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
I remember when I was in Europe--and I have quoted it many
times--reading with a great deal of interest a book entitled, "The
Young Man and the World," written by Senator Beveridge. In this book
the senator said that during an entire summer vacation, a man with
good opportunities to get proper answers, asked of a large number of
ministers through the New England states, three questions:
"Do you believe in God, the Father; God a person, God a definite and
tangible intelligence--not a congeries of laws floating like a fog
through the universe; but God a person in whose image you were made?
Don't argue; don't explain; but is your mind in a condition where you
can answer yes or no?" Not one minister answered, Yes.
The next question was: "Do you believe that Christ was the son of the
living God, sent by him to save the world? I am not asking whether you
believe that he was inspired in the sense that the great moral teachers
are inspired--nobody has any difficulty about that. But do you believe
that Christ was God's very Son, with a divinely appointed and definite
mission, dying on the cross and raised from the dead?" Not one minister
answered, Yes.
The third question was: "Do you believe that when you die you will live
again as a conscious intelligence, knowing who you are and who other
people are?" Not a man answered Yes.
He said that these ministers were particularly high-grade ministers.
Many of them had gained renown for their piety and for their eloquence
in proclaiming the gospel, as they understood it, and yet all of them
were regretting the lack of interest in the gospel and the absence of
audiences to listen to their preaching. Mr. Beveridge says: "How could
such priests of ice warm the souls of men? How could such apostles of
interrogation convert a world?" There are no priests of interrogation
among the Latter-day Saints. The answer by every preacher of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, as restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, to these
questions, down to our children that go to Sabbath school, is Yes,
Yes, Yes, without a moment's hesitation. There is no doubt; there is
no dubiety in the hearts of the Latter-day Saints. We have, behind the
shadow of a doubt, the absolute witness of the Spirit that God lives,
that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the true
and living God. We know that the gifts and graces that belonged in the
ancient church are to be found here today; we know that the gift of
tongues is enjoyed by the Latter-day Saints; and these are some of the
fruits of the gospel of Jesus Christ as enjoyed by the early Saints.
"O, but--" says one, "I don't believe that you have any gift of tongues
by the inspiration of the spirit of God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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