I can offer a few of the reflections of my own mind with regard to the
discourse of brother Geo. Q. Cannon. I will take his text: "We have a
great work to perform." Not that I have time to take up item by item,
and explain and give you correct views, so that you can understand all
things pertaining to this great work; but I will give a few words,
hoping that you are prepared to receive them in good and honest hearts, and digest them by the spirit of revelation, and understand
what I have in my own heart.
The improvement that we are undertaking is not a small labor. It is
not the work of a day, or a week, or a month, but the work of a
lifetime; and when we end our career here, we hope to leave those
behind us on the earth of our own posterity, who are better calculated
to go on with this work, and who will do so until it is completed.
What is this work? The improvement of the condition of the human
family. This work must continue until the people who live on this
earth are prepared to receive our coming Lord, and dwell with the
sanctified, and to associate with angels and with our Savior,
preparatory to entering into the presence of our heavenly Father.
Now this is the work; and how are we to perform this work is the
question which I hope you will be able to understand. I wish you had
the spirit of revelation. I would delight in the Latter-day Saints
living so that the Spirit of God would be within them, so that they
could see and understand and judge all these things for themselves.
I will commence by drawing attention to the philosophy of man here
upon the earth. We see ourselves here today. Here are old,
greyheaded men, aged ladies, infants in their mother's arms, and
persons in the different conditions and stages of life, with varied
looks, feelings, sympathies and passions. We see this variety before
us today. But we all commenced at the foot of the hill. We see the
infant in its mother's arms. What is this infant here for? What is the
design in the creation of this little infant child? It lies here in
its mother's arms; it would not resist, in the least, if it were
dropped into a cauldron of boiling oil; if it were thrown into fire it
would not know it until it felt the flames; it might be laid down
here, and the wolf might come and lick its face, and it would not know
but that its mother was soothing it. You see this foundation, the
starting point, the germ of intelligence embodied in this infant,
calculated to grow and expand into manhood, then to the capacity of an
angel, and so onward to eternal exaltation. But here is the
foundation. Sent to school, the child learns to read, and continues to
improve as long as it lives. Is this the end of the knowledge of man?
No. It is only the beginning. It is the first stage of all the
intelligence that the philosopher in his reflections, taking the
starry world before him, and looking into the immensity of the
creations of God, can imagine. Here is the first place where we learn,
this is the foot of the hill.
Now the object is to improve the minds of the inhabitants of the
earth, until we learn what we are here for, and become one before the
Lord, that we may rejoice together and be equal. Not to make all poor.
No. The whole world is before us. The earth is here, and the fullness
thereof is here. It was made for man; and one man was not made to
trample his fellow man under his feet, and enjoy all his heart
desires, while the thousands suffer. We will take a moral view, a
political view, and we see the inequality that exists in the human
family. We take the inhabitants of the civilized world, and how many
laboring men are there in proportion to the inhabitants? About one to
every five that are producers, and the supposition is that ten hours
work by the one to three persons in the twenty-four hours will
support the five. It is an unequal condition of mankind. We see
servants that labor early and late, and that have not the opportunity
of measuring their hours ten in twenty-four. They cannot go to school,
nor hardly get clothing to go to meeting in on the Sabbath. I have
seen many cases of this kind in Europe, when the young lady would have
to take her clothing on a Saturday night and wash it, in order that
she might go to meeting on the Sunday with a clean dress on. Who is
she laboring for? For those who, many of them, are living in luxury.
And, to serve the classes that are living on them, the poor, laboring
men and women are toiling, working their lives out to earn that which
will keep a little life within them. Is this equality? No! What is
going to be done? The Latter-day Saints will never accomplish their
mission until this inequality shall cease on the earth.
We say but very little about politics. If we have laws, we should have
good laws, and we should get good men to adjudicate those laws. And if
we are at variance with our neighbor, and are in want of better
judgment than we have to settle our difficulties, let us call three or
twelve men, and leave it to them to decide between us. Adopt this
course, and it would save an immense amount of time, and set the
lawyer to raising his own potatoes and wheat, instead of gulling the
people. The nonproducer must live on the products of those who labor.
There is no other way. If we all labor a few hours a day, we could
then spend the remainder of our time in rest and the improvement of
our minds. This would give an opportunity to the children to be
educated in the learning of the day, and to possess all the wisdom of
man.
