I presume we all understand that the Spirit of the Lord is in the
congregation of the Saints. If we do not understand it and if there is
any one that does not realize the necessity of enjoying it, it would
be a good thing perhaps for him to get up here a while.
When a person is called upon to address a congregation and
notices the upturned faces before him, waiting, wishing, very likely
praying, for the blessings which they particularly desire, I think
that no man can look upon such a sight unmoved, he must feel his own
ignorance and weakness, and dependence, and when he does this I
believe that all public administrations will be an advantage and
blessing both to the speaker and hearers, and I am sure that is my
object this afternoon. I have no personal ambition to serve, but I do
want to bless and I do know that I need to be blessed. And this is the
place appointed (so far as this ward is concerned) for the reception
of those blessings which pertain to the public services of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here is the place where there
should be intelligence. Here is the place where there should be
wisdom. Here is the place to expect revelation, and that not in any
vague, misty, half understood sense—not lost or covered up by a
multitude of words, but divested of everything that will deprive us of
knowledge as to the essential principles which belong really to
revelation. The world, however, holds very peculiar ideas in regard to
this. Every elder in Israel who will look back upon his experience, if
it reaches even to the early history of this Church, will comprehend
how odd and mythical the ideas in regard to revelation were as then
held by mankind. It is true that the masses of the people as well as
the teachers believed that in the ancient times there had been some
communication with the intelligences who dwell behind the veil. They
all agreed—all Christians did at all events—that the Spirit was made
manifest and its utterances recorded in a book. They believed that
without that book the world was in a lost condition, that men were
left to grope in darkness and to wander in ignorance, but with that
book it was believed that every man and every woman could understand
themselves; they could understand something of their origin and the
purpose for which they were dwelling upon the earth, the destiny which
belonged to the human family, and also the process by which that
destiny could be best secured. But it is astonishing what a little
light will do for a man. It is astonishing how our minds expand when
we receive the key to the situation. And when we look at the vast
difference there is between the community who inhabit these mountains
and the communities of the nations from which we have been
gathered—probably most can see and are aware that between the two
there exists a great and ever widening gulf. Men who reject the
principle of revelation in any direction must inevitably become
stunted, they must inevitably cease to live, because revelation is the
element of life, it is the secret of growth, it is the power of
increase, and it is only in proportion to the receptive ability of a
man, or woman, or child, that they can increase in intelligence. Now,
divested of all extraneous or outside ideas, divested of all the
mystery that has been thrown around the idea of revelation by manmade
teachers, divested of all traditions and thoughts that have been
written in regard to it, what is the essential idea involved in
revelation in its significant simplicity? What is there that is
difficult of comprehension? What is there that it should need men of
classical education to explain it; what is there that there should be
these large colleges and this immense army of ministers in order that
the world may be enlightened in regard to the principle of
revelation? Why, when you come to probe and to reach the foundation of
the idea it is nothing more nor less than the communication of
intelligence possessed by one to another who in regard to that subject
remains in ignorance. That is all there is involved in revelation, and
whenever you find a human being who is ignorant of any subject
pertaining to any direction of human thought, or in regard to any
useful field of human experience, there revelation is an absolute
necessity.
Now, then, revelation may vary in degree; it may vary in character,
according to the necessities of the case, according to the
intelligence of individuals. The mother who guides the destiny of a
family and endows it with all the comforts of domestic and social life
finds herself surrounded by a few crude men and women, or, as we call
them, boys or girls. You consider the character of this offspring.
