Uses of Sorrow

—

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Knowledge, concentrated into wisdom, is the end of existence. To those who live according to God's law, knowledge will come easily. It will continue to come to his people, until it shall be the most intelligent among the nations. The Lord has said it. "How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri River in its decreed course, or turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints."* (the end.)

USES OF SORROW.

"We learn hy suffering what we teach in song," the poet says. It would be truer to say that we learn by suffering what we teach in our lives. When the great violin-makers of the middle ages wished to form a perfect instrument, they caused the tree to be felled at a particular period of its growth. The wood was then planed and cut into small pieces. These were exposed to the heat of the sun and the winter's storms; were bent, rubbed, polished, and finally fastened together with incomparable skill. If the wood could have found a tongue, doubtless it would have begged to grow in the forest, to rustle its branches and bear its fruit as its companions were left to do, becoming at last a part of the sodden earth. But it was this harsh treatment that made one of its common boards the Stradivari violin, whose music still charms the world. So, by countless touches of pain and loss, God fits us to bear our part in the great harmony with which true and earnest souls shall ultimately fill the world. Selected.

• Doctrine and Covenants, 12 i: 33.