--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Jensen, Nephi collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 18 number: 11 published: 1915-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Jensen, Nephi, "The True Note," *Improvement Era* 18, no. 11 (September 1915): 973–980.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera18011unse 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: improvementera18011unse start_page: 973 end_page: 980 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1915-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera18011unse publication_year: 1915 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 1915, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The True Note The True Note BY NEPHI JENSEN Two of the professors who had received notification of the termination of their employment at the University of Utah were walking together in the corridors of one of the University build- ings. As they walked, they came near an unimportant professor. When they came within hearing distance of this Utah man of learning, one of the two, with imported airs and prejudices, began to discuss the qualifications of men to fill the vacancies at the Uni- versity, all with the very apparent intent that the local man should derive educational benefit from the discussion. One of the two said, "What is needed here is men of sanity. These people here are too serious about religion." Were it not for the too ap- parent spirit of prejudice and flippancy, in this short characteriza- tion of the Latter-day Saints, one might be provoked to exercise himself a little in polemics. But the sober second thought sug- gests the unwisdom of formulating arguments with which to de- molish so inconsequential a thing as a man of straw. Without becoming controversial, we might be permitted to pleasantly remark that it is possible that Professor thinks the "Mormons" are "too serious about religion," because he only knows of religion of the kind that has not enough of reality in it to be "serious" about. But polemics aside, this professor's criticism is an expression of the spirit of the age. Frivolous buffoonery is the curse of the present. If we look at a newspaper, the first thing that attracts our attention is insipid comedy caricatured. If we go to the the- ater, we hear the multitude in hilarity laughing their approval of a painted, fickle, feminine buffoon. If we pick up a book, we are likely to find in it the author's strained and serious efforts to write without sense and to be as frivolous as a clown. Not long ago the social consciousness was at the other extreme. Then men saw only the doleful in art, read only the doleful in books, and heard only the doleful on the stage and in the pulpit. Humanity's pendulum has swung from the extreme of unnatural seriousness to the other extreme of empty, meaningless gaiety. The age is abnormal. It is frivolous about the serious, and serious about the frivolous. The great problem of the present is to find the true note in literature, art and religion. We shall not find this true note in the doleful serious, nor in empty frivolity, "which today is and tomorrow is not." Where shall we seek it? Let us go first to nature for a lesson. Nature is true. What does she teach? Let us look at God's expression of the beautiful in the indiscernable blending of light and shadow, as the sun sinks in the West. We are pleased, but we do not in- dulge in loud laughter. We do not giggle. Listen to the song of the bird. Again we are pleased. What is our impression? If we express it in words we are likely to repeat the old familiar phrase, "That bird sings as if its heart would break." One note in the song of a bird holds the deep secret which has baffled the philosophers from Aristotle to Bergson. Why does the bird's song which is both sad and glad, please us? Whoever truly an- swers this question will give the divine plan and purpose of ex- istence. Robert G. Ingersoll bitterly railed against nature and God be- cause in every age cruelty's harsh oppression has left sorrow in its trail across the centuries. But in a saner mood, the great agnostic caught a glimpse of the truth and said, "Great music is always sad, because it tells us of the perfect." There is also glad- ness in great music. When we become great enough to perfectly blend in the human tone the glad with the sad, we shall hear the true note in music. There will linger in that note a strain of sad- ness to help us to know we are glad. It is the constant conscious- ness that we are choosing the beautiful, where we could choose the ugly, that makes life pleasurable. An old prophet of the American continent, in the homely phrase, "All things must needs be a compound in one," gives divine sanction for the truth of the words, "Even in the vase of joy we find some tears." This Book of Mormon phrase holds the riddle which has baffled the efforts of the philosophers in all ages to find the real nature of existence. The failure of Mrs. Eddy to learn the deep, profound truth, bound up in these plain words, gave rise to Christian Science, whose bedrock fallacy is the notion that perfection for mortals is a settled, fixed state instead of a state of "adversity" upon whose "golden rounds" of calamities we ascend, and ever ascend, in the ceaseless joy of increasing ex- perience, knowdedge and glory. The truth lies deeper than art. Indeed, if we could maintain child-like naturalness there would be no place for art. Henri Bergson, the most noted living philosopher, in his "Essay on the Comic," reaches this conclusion: "If we could enter into imme- diate communion with things and with ourselves, probably art would be-useless, for then our souls would continually vibrate