Elder Joseph F. Smith Jr.

The Latter-day Saints have received the words of eternal life--"Christians" who do not believe in Christ's Divinity--Man's reason needs the Spirit's guidance--Prevalent disbelief in Scripture statements--The Infinite cannot be comprehended by finite reasoning--Falacious dogmas of modern scientists--Essentiality of Spiritual guidance demonstrated.

My brethren and sisters, I am very greatly impressed, this morning, with the many evidences that proclaim this to be in very deed the place--the place of Zion: that here are found the people of the Lord with whom He has made covenant, and who have made covenant with Him to serve Him and keep His commandments: that Zion will grow and prosper until her fame shall fill the earth and her glory and majesty shall cover the face thereof.

I feel this morning very much as Peter did in his answer to the Lord after the feeding of the five thousand, when he confessed the Lord to be the Son of God. We read in the sixth chanter of John's Gospel that the Savior departed secretly from the people after this miracle was performed, and crossed to the other side of the sea of Galilee, to the city of Capernaum. The next morning when the people discovered that the Lord had departed, they followed Him and asked when He came hither, and Jesus rebuked them because they had not followed Him because of the things He taught them, but because of the loaves and fishes. He thereupon instructed them to seek for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life which He could give unto them. They promptly informed Him that their fathers did eat manna in the wilderness which was bread from heaven. He answered that the bread Moses gave was not the true bread from heaven, but He was the bread of life, and that whoever came to Him should never hunger, and those who believed on Him should never thirst. This caused them to murmur, and to make it more emphatic the Lord declared unto them: "I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. * * * I am the living bread which cometh down from heaven." He offended them still more by saying, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," referring to the ordinance which He later instituted, the sacrament of the Lord's supper. When He made this statement they were greatly offended, and many of those who had professed belief in Him declared that it was a very hard saying, and they could not receive it. Or, as it is written: "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered Him: Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And I say, my brethren and sisters, that I feel this morning, after hearing the testimonies of the brethren at this conference, very much as Peter did in answering the Lord. Where can we go and find the words of eternal life? We cannot turn to the right hand neither to the left for there spiritual darkness reigns. Right here are to be found the words of eternal life, as they are given by revelation and inspiration to the people of Zion, and we know, as Peter did, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is our message to the world; and it is a very timely message, for the so-called Christian world is departing from the fundamentals, if they ever had them, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are rejecting Him; they do not accept Him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for I realize there are many in the world who do accept Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind and as the Son of God: but the tendency among the religious thinkers and speakers today is very largely in the direction of which I speak.

During the year 1914, and running into the year 1915, a number of articles appeared in the New York Independent, one of the leading weekly papers of the United States which has a circulation in all the states of the Union and in many countries abroad. These articles appeared at intervals of a week or two during that year and were entitled, "What I believe and Why." The writers were men who are moulding the thought religiously and educationally, of the people of this land. I read quite a number of these articles, and as I remember it now, there was not among them all, one declaration, clear cut and without modification, accepting Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son of God, and the Redeemer of the world; and yet these articles were written by men who profess to be ministers of His gospel. They call themselves Christians, but they taught most everything else except the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. They were very modern in their views, and accepted the theories and the ideas that prevail so largely now in the world, in contrast and contradiction to the Gospel of our Lord, as His doctrine is set forth in the Holy Scriptures. The final article of these papers, appeared in the issue of that weekly for March 15, 1915, and was entitled "The Sum of the Whole Matter. What I Believe and Why," and was introduced as the final paper or word on these religious subjects. The author of this final paper was Dr. William Hays Ward. I want to read to you just a few sentences. Mr. Ward said:

