Editor’s Table

EDITOR'S TABLE. FASHION AND THE VIOLATION OF COVENANTS AND DUTY. At the annual conference of the Mutual Improvement Associations, I enjoyed the privilege of speaking to the young people on a subject which I think at present deserves further consideration. With this in view, good may result from repeating some of the thoughts expressed. The Lord Almighty has revealed unto us truths, and principles. He has given us commandments, shown and taught us the order of prayer, and how to worship in spirit and in truth. He has given us signs which it is our privilege to use to indicate our determination before him, to remember him, and to witness unto him that we are willing to keep the commandments that he has given, that we may always have his spirit to be with us, even unto the end. Not one of these commandments of God, these gifts that ha;e been bestowed, these keys of knowledge and of principle that have been restored and revealed unto us, through the gospel of Jesus Christ and its ordinances, should be violated in the least by the Latter-day Saints. They should be held in sacred reverence. We should hold them as we hold dear to the heart the most sacred thing to our souls, because they are God's commandments, and keys, his requirements made of us, and they are the pointing of the way, by the manifestations of the Spirit of the Lord unto us, in which we should walk, in order that we may become entitled to the greatest amount of happiness in this world, and in the world to come a fulness of joy. And by neglecting, slighting, and putting them aside, by turning away from the course which the Lord has marked out for us to pursue, we weaken ourselves, shear ourselves of our own strength, and deprive ourselves of the light needed to

EDITORS TABLE. 813 make us more efficient in the discharge of our duties as the children of God. We entered into covenants with the Lord that we will keep ourselves pure and unspotted from the world. We have agreed before God, angels and witnesses, in sacred places, that we will not commit adultery, will not lie, that we will not steal or bear false witness against our neighbor, or take advantage of the weak, that we will help and sustain our fellow men in the right, and take such a course as will prove most effectual in helping the weak to overcome their weaknesses and bring themselves into subjection to the requirements of heaven. We cannot neglect, slight, or depart from the spirit, meaning, intent and purpose, of these covenants and agreements, that we have entered into with our Father in heaven, without shearing ourselves of our glory, strength, right and title to his blessings, and to the gifts and manifestations of his Spirit. The Lord has given unto us garments of the holy priesthood, and you know what that means. And yet there are those of us who mutilate them, in order that we may follow the foolish, vain and (permit me to say) indecent practices of the world. In order that such people may imitate the fashions, they will not hesitate to mutilate that which should be held by them the most sacred of all things in the world, next to their own virtue, next to their own puritv of life. They should hold these things that God has given unto them sacred, unchanged and unaltered from the very pattern in which God gave them. Let us have the moral courage to stand against the opinions of fashion, and especially where fashion compels us to break a covenant and so commit a grievous sin. Many of our young people, also, are leading mistaken lives and doing wrong in that they feel, in order to cope with the spirit of the times, the fashion of the age, and to be ' 'in the swim," if you will permit the expression, that they must not marry until they are able to furnish themselves commodious mansions or .palaces, or homes equal to those of the rich; homes equal, perhaps, to those of their parents who have labored through years and years, who have borne the burden, in the heat of the day, who have toiled and struggled with poverty, and who, through their toil, perseverance and economy, have been able to secure and gather to them-

814 IMPROVEMENT ERA. selves a little means by which they have built acceptable homes, to make their families comfortable; and the children feel that it is not right for them to engage in matrimony until the y are able to build a house equal to their father's, or a mansion equal to their rich neighbor's. To feel so is a mistake, it is an illusion, and it will lead men into the wrong way. I want to say to the young men's and to the young ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations that in the beginning God created man in his own image, and in his own likeness, male and female, and they were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth, that they might have joy in their posterity. They were commanded to subdue the earth and control it, and not to be controlled by it. These commandments of the Lord have never been annulled. They are in force today as they were when they were first uttered in the garden of Eden to our first parents; and, in order to fulfill these laws, and these great commandments of the Lord, we should never wait for wealth. The young man should be willing to take his bride, and take her who is worthy, to wife, even if it be in poverty. Let them join their efforts to build a home for themselves; and if they can endure poverty, they will be able to endure riches. But if they are not able to endure poverty, woe be unto them, for he that is not able to endure poverty, in the kingdom of God, or in the house of the Lord, will scarcely be able to endure riches, for it is absolutely easier for men to worship the Lord, and to feel after him and remember him in adversity, than it is in prosperity. Men are so shallow-minded, so thoughtless, so unmindful of their dependence upon the Lord that, with a little temporary prosperity, and by the possession of perishable riches, they begin to feel that they are independent of the Lord for all his mercies; and, therefore, they forget him, and disregard, or are apt to disregard, the hands that made them prosperous. But the Lord requires us to remember him in prosperity the same as in adversity. "And if ye seek the riches which it is the will of the Father to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people, for ye shall have the riches of eternity; and it must needs be that the riches of the earth are mine to give; but beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old." (Doctrine and Covenants 38: 39; see also Sec. 11: 7.)

EDITOR'S TABLE. 815 Now I want to say to my young friends that in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in honorable marriages. We believe that it is "honorable in all" to marry, who possess ordinary intelligence and ordinary ability to obtain the necessaries of life; and to wait for luxury, before they consummate this object and purpose of their being, in the world, is wrong; it is a mistake. It is the violation of a sacred duty, for the sake of the folly of fashion, and is displeasing to the Lord. Joseph F. Smith.