I don't know whether it's fair to have a wonderful chorus sing before the speaker speaks.
The contrasts is too marked.
I have often wished that in speaking we could
express ourselves as beautifully as a chorus can express itself as it sings to us.
As I look at this audience this morning and contemplate why you're here
my mind goes back to my first trip to the nation's capital in 1951.
I was impressed on that occasion with the halls of Congress, with the beauties of
the White House, with the many monuments that adorned buildings and grounds in
that great city; but I recall this morning especially a little article
that I read in a newspaper at that time and it is rather vivid in my memory.
A Russian historian had visited the United States for something over a year
studying the history of great Americans and American institutions.
As he was about to board his ship to return to his native land, newspapermen interrogated
him and one of them asked him this question: "In your study of great Americans
during this past year which of them do you consider to be the greatest?"
His answer is most startling. He said,
"You have only had one truly great American,
one man who gave to the world ideas that could
change the whole destiny of the human race—Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet."
I regret very much that I did not retain that newspaper nor can I remember the
name of the Russian gentleman; but as I look in your faces here this morning and
realize that you were here and I am here all because of one great man, Joseph Smith
the Mormon prophet, and when I realized that there are some two million
of us over the world who revere his memory—that by the end of the century
there will be some ten million who revere his name—I begin to see something
of what the outsider saw in this great American.
Certainly we are ruled by ideas;
and when we bear in mind the great ideas which Joseph Smith brought to the
attention of mankind, which he taught to us, we begin to
realize why his influence grows with the years. Time will not permit an
enumeration of all these great ideas. I want to mention only two or three of them this morning.
He restored to the earth the understanding of the nature of God—
that God is a personal being with a body of flesh and bone like unto that of
man who hears and answers prayers, who is concerned with his children.
He gave to us an understanding that man is of the same
species as God, like him in form, and may become like him in character, may become
like him creators of worlds, an idea which raises man above all other created things.
To a world that was relatively lost in its understanding of
the nature of man and the nature of the gospel, he brought forth the idea that
the gospel would be preached to all people who had ever lived upon the earth,
to all living and all dead, that all mankind might be judged by the same standards.
He brought forth the idea that all men would be resurrected from the grave,
that we are eternal beings, that practically all of mankind would
eventually receive some degree of glory— the most optimistic picture that has
ever been given by a religionist to the world.
He brought again the power of God among men, given him of the Father,
the power to bind on earth and it
should be bound in heaven, or loosed on earth and it should be loosed in heaven—
a power that only those in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints understand.
I suppose we could name on the fingers of our two hands all the books ever
published in the United States of America that have continued to live an
increase in circulation over the years— books that we term "living books."
Of those ten living books three of them are attributed to this man, Joseph Smith.
Next to the Holy Bible, the book that is most published and circulated in the world is
the Book of Mormon. Certainly the time will come when no person in collegiate
life will consider himself educated if he is unfamiliar with the great living
books attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith. However, this morning I am not
going to take time to elaborate upon the great ideas which he brought forth in
our day and which have scarcely been enlarged since the church began.
I am rather going to talk about the qualities of leadership which made him a fit
instrument in the hands of God for the Lord's purposes upon the earth—
qualities of leadership which, if you cultivate and possess them, will
fit you to be servants of the Lord in this latter-day kingdom.
The first of these qualities is the quality of intelligence, without which, of course,
none of us can hope to achieve great things. You may ask how can we test the
Prophet's intelligence; well, very soon yours will be tested by your professors
in examinations. While that might not be always an accurate
of intelligence, it is useful. If we had the Prophet Joseph in our classes, we
might be able to make some comparisons. It's interesting to note that the
Prophet, who had little opportunity for formal schooling, was our greatest
advocate of education. Sensing that his people should know languages, especially
those basic languages of the Holy Bible, he employed a Hebrew scholar, Dr.
Seixas from Oberlin College, to come over to Cleveland, Ohio, to teach
leaders of the church Hebrew. He thought they could master it in seven weeks of night school.
