Conference Address

My brethren and sisters, I wish it were possible this morning for me to express to my Heavenly Father the gratitude there is in my heart for the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in these latter days. I am sure that if we serve all the days of our life and render to this work the utmost of our ability in furthering its progress, that we will not have shown fully the appreciation which I know we all hold. It is glorious for me to contemplate the possibilities that the gospel gives to us in life, the blessings that it has bestowed upon us thus far in our lives. I marvel as I go through the Church and receive of your kindness and your hospitality and your faith and prayers in my ministry, at the growth and the development which I, in turn, see in you, who are faithful to the offices and callings which you fill and who are rendering the service that you do render to the children of our Heavenly Father. I am certain that I can never do enough in my life to compensate my Heavenly Father for the testimony that he has given me of the divinity of the work in which we are engaged. More priceless than all else is the knowledge that I have that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that he called upon the boy Joseph Smith to be his prophet in these latter days and to restore to this earth his gospel for the salvation, and, through our obedience, the exaltation of mankind. ¶

Adversary at Work ¶

We may sometimes feel that this work is purely spiritual but there is no phase of life that we can afford to overlook in fulfilling our obligations to our Heavenly Father and to the priesthood which we hold. We must be conscious of the fact that the adversary is at work, utilizing every agency of which he can conceive. I am sure we are all agreed that his imagination is almost limitless, to bring about the downfall of the work of truth and righteousness here upon this earth. Where he finds us to be vulnerable either in our thinking or in our lives, there is where he is going to get in his work most ¶

effectively. He is causing us in our thinking to be led to adopt the philosophies of the world. We are easily led. I am sure that flattery is one of the greatest implements or tools that the adversary has at his command. You and I, today, must fortify ourselves against unrighteous flattery, in fact, I feel to say, any kind of flattery at all, to keep our feet on the ground and our thinking clear and to see to it that we devote our spare time to studying the principles of the gospel, that no philosophies of men will have any room in our thinking, nor shall we have time to devote to the reading of such. ¶

Rights of Citizenship ¶

We are called upon in our daily lives, in this great country in which we live, to exercise our rights of citizenship. I wonder sometimes if all of us are conscious of the power that we possess in this respect. We have had a great deal said at this conference, to which I can very happily say amen, concerning the family. I wish we could all take to heart every word that Elder Ezra Taft Benson said in his address on the "Church of the Air." I rejoice in his courage to tell the people of the world that which is destroying the home. To point out to them the way in which the home can be built up and strengthened. What I want to emphasize today, if I may, is the fact that the home in which we live and in which we rear our children is located in a community or vicinity, or city. We cannot keep out of our home the influences which we find in these centers in which we live. We need to call upon our Heavenly Father to give us the inspiration and the foresight, first of all, to know what to do and then the courage to accomplish it. ¶

State Legislature ¶

I want to say a commendatory word to those who sat in our last state legislature. May the Lord bless them for their efforts to make of our state and of our communities a better place in which to live and a better place in which to rear our families. I owe a debt of gratitude beyond measure to my parents, to my brethren and sisters who lived in this state when I was a boy for the fact that they kept the town in which I was reared as clean as it was kept. It is now our duty to keep the youth of Zion from as many temptations as possible and to give them the same opportunity that many of us have had to develop faith and to grow in righteousness and to overcome the weakness of the flesh in an atmosphere peculiarly adapted to" such purposes. I feel to commend all of the Latter-day Saints today for the efforts that they have extended to make of their communities, in a civic sense, a proper place to live. But I am certain that you will all agree with me that we still have a great work to perform in this connection, and we cannot delay nor overlook the slightest opportunity. ¶

First Dag ¶

Community Life ¶

We sometimes permit ourselves, around election time, to become concerned with politics. We should always be active. Now is the time to prepare for the next election. It is upon politics we must rely in large measure for the kind of government that we have. In turn we must rely upon that government for the protection of our rights, for the enforcement of our laws, and for the protection of our principles. Now these things go to the very root of life itself and of our growth and development in the gospel. We cannot afford to neglect to do our duty as citizens of this great United States and as citizens of the state in which we live. Those of you, my brethren and sisters, who come from the countries outside the United States, so far as the laws of those countries permit, should exercise the same influence there as we undertake to exercise here under our laws. We have the power, we have the leadership and the strength in this Church to make our views known. Even though we may be a minority, in some places, we have the power to convert every person who thinks right and who desires the right, to our cause. I have the abiding conviction within me that there are none of us living in any communities anywhere but what the great majority of the people — our friends, our neighbors, our associates — even though they be not of our faith, nevertheless they, the majority, desire righteousness rather than evil to predominate in the communities in which they live. And so it is up to you and me, where we are minorities, to make ourselves majorities by converting those who need converting to these specific programs, programs which we have in mind to bring about the kind of suitable conditions under which we can establish our homes and rear our children. Our efforts should not be confined to the times of political elections. We should be on duty always. ¶