"The sum of the whole matter is this: Reason is the last arbiter; our own reason, our individual reason, my reason, nobody's else. There are various sources of authority. Bible, or church, or God, but each one must be tested by our personal reason before it is believed. We are all of us at bottom rationalists, can not help being. What God is, whether there be a God, we must decide by the best reason we have. If we are made in the image of God, that image is in reason, not in body." Now I want you to reflect and remember that. "If we are made in the image of God," he says, "that image is in reason, not in body; and our little reason can and must get some true view of God, just as our little blinking myopic eyes can truly, if imperfectly, decry the infinite spangled universe. Reason may see faintly, even erringly, but it is all we have to guide us. It may rest on custom, tradition, social inheritance, the teaching from childhood of those whom we think possessed of more knowledge and judgment than we, but all our beliefs rest on such reason as we have. * * It is by reason that we too must test the Bible as well as the Vedas, Moses as well as Hesiod or Zarathustra. If we find in our Bible anything of cosmogony, or history or morals that does not approve itself to our reason, we must reject it, we can not help it. That did not, could not come direct from God, but came through fallible men, the framework and the chord of whose harp was constructed after the fashion of their day, and could not sound perfect music. Reason prefers our school text-book to our Bible on matters of geology and astronomy, sifts Bible history by comparison with contemporary records recovered from the sands and clay of ancient empires: and reason it is that judges the teachings of Jesus to be superior to the sacrificial cult of Leviticus, or the cursings of Ezekiel and Amos. Our light is better than theirs, for our reason has more knowledge, more experience, on which to rest. The best human reason--I think I do not err--whether whether it looks outward or inward, finds God."

And I say it does not! Reason is all right when intelligently used. There is not a principle of the gospel that will not appeal to the reason of man, for every principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is reasonable, clear and easily understood with the aid of the spirit of truth. But man cannot determine upon the strength of his own reason unaided by the Spirit of God the power and saving grace of the gospel principles, and expect to find out God. He cannot do it! The judgment of these men in the world, is not by any means as good as the judgment of Ezekiel, the judgment of Amos and the judgment of Leviticus, that is, the word of the Lord as found in the book of Leviticus; neither is it as good as the judgment of Moses or any other of the old prophets, for the very good reason that Moses and the prophets were led and directed by the Spirit of God. These men are not so led, they have rejected the Lord and in His place have set up, as they did at one time in the nation of France, the god of reason which they worship, and which leads them into all kinds of errors because of their faulty and erroneous reasoning, such as these sentences express which I have read to you.

Of course our reason is in the form and the likeness of the reason of God our Father, but His is infinite and ours are limited and very imperfect. And it is true, notwithstanding what man may say or think, that we were created in the image of God physically, and this man's reason unaided by the spirit of truth has led him astray in this regard because he has rejected the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

I am reminded of an expression found in the eleventh chapter of the book of Job. One of his comforters expressed it but it is nevertheless a true statement. He said to Job: "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" And the answer to that naturally is: No, you cannot, unaided by the Holy Ghost! It is impossible for man to discover God unto perfection by the aid of his reason and that alone. We have the word of God for it. Paul tells us in the second chapter of Corinthians:

"It is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God." Or in other words, unless he has the Spirit of God. "Now we have received," he says, "not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

Now these modern religionists--we have some of them in our own city--I happen to think to think I have a clipping in my pocket from which I want to read a paragraph to you. This is the purported statement of a minister of this city taken from a discourse delivered not many weeks ago. He said:

"I for one can't see why men should accept the proposition that there is a hereafter simply because it is so written in the books. What more did the writers hundreds of years ago know about that than we do, and why should we particularly believe them? No man has ever journeyed to the beyond and returned to earth to prove to us we do go on."

And I say he is wrong! But this is the way these modern religionists reason. Many of those who have gone to the great beyond have returned and we have witnesses raised up in our day who can testify that they have seen and con-versed with them. The Lord Himself, even the Son of God, appeared in the Kirtland Temple to the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and ministered to them. The Prophet and Sidney Rigdon saw the Son of God in heavenly vision and they bore witness of it and their testimony is a matter of record before the world. They saw Him and bore witness, as they declared it, "last of all" that He lives for they saw Him. Angels, who are men that lived upon this earth and have been glorified, receiving their resurrection, returned and conferred upon the heads of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, keys and powers and priesthood which they held, and this same priesthood has been handed down and you hold it my brethren.