This proved a little bit short, and they employed him for another
seven weeks—fourteen weeks—equal to one quarter of schooling. Only two of the
students mastered Hebrew sufficiently to give any discourses on it, the Prophet
Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt. All others felt a little inadequate in that
language. In the course of a brief few years the Prophet Joseph was able to
read Egyptian—the ancient hieroglyphics— German, Hebrew, and Greek. I
suppose he would not have been proficient in speaking any of them, but
he understood them and conversed on biblical writings in those various languages.
On one occasion he mentioned a great number of languages and said,
"If I live long enough I will master them all."
Sometimes we test the intelligence of an
individual by seeing how his views on many subjects compared with those of other men.
The Prophet Joseph had views on many subjects other than religion.
At the time that he was being groomed as a candidate for the office of President
of the United States in the spring of 1844, he wrote a memorial to Congress in
which he voiced his views on many public issues. That memorial is worthy of study,
for it shows his statesmanship in many fields. He advocated a strong federal
banking system, something we didn't get in this country until we had our Federal
Reserve System in 1917. He advocated extensive prison reforms, that the
prisons become schools of learning so that the character of the inmates might
be changed. He advocated improving the navigation of the Mississippi River by
establishing a dam across the river a few miles below Nauvoo and the building of
locks so that ships could avoid the rapids of that river. If you visit
that area today a few miles below Nauvoo, at Keokuk, you will find the great Keokuk
Dam built at exactly the spot where he advocated one should be, though he was
laughed at at that time. He advocated the extension of the American Commonwealth
westward to the Pacific Ocean, at a time when the land west of the Mississippi
was considered relatively of little value. It would be worth your while to
read some of the views of the Prophet Joseph on many subjects other than
religion, that you might sense something of his great intellect and his knowledge
and understanding of the problems facing our country in his day.
He had a second great qualification. He had a zeal for learning; he was a
great student. You may think yourself students when you pay your fees and
register here at BYU, but there are those who would inform you that that
does not constitute a student. I like to read sometimes the first account
of Jesus as a student. His parents had taken him at the age of 12 down to the
temple at Jerusalem; and there he sat at the feet of learned Rabbis, asking and
answering questions. He became so absorbed in his learning that he forgot his folks
entirely, and they left the city without him and had to come back the next day to find him.
When you become so absorbed in learning, in a problem you face in your
class, that you forget time, you forget your lunch, you forget to go home, you
forget your date, then I believe you can attach to your name the label "student."
Joseph Smith could not leave a problem alone until he found its solution.
Problems which had faced mankind for generations unsolved, faced students for
generations unsolved, Joseph Smith could not leave alone. He had a zeal for
learning the like of which is rarely known in this world of ours. He became a
proficient conversationalist on a multitude of subjects. He had, over
and above his zeal for learning, a third grade characteristic.
He had a faith in God. There have been great scholars. There have been
people who have delved into the mysteries of the universe so far as the mind would
enable them to go: Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Francis Bacon—
oh, a multitude of intelligent minds eager to learn—but on many of the most important
problems bought because they could not find among their contemporaries or in
the exercise of reason the answer to their problems. When the Prophet Joseph
Smith could not find answers among his contemporaries or in the writings of
the learned, he went on his knees in prayer to God and prayed with such faith
that he opened the heavens and received answer after answer to problems that
have bothered the philosophers through the ages.
His faith is most remarkable,
from the time he went into the woods as a boy to pray until the time of his martyrdom.
I often think that, among all the acts of faith on his part,
this was greatest: when he prayed to the Lord to reveal to him the original
writings of a man dead for thousands of years and whose writings had been lost
for a long, long time. In studying the Holy Bible he found, in the Book of Genesis,
many problems. To give you one of the simple ones:
the Bible speaks of Adam and Eve having sons—Cain, Abel, and Seth.
Cain killed Abel, leaving only Cain and Seth to perpetuate the human race.
There is no mention of daughters. I do not know how many millions of people read
those passages and were puzzled by them, but didn't have the faith to go to God to
solve them. The prophet knew something was wrong.
