Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Religion
Gems of Reminiscence: Seventeenth Book of the Faith Promoting Series, Designed for the Instruction and Encouragement of Young Latter-day Saints
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- Missions
"O," says one, "but I do not believe that you have this knowledge."
Yet, the fact remains that individual disbelief regarding some
information and knowledge that another man has cannot change the
knowledge of that man, if in very deed he has it. I know nothing of
chemistry. Therefore, when a chemist tells me certain things in a sugar
factory, his statement may seem absurd to me. When he tells me that
by pouring two half-filled glasses of water together that water will
immediately change to red, blue, green or some other color, it seems
absurd to me because the water appears to me to be perfectly pure and
colorless. But with the knowledge that the chemist has, he knows what
the result will be when he makes this mixture, and he demonstrates
before our eyes the truth of all the statements he makes.
Now, we maintain, as Latter-day Saints, that men and women who will
look into and examine and study the gospel of Jesus Christ, as revealed
in our day through the Prophet Joseph Smith, can demonstrate its truth
to their reasoning faculties; and if they will pray to God for the
inspiration of His spirit to guide and enlighten their minds, they can
also demonstrate by the Spirit of God, the divinity of this work in
which we are engaged.
I call to mind that while presiding over the European mission, one
of the most eloquent preachers, one of the best reasoners upon the
gospel, among the Elders who went out to preach while I was there,
was Benjamin Burchell, who came to Utah as a young man from England,
to be a preacher, if I recollect aright, for the Methodist Episcopal
church. His field of labor was Nephi, Juab county. The superintendent
of his church for this inter-mountain region gave him instructions,
one of which was: "Don't read the Book of Mormon; don't read any of
the 'Mormon' literature;" and the superintendent gave him a great deal
of anti-'Mormon' literature to read and study. The young man loaded
his double-barrelled gun, so to speak, with anti-'Mormon' bullets,
and one of the men that he fired them at was the bishop of one of the
wards in Nephi; and they didn't seem to hurt the bishop any. He said
in substance, "Who filled you full of those lies?" The young man said:
"They are not lies; they are true." The bishop replied: "How do you
know they are true? I have lived here all my life, and I know that
everything you have said is false."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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