When they were born they were helpless, and in infancy they possessed
no intelligence save those animal instincts which lead only to the
preservation of life. But in a few weeks or months the spirit of
intelligence begins to dawn. The mother watches the growing spark and
seeks to fan it to a flame; to point out the remedy where difficulty
occurs in early experience; to explain the educational process through
which the child must pass from man or womanhood; and to show that when
the first efforts are made, and even when they are comparative
failures, that these only stand as sentinels or pointsmen in the great
highway of success—prompters to ultimate and final success. The
probability is that every young woman who has learned to make bread
has had an experience of this character. And it is true that many of
the first trials, unless the mother watched very closely, would not be
successful, the bread might be heavy, or it become sour. Now it is the
mother's duty to reveal, to give from her intelligence to one
comparatively ignorant, a solution or remedy for the difficulty. The
young girl is expected to listen to the mother. She has the faculty to
receive the intelligence that is communicated, and to put that
intelligence into practice. And when the bread was heavy the mother
showed the cause which brought about that condition. If the bread was
sour, a little neutralizing element had to be put into the dough, in
order that the acidity might be removed, a little soda or something of
that kind; and this is a revelatory process from the mother to the
child. If you take one of our good mothers in Israel who has grown
grey under the weight of experience, you will find that she possesses
a vast fund of information, and in every direction in domestic or
social life she is the great standard of appeal, and even when the
daughter has become a married woman, when she passes into the
responsibility of motherhood, when sickness takes hold of the darling
that God has given her, she instantly appeals to the higher or wider
intelligence and experience of the mother, and that which the mother,
by the advantage of years, by the experience through which she has
passed, has gained, she communicates unto the daughter, and thus the
daughter becomes the recipient of revelation. And as it is with the
mother and the daughter, so also it is with the father and the son; so
also it is with those who are learning a trade, so also it is with
those who attend our daily or our Sabbath schools, and the very fact
that we are so constituted that we can receive revelation in
these channels is a revelation in and of itself, written in the
fundamental organization of the human character, that revelation is
not only possible and desirable, but that it is also a necessary and
inevitable element pertaining to the highest welfare and the grand
destiny and future of those who submit to its varied processes from
day to day! Now, this character of intelligence may be said to mark
the very lowest phases of human life; but while man is an animal,
while he has his physical necessities, while he is surrounded with
domestic life, while he is subject to and is a member of the social
arena of life, there are also attributes of character which are beyond
this physical, this animal, and this social cast. There is something
in every man and in every woman which savors of the divine, in all the
circumstances of life there is a reaching out after something which is
beyond the grasp; there is a soaring of the spirit, a seeking after
something to which the present surroundings gave no clue. Man feels
that he is. He not only feels that he is, but thousands and millions of
the human family have an inkling of the great fact that they have
been, and millions and millions more have an inkling of the other
great fact that when they leave this stage of existence they will
continue to be. And it is the realization of such things which
establishes the idea outside of any other special revelation that our
origin is divine as well as human. When we sense these ideas, when
they become interwoven into the fabric of our lives, when we
instinctively feel that we do possess this characteristic, there must
be certain elements and certain principles which will minister to the
growth of such ideas; just as there are elements of and in nature
which minister to the welfare of the lower, so there are elements
which minister to the higher, and fitted for the cultivation of every
attribute of the human character, no matter how low we may esteem it
to be, or how lofty we may conceive it to be, there are resources in
the economy of God for the development and growth and glory of that
characteristic. Hence when a man realizes that he had a pre-existence,
when he realizes that the present existence is but a transitory
condition, when he realizes that there is a vast and illimitable
future before him, he desires to comprehend how he shall best minister
to his individual welfare in that future. And here steps in the
necessity of revelation based upon philosophy, based upon human
necessities and human needs. The only way that we can be educated in
this direction is by revelation coming to us from outside sources,
from higher intelligences; from those who have passed through the
selfsame experience as we ourselves have and will forever pass.
Now, then, as a fundamental process for our education in this respect
we have given unto us the Gospel. That Gospel is just as systematic
and just as orderly as are the details of education in a school. It is
just as orderly and systematic as are the methods by which our boys
are taught and trained in the various branches of education or trade.