There was no answer among men. He prayed to the Lord to reveal to him what Moses
originally wrote, convinced that part of the account was lacking. To me that is
the greatest act of faith in his life. It's one thing to translate an ancient
document by the power and gift of God, quite another to pray for the contents
of a long-lost document. Well, you know the answers. Scores of times, baffled by
the incompleteness of the Holy Bible, he prayed to the Lord that he might know
the correct text and corrected the Bible and offered his corrections as a
challenge to the whole world of Biblical scholarship. In all the years that have
elapsed since the Prophet Joseph lived, none of his ideas have been proven false,
none of his corrections in the Holy Scriptures have been proven false. They
have not all been confirmed, but none have fallen by the wayside.
The Prophet Joseph had a fourth great characteristic that fitted him for leadership.
I am going to call it the power of introspection, the power to look within
oneself and appraise what you see. I think perhaps all of you this morning
took a last look in the mirror before your left your homes
or your lodgings, and you probably look more presentable here this morning
because you did. I think perhaps we make better appearances because of mirrors
that allow us to see reflection of the outer shell of ourselves. But it is
rather a rare person who can look within himself, though all of us, I think, would
like sometimes to withdraw from ourselves, meet ourselves on the street,
see what we look like, see what we talked about, even though it might be embarrassing.
The prophet Joseph had the rare quality of looking within himself. In
translating the Book of Mormon from the gold plates into the English tongue, he
came the realization that he did not know the English language well. In
the first edition of the book of Mormon there are about 2,000 grammatical errors—
about the same number that college students make in an equally large essay.
Nevertheless, he was not content. When the second edition was printed in 1837 all
of the grammatical Corrections were made by the Prophet Joseph himself. If you
want to see the literary heights to which a man can climb who realizes his
own weaknesses, who sees within himself and wants to correct what he sees, read
the one hundred twenty-first hundred, one hundred twenty-second, and hundred and twenty-third
sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, in which we see beauty of expression
rise to a height perhaps only equaled in American prose by the Gettysburg Address.
The prophet saw weaknesses in his own character. As you read the Doctrine and
Covenants you will find repeatedly verses which condemn the Prophet Joseph,
the Lord's condemnation because he was following after the persuasions of men,
and calling him to repent lest the Lord choose another. A lesser man would have
left these out. No one needed to know that the Lord had upbraided him. I think
perhaps the only person who can afford to tell his faults as the person who has
first overcome them.
But these faults were overcome. As we read in his journal, one instance is most interesting.
A man came into his house and called him nearly every
vile name under heaven. He so aroused Joseph's anger that the Prophet says, "I kicked him
out of the house and kicked him every step of the way out to the front gate."
And then he enters in his journal his remorse—that this was not befitting a
prophet of the Lord to thus lose his temper. As you read the entries in
his journal made during the last year of his life, you find his great compassion upon those who
revile him and persecute him. He was not easily aroused anymore to anger. No wonder he said,
"I was as a rough stone until the Lord took me in hand."
Indeed he was. He was a far different man in June of 1844 than he was when the Church
was organized in 1830. He has literally raised himself to greatness.
Always aware of his weaknesses, he frequently admonished the people,
"A prophet is not always a prophet, but only when he is moved upon by the Holy Ghost.
"At other times he is as other men, subject to their weaknesses and mistakes."
Oh, if we could keep the same perspective of ourselves
as he seemed to have kept of himself as he marched through life
as a prophet of the Living God!
This power of introspection, what a priceless power! He had, over and
above this, a fifth great quality without which no person can become great or
useful in God's kingdom. He had a love of people that is rarely found among men,
and his love was returned by those of the Church. I think, for example, of the
great story of Stephen Markham, who joined the church in the East, sold his
property, and came out to Nauvoo with a bag of gold. He listened to the Prophet
admonish the people that the Lord wanted them to complete the Nauvoo
Temple and urge the people to give of their means, that the temple might be built. At
the close of the meeting Stephen Markin came forward and put the
little bag of gold upon the rostrum: "Use this for the temple." He started from scratch and, with
the aid of his neighbors, built himself a fine home in Nauvoo.
