My young brethren and sisters of this great
school, I am delighted to greet you this very
first day you’re back to school from your
holidays.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and
are on the road to a successful and happy
New Year.
This is such a special time of the year—this
holiday—Christmas and New Year.
I trust we have been greatly blessed by the
spirit of Christmas and the Christ child and
that we may have that spirit to be with us
and bless us in our lives all the year.
It would be interesting to know what your
resolutions are in the New Year; and although
one should not wait until the New Year to
repent, it does furnish a good time to make
a change.
I like these verses in reference to the New
Year.
"A Clean New Book
Midnight strikes, and the old year is gone.
We close the tablets we’ve written on:
And, torn ’twixt hope and doubt and fear,
We open the book of an unlived year.
An unlived year.
Ah, stained with tears
Are the well-thumbed volumes of other years.
Soiled by blunders and black regret
Are the pages we read with our eyelids—wet.
Close in our hearts, as the leaves are turned
Is the record of passions that flared and
burned;
And panics and sorrow, and ghosts that leer,
Look out from the page of the dying year.
But fresh in our hands—once more—is laid
A clean new book, by the Master made;
Unmarred are the pages lying there
Twelve new chapters, fresh and fair.
It is ours to write the daily tale
Of how we conquer or how we fail;
Of struggle and effort and hope that wakes
Like a sun in the heart when a bright day
breaks.
Once a year, when the glad bells ring,
And the old year nods to a baby King,
Fresh in our hands, with the title clear
And the leaves uncut, is an unlived year."
Florence French wrote these verses:
"I would like to change the picture
I painted yesterday;
The harsh tones would be muted,
The background be less gray.
The leafless trees of winter
Would take on tints of spring;
The silent, ice-bound river
Would be a sparkling thing.
The scarlet tanager would replace
The starling’s somber shade;
The pink of wild rose fill the space
Where drifting leaves pervade.
I cannot change the picture
I painted yesterday,
But I can make a new one—
And I’ll begin today."
A man who had been in the penitentiary applied
to Henry Ford for employment.
He had decided to tell Mr. Ford about his
past as he applied.
He had not been honest on several occasions
as he had applied and after he was hired and
working, his employer had found out he had
been in the penitentiary and let him go.
So now as he started to tell about his past,
Mr. Ford stopped him and said, “I don’t
care about your past; start where you stand.”
Berton Braley put these thoughts to verse:
"Start where you stand and never mind the
past;
The past won’t help you in beginning new;
If you have left it all behind at last
Why, that’s enough, you’ve done with it,
you’re through; . . .
Forget the buried woes and dead despairs;
Here is a brand-new trial right at hand;
The future is for him who does and dares;
Start where you stand.
. . .
What has been, has been; yesterday is dead
And by it you are neither blessed nor banned;
Take courage, man, be brave and drive ahead;
Start where you stand."
Repentance is one of the greatest principles
of the gospel.
There is another important event that is often
lost track of in the busy holiday season,
or only little is made of it.
I refer to the birthday of the Prophet Joseph
Smith on December 23.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, we recognize Joseph Smith
as a prophet of God through whom the Church
was restored in this dispensation.
No one is more revered by us save Jesus Christ
himself.
Even though we revere him as our Prophet and
the founder of the Church, it is unlikely
that we fully comprehend his true greatness.
May I share with you a few of the attributes
and virtues that made him one of the greatest
men ever to live upon the earth.
John Henry Evans wrote of him:
"Here is a man who was born in the stark hills
of Vermont; who was reared in the backwoods
of New York; who never looked inside a college
or a high school; who lived in six States,
no one of which would own him during his lifetime;
who spent months in the vile prisons of the
period; who, even when he had his freedom,
was hounded like a fugitive; who was covered
once with a coat of tar and feathers, and
left for dead; who, with his following, was
driven by irate neighbors from New York to
Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, and from Missouri
to Illinois; and who, at the unripe age of
thirty-eight, was shot to death by a mob with
painted faces.
Yet this man became mayor of the biggest town
in Illinois and the state’s most prominent
citizen, the commander of the largest body
of trained soldiers in the nation outside
the Federal army, the founder of cities and
of a university, and aspired to become President
of the United States.
He wrote a book which has baffled the literary
critics for a hundred years and which is today
more widely read than any other volume save
the Bible.