It is just as orderly and systematic as the education our wives give
to their daughters, or that mothers give to their married girls. You
never find a mother, in training her children for domestic life, begin
to tell them in the first place how to make one of those very rich
cakes that we sometimes make ourselves sick with at Christmas. You
would scarcely find a man who took an apprentice, begin to
teach him in the first place some higher branches of his trade. You
would scarcely find a teacher begin to teach his pupils the advanced
principles pertaining to a classical education. There is an order;
there are steps and processes in every educational direction, which we
take in their order and in their time and place. Now one of the most
startling revelations that has been given to the human family in the
day and age in which we live, by the elders of Israel, to a dark and
benighted world, is the great fundamental idea of "the fatherhood of
God." Now, this may not appear so startling to the American citizen
whose mind is impregnated with the idea that the human family are
equal—that one man is as good as another, but in the Old World there
exists conditions of class and of caste. You who have come from
England or from any European nation, will realize what I mean by class
and caste. There is the charmed circle of the royal blood, into which
the plebeian never enters. There is the larger circle of the
aristocracy, or, as we call them, the "upper ten," and into the
precincts of that circle, jealously guarded as they are, a stranger
scarcely ever enters. Then you were surrounded in England by what is
called the middle classes, and even they look upon the lower classes
as being made of some material distinct and different from themselves;
but when the elders of Israel landed in Old England and proclaimed
"the fatherhood of God," and laid the axe at the root of caste and
class, they were preparing for the foundation of a kingdom that should
recognize the essential unity of the human family and of necessity
the brotherhood of man. It is quite true that under some social,
religious or political circumstances, we hear of a certain unity and
equality among the human family; but if you attempt to put that unity
and equality into practice, what are the results that inevitably flow
from such a course? You are surrounded with obstacles on every hand,
and it is only perhaps after the lapse of two or three generations
that a man in his posterity is able to make his way from the ranks and
associate with the higher class. It is true there are those here and
there who do this, and they do it by virtue of inherent genius or some
chance legacy, and when they are accepted into this higher class, it
is by virtue of this chance, etc., but as a rule they are looked upon
as intruders. Take the Prime Minister of England, Lord Beaconsfield.
There is a man who has made himself a necessity to the government of
the country, to Her Majesty, to the higher classes; he has done this
by virtue of the inspiration of the Almighty, and yet with all his
grand attainments, that man is looked upon more or less as an
intruder because he was not nobly born! And so I might multiply
illustrations which would be familiar to you all. But the Gospel sets
out in the first place with these two ideas, twin ideas, that never
can be put asunder, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of the
human family.
Now, then, if we are one in our origin, if we are really one in
destiny, we must all reach that destiny by the selfsame process, and
that process is to be found in the ordinances of the Gospel, in the
power of inspiration and revelation resting upon those who initiate
men and women into that order. And in connection with this, wherever
and whenever you comprehend this higher intelligence that
bears rule in the eternities, controlling the destines of these great
orbs that we see from time to time in the midnight heavens—wherever
you find those that have graded from a fallen world you will find
those who graded up and through the instrumentality of the selfsame
Gospel that is given to you and me. There is no other Gospel. There is
no other way to that exaltation which pertains to the Gods only
through the revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So that there is
"no royal road" to heaven; no matter what a man's condition, no matter
what the class to which he may have been known in social life on earth
by virtue of birth or by virtue of wealth; no matter what position he
may occupy because of his ignorance or lack of information; no matter
whether he may live in a hovel or dwell in a palace, or though he may
have but a crust to eat or his table be laden with all the good things
of the earth, he must submit to the selfsame ordinances, be
controlled by the selfsame spirit of revelation, and reach the final
issue through the selfsame channel.
Now, then, what is it that we expect through the Gospel? Why, that it
may develop in you and me, from our crude, ignorant, unlovable
condition—the results of many a fearful fall—the appearance and the
characteristics of the eternal Father. This selfsame idea animated
the Saints in ancient times. They had faith that by obedience to
righteous laws there would be evolved in and from them, through the
attributes which they already possessed, measurably dormant or
measurably active as the case may be—that they would be able to
produce the likeness of God the eternal Father. Now, at first view
this may appear sur prising, but suppose we reason upon it for a moment
or two.
