Elder Anthony W. Ivins.

Evidences that "a great and marvelous work" has come forth-World-wide proclamation of the Gospel-Unparalleled gathering from all nations-Many millions yet to be warned-Saints should be interested in national welfare-Righteousness needed in the nation, as in the Church.

"Now, behold a great and marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men. Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve Him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day."

I suppose, my brethren and sisters, that the varied exercises of this conference, the words of inspiration which have been spoken, have prompted us to think upon a variety of subjects. There has been some outstanding thought, perhaps, in all of our minds, varying as the different subjects, all of which are of very great importance, have been treated. It has been so with me. From the opening session of the conference, when the President of the Church made that splendid report of its condition, I have been thinking of these words of the Lord which I have read. This revelation was given more than a year before the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church had not come into existence as a recognized body. The Book of Mormon had been published; a few men and women had been converted to the truth, and to the divinity of the mission of the boy prophet who had translated and published it to the world. More than a year later, when the Church was finally organized, there were but six persons present who were recognized as participating in that organization, that were members of the Church. The total wealth of those people combined was scarcely sufficient to print the Book of Mormon and offer it to the world, and yet upon that little handful of men and women devolved the mission of proclaiming to the world the opening of this Gospel dispensation, and the appearance of the Father and the Son. Their mission was to confound false doctrine, to proclaim truth, and lay the foundations for the establishment of God's kingdom upon earth.

I have been looking-backward over these eighty-five years of the existence of the Church. I have been making some comparisons. I have been asking myself the question, have these words of the Lord, which were spoken before the organization of the Church, been fulfilled, were they true? And I remembered that during those eighty-five years, from that little handful of people have come the multitude who make up the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; I remembered that the Gospel had been preached in every state of this Union; that it had been preached in Mexico and Canada, and had been carried to South America; that it had been preached in the Scandinavian countries of northern Europe, where multitudes of men and women, Israelites and heirs to the Gospel by right of the promise, have been brought into the fold of Christ, and numbered among the Saints of God; that it had been preached in Germany, in Belgium, in Holland, in a limited degree in France, in the British Isles, and in the Turkish Empire; that it had been carried to India; not much done in China, but has been carried to the empire of Japan, and to all the Polynesian islands of the Pacific. Many thousands of people have believed and obeyed it; inspired by the Spirit of the Lord they have been gathered together here in the tops of the mountains. Driven from place to place, in poverty, in distress, the Church was bodily moved from the east and planted here in these mountains, with the result which we see today.

There are scores of individuals in the Church today each of whom possess greater wealth than its entire membership did at the time that these words of the Lord were uttered. The Gospel has been preached almost everywhere. There is not, I believe I am safe in saying, in the history of the world, a parallel to it. Greater multitudes of people may have been converted to the truth in other Gospel dispensations, but if so, that conversion occurred in their own immediate vicinity and neighborhood. To have covered the civilized world, to have circumnavigated the earth, and above all, to have brought together these people from different nations, planting them in communities, strangers to each other by nationality and birth, and establish harmony, union, one purpose, that being the accomplishment of God's will in the earth, I say that no such thing has ever been undertaken and successfully accomplished before in the world's history. A great and marvelous work was about to come forth, and I believe that we are justified in saying, not boasting, but in humility before the Lord, and giving Him credit for all that has been accomplished, that He has vindicated His word, and that a great and marvelous work has been accomplished through the ministry of His servants, endowed with the Holy Priesthood, as they have gone out from His Church, and promulgated the truths of His Gospel in the world.

So much for the past. Now, when we contemplate these conditions, these splendid results, are we justified in saying that we have done enough, that the work of the Lord is finished, that there is nothing more for Latter-day Saints to do? I believe that there is no condition so dangerous, either to an individual, a community, or a nation, as that which leads him to believe that he has reached the point where there is nothing more to do, nothing more to be accomplished, no farther progress, no development; that very moment retrogression begins. So I see before me, just as I regard the accomplishments of the past a miracle wrought by the hand of God, as I look into the future greater works to be done, demanding our attention, our energy the exercise of our faith and all the power that we can get from the Father. While it is true that the Gospel has thus been generally preached in the world, it is also true that but a very small proportion of the inhabitants of the earth have yet heard it, or looked upon the face of a man bearing the Priesthood, and authorized to speak in the name of the Lord in this dispensation; millions of people in our own country must hear the truth, millions of people in the old world, the empires of Russia, China, and India; millions of people who are in Mexico, Central and South America must hear the Gospel, as we have heard it.