On the threshold of an organizing age he established
the most nearly perfect social mechanism in
the modern world, and developed a religious
philosophy that challenges anything of the
kind in history, for completeness and cohesion.
And he set up the machinery for an economic
system that would take the brood of Fears
out of the heart of man—the fear of want
through sickness, old age, unemployment, and
poverty.
In thirty nations are men and women who look
upon him as a greater leader than Moses and
a greater prophet than Isaiah; his disciples
now number close to a million; and
already a granite shaft pierces the sky over
the place where he was born, and another is
in course of erection over the place where
he received the inspiration for his Book."
Joseph Smith occupies a unique place among
the prophets—his birth and his name, Joseph,
were known nearly four thousand years before
he came to the earth.
Joseph who was sold into Egypt said of the
great latter-day prophet:
“Yea, Joseph truly said: Thus saith the
lord unto me; a choice seer will I raise up.
. . .
“. . . Behold; that seer will the Lord bless.
. . .
“And his name shall be called after me;
and it shall be after the name of his father.
And he shall be like unto me; for the thing,
which the Lord shall bring forth by this hand,
but the power of the Lord shall bring my people
unto salvation.
“Yea, thus prophesied Joseph: I am sure
of this thing.
. . .”
Not only was the Prophet Joseph’s birth
known, but after his death, the Lord caused
to have written and included as scripture
the following:
“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the
Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for
the salvation of men in this world, than any
other man that ever lived in it.
. . .”
He lived great, and he died great in the eyes
of God and his people; and like most of the
Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed
his mission and his works with his own blood
. . ."
Dr. John A. Widtsoe said of the Prophet Joseph:
"Since I struggled as a boy to find the Church
and the message of Joseph Smith I have been
overwhelmed by the greatness of the Prophet.
He towers above all men by his great teachings.
Of course he was a man with the frailties
of the flesh, but he so lived that God spoke
to men through him.
Indeed, he is the biggest man in the history
of the world since the Savior lived among
men nearly two thousand years ago.
He was a magnificent type of man.
The Prophet stands unique among the religious
leaders of the world, for in practically all
of his work in the restoration he had witnesses.
Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, as examples,
each established his work without witnesses,
but not so Joseph Smith.
There were witnesses to the Gold Plates and
the Book of Mormon, in the visitation of heavenly
personages, and in the receiving of many of
the revelations.
His work was inaugurated not by himself alone,
but by and with witnesses.
His teachings clear up so many misconceptions,
that any man who honestly investigates the
Prophet and his work, must come to a conviction
that he was indeed a Prophet."
Possibly few tributes have been given of the
Prophet greater than that of Josiah Quincy
in his Figures of the Past.
"It is by no means improbable that some future
text-book, for the use of generations yet
unborn, will contain a questions something
like this: What historical American of the
nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful
influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?
And it is by no means impossible that the
answer to that interrogatory may be thus written:
Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.
And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems
to most men now living, may be an obvious
commonplace to their descendants.
History deals in surprises and para doxes
quite as startling as this.
The man who established a religion in this
age of free debate, who was and is today accepted
by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary
from the Most High,—such a rare human being
is not to be disposed of by pelting his memory
with unsavory epithets."
A Russian historian once 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.
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.”
The Prophet was tried and tested and suffered
many indignities.
He was falsely arrested 42 times but was always
cleared by the law of the land.
He was tarred and feathered.
He spent nearly six months in Liberty Jail
in terrible conditions and with food not fit
for humans.
Parley P. Pratt says of one of these occasions:
"In one of those tedious nights we had lain
as if in sleep till the hour of midnight had
passed, and our ears and hearts had been pained,
while we had listened for hours to the obscene
jests, the horrid oaths, the dreadful blasphemies
and filthy language of our guards, Colonel
Price at their head, as they recounted to
each other their deeds of rapine, murder,
robbery, etc., which they had committed among
the “Mormons” while at Far West and vicinity.
They even boasted of defiling by force wives,
daughters and virgins, and of shooting or
dashing out the brains of men, women and children.
I had listened till I became so disgusted,
shocked, horrified, and so filled with the
spirit of indignant justice that I could scarcely
refrain from rising upon my feet and rebuking
the guards; but had said nothing to Joseph,
or any one else, although I lay next to him
and knew he was awake.