Here are some of you good brethren; you go to work this spring and you
set out an orchard of apple trees, and by and by the time for fruit
arrives and you go and look for pears, or plums, or cherries upon the
apple trees! Now, what would be thought of your intelligence? Why
everybody would say you have certainly made a mistake; they were apple
trees that you planted, and apples are the fruit; if you want pears
you must plant pear trees. Men don't gather grapes of thorns nor figs
of thistles. Then, if we are the children of our Father you can see
at a glance by that illustration that if we submit to the process of
education which he had pointed out and laid down, we must become like
him. Well, now, this may seem incredible to some that a human being,
defiled and deformed as he is by sin and transgression, the result of
ages—I say it may seem almost incredible that a human being should be
able to rise to the characteristics and attributes and appearance of
the Father; but it is not only possible but it is inevitable, and all
the ancient Saints had this idea. One of the old prophets, for
instance, when under the inspiration of the Almighty, has said, "I
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness;" and in the New
Testament, one of the apostles said, looking forward to the time of
the resurrection, that, "When he shall appear, we shall be like him;
for we shall see him as he is." We shall have an opportunity of
demonstrating our likeness. We shall be able to make the contrast, "We
shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." And of Jesus it was
said that, "He was the brightness of his Father's glory and the express
image of his person." He was like his Father, and this
likeness was in him by virtue of the fact that he lived in possession
of the inspiration of revelation; his course was marked out by that
spirit. It animated every faculty, controlled every action, prompted
every motive, and because that spirit was poured upon him "without
measure," he became the glory of his Father and exhibited in himself
the "express image of his person," and he, in speaking to his
disciples, declared that they should become "like unto him, even as he
was like his Father," by the reception of "line upon line and precept
upon precept, here a little and there a little." Now, probably I might
illustrate this from the facts of everyday life, the possibility, I
mean, of a change in the features of those with whom we are familiar.
Did you ever notice a man and wife who had lived happily together,
whose thoughts were one, who had become assimilated to each other in
their tastes and feelings so far and to such an extent that when you
see them white with the snow of years you would say of them, "I never
saw a couple so much alike; they are positively like brother and
sister." Did that ever come under your observation? It has come under
mine many and many a time. Now, what was the secret of that? Why the
wife had become assimilated to the husband and the husband to the
wife; they were actuated upon in a great measure by the selfsame
impulses, until they had become similar in their habits of life, so
thoroughly one that they were like each other even in their facial
expression, and when death claimed one or the other, but a few hours
or days would pass before they were again and for evermore united. And
this is a characteristic in which we glory. But to illustrate this in
another direction. Here is a mother, now, or a young wife. Her heart
overflows with affection for the husband of her youth. God has blessed
the union that was made by the authority of the priesthood. She passes
along until she attains to the condition of motherhood, and in the
fulness of her heart she brings the babe to the assembly of the Saints
that by the authority of the priesthood it may be dedicated to the
service of God and to the building up of this kingdom. The mother's
heart is full. It bursts almost with gratitude for the great boon she
has received. She breathes many a prayer for the child that God has
given, and by and by, even when the cup seems full to the very brim,
some of her sisters come along and say, "what a beautiful baby you
have got; how very like its father;" and that is the last drop needful
to make the mother's soul and ambition full to overflowing. To say
that the babe was like herself would perhaps have been quite as
correct; but when it was pronounced to be like his father, more
especially if its father was a good husband, if he was everything that
he should be in regard to character—there was no limit to the love and
affection she could bear for her husband and their child.
* * * * *
There is an illustration we can apply in another direction. We have
all come down from the eternities of the past to this period of
probation. I think the probabilities are that while we dwelt there we
were in possession of a good deal of intelligence. There were many
facilities, I expect, for the acquisition of such intelligence as was
adapted to our condition. I believe that we were there taught the
necessity and advantage of taking a probation upon the earth. I
believe that there we exhibited a great many of the attributes
of our Father, the Father of our spirits; but we came down here and we
took upon us tabernacles; these tabernacles are given to us by our
earthly father and by our mother. And they came to us corrupted, they
came to us contaminated by the vast variety of evils with which our
fathers have afflicted themselves during many generations. When we
consider the exalted character of our first father, when we consider
the position that he occupies, and when we consider his offspring on
the earth subject to the infirmities of the flesh, it is not unlikely
that many are led to say, "how can we be the children of our father
who art in heaven? And if we are his children how can we renew or be
restored to his image and likeness, how can we develop the attributes
which he possesses, how can we become like him in our spirits and more
or less in our tabernacles." Why we shall have to do this by the
reception of his spirit, and by cultivating the principles of life
that come through revelation. When we come to look at each other as we
are, we see stamped in our countenances selfishness, we see
exhibitions of sensuality, we see the evidences of a thousand and one
conditions to which we have been subjected and our fathers before us.