But we are to revolutionize the world. Do you think these Latter-day
Saints can do it? I do not know. It is the work of the Almighty; and
if he sends forth his Spirit to teach the people true principles, we
have a right, a moral right, a religious right, to tell the truth to
the people without interruption; and men have no business to raise
their anger against this people, when we are merely telling the truth
to the inhabitants of the earth, and instructing them how they can
better their condition.
But we have something more than morality alone to teach the people.
What is it? It is how to redeem the human family. In Adam—that is, if
we believe this book (the Bible), and believe the history that Moses
gave of our first parents, and of the inhabitants of the earth, which
indeed we have to depend upon, for we are not in possession of any
other history of our first parents, and are consequently obliged to
refer to this history—if we believe this, I can say that as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ all are made alive. If we can believe Moses
and the Apostles, we die in consequence of sin in the conduct of our
first parents, in eating that which they were forbidden to eat; that
we are shut out and cannot see and understand heavenly beings. We
cannot see their faces. We cannot hear their voices. We cannot behold
their glory. We are shut out from this. The veil of mortality being
dropped between us and the Creator, something has to be done so that
we may return and behold those that are exalted.
There is a difference between the Latter-day Saints and the professed Christian world. Shall I remark on this difference? We teach
our children that we are serving a God who has an ear to hear, an eye
to see. He has a mouth to speak, a hand to handle. He has a body. He
has the component parts of man. He moves in his own sphere. He dwells
at his own dwelling place. His presence and his power fill immensity.
He has filled the heavens and the earth with his works, and placed man
here upon the earth, and brought forth in the latter days his greatest
work. It is the greatest work for the salvation of the human family
that has been revealed to man since the fall of Adam. I hope you teach
this in the Sunday school, that we are serving a God who has a body,
parts and passions, and who has feelings, and a fellow feeling. Well,
you startle at this. You have a fellow feeling. If the Christian world
were to hear me declare that our Father in heaven could know and
sympathize with this mortality by experience, and has a
fellow feeling, and deals kindly and sympathetically and mercifully
with those who are froward, they would be startled. Yet this is our
Father. We believe in him. Yes. Ask the Christian world, Do you
believe in such a God? No, they say. What kind of a being do you
believe in? Such as was described in the inscription which Paul saw
written on the altar at Athens, "To the unknown God." "We worship that
unknown God." But the God that the Latter-day Saints are worshiping,
and that we teach our children to worship, is the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of our spirits, the author of the
existence of our bodies, He who placed them here upon the earth. He
gave existence to us all. He gave breath and being to all. And yet man
has his agency; this truth we must never lose sight of. We must teach
our children that Christ came in the meridian of time; that he
suffered and died for the original sin Adam committed in the Garden of
Eden, and tasted death for every man. He suffered for every man upon
the earth.
This is the character of him whom we receive as our Savior.
We want you to believe in Him, my son, my daughter. Believe in His
Father, and that they have compassion upon us, and we should hearken
to His counsel. What is required of us as soon as we come to the years
of accountability? It is required of us, for it is an institution of
heaven, the origin of which you and I cannot tell, for the simple
reason that it has no beginning, it is from eternity to eternity—it is
required of us to go down into the waters of baptism. Here is a
fountain or element typical of the purity of the eternities. Go down
into the waters, and there be baptized for the remission of sins, and
then have hands laid upon us to confirm us members of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then receive the Spirit of truth,
or the Holy Ghost. Then live according to every word that proceeds out
of the mouth of God, through those men whom he has appointed here upon
the earth, until we are perfect.
If we go and preach the Gospel, men and women of age, youths and
children believe our testimony, come forward and desire to receive a
remission of their sins by obeying the ordinances of the house of God,
that are placed in that house for the express purpose of remitting
sins. Then they commence to live moral lives, as becometh those who
have embraced the truth, and continue to live by the truth
until they are prepared to enter into an exaltation. How long will
they live here? No matter if they live as long as Methuselah lived, if
they commence that moral reform required in their lives. Those who
have been in the habit of swearing, swear no more. Never use the name
of the Deity without his authority. If we are in the habit of telling
that which is not true, learn to speak the truth. If we speak evil of
our neighbors, cease to speak evil. Covet not that which is not our
own. Keep the Ten Commandments, and then go on until we are perfect,
loving our neighbor more than we love ourselves, imparting to all that
kind fellow feeling, that we can take those who are in this poor and
stricken condition of life, and raise them, that they may come up and
possess the fruits of the earth, and enjoy all that we can enjoy in
raiment, food and possessions. Raise our own horses, our own food, and
let everyone be a producer, and then we can with a good grace, be
consumers. Infringe upon no one. Instead of making any poorer, make
all wealthy.
