--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Heber J. Grant collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 5 number: 7 published: 1902-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Heber J. Grant, "Results of Obedience," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 7 (May 1902): 540–542.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0507unse 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: improvementera0507unse start_page: 540 end_page: 542 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1902-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0507unse publication_year: 1902 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 1902, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Results of Obedience 538 IMPROVEMENT ERA. to come. Whitman himself believed in "spiritual results" as the outcome of all. He was but a step from that sublime concept of Joseph Smith's, that a heaven is to grow out of this earth, and that man is destined to develop into a God. He also believed in a way concerning the glory to be revealed, before which mountains shall be leveled, valleys raised, the crooked made straight and the rough places plain. The question resolves itself into this: How can that end best be reached —by returning to the state of naked, innocent ignorance from which Adam fell in order to learn, or by retaining our present knowledge of good and evil, the progressive result of the fall, and utilizing the fig leaves of decorum and propriety as a factor in our further advancement toward perfection? In spite of Whitman's blemishes, however, I agree with his friend and admirer. Burroughs, when he says, "I never open his book without being struck afresh with its pictural qualities, its grasp of the concrete, its vivid realism, its intimate sense of things, persons, truths, qualities, such as only the greatest artists can give us, and such as we can never get in mere prose." If this article were not already too long, I would give an illus- tration in parallel columns of the difference between the poetic style as exemplified by Milton, Wordsworth and Keats, and the prose style of which Ruskin, Newman and Pater are leading expo- nents. But the reader can himself make the comparison. While I admire all these masters of English, I have no fear that "the poets of the twentieth century" will discard the former and follow only the latter as literary models. Possibly something greater than either style will yet appear; if so, I venture the prophecy that it will be poetry before prose. With all my heart, let pass the false, the artificial, the insin- cere. They must pass. No lie can live; it is the truth in things that causes them to survive; and truth survives for the very reason that it is as old as eternity.What had no beginning can have no end. But the passing of the untrue does not involve the wholesale abolishment of poetry. Poetry, like religion, like music, like art, has a mission. Let it be true to that mission, and there will be a change of sentiment in its favor. The hearts of the prodigals now feeding on husks will return to it. True poetry cannot pass. So long as the mind has exalted thoughts and the heart has profound emo- tions, so long will there be a corresponding and fitting medium of POETRY; IS IT OUT OF DATE? 539 expression. Only in the absence of these, can poetry become obso- lete and prose be enthroned in its stead. The distaste for poetry, like the distaste for religion, is one of the signs of the times. Both are neglected for the same reasons, only one of which is the false and dead forms in which they are sopaetimes clothed. The fault is not with the things themselves, but with the hackneyed, worn-out and ofttimes incompetent man- ner of their presentation. A stereotyped stupidity of routine renders most things lifeless and insipid; though some routine is of course necessary. Poetry and religion are mainly unpopular be- cause of the mighty wave of materialism that is sweeping over the world. They have nothing in common with the sordid and the sensual, though they take account of and utilize to their true end and purpose temporal things. "Among them but not of them" is the position of this divine twain in the midst of money-worship, political chicanery, and the innumerable tom-fooleries of society. Their mission is to correct such evils, to lift the banner of the ideal above the real, and lead the human mind and life up to loftier levels. The spirit of poesy is akin to the spirit of religion, and in its highest sense it is the spirit of religion, the key to the universe, the clew to the solution of that beautiful and mysterious symbolism everywhere pervading God's handiwork, and placed there no doubt that the minds of his children, by means of the poetic faculty pos- sessed in some degree by all, might be led step by step "from wisdom on to higher wisdom;" the less ever pointing out the greater, the type suggesting the fulfillment, the promise merging into the performance, until eventually we attain perfection. The spirit of poesy is eternal. Like the spirit of man, it does not die when the body perishes; like the human form, it does not change with the coming and going of the fashions. It is essen- tially creative; the meaning of poesy is "to make." It will create for itself in the future, as it has in the past, new and ever varying forms of expression, in which, however, as in the bodies of men, and in the costumes worn by them from age to age, there will always be found similarities and resemblances. Poetic forms, when true and genuine, when the ring of inspiration accompanies them, proclaim their divine origin more surely and more strikingly than "the apparel proclaims the man." RESULTS OF OBEDIENCE, BY APOSTLE HEBER J. GRANT, PRESIDENT OF THE MISSION IN JAPAN. "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than the fat of rams." As an illustration of the benefits of following counsel, I take pleasure in relating to the readers of the Era an incident from the missionary experiences of President Jesse N. Smith of the Snowflake stake, which he related to me eighteen years ago. It is in sub- stance as follows: The custom prevailed in the Scandinavian countries of be- trothing children. A case happened at the time that President Jesse N. Smith was laboring in the Scandinavian mission as its president, in which a young lady, who had been betrothed in her childhood, and who subsequently married the man to whom she was betrothed, and who embraced the gospel long before being married, desired that President Smith should assist her in coming to Utah; that is, that she should be permitted to leave her husband and travel with her child in company with the Saints to Liverpool, and embark upon the vessel carrying the Saints to New York. Brother Smith positively refused to allow anything of the kind, stating that as her husband was not a member of the Church, if she were to leave without his consent, it would incur his enmity, and that he would become a bitter persecutor of the Saints. The good sister pleaded that it was necessary to forsake husband or, wif e,f ather or mother and all for the gospel's sake, but Brother Smith still refused to aid her in "running away" from her husband. At the time the marriage took place, the husband was friendly to-