One of the great future accomplishments of this Church, and one which devolves upon us, is the preaching of the Gospel of the Redeemer to the scattered remnants of the House of Israel. I am a believer in the word of the Lord. I believe the things that are written in this book from which I read, the D&C. I believe the promises of God as they are contained here in this Book of Mormon. What a strength that book has been to me! How I have thanked the Lord for it, for it has taught me the better way of life. It deals plainly with the doctrines of the Gospel, teaches me my duty as a member of the Church, teaches me my duty to the state, teaches me my duty to my fellow man, and if the things contained there are true, just as certain as the sun shines in yonder heaven, so will the remnant who have descended from the men who wrote it, be brought to a knowledge of the truth of the Gospel of the Redeemer, come into the Church and be numbered with the Saints of God. The Lord has promised it, unconditionally; that is to say, unconditionally except as it depends upon their repentance, but that they will repent He has told us in the most definite manner, and there are millions of them around us, my brethren and sisters. These Lamanites, are heirs to the promises, and God has said, without qualification, that He will give this land to them for an everlasting inheritance, that they shall be, with us, the builders of the New Jerusalem; the powers of heaven shall be among them, and they shall know the record of their fathers which has been brought to us through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I could read to you from this same book the word of the Lord in regard to that. Perhaps I had better do it, because I like to justify what I say, by the word of the Lord:

"Nevertheless, My work shall go forth, for inasmuch as the knowledge of a Savior has come unto the world, through the testimony of the Jews, even so shall the knowledge of a Savior come unto My people.

"And to the Nephites, and the Jacobites, and the Josephites. and the Zoramites, through the testimony of their fathers-

"And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindled in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers, whom the Lord has suffered to destroy their brethren, the Nephites, because of their iniquities and their abominations;

This also was revealed to us before the organization of the Church, so this great mission is upon us. The Lord expects us to perform it, and He will hold us responsible if we shall fail. And that is but a small part of our mission. Scattered among the nations of the earth are the house of Judah, the chosen people of the Lord. How long shall they continue, how long shall they suffer, how long shall they be a hiss and a by-word among the nations of the earth, because of transgressions of their fathers? This Book of Mormon, thank the Lord, gives them hope also, and I cry to the Lord that He will prepare their hearts, for the Redeemer testifies here that when these things come forth the Jews shall begin to believe, they shall begin to turn to Christ and recognize Him as their Redeemer, the Messiah. Just as certainly as they have been scattered, so will the Lord gather them together again, and restore to them the lands of their possessions, and they shall forever serve Him and honor Him as their fathers did in the beginning; and they must come through the efforts of the Latter-day Saints.

So I say, brethren and sisters, there is plenty to do; we are not to be at ease in Zion; we are not to say that the work of the Lord has been accomplished, and that there is nothing more to do, and those are the very things which the prophet, in this Book of Mormon, warns us against, and says that some of us will say; but we must continue to work. These are the things that I see in the future, that are abroad; and as we preach the Gospel abroad so is it our duty to provide for, and assist, as we have hitherto done, those of our brethren and sisters who gather up to Zion from the nations of the earth, that they, like us, may become independent men and women. If there was nothing else in the history of the Church but that one fact, tens of thousands of people taken from the sweat houses of Europe, where they or their children never could have become independent men and women, have been brought here, planted upon this promised land where they could become a part of it, owning it, claiming it as their own, under the permission of God our Father, by whom we hold all things, and have become independent, loyal citizens of this good government of ours. That work must continue. We cannot abandon it. So it seems to me that notwithstanding the magnitude of the work which was before the Church at the time of its inception, there is a greater field before us today than there ever has been before in its history.