Now, the Gospel has been given us to do away with sin and death; it
has been given to develop in us the attributes and characteristics of
our Father in heaven from faculties we already possess. Well, now, we
will suppose that one of those angels of intelligence surrounding the
throne of God comes down to the streets of Salt Lake City. He goes up
one of the principal thoroughfares and peers into the face of everyone
that passes. He marks our plainness, or, in some instances, ugliness.
He can detect at a glance where the faculties are perverted, and where
they are in their normal condition. He can see in a moment how we have
been beclouded by sin, how we have been subjected to evil influences,
how we have given way to temptation, and how we are the subjects of
the conditions which surround us. But as he passes along he meets one
of a little different stamp. A man may be dwelling in a hovel on the
bench or in the low wards of the city, and he steps up to such a one
and says, "how do you do." "Why," says the person addressed,
"you have
the advantage of me, I do not know that I ever saw you before." "Well,
now, probably you never did, but," says he, "I know you although I
never saw you." "Well, how do you know me." "Why, I am from
the
eternities that are beyond the veil, I am come from where your Father
dwells and I can see in the luster of your eye, I can feel by the aura
or influence which surrounds you as you move from place to place, that
you are animated by the spirit of your Father's house, I can discern
in your physiognomy the lineage of your progenitors." Well, what is
the secret? Simply that there is a man living his religion. He is
filled with the Spirit and power of God. It is a lamp to his feet and a
light to his path. It actuates him in all the circumstances of life;
as a father, as a member of the Church to which he belongs and as a
citizen. It is this which gives luster to the eye and elasticity to
the step, even when the body is bent with weight of years, and the
stranger who has come direct from the eternal worlds can see that
there is a man who has been with Jesus and has learned of him. Will
it glorify a man and woman in this respect while they are in
the flesh? Yes, it will, and when men and women in general come in
contact with them, they will be prepared to bear testimony that they
are in the enjoyment of a good, or as we may say, right spirit. While
they are tabernacling in the flesh they are preparing for the more
exalted condition and state which belongs to them in the future, and
many and many a man and woman have exhibited some of the
characteristics which were exhibited by the individual who came to the
Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos. John fell at his feet to worship
him, "See thou do it not (said he), I am thy fellowservant, and of
thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God." John
thought from the glory surrounding him that he must be God himself;
and he began to bow the knee to him. "See thou do it not." And when we
see a man whom we recognize as faithful in all the conditions of life,
as "a man whom we can tie to" —to use a common expression, a man who
is
on hand all the time, who is living his religion, we feel
involuntarily to lift our hats to such a one, and this intuitive
reverence which we pay to human character, is testimony of God within
the veil of flesh, and also an evidence of the spirit of revelation
and inspiration.
Now, this is the purpose of our religion, and although our receptive
faculties may be comparatively dormant, yet they can become enlarged.
