Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. SmithSmith, Joseph F. (Joseph Fielding)
Religion
Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith
Smith, Joseph F. (Joseph Fielding)
Latter Day Saint churches
stands for, and it cannot tolerate abomination, crime and wickedness,
on the part of those who may claim to have some connection with it. We
must sever ourselves from them, and let them go. Not that we want to
hurt them. We do not want to hurt anybody. We never have, and we do
not intend to, hurt anybody. But we do not intend to be hurt by those
who are seeking our destruction, if we can help it. It is our right to
protect ourselves.--_Apr. C. R.,_ 1906, pp. 7, 8.
LEADERS MUST BE COURAGEOUS. One of the highest qualities of all true
leadership is a high standard of courage. When we speak of courage and
leadership we are using terms that stand for the quality of life by
which men determine consciously the proper course to pursue and stand
with fidelity to their convictions. There has never been a time in the
Church when its leaders were not required to be courageous men; not
alone courageous in the sense that they were able to meet physical
dangers, but also in the sense that they were steadfast and true to a
clear and upright conviction.
Leaders of the Church, then, should be men not easily discouraged,
not without hope, and not given to forebodings of all sorts of evils
to come. Above all things the leaders of the people should never
disseminate a spirit of gloom in the hearts of the people. If men
standing in high places sometimes feel the weight and anxiety of
momentous times, they should be all the firmer and all the more
resolute in those convictions which come from a God-fearing conscience
and pure lives. Men in their private lives should feel the necessity of
extending encouragement to the people by their own hopeful and cheerful
intercourse with them, as they do by their utterances in public places.
It is a matter of the greatest importance that the people be educated
to appreciate and cultivate the bright side of life rather than to
permit its darkness and shadows to hover over them.
In order to successfully overcome anxieties in reference {194} to
questions that require time for their solution, an absolute faith and
confidence in God and in the triumph of his work are essential.
The most momentous questions and the greatest dangers to personal
happiness are not always met and solved within oneself, and if men
cannot courageously meet the difficulties, and obstacles of their own
individual lives and natures, how are they to meet successfully those
public questions in which the welfare and happiness of the public are
concerned? Men, then, who are called to leadership should be alarmed at
the possession of a disposition filled with forebodings and misgivings
and doubts and constant wonderments. Clouds, threatening storms,
frequently rise in the horizon of life and pass by as speedily as they
came, so the problems and difficulties and dangers that beset us are
not always met and solved, nor overcome by our individual effort nor by
our efforts collectively.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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