Zion Cannot Be Defiled

Zion Cannot be Defiled

BY DR. GEORGE II. BRIMHALL, PRESIDENT OF THE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO

I am full of gratitude for the blessings that have come to me from my fathers and my mothers, both in heaven and on earth. I feel as I nearly always feel in the presence of an assembly of my brethren and sisters, that I need. their faith and prayers; and if I get these I shall not have any occasion to ask for your atten- tion. You have not come up here to hear me. You have come up here to hear the word of the Lord, and if I have been called by his authority to be the instrument, feeble and unworthy as I am, why, the Lord will be praised for anything that I may say, and it will depend upon him and you.

In the remarks made at the opening of this conference, by President Joseph F. Smith, I was led to reflect, and I felt very keenly, that he was actuated by a spirit of boldness and courage that came from his calling, reinforced by our Father. He did not ask what the people wanted to hear. He did not ask what would increase his good favor among this people. He evidently had but one thought, and it was akin to that which inspired the Prophet Brigham when the question came up as to who was to lead the Church, and he remarked : "I do not care who leads this Church, even if it is Ann Lee ; but what I want to know is what the Lord has to say about this." And our President has but one consideration. What is the will of the Lord concerning this people ? And he has given us the will of the Lord. There is a passage of scripture in one of the revelations, wherein the Lord said that, "If ye suffer evil to come into this house, (speaking of the Tem- ple) I will reject it." Now some evil person might have come into that house, some apostate, some enemy. Our great Temple here has been invaded by evil persons getting in there and getting pictures, thieves as they were ; but it was not suffered. You did not consent to it ; I did not consent to it ; the authorities did not consent to it. Hence, it could not be said that we suffered these things.

President Smith could not suffer anything in Zion of a nature

*A fifteen-minute inspiring talk at one of the overflow meetings in the Assembly Hall, at the late October conference.

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that would pollute her. We sang here today, "Let the mountains shout for joy;" and when that hymn was being sung- I thought of a circumstance of but a little over a year ago, when sixty-five eminent scientists from all over the world passed through our country. T had the privilege of riding in a car with one of them across Provo bench. T had a returned missionary by my side, one of my sons; and we had a German, an Italian, and a Russian in the car. And the German asked the boy where he got his German. He was told he got it in a "Mormon" school and on a mission in Germany. He said, "I thought you were a German-born."

Then he looked all around, and I undertook to explain to him something about the nature of our people.

"Oh !" he said, "don't talk. Professor, .the mountains shout for your people. Sec the canal there, that they have made; the ground echoes the thoughts and character of your people. See the orchards, see the harvests, the fields ; look at your buildings that cry out what you are. These are the echoes of the character of your people. It all speaks for you, and it gives the lie to all that has been said about you as a bad people."

I thought in my soul, verily the prophecy is being fulfiled which said that the mountains should melt away. I believe in the literal melting away of the mountains of ice at the coming of the Ten Tribes from the North ; but I believe also it may have a figurative meaning — mountains of prejudice melting away before this people ! I believe what the young missionary said when the minister said to him, "Why, you have Moses and the Prophets ; why not listen to them?" He turned and said to him, "I would have you understand that Wilford Woodruff, in his place, is as great a prophet as Moses ever dared to be." I believe that about President Woodruff. I believed that when I heard him say, during the time we were dedicating the great Salt Lake Temple, that "from this time on this people will begin to prevail among the nations of the earth."

We, through the action of our fathers and our mothers, had prevailed against the desert. We had prevailed against persecu- tion. We had prevailed against the insidious inroads of vice, and we had produced a community of which God could say, through his Prophet, when our glorious Temple was finished, "they shall now prevail against the prejudices of the world."

Have we done it? You think where we stood politically. You think where we stood financially. You think where we stood educationally, at the time that prophecy was made ; and then think of where we are now !

Why, through our proselyting we are now confronted with ministers congregating and crying out, "We are powerless. Some laws must be enacted against these 'Mormon' elders." Is that

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prevailing? What am I bold to bear testimony about today? The Latter-day Saints have been branded as an ignorant people. What is the condition today? You ask the college presidents of this and other nations. Who would have said, who would have dared to say, ten years ago, that one of the greatest institutions in the United States has sent to the Brigham Young University and petitioned one of its "Mormon" boy professors, upon whom they had conferred a. doctor's degree, to come back to Chicago and occupy a professor's chair, and have his assistant there?

And when our boys go out, they observe something that makes us think. One returned a few weeks ago. He said, "We are the watchword ; we are on the map educationally." It was said of him : "You are from the Brigham Young?" "Yes." Of another it was said, "You are from the B. Y. C?" and so on, and, "We know something about that." Brethren and sisters, we are prevailing.

Why are we prevailing, in Zion ? We are prevailing because we have refused to let Zion be defiled. That is why we are pre- vailing. Zion cannot be defiled, because the Prophet of God will never consent, and there never will be, there never has been, and there never will be, an official assent to the inroad of any iniquity among this people : and as long as there is always an official phalanx standing up and refusing official sanction to the admit- tance of any evil in this Church, then Zion, the organization that God has established, cannot be defiled. "Individuals may be de- filed," as Brother Maeser used to say, but yet the Lord has said that this kingdom shall never fall ; but he has never said that I shall never fall.

There is Zion, the pure in heart. That is an element. There is Zion, this continent. There is Zion, the organization of the Church of God. Zion is glorious. Zion is the bride of Christ. Zion is that which we should defend. She is a ship of eternal state, and I am so glad, so happy, to be a part of that great thing called Zion. I never was made happier in my life than when I saw an action taken by a student body, and it was manifest the next morning on their countenances, that "The use of tobacco on this campus is forbidden by order of the Board of Control." What does that mean? That is a part of Zion, refusing to be defiled, and our President yesterday made the correct stand, to refuse to let Zion be defiled.

What is mv mission? To go to my place, back to the Brig- ham Young University, and sav to our force of teachers, we shall refuse anvthing to come into this school that would defile Zion. What is mv honest dutv next? To go to my own home, and do the same thing. To the bishops and the presidents of stakes I have nothing to say. They know they are the most responsible

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men in the Church under the general authorities. I know what is to be done. I know that if nothing had been done in this con- ference but to listen to the word of the Lord yesterday, Israel would be well repaid. God bless, you. Amen.

KONTCSBFKO CHOrR, GERMANY

The above portrait represents the Konigsberg Choir, Germany. Much progress is being made in that branch. The Sunday school over which Elder McLoyd Lauritzen is superintendent is especially pros- perous. The people are anxious for the truth, but sectarian jealousy has caused considerable trouble with the police.

An elders convention was held at Deseret, No. 152 High Road, South Tottenham, London N., England, September 9 and 10, 1913. There were present Presidents E. Taft Benson of the European Mis- sion, Hyrum W. Valentine of the Swiss-German Mission, Edgar B. Brossard of the French Mission, Thomas C. Hair of the Netherlands Mission, Theodore Tobiason, enroute for Sweden to take up his duties as president of that mission; Fred R. Woolley, emigration clerk for the European Mission, Orville W. Adams, secretary of the European Mis- sion, four lady missionaries and approximately two hundred fifty trav- eling elders of the British Mission. A profitable two days' session was held in which important instructions were given to the assembled elders.