It Is A Wonderful Blessing To Be...

It is a wonderful blessing to be in this beloved building on these cherished and sacred grounds again. It is glorious to sing with you and to respond to the inspiration of this choir. It is good to be home. ¶

As I walked out of the Church Office Building yesterday morning, I heard a man say to his companion, "If I keep up this schedule I am going to end up in the grave." My immediate reaction was to feel that whatever schedule he followed his chances of that were pretty good. But the second thought came, a thought expressed by a fine but leaden-footed youngster interrupted in the middle of a drag race by a somewhat stern officer. The boy was asked what he was doing, and he said, "I didn't want to get left in the dust." Well, he won't. No one will, and no one will end up in a grave. ¶

Choose the "Eternal Way" now The spirit of every child of God goes on living as we experience mortal death — the temporary separation of the body and spirit — and through the atonement of Christ there will be a universal resurrection. The body and spirit will be joined together again as the eternally living soul. The circumstances under which we shall live eternally, in whose presence, with what companions, and in what condition of opportunity and creative service, we are now deciding by the choices we make. ¶

The great messages of this conference and the stirring and solemn assurances that have come have brought to our hearts renewed assurance that this is the truth. We have been teaching that truth in Europe in the past several years with many of your choice sons and daughters and their older companions. It has been a wonderful experience to see the transforming Spirit of the Lord work upon them as it worked anciently when the Savior called his Apostles from the counting place and the fishing nets and bade them become fishers of men. It is an experience that we wouldn't miss nor trade for anything. ¶

Missionary Motivations Commended Some years ago a wonderful, successful man, who knew nothing of the Church, spent a few days with his son at a boys' camp where several of these missionaries were serving as counselors. A little time later he wrote a note to one of them. Let me read it: ¶

"It's hard for a person untrained in writing to say what I want to and not sound a bit overboard. I think you know me well enough, though, to know that I mean just what I say. I want to tell you and the others how I feel. There is very little that I know about the Mormon religion, but this I see from my contact with you men during this camp period. In some way it has made itself so vital to young men like you that you found yourself answering a call. You've had to do something personally because your religion is so very personal and important to you. ¶

This is a living religion. ¶

"I am a ruling elder in a Protestant church, and I covet for my own church, more than I can tell you, the sort of teaching, leadership, and conviction that breathes such a vital force into its young men. We have our missionaries, of course, but this thing which you do is a different thing. It reaches out within your church in a different way, I judge, and in my humble judgment it is one of the grandest ways I have yet heard of for a fellow to repay in some measure to his God the great debt we all owe. I know that God will richly bless your mission and you. I want you to know that through you and the other men I have had a glimpse of something which to me has the possibility of being an answer to many of the problems that beset my own church and the whole world in these troubled times." ¶

Well, I agree with Mr. Cary's generous and challenging words, his sincere words of commendation and expectation. And I agree with the wonderful implications in them for the missionary, and his younger brother and sister and his parents, for me and you, for all of us. They are to me a sobering portrait of our possibilities and our responsibilities. ¶

Commendation and Confidence for Youth As we worked with the missionaries, we worked also with wonderful members of the Church and met multitudes of choice young and older people. I see them in my mind's eye this morning in Frankfurt and Orleans and Berchtesgaden, in London and Bristol and Glasgow, and in a lot of other places. Last Sunday night at a fireside gathering in the Brigham Young University field house there were more youngsters gathered than are congregated on these grounds today. A night or two later at Utah State University I met another great group. I feel in my heart for them and their generation the strongest commendation and confidence. ¶

But they have a mighty burden to bear and a great challenge to face. ¶

I have been thinking the last few days of the statement of the Psalmist who sang the sweet strains of heaven: ¶

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: . . ." ¶

(Psalm 23:5.) Our young people have a table prepared all right, and it is a table laden with the gifts that can make this life meaningful and happy and that can fill them in the eternal sense. But the table is in truth, as the Psalmist said, set in the presence of their enemies. ¶

Enemies of Youth Who are their enemies? Some of them have been spoken of this morning: ¶

men who dig gold out of dirt; certain ones who manufacture and market filth; they who, whether misguided or designing, put before our young people a picture of life as some live it but emphasizing the least affirmative and least Godly aspects of man's divine nature. The young have a table prepared for them in the presence of many enemies. One of the enemies is, in every individual case, our own accumulated sinfulness and bad memory. We are constrained to excuse ourselves because of the failings and faults of others. We are constrained to feel that since everybody is doing it, it is all right for us to do it, and this is persuasively propounded by people in various fields who rely on the statistical method and suggest that since large numbers are doing it, then it must be all right for everybody to do it, just so long as you don't go too far. ¶

Well, a tendency in man to excuse himself has ever been with us. Saul was sent on a great mission. Saul failed and then blamed it on his people when he was confronted by the Prophet Samuel. Saul told a falsehood, and Samuel said, "Then what is this bleating I hear in my ear" (see 1 Sam. ¶

15:14), and then Saul blamed his defection on his people. ¶

'Turn Right— Go Straight" ¶

In the day of the restoration a great young prophet had to learn the lesson, too. Many of you are acquainted with the third section of the Doctrine and Covenants, this "handbook of the restoration." May I read from it a verse or two which the Lord gave to Joseph Smith after a misfortune in which he had succumbed to the pressure to do something he knew wasn't exactly right. His benefactor and friend who was helping him, providing for him, working with him, wanted some assurance for his wife and family that there really was a prophet at work, and so Joseph Smith reluctantly surrendered to him the manuscript of the then translated portion of the Book of Mormon. This came in response: ¶

"And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God, and have gone on in the persuasions of men. ¶

"For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words — "Yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble. ¶

"Behold, thou art Joseph, . . ." (D&C 3:6-9.) "Thou Art You" ¶

Could there be any more sublime or sweet or perceptive answer to the suggestion, this siren song of foolishness, that "everyone is doing it"? Behold, thou art you. And God has given you a table, bounteously laden with the good things of eternity. Will you give it up because others are giving up? Will you surrender the sweet and sound and strong principles of this "vital force" ¶

and "living religion"? ¶

Why is it a vital force and whence are its roots? It is a vital force because this is a vital religion. God lives. He is a living, revealing, communicating Father. Christ lives. He is the living Head of this Church. There is a living prophet on the earth to whom the Father communicates and reveals his will. ¶

Man was in the beginning with God, and we are always going to live. ¶

God bless us to choose to live in his presence with our loved ones, creatively, actively, effectively serving and loving and learning, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