I want to say again, I commend the legislature from the bottom of my heart. Our fine stalwart brethren stood in this last state legislature and raised their voices under the inspiration of their priesthood to uphold and sustain righteousness in the enactment of laws. We had a conflict, in our own legislature here last time, which I want to mention for a moment, on two or three issues, specifically which came before them. We should have them in mind as we go back to our homes and begin to devise ways and means by which we can accomplish our righteous purposes. I might say at the outset that what we undertake to do for ourselves is not with any selfish purpose in mind. It is not to obtain any power or dominion over others. It is to bring to them, in effect, the same blessings that we seek for ourselves, those God-given rights secured to us by the laws of this great nation. And so we can go forward. If any of us have any doubts as to our rights in this matter, we need only to read the 134th section of the Doctrine and Covenants to find all of the instruction and inspiration that any righteous man needs to go forth and do his duty. We must all strengthen the community in which we live, from a civic ¶

and political as well as a religious standpoint. I tell you, my brethren and sisters, that when we exercise this kind of faith and courage in behalf of our neighbors as well as our own members we will accomplish a great missionary work in this world. There will be men and women brought to investigate the principles of the gospel because they will see the kind of fruits in us which this gospel has borne. Their doors will be opened to us through our civic activities to preach the gospel of the restored kingdom and to bring the same joy and happiness into the hearts of our neighbors with which the Lord has blessed us all our lives. ¶

Observance of Sabbath ¶

We had a conflict up there in the legislature about the Sabbath day. I would like to go into some of the things that have been said about the Sabbath day from the time of Adam on. So far as I know the Lord has never changed the law of the Sabbath. In the days of early Israel with all of Israel's faults they kept the Sabbath day holy, and they did the Lord's work on the Sabbath day. They literally closed the gates of Jerusalem. They did not permit vendors to bring their wares to the gates to be sold on the Sabbath day. We have had the gospel of the Sabbath day proclaimed to us through all generations of time. Should there be any doubt in our minds as to what course the Latter-day Saints should take with reference to the Sabbath day? Are we to open our stores, are we to carry on our commercial transactions on the Sabbath day the same as we do on a weekday, or are we to close our establishments? Well, the answer is obvious. Now, why isn't any law which has for its purpose the maintaining of the Sabbath day sacred, a law which we should uphold and sustain and support and vote for on every occasion that we have a legal right so to do? To hold otherwise would be to tell us that we have not the right to use our own free agency so far as the affairs of government are concerned. ¶

Liquor Law ¶

We've had another law on our books with reference to liquor, and there was an effort made to expand the present liquor law to the detriment of the people. Nobody had to ask anybody any questions as to where the right and the wrong were to be found. If there are any Latter-day Saints today who think that the old open saloon is uplifting or would help us build a better community, it must be because they are not old enough to remember the days when we had those institutions in our midst and saw from actual experience the results and the evils, the deterioration that set in, the sorrow and the hardships, that such places of vice brought. So I feel again to commend those in our state legislature who saw fit to vote against any act which had for its purpose the bringing back of the open ¶

Second Dag ¶

saloon. They do not call it that now, but that is what it would have been had we had sale of liquor by the drink, and do not let any of us forget that. Let us raise our voices whenever we have the opportunity, and create the opportunity, my brothers and sisters. Let us elect men to office who will be opposed to the institution in our midst of such places of vice as the open saloon. It is bad enough to have to traffic in liquor at all. We certainly should not go farther than we have. If it is necessary, in order to fight this evil, to meet the opposition on the other side, why, then I say to you from the bottom of my heart, let us start fighting for prohibition, for after all, that is what we ought to have to maintain the kind of communities our Heavenly Father would have us maintain in this world, and on this continent, and in this land of his. We cannot hope to receive the blessings of our Heavenly Father here, in as rich abundance as he is willing to give them to us if we do not exercise every power that we have to make this a land choice above all others. Prohibition would help to make it that, and the open saloon would make it the contrary. ¶

Horse Racing Bill ¶

We had one other bill that I would like to speak about in conclusion and that is the horse racing bill. I suppose there is no harm in horse racing, but there is no more insidious vice on earth than gambling. It is destructive of the morals. The man does not live who is strong enough in the faith, I do not care what his past record has been, to start in gambling and continue therein and keep the faith. If there are any people in this state who desire horse racing and the gambling that is incident thereto, we invite them to leave and to go to places where those things can be had. We do not have to have them in our midst. I feel to say that no man can maintain his full standing in this Church and keep his faith and at the same time have anything to do with horse racing and gambling. ¶

Now, brethren, let us take this seriously. In those communities, in this state, where horse racing and gambling have become more or less of an institution, let us use our faith and our courage to eradicate them as such and to elect men to the legislature who will not open the doors to the element that follows horse racing with all the vice and corruption that would come into this state. ¶

Well, now, my brethren and sisters, I hope that you will accept this admonition in the spirit in which it has been given. I love the Latter-day Saints; I am indebted to all of you for your faith and prayers and the support that you have given me as I have gone through the Church attending your quarterly conferences. I have learned to love you. I look forward with the greatest of pleasure every week of my life to coming into your stakes and into your homes and enjoying your spirit. I want our communities, in which we live, to be maintained in keeping with the spirit which we have ¶

here in these conferences and in our quarterly conferences and the spirit that we can have in our homes if we will say our prayers daily. May the Lord bless us to this end, I humbly pray in Jesus' name. Amen. ¶