an act of cruelty and ultimately more damaging, to impale the child on the horns of a dilemma of conflicting loyalties. He cannot be fully loyal to a Church which teaches one doctrine and fully loyal to parents who decline to observe that doctrine. That conflict will be resolved either by the destruction of one or other or both of those loyalties. We need oneness. ¶

The Doctrine and Covenants has explained what the human soul is ; what the soul of man is. The body and the spirit are the soul of man, and the purpose of our mortal sojourn is to bring about a complete fusion, to bring about an indissoluble oneness, of spirit and body. If parents will live according to the Gospel, will send their children to be taught in Church organizations and indeed will augment that teaching with teaching and example in the home, then two great forces, the family and the Church, will converge upon the individual youngster to bring about a wholeness, a spiritual health, a oneness without which neither happiness nor salvation can be obtained. ¶

Hunger for Righteousness To Be Cultivated ¶

We have a grave responsibility to establish in our young people righteous hunger. Everyone of us knows that he has hungers for particular foods. Even now, when I'm very hungry the first thing I think of is a big bowl of beans and a piece of new bread and butter. Why? Because as a youngster, every Monday afternoon that is what I got, and now when I am hungry nothing else tastes so good. We hunger for those things we are used to. When we are hungry, we don't think of a bowl of bird-nest soup, though thousands of Chinese do. These boys who have gone out into the service of their country and get away from home and look about them for a Church to go to, hunt up other boys who are members of the Church and get together to meet. Why do they do it? Because they have a hunger in them established for it. "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness." That is no mere figure of speech. Those words were wisely chosen. If we deliberately implant righteous hungers in our children, then when they are from under our roof trees they will bend their dearest efforts to satisfy the healthful appetite wise parentage has helped to cultivate. One can hunger for righteousness just as one can develop evil appetites. ¶

It is my prayer that we shall have the wisdom and the courage so to live that our very lives will be dynamically persuasive examples to our young people of what the Church teaches, so that we may not be guilty of inflicting upon them the agonies of conflicting loyalties, and I ask it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