in perfect accord with nature." The truest art is the most perfect, merely human expression of the true and beautiful. Religion is the absolutely perfect expression of the true and beautiful, by the joint act of God and man. If the teacher of religion fails to im- press us, it is because the truth he expresses is not a part of him by reason of his own soul's verification of it, or else he expresses his truth with more or less intensity than he feels it. The devout Latter-day Saint pays his best compliment to the preacher by saying, "Your sermon had the true ring." What does he mean ? Simply that the speaker was in tune with the truth expressed, and expressed it with the same intensity that he feels it. It is because many Christian ministers have not "the testi- mony of Jesus," and have not experienced the truth they essay to teach, that they resort to the use of unnatural tones and grim- aces to feign sanctimoniousness. The human voice is a more wonderful instrument than the delicately constructed machine that transmits the wireless message. The voice transmutes the whole truth which the soul holds into sound vibrations that carry the speaker's full message, whether of light or life, to souls tuned to receive it. Because of this unfailing faithfulness of the human voice, it carries to our souls deep confirmation of the greatest truth known, when some "prophet of the soul," who has, through the eyes of faith, seen the warm countenance of Beneficence, says, just as he feels and knows it, "I know that my Redeemer lives." Yes, we must look deeper than art for the truth about the apparent paradox of existences. How could he who was Truth say, "My burden is easy?" The philosopher cannot tell. We must turn to God's revelations for the answer. The Bible invites us to "anoint" ourselves with the "oil of gladness," and the Doc- trine and Covenants strongly disapproves of loud laughter. What is the conclusion? The true, sane, spiritual mood is somewhere between mourning and hilarity. The doleful note running through the theology of the dark ages is as abnormal and unnatural as the meaningless flippancv that now speaks to us from the stage, art, and literature. True religion is true to the truest nature. It makes us feel that "life is real, life is earnest," and it also makes us feel that life is earnest, life is mirth. True religion mingles the seriousness of solid, enduring reality with gladness, to make joy everlasting. The proof of the false is that it does not endure. The test of the true is that it is eternal. The pleasure that ends in remorse is born of error. The joy that lasts, and becomes ever and ever fuller, springs from the fountain of truth in which the divine Alchemist has blended, in some inscrutable way, a few tears with innocent mirth to make a "compound in one." The way of the world and vanity is through pleasure to despair. The way of God is through sacrifice to joy. The ways of man are mocking ; the ways of God are peace. Look at Europe ! What is the matter with her ? She has passed through three de- cades of empty, giddy gaiety ; and now her social pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and she is now madly tearing down the monuments erected by the greatness and genius of the past, and drenching half the world with the blood of human kind. And thus the whole dark, sad history of sin can be written in one short line : First, selfish pleasure ; then, hopeless, mad despair. The inspiration of the Bible is eternally established in the fact that it declares the truth which every soul some time, in some way, learns to be true — "The wages of sin is death !" The oscillation of the soul between hope and hopelessness is despair. The poise of the soul in the orbit of truth is peace. The "straight way" is as true and steady as the star. The "broad way" is swift and giddy, and leads as swiftly to the remorse whose sting is "sharper than the serpent's tooth." The gay without the seri- ous will not stay. The failure of man to understand that "sacri- fice brings forth the blessings of heaven," has made the history of humanity, the story of woe's dark tragedy. From the crushed grapes of our holy sorrows is distilled the joy in which no deceit- ful vanity lurks. As the solemn concsiousness that this world was receding came over Sir Walter Scott, he turned to a friend and said, "Read to me." "From what book," asked the faithful attendant "There is only one Book," was the great novelist's response. It can be said with equal truth, there is only one life, the life of the per- fect One. He walked all the long way through life wedded to truth. And yet we say he was the Man of Sorrows. Can it be that the Master of the issues of life and death did not know the way to joy? What about his "yoke that was easy," his truth that made men free, and his "water" that makes men thirst no more ? Ah, yes, he knew joy. He found it in the cup which the human in him fain would remove from his lips ! But he was more divine than human, and so he drank of the bitter cup. We are more hu- man than divine, therefore we frequently push aside the serious reality which the cup of obedience holds, and grasp frantically for the seeming gaiety of careless ease and vanity; and find in our hand only the ease that turns instantly to despair, and in the depths of our souls, hear truth's pathetic verdict, "You failed ! You failed!" Again we ask the question, which is old and also new, what is the true course for the soul, continually mocked and tormented, as it restlessly flees from remorse to fleeting, selfish pleasure and finds only greater remorse ? The name of it is one of the plainest and homeliest words in all the languages of the race. It is often on the lips of prophets, but too seldom