---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Newell Dwight Hillis
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 5
number: 2
published: 1901-12
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Newell Dwight Hillis, "Dissolving Doubts," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 2 (December 1901): 106.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  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: improvementera0502unse
start_page: 106
end_page: 106
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-12)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  publication_year: 1901
  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 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Dissolving Doubts

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—

106 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

"Yes," said the old man; as he passed on with his four-footed
friend. Detroit Free Press.

Dissolving: Doubts.

For all persons troubled with doubts and intellectual difficul-
ties we have here the true method of their dissolution. Every
faculty has itsown work. You cannot make one sense do the
work of the other sense. The tongue can taste the cluster of
grapes, but the tongue cannot help you hear the song. The eye
sees mountain and cloud, but it will not feel —
that is the work of
the fingers. Reason can collect arguments, and memory can recall
the past; and the religious faculty has its own work in giving
direct access to God. There is, indeed, a fragmentary way of
knowing God that comes through the lower faculties, as children
may know their parents by the lower senses. The babe is upon its
mother's bosom. The little creature thinks it knows its mother.
It knows that the mother satisfies hunger, that the mother gives

warmth through raiment, that the mother can soothe and rest its
tired body. Should you ask this little child, grown to ten years of
age, if she knows her mother, she would make immediate response
that she knows her through and through. Yet not until that child
has come to womanhood and has had children of her own has she
any deep heart recognition of what she owes that parent. Years
from now, when her own children are ten years of age, this mature
daughter will return to the home of her childhood, and the long,
tender embrace will tell this gray-haired mother that at last her
daughter knows how much she owes to the mother who carried
her weakness and ignorance and sickness, and bore her sorrows.
It is only by love that we understand God's infinite love. Oh, all
ye doubting ones, follow the light you have You know that the
!

moral law is right. Obey that to the last jot and title. You know
that Jesus Christ is earth's most pure and radiant spirit. Follow
his example. Daily read his words. Help the weak as he helped
them. Bear burdens as he bore them. Love the poor as he loved
them. Recover the publican and prodigal as he sought for them.
In the cool of evening find your way into some secret place, and
pray as he prayed, and, with your Master's help, you will see that