--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 10 number: 4 published: 1907-02 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Questions and Answers," *Improvement Era* 10, no. 4 (February 1907): 308.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1004unse 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: improvementera1004unse start_page: 308 end_page: 308 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1907-02) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1004unse publication_year: 1907 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 1907, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Questions and Answers 308 IMPFMVEMENT ERA . destestation, and attaches to them every evil motive calculated to make men shudder with disgust. A man who bears such false witness should hide his head for very shame. Never was there a falser, nor more unjustifiable denunciation of this people than is contained in the Senator's closing sentences. Surely it is time the people at home—business men, the press, and all who regard our state with favor—make vigorous protest against such slanders. At home here we have come to regard them as an evil joke, and many so treat them. But it is otherwise in the East. There they are believed. It is our duty to deny them, and by our protest brand them what they are—slanders. They can be easily refuted—the daily lives and actions of our people are in them- selves refutations, and our history bears record of this truth. Joseph F. Smi th. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. Doea a wife hold the priesthood in connection with her husband? and may she lay hands on the sick with Lim, with authority? A wife does not hold the priesthood in connection with her husband, but she enjoys the benefits thereof with him; and if she is requested to lay hands on the sick with him, or with any other ofiicer holding the Melchizedek priesthood, she may do so with perfect propriety. It is no uncommon thing for a man and wife unitedly to administer to their children, and the husband being mouth, he may properly say out of courtesy, "By authority of the holy priesthood in us vested." Is the mind a part of our spiritual or physical existence? Without doubt, mind is not a physical, but a spiritual existence. The spirit of a man is the life of a man, that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal. The spirit of a man is in the likeness of his person. (Doc. & Gov., 77: 2.) What we call mind must be the effect of the spirit, since without the spirit, which is life, there is no mind. The old saying arises: What is matter? Never mind. What is mind? No mat- ter." We must agree that matter is never mind, and that mind is not matter, at least not such matter as composes our physical