in the hearts of any of us. It sounded warning to the ante-diluvians before their destruc- tion ; its shrill, piercing note rang through the wilderness when the Baptist made "straight the way" for the Prince of Peace ; and it was one of the first words spoken by the Son of God, in his earthly ministry. It is "Repentance." The strongest, the truest, and the greatest personality of modern times, when he wanted deeply to impress upon the minds of those who worked with him for the establishment of the king- dom of salvation and peace, admonished them to teach "nothing but faith and repentance to this generation." We could ask for no stronger confirmation of the divinity of the calling of Joseph Smith than that found in the fact that he so plainly and specific- ally emphasized these two forces, which through the atonement of Christ, have in the past, do now, and ever will break the galling shackles of sin, and lead the soul to peace and joy. Faith and re- pentance ! How plain these two words seem. And yet there is locked up in them a wealth and depth of philosophy which only eternity can fully reveal. Faith, the first, and ever first, is the very mouth of the soul through which the soul receives its nour- ishing life, the Spirit of Truth. Repentance, second but never to be laid aside, is the daily dying within of evil to give life to the holy motive that unfailingly leads from sin. Let the trans- gressor go where he will, live as long as he will, he never will find the haven of rest until, in his heart, he says with holy ardor, "I will arise and go to my Father !" The Prophet Isaiah knew the path that leads straight be- tween the pleasure that mockingly darts away, just as we com- mence to enjoy, and the soul's remorse when it hears its own sad verdict, "I failed." He knew that the straight way is paved with the gold of truth, and that those who walk in it have in their souls the "stainless peace" that smiles from the distant star, because the star is held in rest by the strong arms of unchanging law. He voiced God's call to the race of every age and every clime when he invited man to offer to God the sacrifice of a "broken heart and a contrite spirit." This is not a call to dolefulness. It is not an invitation to moan and weep. It is an invitation to let into our lives the soul-mellowing light of the Spirit of Truth, that despair may take the wings of hope, and arise from its dungeon. It is not a call to walk dejectedly, but an invitation to walk upward in the glad consciousness of overcoming and being continually ennobled. Israel's exodus from Egyptian bondage typifies the soul's deliverance from sin. So, too, the eating of the flesh of the lamb, with the bitter herbs an dunleavened bread, or bread hastily pre- pared, on the eve before Israel's departure from Egypt, typifies the contriteness of spirit, which is the true and continuing mood of all those who are ever and ever being delivered from evil. The paschal ceremony dramatizes the true contrition that mingles a little of the sadness of regret for the past failures with the glad- ness of triumph. The sadness of regret holds us from turning back, the hope of overcoming bears us ever upward. The united and blended two, serious regret and buoyant joy, hold the soul in the rhythmic gladness of the life that does not mockingly alter- nate between gaiety and despair, but is ever and ever becoming fuller and fuller, truer and truer ! God's call to contriteness of spirit is not an injunction to mo- mentarily take on the soul's true normal mood ; it is a call to walk all the long way, through life, in the majestic, unoffending, un- despairing poise and beauty of humility. Pride is unnatural. It is dishonesty. It is deceit. Contriteness of spirit is candor, truth and oneness with God. "I will dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of humble heart and contrite spirit." To be bound to God by the chains of truth is poise and peace. It is the mellow soil, moistened by the dew and warmed by the sunlight, that breaks the husk of the seed and lets out its life to grow towards the light. And it is the soul, mellowed to contri- tion by the tears of Godly regret and warmed by the "Light of Christ," that germinates the seeds of truth and makes them grow to the full fruition of Christian character. The hard, dry soil is sterile, and the cold, hard soul is dead ! "Of all acts," says Car- lyle, "is not for man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin ; that is death ; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead; it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure." But in contriteness of spirit, the soul "thirsts for the righteous- ness" which fills life with all the light and joy it knows. The apostle Paul, was both prophet and philosopher. He knew that the holy sorrow which we sanctify to our purification is transmuted into the "oil of gladness." He invites us to follow him through the repentance born of "Godly sorrow," to the life so true and pure that it needs not "to be repented of." "Godly sor- how" for sin, is the soul's only honest attitude to evil. Even the Gods weep because man, through the deceitfulness of error, and oft times through selfish perverseness, fails to find truth's pleasant repose. Moreover, the apostle says, "The sorrow of the world worketh death." If we were to see in these words what Paul saw, we would see in the soul of an unbelieving, "erring one," selfish remorse desperately and hopelessly struggling to adjust the soul with the economy of things, without honestly, truly, and courageously turning from error to the true and good for the Godly love of truth. "The sorrow of the world" says, "I have been indiscreet. I am out of joint with society. I am sad." It goes