Two years later heard that the Prophet Joseph was in debt. He was running a store.
There were no funds to support the Presidency of the Church. The members of
the Church were taking advantage of him. They were getting goods on
credit and not paying their debts, knowing the Prophet would hardly sue them.
Hearing this account, Stephen Markham sold his home, moved his family
into a tent, and came and laid the proceeds in the
Prophet's hands, saying, "Pay off your debts. We need you as a Prophet of the Church."
Yes, people returned his love. Emma says of him that he so loved people that he
could never eat alone, even if he had to call in a stranger off the street.
Certainly we shall never forget the fateful story of June, 1844. The Lord had informed him or
inspired him to know that if he fell into the hands of the law at Carthage,
he would be killed.
Obedient to the revelation, he prepared to flee to the West and find a home for
the Saints in the valleys of the mountains. He crossed the Mississippi to the Iowa side.
The horses were ready; they were packed, but before the party could get underway,
a messenger across the river from his wife, Emma:
"The people in Nauvoo are saying that you are running away. They say
you are a coward, that you are leaving them to their fate."
He turned to his brother, Hyrum, and said,
"If my life is of no value to my friends it is of no value to me. We are going back."
As he rode from the city of Nauvoo toward Carthage, which was to be the
place of his martyrdom, he stopped at a little rise and turning back, said to
those with him, "Oh, that I could but speak once more to my beloved people!"
Yes, he loved people. A year earlier a Missouri sheriff with the name of Reynolds had
come into the state of Illinois,
secured a writ of extradition, and, with Constable Wilson, from
Carthage, had found that the Prophet was visiting his wife's relatives some twenty
miles out of Nauvoo. They went to that place. They pretended they were
missionaries and called him out of the house. They seized him, abused him,
beat him with her pistol butts until he was black and blue. They refused to
let his wife see him. They put him on a horse and rushed him toward the Missouri
border to get him out of the state of Illinois. Some of his friends
intercepted them by the way and got a writ from a local judge accusing them of
abusing the prisoner. Further, the Nauvoo Legion was raised in Nauvoo and came out
to the rescue. We have a strange procession:
the Prophet a prisoner of the sheriff, the sheriff the prisoner of a local sheriff.
They go into Nauvoo, where the Prophet is tried and released. Then comes an unusual act.
He invited Sheriffs Reynolds and Wilson to his home. He had his wife, Emma,
and himself serve them with the finest that could be provided. He treated them
with every kindness and courtesy, until one who was there on that occasion said,
"His treatment of these men, who had been so brutal to him,
would have melted the heart of an archcriminal."
Yes, here was an unusual man, in whom were combined
five great elements: intelligence, a zeal for learning, an unusual faith in God,
a power of introspection, a love of people. In combination they made him a fit
instrument in the hands of God to restore the church in these latter
days, qualities which, if we possess and cultivate, give us the elements whereby
we, too, may become useful. As Joseph Smith rode from Nauvoo toward Carthage, he
met Stephen Markham and was asked, "Joseph, where are you going?"
Joseph's answer rings down the ages:
"I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a
"summer's morning. I have a conscience void of offense toward God and all men."
Would that all of us could say that!
Of all Americans, probably Joseph Smith has left us the most writings that look
into the recesses of a man's heart. In the six great volumes that we sometimes
refer to as The History of the Church and sometimes as The Documentary History,
we see into the inmost recesses of his mind. I have said, and repeat here
"I believe that I know him better than I have known any man in this life saved my own father."
By it I mean I know how he would react to every temptation.
I know what his counsel would be to me in almost every situation
in which I might find myself. He is a great companion. I recommend him to you.
I bear you my solemn witness that I know that he is a prophet of the living God,
and the Church of which we are members, founded by him, is directed by Jesus Christ.
May the Lord bless you with like testimony, I pray in the name of the Master.
Amen.
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