On a sudden he arose to his feet, and spoke
in a voice of thunder, or as the roaring lion,
uttering, as near as I can recollect, the
following words:
“SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit.
In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you,
and command you to be still; I will not live
another minute and hear such language.
Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!”
He ceased to speak.
He stood erect in terrible majesty.
Chained, and without a weapon; calm, unruffled
and dignified as an angel, he looked upon
the quailing guards, whose weapons were lowered
or dropped to the ground; whose knees smote
together, and who, shrinking into a corner
or crouching at his feet, begged his pardon,
and remained quiet till a change of guards.
I have seen the ministers of justice, clothed
in magisterial robes, and criminals arraigned
before them, while life was suspended on a
breath, in the Courts of England; I have witnessed
a Congress in solemn session to give laws
to nations; I have tried to conceive of kings
of royal courts, of thrones and crowns; and
of emperors assembled to decide the fate of
kingdoms; but dignity and majesty have I seen
but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight,
in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri."
One of the tests of a true prophet is whether
his prophecies come true.
"Elder John A. Widtsoe in his book, “Joseph
Smith the Prophet,” makes an interesting
statement about the prophecies of Joseph Smith.
He says: “From the revelations printed in
the Doctrine and Covenants are found 1,100
statements that may be classed as prophecies
of the future.
Nearly 700 are of a spiritual nature; the
other 400 deal directly with the things of
the earth.”
I will mention only five of his well-known
prophecies to which we’ve all made reference
time and again.
He predicted that three witnesses should see
the golden plates and should testify of their
experience.
He prophesied to Stephen A. Douglas in 1843
that the time would come when he, Stephen
A. Douglas, would aspire to the presidency
of the United States, but that if he ever
turned his hand against the Latter-day Saints
he would feel the weight of Almighty God upon
him.
The rest is history.
Douglas did turn his hands against the saints,
he went down to political defeat and died
an embittered man.
In 1832 the Prophet Joseph Smith prophesied
that war would shortly come to pass, beginning
in the rebellion of South Carolina and that
the Southern States would be divided against
the Northern States, etc.
He prophesied in that same revelation that
the time would come when war would be poured
out upon all nations.
World War One and World War Two and what has
followed after have been a vindication of
his place as a foreteller of events.
In 1842 he prophesied that the saints would
be driven to the Rocky Mountains and some
would assist in making settlements and building
cities and see the saints become a mighty
people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains.
But beyond being merely a foreteller of future
events, what is it that characterizes a true
Prophet of God?
First he is God’s mouthpiece of that day
and to his group.
Second, he restates the ancient truths, and
seeks to hold the people to unchanging laws
of the gospel.
Third, he receives additional revelations
from the Lord to meet the problems of the
progressive unfolding plan.
Such new truths emanating from Deity come
only through the Prophet of the day.
Such a man was Joseph Smith, in every sense
a Prophet of God.
Yes, truly as Prophet Amos has said, “Surely
the Lord God will do nothing save He revealeth
His secrets unto His servants the Prophets.”
Miracles as great as those in the meridian
dispensation were accomplished by Joseph Smith
during his life.
President Wilford Woodruff gives an account
of some of these healings.
"While I was living in this cabin in the old
barracks, we experienced a day of God’s
power with the Prophet Joseph.
It was a very sickly time and Joseph had given
up his home in Commerce to the sick, and had
a tent pitched in his door-yard and was living
in that himself.
The large number of Saints who had been driven
out of Missouri, were flocking into Commerce;
but had no homes to go into, and were living
in wagons, in tents, and on the ground.
Many, therefore, were sick through the exposure
they were subjected to.
Brother Joseph had waited on the sick, until
he was worn out and nearly sick himself.
On the morning of the 22nd of July, 1839,
he arose reflecting upon the situation of
the Saints of God in their persecutions and
afflictions, and he called upon the Lord in
prayer, and the power of God rested upon him
mightily, and as Jesus healed all the sick
around Him in His day, so Joseph, the Prophet
of God, healed all around on this occasion.
He healed all in his house and door-yard,
then, in company with Sidney Rigdon and several
of the Twelve, he went through among the sick
lying on the bank of the river, and he commanded
them in a loud voice, in the name of Jesus
Christ, to come up and be made whole, and
they were all healed.
When he healed all that were sick on the east
side of the river, they crossed the Mississippi
river in a ferry-boat to the west side, to
Montrose, where we were.
