--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Madsen, C. A. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 2 number: 7 published: 1899-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Madsen, C. A., "Groundwork for Government and Leadership," *Improvement Era* 2, no. 7 (May 1899): 486–488.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera27unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera27unse start_page: 486 end_page: 488 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1899-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera27unse publication_year: 1899 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1899, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Groundwork for Government and Leadership — — —— — — GROUNDWORK FOR GOVERNMENT AND LEADERSHIP, BY BISHOP CHRISTIAN A. MADSEN. INTRODUCTION. —LEADERSHIP IN INCOGNITO. No one knows the Son, only those to whom the Father will reveal him. Jesus. So long a time I was with you; but yet you do not know me. Jesus. You do not know me; you never knew my heart. Joseph the Prophet. Popularity rests mainly on the present. Leadership rests on the past, present and future. It must be in touch with the present, and to some extent be able to read the future. It is imbued with the effects of the receding waves of the past; facing the storm-toiling, tumultuous ups and downs of popular clamor, as well as the real necessities of the present, and continually evolutionizing for harmony with the oracles of the future. Hence, leadership must keep itself in subjection to the power behind the scene: at the same time it is on a level with the people. This dual condition, necessarily establishes the incognito. INCOGNITO AND INITIATION. The world —can not receive the spirit of truth. John 14: 17. What I do thou knowest not now. John 13: 7. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father. John 14: 20. GROUNDWORK FOR GOVERNMENT AND LEADERSHIP. 487 ASSURANCE. Is it not an ethic-religious condition of a well balanced mind, and an innate aspiration in the true man, intensely to desire and strive to be sure that he is right? And is it not a necessary forerunner to firm and decisive action? And it should be a foregone conclusion within initiative ability, that the obtainance of "true and ideal assurance resorts under divine auspicies." During the ancient high culture of gentile Greece, it is historic, that a well-trained maiden of the classic high school, would not answer her wooer, before being advised by the oracles. Why? We answer: She. wanted assurance, before acting on one, to her, so important question. The qualities of what is called reason or logic, become inferior before the dialectics of inculminative pro et con; because it being of this world, it can neither receive nor convey the spirit of truth, or produce ripened assurance, or give enduring satisfaction and rest to seekers after righteousness. Reason or logic, in and of itself, contains or conveys no soul, it only expresses the soul of its manipulator; hence is entirely and only a servant to its master; either good or evil, true or false. As far as assurance goes, obtained through reason or logic, that is all the world has got, because "it can not receive the spirit of truth.'' Therefore: Babylon will fall, its governments come to naught and its statesmen will be entirely unequal to conditions. The grade of assurance here under consideration has no resort whatever in the outward. To illustrate: A friend of my youth underwent unspeakable horrors in the thought of possibly being buried alive. In conversation, at a time when his mind was worked up under this self-torture, his friend asked of him his answer to this question: "Do you really think that a kind Providence ever would permit it's subjects to suffer such horrors? " That question went to his inward soul and healed him. He received divine assurance. The intensity of desire for assurance, seems to be simply founded on a disposition to unravel the eternal laws of existence, reaching out for what is only obtainable through eternal develop- 488 IMPROVEMENT ERA. ments, in which there will be no uncertainties, that is: in the revelation of Jesus Christ. GOVERNMENT, LEADERSHIP AND PROPHETS. "All what is not planted in Christ Jesus shall by the roots be torn up." Divine evolution through the eternal laws of cause and effect, including the intervenient agency from on high, is the hidden, and to the world unknown (incognito) power, that holds outcome and destiny in its hands. Therefore, those who govern and lead their fellow-men successfully, against, and through impediments and obstructions, must more or less be in communion with that same hidden power that rules on high, they must have the Spirit of God abiding with them: they must be prophets! The eternal and rigid discipline, under the stern laws of cause and effect, and which rules over all nature, creation, and men's lives and acts, are nevertheless flexible and changeable in the hands of God — (As a most telling and terrible instance: the great flood, closing the antediluvian period,) who holds the exceptions to the rules, under a higher law, by divine interposition. Even if frail, mortal man, short-sighted as he is, does have some experience in regard to cause and effects, what does he know, of himself, about Gods' interposing, fatherly, all-wise and all-powerful care, in mending upon the effects of his children's erring ways, which else would bring on conditions, through their free agency, that might cause irreparable consequences, if not prevented or overcome by divine interference? Hence governors and leaders of men, to be in harmony with divine purposes, even for one day only, to say less about years, to avoid disastrous and ruinous mistakes, must be imbued with the true spirit of foreknowledge, or be instructed by and be subject to the instruction of prophets. Divine inspiration, for instance in regard to length of time needed, in order to accomplish certain purposes, or to cause proper or intended effects, often and very essentially, if not entirely, differsfrom man's adopted ideas. A clear-sighted poet once touched this subject when he said: "The mills of the gods grind slowly. But they grind exceedingly fine."