I should like to dispense with all
formality, if I may, and address both
faculty members and student body as my brothers and sisters. I adopt that
form of salutation for several reasons;
first, practically all who are here
are members of the Church that 
established and maintains this university;
second, I believe in the fatherhood of God 
and the brotherhood of man;
and third, i do not intend to give a lecture, certainly
 not an oration or even a sermon,
but simply wish to bear my testimony
 to my brothers and sisters.
I should like to be for a few minutes
 a witness in support of the proposition
that the gospel of Jesus
Christ has been restored in our day
and that this is His Church, organized under His direction through the Prophet Joseph Smith.
I should like to give some reasons for the faith I have
 for my allegiance to the Church.
Perhaps I can do this more
quickly by referring to an interview
I had in London, England, in 1939,
just before the outbreak of the war.
I had met a very prominent English gentleman,
a member of the House of
Commons, formerly
one of the justices of the Supreme Court
of England.
In my conversations with this gentleman on
various subjects— "vexations of the soul,"
he called them—we talked about business, law, politics, international relations,
and war, and we frequently discussed religion.
He called me on the phone one day and asked
if I would meet him at his office and explain
some phases of the gospel.
He said, "I think there is going to be a war.
"If there is, you will have to return to America and
we may not meet again."
His statement regarding the imminence
of the war and the possibility
that we would not meet again 
proved to be prophetic.
When I went to his office he said he was intrigued by some things I had told him.
He asked me to prepare a brief on Mormonism.
I may say to you students that a
brief is a statement of law and facts that lawyers
like President Wilkinson prepare when
they are going into a court to argue a case.
He asked me to prepare a brief on Mormonism
and discuss it with him as I would a legal problem.
He said, "You have told me that you believe that 
Joseph Smith was a prophet.
"You have said to me that you believe that
God the Father and Jesus of Nazareth
appeared to Joseph Smith. I cannot understand how a barrister and solicitor from Canada,
a man trained in logic and
evidence, could accept such absurd statements."
Now this man,
brothers and sisters, this this great
judge, is one of the one of the most
intellectual men I ever met. I think he
had the most incisive mind. His
his mind seemed to me to be almost like
a steel trap. And when he said, "What you
tell me about Joseph Smith is fantastic,"
I was bold enough to suggest to him that
we perhaps should go forward
right then with our discussion. I said,
"I'd like to present my brief right now."
He had intimated that I'd probably take
three days at least to prepare for it
because he said, "I'm going to give you
three hours in which to present it."
When I told him I was ready at the moment,
I suggested to him that what we have in
Canadian and English law and to some
extent in this country is called an
"examination for discovery." An examination
for discovery is, briefly, the getting
together of the opposing sides—
the attorneys and the plaintiff from the defendant—
and seeing if they can find
some area of agreement and thus save the
time of the court later on. I said,
"Perhaps we could have an examination for
discovery here and see whether there is
some area of agreement. And from there we
can start to discuss my fantastic ideas."
He agreed to that quite readily,
and I said, "Of course, I am proceeding on
the assumption that you are a Christian."
"Certainly."
"I assume you believe the Bible, Old Testament, and New Testament to be the word of God."
"I do."
"You believe what's written in the book?"
"Certainly, yes."
"You say that my statement that God spoke to
a man in this age is fantastic and absurd."
"To me, it is."
"Do you believe that
God ever did speak to anyone?"
"Well, certainly.  All through the Bible we have
evidence of that."
"Did he speak to Adam?"
"Yes."
"Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jacob,
Joseph, and on through the prophets?"
"I believe he spoke to every one of them."
"Do you believe that that kind of contact between
God and man ceased
at the Meridian of time or when Jesus appeared?"
"No," he said, "it reached its climax, its
apex, on that occasion."
"Do you believe that God spoke through Jesus?"
"Yes."
"Was He the Son of God?"
"He was."
"Do you believe, sir, that—"
(And I'm going to have to shorten
this considerably because I said it took
me three hours to tell it to him and I
must tell it to you in less than 30 minutes.)
"Do you believe, sir, that after Jesus was
resurrected and after He ascended into
heaven—and I assume you think He did
ascend into heaven?"
"I do."
"Do you believe
that a certain lawyer sometimes referred
to as a tentmaker by the name of Saul
of Tarsus on his way to Damascus
contacted that very individual, namely
Jesus of Nazareth who had been crucified
and had ascended into heaven, do you
believe that Saul saw light and heard a voice?"
"I do."
"Whose voice was it?"
"It was the voice of Jesus Christ for He so introduced himself."
"Then, m'lord," (that is the way we
speak to justices in the British Empire),
"M'lord, I am submitting to you in all
seriousness that it is has been standard
procedure throughout all recorded time for God to talk to men."
He says, "I think I'll have to
admit that, except that it stopped
shortly after the first century of the
Christian era."
"Why did it stop?