It is the extreme of foolishness for a man to rise up and say, because those who have gone to the beyond have not appeared to him, therefore they have not returned, that no one has returned from the great beyond to prove we do go on! and to teach such nonsense in his ignorance to the people, because it appeals to his reason. He never will receive such visitations and knowledge as long as he holds to such views, and rejects the Lord Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world. Peter says:

"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Now this man asks, what did the prophets of old know more than we? And Mr. Ward, one of the great teachers in the religious world asks the same question, or, declares that we have more light and a better vision than the prophets had, because of our greater experience. And I say unless we are in communication and fellowship with the Spirit of God we do not know as well as they knew, for we have it in the words of the chief of the apostles that these holy men of old, Moses, Elias, Elijah--all of the prophets of old--spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that which they declared to the people was the vital truth. The Lord taught His disciples that the mission of the Comforter, or Holy Ghost, was to teach the truth and that He would teach us and lead us in all truth; that He would show us things to come--which is the spirit of prophecy. He would take of the things of the Father and of the Son and reveal them unto us, providing, of course, that we are in fellowship with Him. And so Peter bears witness that these prophets spoke tinder the inspiration of the Lord and gave unto us the word of the Lord.

We have even a greater witness. The Lord Himself has borne record of this fact. You remember having read in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke how, after His resurrection, He walked along the road with two of His disciples going to the little city of Emmaus, not far from Jerusalem, and the scriptures say, their eyes were holden, that they should not know Him. As He walked with them they were surprised, thinking Him a stranger and ignorant of what had taken place during the past three days, so they commenced to instruct Him as they walked along. They told Him how the Jews had taken Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom they thought had come to redeem Israel, and had put Him to death. They were very much concerned about it, and they were feeling in their hearts that all was over, their hopes and promises were at an end. The Savior listened patiently for some time and finally He said to them: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he ex-pounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." So He testified to the fact that Moses and all the prophets whose records we have in the old scriptures--which today are quite generally discarded in the so-called Christian world--had declared that He was to come into the world; suffer and have His blood shed for the redemption of the world, to die upon the cross and that He was verily the Son of God the Redeemer of mankind. Thus He opened the scriptures to their understanding and taught His disciples after His resurrection, that these things were true, bearing witness and record to the fact that the prophets of old spoke, and wrote also, as they were moved and commanded by the Spirit of God. This is what we Latter-day Saints believe.

Now these modernists who are instructing and leading astray the people of this and other lands, reject the doctrine of the atonement of Christ; they reject the resurrection of the Son of God, and consequently the resurrection of all mankind. They have discarded entirely the miracles of the scriptures and make light of the saving ordinances of the gospel which the Lord declared to be so essential to our salvation; and in the stead thereof they have accepted the theories and notions advanced by modern scientists which are evidently false, and have taken to their hearts and hugged to their bosoms the falsehoods set forth in the theories of evolution and of higher criticism of the scriptures. And why have they done this thing? Because the simple truth, which is understood by the Spirit of God and not understood and comprehended by the spirit of man, does not appeal to their reason. They have refused to hearken to the words of the Son of God wherein he rebuked the unpenitent Jews:

"I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me. And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me."

All manner of theory and error they teach to the world, declaring that we cannot accept anything, only that which our reason teaches us. Therefore, if reason teaches me that baptism is not essential to salvation and it teaches you that it is, we are both right, which is a contradiction which cannot be true; and unless reason teaches us the same thing and we are agreed, both cannot have the truth and we are not in the narrow path, we are not in fellowship with God. We must walk in holiness of life in the light and in the truth with proper understanding which comes through the gift and power of the Holy Ghost which is promised to all who will believe unto repentance and receive the words of eternal life. If we are in fellowship with this Spirit then we walk in the light and have fellowship with God. He who is without the guiding light of the Spirit of God is in the midst of darkness and cannot with his reason unaided and unenlightened search and find out God.

My testimony is that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of the world. that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, that he did receive ministrations of angels, and even of the Son and of the Father; that he was called to establish this work in truth and righteousness, and this message has gone forth to the world and many--even the great majority, have rejected it. However, this is my testimony and the testimony of the elders of Israel, and may it prevail, is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.