Permanency of the Church Assured

Perpetuity of the Church Assured

By Elder James E. TaJmage, of the Council of the Twelve

The course of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been ever onward. It is a notable fact that its members are imbued with the testimony of certitude as to the genuineness of the Gospel they have embraced and the perpetuity of the Church. This has been a distinguishing feature from the beginning. Apostasy from the organization is so rare as to be negligible. Excommunicants, who are deprived of their standing through failure to live up to the high standard of morality and duty required by the revealed law of the Church, while not numerous exceed by many fold those who voluntarily withdraw and affiliate with other religious bodies. The Church has never experienced a period of reduced membership. Always the present has been the time of its highest achievement. In spite of opposition, some of which sprang from misplaced sincerity and zeal, while much was born of ignorance and fanaticism, the strength of the institution, measured in terms of loyalty, devotion and unswerving adherence to the principles of the restored Gospel has steadily and constantly increased. "Mormonism" is definite and incisive in its claims. It speaks to the world in no uncertain tone. Its voice is virile; its activities are strong. presents an unbroken front and is unafraid. It strongly aggressive. Its meth- Its attitude is not hostile, though ods are those of reason and persuasion, coupled with a fearless affirmation of testimony as to the surpassing importance of its message, which message it labors to convey to every nation, kindred, tongue and people. "Mormonism" lives because it is healthy, normal and undeformed. In general, a healthy organism is assured of life, barring destruction from external violence or deprivation of physical necessities; whereas one that is abnormal and sickly is doomed to decline. Opposition to the Church, the pitiless maltreatment to which its people have been subjected, particularly in the earlier decades of its history, comprising mobbings, drivings, spoliation, scourgings, and assassination, have operated

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to strengthen the Church, body and soul. True, the heat of persecution has scorched and withered a few of the sickly plants, such as had no depth of sincerity; but the general effect has been to promote a fuller growth, and to make richer and more fertile the Garden of the Lord. In its early days the Church received the word of the Lord avouching the permanency of the organization. While no individual was promised that he should not fall away, and though the forfeiture of the Holy Spirit's companionship was specified as the sure and incalculable loss to all who wilfully persisted in sin, the blessed assurance was given that the Church was established for the last time, never to be destroyed nor again driven from the earth through apostasy. Men may come and men may go, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shall go on forever. There has never been revision nor amendment in the fundamental law of the Church, and the only changes are those natural to development, expansion and adaptation to new conditions. The world is full of sects and churches, and there is scarcely one that has not a counterpart in the form of a revised or reformed or reorganized sect. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is no sect; it is an original creation with the Lord, and when established upon the earth in this age it was a restoration. There will never be a reformed or reorganized variant of this, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The faith of the Latter-day Saints is no whit weakened because of their fewness. This very condition was foretold. Nearly six centuries before the Savior's birth, a Hebrew prophet on the Western Continent predicted the establishment of this Church in the last days, and testified of it, as he had seen in vision, that its members would be found in all parts of the earth, but that their numbers would be relatively small. See Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." (Matt. 7:14, also Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 14:14). The doors of the Church are open to all, rich and poor, learned and unlearned; and the pleading invitation to enter and become partakers of the blessings that pertain both to mortality and to the eternities beyond is freely extended— to you and yours and to everybody, near and afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall ctdl.