A few words upon the minerals found in our mountains. We have had a
great many men examining among the mountains, and through the plateaus
and ranges in the south. The whole scientific world, a few years ago,
would have pledged their reputation that there was not any mineral in
the sandstone range along the Rio Virgin River. Now they are finding
it in many places. A great many have told me that there was no mineral
there, but it is now found in various parts of the southern portion of
this Territory. What can I say about it? The Lord, in Isaiah, says,
"For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and
for wood brass and for stones iron." I can attribute it to no other
agency than the power of God diffusing it in these mountains. I will
refer it to the scientific world. You may as well take a piece of wood
and say that it shall become a piece of sandstone, as to say that you
will find silver in sandstone. Did you ever know sandstone to become a
petrifaction. It is hard to say where it will not be found, now that
it is found in the barks of petrified trees. It is no matter, the Lord
is managing all this, and he does just as he pleases with regard to
the treasures of the earth, and we may look for them, but if we are
not to find them, they will be hid. When God says to his agents,
remove this gold, this silver, this copper, it will be done. You do
not understand this philosophy, but I do. And my philosophy outreaches
the philosophy of men that study books. I have said enough with regard
to the minerals of the earth.
I see a man grow up from the infant stage to be a scholar, and by and
by he has an empire, and can give laws to the people, that can
equalize them, and bring them to a state of happiness and excellency,
and give them all the advantages that man can possess upon the earth,
and make every man happy and comfortable. This is the work that we
have upon our hands. Teach the people the faith of the Gospel. Teach
them what God is, and what His work is, and that there never was a
time such as many of our philosophers speak of, who drift back and
back, and come to this theory and that theory, and go back, and back
to the time when we were all reptiles. When was there a time when
there was not a God? But, say they, there must have been a time. Then
you declare to me, do you, that there was a time when there was no
time. And this is the philosophy of a great many of the
scientific in this day. They see the heavens stretched out but they
comprehend them not. And why do they not say, if there was a time when
there was no time there will be a time again when there will be no
time. What a condition for man to be in! Can we look onward and upward
through the immensity of space, and behold the worlds on worlds that
we call stars, and imagine that they will be blotted out forever? What
an idea! What a philosophy! Why, it ought to be laughed at by the
ignorant, and those who are children in their reflections. A time when
there was no God, no eternity! It cannot be possible, and the
philosopher who tries to establish such a doctrine cannot possess any
correct ideas of his own being. Will there ever be such a time? No.
But forever onward and upward. So it is with the religion we have
embraced.
Teach the Sunday School children with regard to the heavens, with
regard to their faith, with regard to their mortal lives, and reach
out to that higher life, far above this, that we may, if we will,
enjoy upon the earth. This is the condition of man. This is the road
for men to walk in, to be obedient to the principles of eternal truth,
those immortal principles that God has revealed to us.
With regard to the ordinances of God, we may remark that we yield
obedience to them because He requires it; and every iota of His
requirements has a rational philosophy with it. We do not get up
things on a hypothesis. That philosophy reaches to all eternity, and
is the philosophy that the Latter-day Saints believe in. Every
particle of truth that every person has received is a gift of God. We
receive these truths, and go on from glory to glory, from eternal
lives to eternal lives, gaining a knowledge of all things, and
becoming Gods, even Sons of God. These are the celestial ones. These
are they whom the Lord has chosen through their obedience. They have
not spurned the truth, when they have heard it. These are they that
have not spurned the Gospel, but have acknowledged Jesus and God in
their true character; that have acknowledged the angels in their true
character. These are they that work for the salvation of the human
family.
I say to the Latter-day Saints, all we have to do is to learn of God.
Let the liars lie on, and let the swearers swear on, and they will go
to perdition. All we have to do is to go onward and upward, and keep
the commandments of our Father and God; and He will confound our
enemies. It is for you and me to improve our children, and teach them
to bring forth the elements here, until we possess all things that are
on the earth, and then prepare to possess the things that are in
Heaven, and go on from glory to glory, until we are crowned with God
the Father.
May the Lord bless you, Amen.