There are other things for us to do, for our loyalty is not to the Church alone. We are here, we say, under the best government in the world and I believe it, and thank the Lord for it, a government, we say, which was established under the inspiration of the Lord Himself, and I believe it; we are citizens of that government. I never have been able to conceive that it is possible for me to be an acceptable member of the Church in the sight of God, my Father, except that I am a devoted supporter of my country and its institutions, honoring, obeying, and sustaining its laws, and just as I labor for the spread of the truth, just as I seek to bring people to a knowledge of it, so is it my duty to labor for the establishment of righteous government in the land in which I live. The Church and the State are so intimately associated that in my mind I cannot separate them, for I believe that without the State the Church could accomplish little, and that without the influence of religion, those restraining influences which come through faith in God, and acknowledgment of our Redeemer as the Savior of the world, it is at least an exceedingly difficult thing that good government may be established and maintained in the world. So I must labor for better citizenship. Isn't that true? Justice, temperance, and truth are the fundamental doctrines of all good government; and if I see those doctrines threatened, is it not my duty to oppose their enemies? It seems to me that it is. Pageants may parade the streets, artists and poets may immortalize freedom on canvass and in verse, but unless the things that we do are in harmony with that which we say, "it is like sounding brass of a tinkling cymbal." And so I say that so long as there are in this great nation of ours men and women who cry for bread, who seek employment in vain, while others indulge in the extravagant accumulation and use of wealth; so long as our prisons are filled with men and women who defy the law, and those rules which are established for the security of society; so long as men in this free government shall deliberately ignore and defeat the will of the people whom they pretend to represent; so long as there shall remain in this land of ours a single house of assignation, where the souls and bodies of women are bartered for gold; so long as there shall remain upon the opposite sides of the streets from where houses of prayer are built, chapels of the devil, which, with open doors beckon your sons and invite them in, that they may become drunken and corrupted, their bodies and souls endangered;-I say, so long as these conditions continue there is work to do, for every man and woman who has taken upon him or her the name of the Redeemer, I do not wish to be regarded as an agitator, I do not wish to be regarded as an extremist; but my brethren and sisters, if I see these things as I move about among the cities of this country, is it my duty to be silent, or is it my duty, as a professed teacher of righteousness, to call attention to them, in order that they may be corrected? When men sell their votes by thousands, and ambitious men buy them in order that they may be magnified before the people; and attain to those places of trust where your very lives and liberties are at stake, as occurred in the last election in one of the greatest states of this republic, it seems to me that there is something to do; and if I see these forces which are making as surely for the disintegration of this government as they ever made for the disintegration of governments that have existed before it, I cannot restrain the feeling which I have that it is my duty to call attention to them, not to complain, but in the hope that seeing them we may reform,

Just the other day a ship struck upon a rock, an uncharted reef, off the coast of California, and was wrecked. No one knew the rock was there before, but the captain of the vessel knows it now; he knew when he struck it. Would it be proper for him to go away and say, "That hidden rock is there, but never mind, I won't say anything about it. I will just let somebody else come along and run their ship onto it, and be wrecked as I have been?" No, he puts it on the chart, so that the next mariner who comes knows that he must avoid that spot.

So, my brethren and sisters, if you will read the word of the Lord, if you will be admonished by the prophecies contained in these books, if you will study the history of the nations that have lived before you, you will know that there is just one thing that makes for security, and that thing is righteousness and truth in the Church, in the State, in business, and in the life of every individual who pretends to serve his people, or to serve the Lord. That is all that I wanted to urge, just that there be righteousness, that there be integrity, that there be honesty. When I see the great work which is before us and contrast it with the past, I feel like buckling up my belt one hole shorter, as the Indian does when he lacks a meal, and going on with the fight. The battle with sin is real. Don't deceive yourselves by thinking that the devil is dead. He is very much alive; he knows the truth, he fears it, he trembles but he will never obey it until he is bound with chains and put where he belongs. And there are thousands of men in this country who are just as unconvertible as Lucifer himself, because they are his agents; I would that they could all be converted to the Gospel of Christ; but if that is impossible then I regard it to be my duty, as a citizen of this country, to see to it that just and merciful laws be enacted, so that if a man refuses to yield to reason, if he refuses to be converted to the truth, he may be restrained by force and put where he belongs, that he cease to be a menace to his fellow citizens.

The Lord bless you, my brethren and sisters, guide us in the right way. Oh, how precious is the Spirit of God our Father, that leads us unto all truth! I pray for it; I need it myself every moment; you need it. If you are guided by it you never will go astray, but you will feel as I do that in this fight with sin you had better die in the trenches, for that is where we all are, we are right in the trenches, in the first ranks; better die there, as those Belgians died, than that we compromise with the devil to obtain peace, for he never keeps any contract that he makes, he never did, he never will, and if you accede to him one iota, you are like the fly that goes into the web of the spider, you become so entangled that you never can escape, and there you die. God help us carry on this magnificent work until His purposes are accomplished, until the destiny of the Church is fulfilled, until the state is purified and we prepared, both religiously and civilly, for the kingdom and coming of the Lord, that His will may be done on earth as it is in heaven, I pray through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Elder Melvin Ballard sang a hymn entitled, "Come near me, O my Savior."