Modern Spiritualistic and Latter-day Saint Views

890 IMPROVEMENT ERA

he like God. "Be ye, therefore, perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." It is a striking thing that scientific spiritualism corresponds with our views in so many things. The fact that it so appears, shows that it is learning something. Is the hand of God in it to prepare the people of the world for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and is He using science and scientists and clairvoyants as his agents, or is Satan devising a scheme to deceive the every elect? 64 Lofthouse Place, Leeds, England

What of Yesterday? What did you do with yesterday, When you turned the used page over? Hid you do it quick with a sorry sigh, Or turn it slowly and happily, With a lingering touch on the cover? What did you do with yesterday When you woke in the early morning? With prayer did you enter the "gates of day" And at the feet of the Savior lay The hours from the very dawning? What was it you thought of yesterday, As you lay in the dawning thinking? Had you done all things in the way you should? Did memory bring you naught but good, Or from some was your memory shrinking? A pure, sweet day was yesterday, When you early rose to greet it. Itcame to you as a glorious gift, Or a flake of snow from the great snowdrift — Of the year as you came to meet it. Today will soon be as yesterday. The hours go silently winging Their backward way to the vanished years. Some are wet with a rain of tears, And some are joyfully singing. Then ere today becomes yesterday, And the used page be turned over, Fill every hour with an incense sweet, Worthy to lay at the Savior's feet, And write his name on the cover. Hobart, Tasmania. A. C. A. Dean Hewer.

"This is the Place"

By John G. McQuarrie

When, in 1847, Brigham Young, at the head of the western exodus which resulted in the settlement of this intermountain region, first looked from the heights of the Wasatch mountains into the valley of the Great Salt Lake, he exclaimed, "This is the place." This brief statement, when fully appreciated, has a meaning and significance comparable in importance to the statement of Jesus when he said to the woman of Samaria, "I am He." The latter designated the person through whom the redemption of the world was to be brought about; the former, the place where his people should gather. A person unacquainted with the history leading up to it, and the events which were to follow it, would naturally draw from this statement only the meaning that it was a place where weary pilgrims might find rest, or where colonists might build homes. But the pioneers following this modern Joshua in their long, hard journey had passed over broad, unoccupied plains, and by beautiful, clear streams of fresh and flowing water, and through mountains rich in the precious metals. Still they did not see The Place, the setting where the great world drama was about to be staged, until they looked out upon that land which the Catholic fathers, the Spanish explorers, and the American trappers, who had previously visited it, regarded as a desolation or, at best, a land suited only for the Indian, the hunter, the prospector, and the adventurer. In order to better understand the import of this statement, and the religious movement which prompted it, let us consider for a moment the history of the past, and the prophetic utter- ances which Brigham Young and his associates felt assured they were helping to fulfil. The writings of the prophets of Israel, for the most part, consist of pleadings, warning, rebukes, and judgments; and the history of Israel, as contained in thr Old Testament, with the exception of brief periods of phenon enal prosperity which made their reverses more pronounced, ii one of defeat, disaster, dispersion, and, finally, national destruction. But there are two hopeful themes running through their in spired writings upon which the prophets delighted to dwell, and which the people never lost sight of. The first was the coming of the Messiah. The second, the permanent establishment of