The first house they went into was President
Brigham Young’s.
He was sick on his bed at the time.
The Prophet went into his house and healed
him, and they all came out together.
As they were passing by my door, Brother Joseph
said: “Brother Woodruff, follow me.”
These were the only words spoken by any of
the company from the time they left Brother
Brigham’s till we crossed the public square,
and entered Brother [Elijah] Fordham’s house.
Brother Fordham had been dying for an hour,
and we expected each minute would be his last.
I felt the power of God that was overwhelming
His Prophet.
When we entered the house, Brother Joseph
walked up to Brother Fordham, and took him
by the right hand; and in his left hand he
held his hat.
He saw that Brother Fordham’s eyes were
glazed, and that he was speechless and unconscious.
After taking hold of his hand, he looked down
into the dying man’s face and said: “Brother
Fordham, do you not know me?”
At first he made no reply; but we could all
see the effect of the Spirit of God resting
upon him.
He again said: “Elijah, do you not know
me?”
With a low whisper, Brother Fordham answered,
“Yes!”
The Prophet then said, “Have you faith to
be healed?”
The answer, which was a little plainer than
before, was: “I am afraid it is too late.
If you had come sooner, I think it might have
been.”
He had the appearance of a man waking from
sleep.
It was the sleep of death.
Joseph then said: “Do you believe that Jesus
is the Christ?”
“I do, Brother Joseph,” was the response.
Then the Prophet of God spoke with a loud
voice, as in the majesty of the Godhead: “Elijah,
I command you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth,
to arise and be made whole!”
The words of the Prophet were not like the
words of man, but like the voice of God.
It seemed to me that the house shook from
its foundation.
Elijah Fordham leaped from his bed like a
man raised from the dead.
A healthy color came to his face, and life
was manifested in every act.
His feet were done up in Indian meal poultices.
He kicked them off his feet, . . . and then
called for his clothes and put them on.
He asked for a bowl of bread and milk, and
ate it; then put on his hat and followed us
into the street to visit others who were sick.
. . .
As soon as we left Brother Fordham’s house,
we went into the house of Brother Joseph B.
Noble.
Who was very low and dangerously sick.
When we entered the house, Brother Joseph
took him by the hand, and commanded him, in
the name of Jesus Christ, to arise and be
made whole.
He did arise and was immediately healed.
. . .
While waiting for the ferry-boat, a man of
the world, knowing of the miracles performed,
came to him and asked him if he would not
go and heal two twin children of his, about
five months old, who were both lying sick
nigh unto death.
They were some two miles from Montrose.
The Prophet said he could not go; but, after
pausing some time, he said he would send some
one to heal them; and he turned to me and
said: “You go with the man and heal his
children.”
He took a red silk handkerchief out of his
pocket and gave it to me, and told me to wipe
their faces with the handkerchief when I administered
to them, and they should be healed.
He also said unto me: “As long as you will
keep that handkerchief, it shall remain a
league between you and me.”
I went with the man, and did as the Prophet
commanded me, and the children were healed.
I have possession of the handkerchief unto
this day."
Few men have been privileged to see God the
Father and Christ while in mortal life as
did the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Few have been so honored with the many manifestations
as he was.
Quoting President George Albert Smith, President
Harold B. Lee said of the Prophet Joseph in
a general conference of the Church: “‘. . . Many
have belittled Joseph Smith, but those who
have will be forgotten in the remains of mother
earth, and . . . their infamy will ever be
with them, but honor, majesty, and fidelity
to God, exemplified by Joseph Smith and attached
to his name, will never die.’”
There are those who would say, I can accept
everything in the Church except that Joseph
Smith is a prophet of God; or, I can belong
to your church if you would do away with the
principle of continued revelation.
It is difficult for me to understand how one
could accept the gospel without accepting
him who was the instrument in its restoration,
or reject the principle of continued revelation,
upon which the Church is founded.
It is important that each of us come to know
for ourselves, individually, that Joseph Smith
was and is a prophet of God, that he did see
God and Christ, and was an instrument in the
establishment of the Church in this dispensation.
May I leave you with my witness of this fact,
that I know that he did, that day in the grove,
see God the Father and the Son, and that he
was their instrument in the establishment
of this work.
I leave you with this testimony in the name
of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
