Y Brethren And Sisters I Sincerely Seek...

My brethren and sisters: I sincerely seek an interest in your faith and prayers, that what I shall undertake to say in the next few minutes may be directed by the Spirit of our Heavenly Father and may be delivered in a spirit of love and fellowship, for I love the work of the Lord, and I love his people; I love to work with them. ¶

I have been interested in this conference, especially interested in the many references that have been made to the foreign missionary work and to the newly completed temple in Switzerland. ¶

Those references have caused me to reflect upon the purposes of temples. We have had some instruction already as to why we build them. It seems to me that so far as a newly erected temple is concerned, perhaps its major purpose would be to take care of the living, because I believe the accommodations of those already existent would take care of the vicarious work that we have available at the present time. So this newly erected temple is likely to be most beneficial for the living people of Europe. They who have never had the experience of an endowment in the temple before, will receive a wonderful uplift in their spirituality as they enjoy this rare and wonderful privilege which is given to us in the temples of God. ¶

The priesthood has for its purpose integrating into the lives of people the ordinances and the benefits of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The greatest and most supreme of all of these blessings comes to us through the administration of the priesthood in the temples of God and in no other place and were this new temple limited to the benefits the people receive in mortality, its erection and administration would be amply justified, but the benefits of these ordinances when they are carried through to their ultimate end, are not limited to mortality. They penetrate the veil between mortality and eternity, giving people advantages which are past our understanding. Really, they are so sublime and wonderful that they stagger our imagination. ¶

In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told that any man who can attain to the magnification of all of his duties in the Melchizedek Priesthood would and will ultimately attain to the powers of God. ¶

No man who goes into a temple and is content with receiving his own endowments realizes the full possibilities that the temple offers him. He only who takes a wife into the temple and is sealed to her for time and all eternity can ultimately attain to the tremendous and wonderful blessings that are held out as an inducement for righteous living. That seems to me to be the sublime and supreme distinction between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and all other religious denominations. ¶

During the last year, 1954, and this year up to the present, as we have ministered among the stakes of Zion, there has been placed in our hands an item, a statistical item relative to the numbers of people who avail themselves of this grand and glorious privilege. I have kept account of the stakes I visited last year and this. Last year there were reported 1811 marriages in the stakes that I visited, and I was surprised to learn that less than half of them were consummated in the temple, a fifth of them involving people who were not members of the Church. ¶

It is an astonishing thing. I rather feel to regard that as an unsatisfactory percentage. There may be people who think it is perhaps all that could be expected, but I do not. I think that we ought to strive to increase that percentage, and then once you make up your mind that that should be an incentive and an objective, the question then is: Where are you going to start to bring about an improvement? ¶

It seems to me that the duty of teaching people who are approaching marriageable age, the advantages of celestial and eternal marriage, first, and always, is with the parents. Then I wonder how parents who have not availed themselves of that privilege and who hardly live so as to impress their children with the desirability of perpetuating the marriage relationship, can expect so to impress their children. I have come to decide, brethren and sisters, that the place to start is not with the young folk, but with the old folk, to get the fathers and mothers of young people fully to appreciate the advantages, the wonderful advantages of celestial marriage, and then to present to their growing children an example which will make marriage, a marriage for eternity, attractive to them. ¶

If the parents do not do it, where can we lay the responsibility for it? We have a good many agencies that are supposed to supplement the efforts of the parents, brethren and sisters, but it seems to me that fathers and mothers can never escape the responsibility for this instruction. ¶

So it behooves us to live to be worthy of it. If we have not already availed ourselves of the opportunity to bring our lives into conformity with the standards of the gospel so that we can avail ourselves of that privilege, what example do we set as a lesson to our children? Words fall flat when they do not show in the example of the parents the value of the teaching. ¶

So I believe that is where we ought to begin, brethren and sisters, and there are many of us who can take it to heart. I am sure there is a wonderful percentage of people who make every possible effort to magnify their calling and obligation, but there are many others of us who do not. We let jealousy and hatred and other things enter into family relationships which disrupt them and disturb them, resulting too frequently in the dissolution of the union, and all of that is not right, brethren and sisters. It is not right, and it behooves us as fathers and mothers to set the example and then give the instruction. That instruction should be subtle. It should be attractive. It should be convincing. ¶

Then to supplement the efforts of the father and the mother, we have the bishopric of the ward. We had a wonderful film on the responsibility of a bishop the other night. There have been bishops in the Church who have seen and used the opportunity that is theirs to instruct their young people when they approach marriageable age in the advantages of celestial and eternal marriage. There, again, is the closest contact I believe that we have in the Church to supplement the efforts of the fathers and the mothers. And if fathers and mothers and bishops and auxiliary associations should combine in a serious effort to teach this truth, I believe we could make it so attractive that the evils which befall many of our young people would cease to be attractive to them, and they would develop a strength in their youth which would carry them through all their future lives in honorable service to God, our Heavenly Father, and in righteous living. ¶

Now what will we do about it? We cannot dream ourselves into it, brethren and sisters, and if any single one who is here today finds opportunity, he should start action at once to correct his life and make it appropriate for the realization of these grand and glorious principles and privileges. ¶

The greatest result of such living is the union of a man and a woman for time and eternity, sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise, with the power of eternal increase, an attribute of Godhood. ". . . all that my Father hath shall be given unto him" (D&C 84:38) is the promise made to the man who receives and magnifies the priesthood. God bless you. Amen. ¶