no farther, for "it is dead." But "Godly sorrow" says, "I have offended God. I have in- sulted the fair majesty of truth. For God's sake, I regret my mis- deed. For truth's sake, I am sorry. I am tired of the husks of sin. Then the "spirit of truth" lets in the light of hope, and "God- ly sorrow," in its honest sincerity, exclaims, "I still love God; truth to me is still majesty and nobility. I will arise and go to my father." This "Godly sorrow" turns to joy because it is true. All things that are true and beautiful turn to joy. The "sorrow of the world" commences in despair and ends with despair. "Repentance is a gift of God." The regret of the soul for misdeeds is only turned into "Godly sorrow" by the Spirit of God. Not until the light of hope, which the atonement of Christ holds, comes into the soul, is dead despair made alive in "Godly sorrow" that "worketh repentance unto salvation." Man cannot save himself! He cannot mend the shattered human will. God alone can do that. When man's despair is kissed by the hope in the atonement of Jesus Christ, God's will is welded to the human will, and by the joint act of God and man, salvation is wrought out. This is the only way. The very morning I wrote this paragraph, my little three- year-old boy broke my glasses. True to the soul's instinct that, for every wrong there must be reparation, he came to me, looked up appealingly, and said, "Daddy, I broke your glasses. Do you like me ?" In my anger I said rather sharply, "No, daddy doesn't like you." Then, even the child's remorse turned to stubbornness. He puckered his little lip and looked defiance at me. He was belligerent. He stepped out, picked up a rock, came in and de- fiantly said, "The baby will hit you ; you don't like the baby." After a moment, I put my arm gently about him, and said ten- derly, "Daddy does like the baby." Instantly the little tears came to his eyes, and then he smiled to me through his tears, the truth of the almost incomprehensible doctrine of the atonement, the doctrine against which skeptics, from the time of Christ, have hurled the epithets molded of their misunderstanding. It was not until the child was assured of forgiveness that his little spirit mellowed into oneness with me. One aspect of the atonement is simply this. Salvation means emancipation from the shackles of sin. The soul's own dead despair cannot lift it from the dungeon. Through and by the hope the atonement offers, man's sorrow is transmuted into "Godly sorrow," and in that "Godly sorrow" the strength of God is given to man and the sin-bound soul is set free. Is the doctrine true? Experience says, yes. And "The test of truth," says Emerson, "is that it finds a response in the soul." In contriteness of spirit there is wisdom. What were wis- dom but knowledge steadied by the brain's consciousness of its fallibility and limitations. The swift haste of the giddy gay is .imprudence; the earnest seeking of the humble for right and truth is wisdom. And were it not for offendmg the professor I would add: Humility is wisdom, and wisdom is "sanity." If you take out of the life of Lincoln the sublime humility that mingles prudence with grace, in his speeches and state papers, the mem- ory of the great and tender-hearted Emancipator would be lost in oblivion, the treasure house of all things that are not worth while. "A haughty spirit goeth before a fall ;" the humble, in faith, hold securely the "iron rod" of revealed truth and go not astray. Contriteness of spirit is life. Light is life. The sunbeam which of a morning steals through the checkered bars of the prison makes the spirits of the inmates awaken into life. So when we contritely open our souls, and let in the "Light of Christ," we receive renewed life. "The Light of Christ" in us, is Christ with us. "I will dwell with him also that is of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the contrite ones." It was no unreasoned preference that impelled Christ to say that the publican, who cried to God for mercy, is justified, rather than the self-righteous Pharisee. The biologist tells us that physical life is energy's ceaseless adjustment of matter, so that there will be a "continuous rhythmic surging onward." So repentance is the soul's ceaseless consciousness of its need of adjusting itself to an ever better and truer life, that makes the soul continually "surge onward," in the rhythmic, daily dying of evil to make place for the ever-living and ever-increasing good. The Pharisee knew no need of "adjusting" himself with truth and God. Hence, he was dead. Stagnation is death. The Publican, through faith in God, could see the deathly turpitude and malignity of his sin. This faith within him turned into that "thirst for righteousness" which makes the soul ever live in the joy of eternally being filled and fed with light and truth. Contriteness of spirit is glory. The glad, ceaseless, "rhyth- mic surging onward" of the soul, in which the evil of ever-de- creasing magnitude is "dying daily," and the good of ever- increasing magnitude is being "revived" and strengthened, as the soul ever and ever gathers into its urn eternity's limitless wealth of goodness, beauty and truth — this is glory. There is no other worth the name. What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? The homely sentence : "All things must needs be a compound in one," holds the deepest philosophy of any sentence in the language. "Even in the voice of joy there are some tears." Under the bur- den graciously born is the abode of ease. In the depths of hu- mility are the heights of glory. The contrite in heart hear the true note in the ceaseless melody of the universe. They walk in rhythmic gladness along truth's straight way of peace, up to God. ♦