"I can't say."
"You think that God hasn't spoken
since then?"
"I'm sure He hasn't."
"There must be a reason. Can you give me a reason?" 
"I do not know."
"May I suggest a reason or several? Perhaps God
does not speak to men anymore
because He can't. He's lost the power."
He said, "Of course that would be blasphemous."
"Well then if you don't accept that, 
perhaps He doesn't speak to men
anymore because He doesn't love us anymore.
He's gone off and left us
to find our own way in the dark."
"Well," he said, "God loves all men of all ages and is no respecter of persons."
"Well then, if He could speak, if He loves us, then the
only other possible answer is I see
is that we don't need Him. We've made
such rapid strides, we're so well
educated, we have such great science that we
don't need God anymore."
And then he said,—and his eyes were moist when he said it—
"Mr. Brown, there never was an age in the history of
the world there never was a people or a
time when the voice of God was needed as
is needed now."
And then he said, "Can you tell me why He doesn't speak?"
And my answer was, "M'lord, He does. He has spoken, He is now speaking,
and all we need is the faith to hear Him.
And then we proceeded rather quickly —and
I must not refer to very much of what we
proceeded to do, but—we proceeded to
prepare what I have been pleased to call
a "Profile of a Prophet." I wonder if you
students would like to fill in the
various things that I'm now going to
mention, add to them as you will, and
then see whether Joseph Smith measures
up. Stand him up against that profile and
see where he comes in.
We agreed between us and this in pursuit
of our examination for discovery of
ground on which we could both stand.
First, we agreed that any man who claimed
to be a prophet of God also claimed to
have been spoken to by God. We agreed
that any man so claiming would be a
dignified man, no table jumping, no
whisperings from the dead,
no clairvoyance, but a dignified, clear
statement of truth.
We agreed that any man claiming to be a
prophet of God would declare his message
without any fear—courageously and
without making any weak concessions to
public opinion. We agreed that if he were
speaking for God he could not make
concessions, and we agreed that
ordinarily what he taught was not in
harmony with the generally accepted
teachings of the day. We agreed that such
a man would speak in the name of the
Lord and say, "Thus saith the Lord,"
as Moses, as Jeremiah, and others. We agreed
that such a man would predict future
events and predict them in the name of
God and
they would come to pass, as Isaiah and
Ezekiel. We agreed that he would have not
only an important message of before his
time, but ordinarily a message for all
future times such as Noah and Malachi and
others. We agreed that his courage in
supporting his statement of truth would
be such that would enable him not only
to endure persecution, but to give his
life if need be for the cause he had espoused,
such as Daniel, Hosea, 
David, and others.
We agreed that such a man would denounce
wickedness fearlessly,
that he would generally be rejected by
the people of his time, but that as time
went on he'd grow in stature, and that
they who put him to death would find if
they could live on that their
descendants would build monuments to his honor.
We agreed that he would do many
superhuman things. Things that no man
could do without God's help. We agreed
that as he grows in stature, the
consequence of his work would be among
the most convincing evidences of his calling.
"By their fruits ye shall know
them."
We agreed that his teachings would be in
strict conformity with scripture.
We agreed that his words and his
writings would become scripture.
Now I've gone quickly and left out a lot, but you
can fill in. But I ask you in all
seriousness to stand the Prophet Joseph
Smith up against that profile of
prophets and see whether he measured up.
And as a student of the life of the
Prophet Joseph Smith for more than 50
years, I say to you young men and women:
there is no claim which any prophet has
made in connection with his prophetic
calling
which Joseph Smith cannot qualify under.
Think it through. I said to this friend
of mine, "I believe that Joseph Smith was
a prophet of God because he talked like
a prophet, he taught like a prophet, he
lived and died like a prophet. I believe
he was a prophet of God because he gave
to this world some of the greatest of
all revelations. I believe that he was a
prophet of God because he predicted many
things on the future which have come to
pass since the prediction, things which
only God could bring to pass." I said to
him and I say to you, "I believe that
Joseph Smith was a prophet of God
because John on the Isle of Patmos the
beloved disciple of Jesus declared that
the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
prophecy." And I submit to you and I
submitted to him that of any man who
ever lived had a testimony of Jesus,
gave his life for that testimony, and was
effective in spreading the testimony and
bringing convincing evidences of the
truth of the statement that Jesus is the
Christ among all the men that have lived,
I challenge any man to show one who has
given us more real evidences of the
divine calling of Jesus Christ
than did the Prophet Joseph Smith.
