My Brothers And Sisters I Had Given...

My brothers and sisters, I had given up the expectancy of having this privilege of bearing my testimony to you this afternoon, and I haven't the courage to take time to make an extended speech or any extensive remarks. I trust that the Spirit of God may help me to bear a true testimony to the truth of the gospel, and when I say testimony, which seems to be the spirit of this conference, I mean that I testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; that he and the Father appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith; that through the visitation of heavenly beings and the inspiration that came from God, a real and true interpretation of the plan of life and salvation was returned to the earth; that through heavenly beings there came back to the earth the priesthood which authorized men to perform the functions that are essential to the exaltation of people in the kingdom of God; and that to regulate the use of that priesthood the Church was set up according to the will of God and the pattern which Jesus Christ gave us when he ministered in the earth. ¶

That I honestly and sincerely believe to be true, and I feel that the fact of its truth has been revealed to me by the Spirit of God. The spirit of this conference has been testimony. Christ told Peter that upon the revealed testimony that He is the Son of God, he had built his Church, and the gates of hell could not prevail against it. ¶

I honestly believe, brethren and sisters, that if we can properly instil into our own hearts and the hearts of our children this testimony to the degree that it will impel them to live true to the principles of the gospel, to the covenants that they have made in the waters of baptism and in the temples of God, and to the promises that are implied, if not actually made, when one receives the priesthood, that the Church will never be in danger. ¶

The power of the Church is in the administration of the priesthood offices, of course, and in the faith that the people have. I believe that testimony comes from faith and prayer and righteous living, and that the best way to get it is to live true to the teachings of the gospel, to pray about it, and to exercise our faith to that end. And then I believe further that if we can get that testimony truly in our hearts, that all men who accept ordination into the Melchizedek Priesthood or the Aaronic Priesthood for that matter, will exert every possible power within them to magnify that calling. There is not the least doubt in my mind that any man who holds the Melchizedek Priesthood, who lives to magnify that calling, should never yield to any of the temptations of his satanic majesty. ¶

I feel that whenever men give way to those temptations, it is an indication of really either a weak testimony or a lack of testimony of these wonderful things. ¶

We who hold the priesthood have the problem of planting that testimony in the hearts of others. We do it by the way we live and by what we teach. ¶

I heard a testimony just a week ago from a very fine man who has recently come into the Church. He was first impressed by the life of certain members of the Church whom he met. He became interested and investigated. He had a son fourteen years of age who likewise was interested in the missionaries and attended their meetings in the branch. The son came home one day and to the utter surprise of his father said, "Father, I have a testimony," and this man said, "Now in our church nobody ever testifies." ¶

It is in Christianity a forgotten art practically, but with us it is the most essential thing of our whole program, brothers and sisters, that we should gain that testimony; that we should live true to it, and that when we accept responsibility in the priesthood we should magnify it. ¶

Now we who keep records know that there is a large percentage of men who have been ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood who are not magnifying their callings. We have a program, brothers and sisters, that we have been advocating for sometime, to which reference was made today, to try to interest those people and bring them to pray and study that they may come to understand these things and then go forth to reclaim their privileges as members of the Melchizedek Priesthood. ¶

Of course there is plenty of incentive for it. To those of you who were here last night I recommend again the passages in the Doctrine and Covenants that Brother Romney read to you, that he who receives these callings in the priesthood and magnifies them fully can eventually attain to the powers of God. ¶

That is the incentive, brothers and sisters. When we go to these people, we must go in love and kindness, helpful as we can in the hope that they will listen to us. ¶

I pray that God will bless us that we may understand individually our own problems, understand that the privileges of membership in the Church of Jesus Christ are individual privileges, and that no man should let the conduct of another man prevent his using these privileges to his own exaltation. If people who come into the Church could come understanding that it is an individual problem pure and simple with them, then these other things that they observe at times would have no effect upon their lives. ¶

Brethren and sisters, we have the problem not only of our own people, but also of assimilating and absorbing and helping the many people who are being baptized into the Church. May God help us to do all these things, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. Amen. ¶