The Lesson Taught by a Healing

The Lesson Taught by a Healing BY GEORGE F. RICHARDS, OF THE QUORUM OF TWELVE APOSTLES "But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteous- ness, is accepted with him." — Acts 10:35. I relate the following experience to show that want of age is no bar to the obtaining of favor with the Lord and the exercise of the powers of the priesthood. When I was fifteen years of age I was permitted to receive the ordination of an elder and my endowments in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City. When I was seventeen, my mother had a very serious and extended sickness. One Sunday when she was groaning with pain, we invited the bishop and several other brethren to come to our home after the ward meeting, and they and members of our family present kneeled, prayer was offered, and then the ordinance was performed of anointing with oil and sealing the anointning and praying for my mother. She had frequently been administered to before, and had re- ceived blessing therefrom, but on this occasion she seemed to get no relief, and in the midst of her distress and suffering, soon after the brethren had left us, she asked me to lay on hands and pray for her. In the midst of my tears for my mother's sufferings and the task of performing an administration such as I had never yet done, I retired to another room, and wept and prayed. When I had become composed, I returned to the sick room, and in a few humble, simple words I performed that sacred ordinance as best I knew how. I had the saitsfaction of witnessing the power of the Lord therein, for my mother ceased her groaning, and received relief from her suffering while my hands were yet on her head. I make humble acknowledgment of the mercy and goodness of the Lord, as shown forth on that occasion. I have always since felt that the fact that my mother did not get the relief we hoped for, from the administration of the bishop and other brethren, was not because there was anything wrong with any one of them, or that the Lord did not want to honor the priesthood in them ; but the blessing was reserved to be given in answer to the prayer and administration of a boy, who had been honored to bear the priesthood, to teach that boy the lesson that that priest- hood in the boy is just as sacred and potent as in the man, when that bov lives as he should, and exercises it in righteousness.