I believe the Prophet Joseph Smith was a
prophet because he did do many
superhuman things. One of them was
translating the Book of Mormon. Some
people will not agree on that, but I submit to you
that the Prophet Joseph
Smith in translating the Book of Mormon
did a superhuman task. I ask you
students to go out and write a Book of
Mormon. I ask you to write one chapter
of a Book of Mormon. I asked you to write,
if you can, any kind of a story of the
ancient inhabitants of America, and I
asked you to write it without any source
material. I ask you to include in
your statements with respect to the
ancient inhabitants of America some of
the things which the Prophet Joseph
included in the Book of Mormon. I ask
you to write, for instance, 54 chapters
dealing with wars, 21 historical chapters,
55 on visions and prophecies. And
remember when you begin to write on
visions and prophecies, you must have
your record agree meticulously with the
scriptures. You'll write 71 chapters on
doctrine and exhortation, and here too
you must check every statement with the
scriptures or you'll be proven to be a
fraud. You must write 21 chapters on the
Ministry of Christ, and everything you
claim He said and did, and every
testimony you write in your book about
Him must agree absolutely with the New Testament.
I ask you, would you like to
undertake such a task? I would suggest to
you too what you're up against in
connection with this book you're going
to write. You're going to
have to introduce figures of speech:
similes, metaphor,
narration, exposition, description, oratory,
epic, lyric, logic, and parables. Undertake
that, will you? I ask those of you who are
under 20 to undertake it. I ask you to
remember that the man that translated
the Book of Mormon was a young man and
he hadn't had the opportunity of
schooling that
you have had. And yet he dictated that
book in just a little over two months,
and made very few if any corrections.
For over a hundred years, some of the
best students and scholars of the world
have been trying to prove that the Book
of Mormon was not the word of God and
they've taken the Bible to try to prove
it. Not one of them has been able to
prove that anything he wrote was not in
strict harmony with the scriptures,
with the Bible, with the Word of God.
The Book of Mormon
not only declares in its title page that its
purpose is to bring the knowledge of
Christ to the people, but the whole of
the subject matter has that as its
central theme. There is no chapter in
all literature sacred or profane which I
say to you as a lawyer has greater
evidential value than the chapters in
Third Nephi where multitudes of people
said, "We saw Him, we felt of His hands and
His side. We know He is the Christ."
I said to my friend, "M'lord,
I cannot understand you saying to me
that my claims are fantastic, nor can I
understand why Christians who claim to
believe in Christ would persecute and
put to death a man whose whole purpose
was to prove the truth of the thing they
themselves were declaring, namely that
Jesus was the Christ. I could understand
them persecuting Joseph and the rest of
us if he had said, 'I am Christ,' or if he
had said, 'there is no Christ,' or if he had
said, 'someone else
is Christ.' Then Christians believing in
Christ would be justified
to some extent at least in persecuting
or disputing with him. But what
he said was, 'He whom ye ignorantly served
declare I unto you,'
paraphrasing what Paul said in Athens. 'He
whom ignorantly worship declare I unto
you,' and Joseph came to Christians and
said to them,
'You've been claiming to believe in Jesus
Christ. I say to you that I saw Him and I
talked with Him. He is the Son of God.'"
When Joseph came out of that wood, at
least four fundamental truths came out
with him
and he announced them to the world.
First, that the Father and the Son are separate
and distinct individuals. Secondly, that
the canon of scripture is not complete.
Thirdly, that man was created in the
image of God. Fourth, that that revelation or the
channel between the earth and the heaven
is open, and it's continuous. I'd like to
say to you students there's nothing
so far as I'm concerned in all our claims
finer and more challenging to students
in any field of activity than the one
which states we not only believe what "God
has revealed and does reveal, but we
believe that He will yet reveal many
great and important things pertaining to
the kingdom of God." That is a challenge
to research. It's a challenge to check on
what you believe. It's a challenge to
bring your beliefs, your thoughts, your
education, your lives up-to-date. May I
just say to you,
and perhaps some of you were wondering,
what was the reaction of this judge when
we'd finished. He sat and listened
intently. We asked some very pointed and
searching questions. At the end of the
period, he said, "Mr. Brown,
I wonder if your people appreciate the
import of your message. Do you?"
He said, "If what you have told me is true, it is the
greatest message that has come to this earth since the angels announced the birth of Christ."
This was a judge speaking. 
A great statesman, an
intelligent man. He threw out the
challenge, "Do you appreciate the import
of what you say?" He said, "I wish it were
true. I hope it may be true. God knows it
ought to be true. I would to God," he
said, and he wept as he said it, "that some
man could appear on the earth and
authoritatively say, 'thus saith the Lord.'"
As i intimated, we did not meet again. But
I bring you just in the briefest form
two or three reasons why I believe that
Joseph Smith was the prophet of God.
Under girding and overarching all the
rest, I say to you from the very center
of my heart, I know that Joseph Smith was
a prophet of God, and all of these
evidences and many others that could be
cited may have the effect of giving me
in a sense an
intellectual conviction, but by the
whisperings of the Holy Spirit one may
come to know. And by those whisperings, I
say I do know. I thank God for that
knowledge, and pray for his blessing upon
all of you. In the name of Jesus Christ,
amen.