You and I have a right to enjoy revelation and inspiration. It is not
confined to officials or to the ordained elders of Israel, it is not
confined to the first presidency, to the twelve apostles, to the
seventies or the high priests, but it is within the reach of every man
and woman in Israel, and we can bring that spirit of revelation to
bear upon our duty, in our social as well as our religious life. Now,
I know there are a great many who think that the spirit of revelation
and inspiration is of no use in the details of every day life. This,
however, is a mistake, for the selfsame inspiration and revelation
can qualify a man in business, it can help his faculties, enlarge his
reason, and make him more noble and godlike and intelligent in all the
directions he may be called upon to act in. To be sure there are those
who say that our religion has nothing to do with our business. I
recollect one of our leading men asserting that President Young might
direct in spiritual things, he might direct in matters pertaining to
the Gospel, "but, when it came to business, he knew what business
was!" Now, that is a mistake because the object of this Gospel is to
minister to our spiritual and also to our temporal wants and
interests. Take our bishops as an illustration. Are they not called to
administer in the temporal affairs of the kingdom? What is their
office? They are fathers to the people. They are to see that every man
becomes self-sustaining. They are called upon to open up industries
for the growing youth of our Territory. We sustain them in that
office. Thus our religion enters into temporal things and they are
ordained and set apart for this. When Brother George Q. Cannon goes to
represent us in Congress he is set apart for that office, and the
priesthood lay their hands upon him in order that he may be blessed in
that capacity. When Brother Staines goes down to New York, he goes
there to attend to those duties which are temporal, but he is set
apart by the Authorities of this Church to officiate in that
character. The Gospel therefore interferes in our temporal
arrangements. And this is no new theory. It is as old as the
everlasting hills; it pertains to eternity, it will exist throughout
all the eternities of the future. If you turn back in the old book to
the history of the tabernacle in the wilderness, you find that under
the jurisdiction of Moses, there were certain men who labored on that
building that were inspired of God. He caused his Spirit to rest upon
them, and you will notice it in a greater degree when you come to the
building of the temple of Solomon. You will find there were men
inspired to work in that direction. And that which was good in the
years of the past is good in the day and age in which we live, and the
day will yet come in Israel when men will be set apart to act in more
temporal capacities than many in Israel dare to think of now. When a
man shows that he has received a gift from God, no matter about its
character, whether it is a gift of wisdom, or whether it is a gift
leading into mechanics, science or literature—whenever that man
exhibits these attainments, and he is taken and set apart by the
servants of God, you will see that spirit enlarge his faculties,
increase his judgment, and when that day comes, you will see a good
spirit in the midst of Israel. It will glow and grow and increase in
every direction that will minister to the welfare of the kingdom as a
whole. Why, even now, in the building of our Temples, Brother T. O.
Angell and others are sustained as architects. Now, what has religion
to do with building a house? Much. Has it to do with teaching a
school? Yes. Has it to do with domestic economy? Yes; I know it has;
and wherever you find men and women who will cultivate that spirit and
follow its counsel, you will find that they will become famous in the
direction in which they act. They are inspired of God, led by his
spirit, and have access to the intelligence that lies behind the veil,
and those who have had experience there will minister to our wants, so
that when Zion begins to grow she will fairly shine. She will support
everything that will contribute to the welfare and glory of the
greatest kingdom that was yet set up upon the earth, until men shall
say, "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the
house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we
will walk in his paths." Now, this is the purpose for which you and I
have come from the Old World, from the different States in the New
World, and from the different parts of Europe and the islands of the
sea, to be taught of God, to enjoy his Spirit, to be educated in his
Church, to be subject to his authority, and to grow and increase in
the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is something worth
having, something that is worth living for, something that outshines
and outdistances all the organizations and systems which men may have
introduced. It is the Gospel of the living God. It is the Spirit of
the living God burning in the hearts of the Saints. But far too many
of us neglect this Spirit, we grieve it, we do not listen to its
admonitions. How many in Israel have bartered their homes and sunk
their means in a "hole in the ground," because they would not listen
to the counsels of God through his servants? How many failures in
life, because of our ignorance, notwithstanding the fountains of
intelligence are open at which we can drink? How many of us lose our
children because we fail to apply to these great fountains, so that
all could operate and under stand how to resist adverse
influences, while we are in the flesh. Now, if we would cultivate this
spirit, if we would listen to its teachings, it would come to us in
many ways, in visions, in dreams and manifestations of the power of
God. We could have the ministration of angels, and many of us probably
the ministration of the Son—as some have done in the history and
experience of this Church—and this is the position to which we will
all arrive if we are faithful to the great trust that is laid upon us;
we shall not only enjoy the society of "an innumerable company of
angels," not only come "to the general assembly and Church of the
Firstborn," but we shall also be privileged to go to Jesus, and to God
the Father of us all and there bask in his presence and be educated in
his ways and sit down to the glory which awaits the just.
Now, may God bless us with his Spirit, may he lift us from the
groveling condition in which we find ourselves placed; may he infuse
into and surround us with the influence of his Spirit, that we may
live indeed a new life, and so glorify God "in our bodies and spirits
which are his," is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.
- Henry W. Naisbitt