Our Very Present Help

Our Very Present Help* By Amicus Affectionately Dedicated to Dr. James E. Talmage ONCE at the hour of dawn I stood upon the ocean shore, waiting for the sunrise. On the horizon a sail moved slowly to the distance. Clear it stood before the sky, bright in light’s earliest rays. But when the sun rose I could sec the sail no more, for the brightness of his shining. Yet, I knew that the ship was there, sailing ever down the pathway of the light. SO it is, I thought, with those whom God takes to Himself. While we stand in the twilight of our feeble faith, they move, splendid, to a wondrous destiny. When the Sun of His consolation has arisen on our sight, they are hid in the glory of His Presence. Then comes the day. THERE was never a marriage without pain of parting. A mother will weep when her daughter is taken from her care. Yet, with loving anticipations, the daughter stands on the threshold of a sweeter life, of a high and holy estate. For her the future’s promise speaks stronger than the call of dying pasts. EVEN thus, also, is the trembling ecstasy of the soul whom God summons to that new life in His Presence. Whoso has heard the music of His speaking attends no more to the poor harmonics of earth. Whoso has beheld His golden splendor can sec no longer in the twilight of our world. God comes very near, when eyes which have lighted for us can discern His beckoning hand. WE think that God despoils our love. Rather is it true that He has allowed us brief foretaste of the joys prepared for them that love Him. Was it not He who gave our treasure? He has but borrowed His gift. A JEWELER takes jewels that he may polish them, and repair their settings. When they are returned, they shine with new beauty. So God, the Master Workman, takes the precious jewels of our love, that the Hands which shaped their beginning may perfect them for endless life. When we receive them again, we shall know that He makes all things new. * Editorial Note: These thoughtful and inspiring paragraphs are from the pen of one of "the honorable men of the earth", not a member of the Church but a true friend of the Latter-day Saints. We print strictly according to copy as received.

666 IMPROVEMENT ERA A GREAT king loved a humble maid, and sent his servants offering marriage and rich gifts. She marveled that one so exalted had inclined his eyes to the dust; but he set her upon his throne. THE King of kings comes from His Glory to visit our humility. The Almighty descends from the constellations to exalt our weak¬ ness. The Lord of splendors seeks love in our mean dwellings. OUR lives are more precious in His sight than even to ourselves. They are components of the eternal scheme, valuable in God’s mind, which creation itself embodies. While we think of earth’s brief sojourn. He knows an everlasting significance. “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” EOR God the endless years are one enduring present. Every beginning is before His eyes; all ends are in His hand. This world and our brief life in it are small details in the intricacies of His vast design. They are as one cast of a shuttle in the loom of His eternity. COULD God desire aught, we know that, above all else, it is the love of our heart. God loves even as a father, pitying his own children, and in this clothes our human love with the glory of a divine significance. We love Him because He first loved us: if we miss blessedness, it is because His love goes unrequited. He made man a little lower than the angels, and, for his first habitation, planted a garden of delight. He numbers the very hairs of the head, and rejoices when the wicked turns from wickedness. BUT God is a jealous God; when He seeks the heart’s love. He demands all. He strove to win us in our prosperity, but we would not listen. He sues for the love which grief has wounded, and exalts it with His comfort. He is the Eather of the fatherless and the Husband of the widow. He is our Rock and our Habitation, and our Very Present Help in trouble. SORROW, suffering and death — they do not thwart Him. They are angels sent to awaken us, that we may behold the splendor of His Day. They are goads, wielded at His command, “Compel them to come in”. They are deep shades laid down to set forth the glowing colors of enduring love. GOD opens the door of sorrow, but through it we may enter the home of His tearless joy. He leaves the path of adversity rough to our feet; but it is such a little way to the abode of His peace. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; he shall be my son, I will be his God.” BLESSED, then, is sorrow: underneath are the Everlasting

OUR VERY PRESENT HELP 667 Arms. Blessed is adversity: it opens the eyes of faith. We can not forget our troubles, but we can remember God. His it is to take away their bitterness. IN life’s loudest turmoil we may hear His speaking: “Be still and know that I am God.” So the keen hearing of the prophet discerned His whisper above the tumult of storm and earthquake and mighty rushing wind. To him God was nearer than the thoughts of his own heart: His stillness was louder than the outcry of Nature’s terrors. WHEN God promised Abraham a thing which seemed im¬ possible, Abraham believed, knowing God’s Almightiness. Thus it was said that Abraham was the friend of God — he knew God. But God would have such a friend in every soul. FAITH is divine friendliness in the heart of man. It is the power to think God’s thoughts. It is the soul’s sure knowledge of God’s goodness, when it were too easy to believe in evil. Were God not good, there were no need for faith. FAITH discerns realities, while reason hesitates at evidences. Through it we live by knowledge above understanding. By it we testify, even unwillingly, to God’s unbreakable promises. FAITH is the soul’s life with God. It reaches out in the dark, knowing that it shall grasp a hand. It subsists in the con¬ fidence that the heart’s desires — those things which we earnestly hope may be true — are the things which we were created to inherit. It is the eyesight of the soul. While the soul lives it must depend on faith. WHEN we hunger or thirst, we seek food or drink. If weary with labor, we seek refreshment in sleep. If lonely and forsaken, we know that fellowship and sympathy may be found somewhere, and our pain decreases. Provision for every need is only the law of life. There is joyful requital for every proper desire of the heart. In this fact we have enduring faith. CREATION is glorious in its compensation: yet the soul of man is not satisfied. There is thirst beyond the quenching of water: there is hunger beyond satisfying with food. “As the hart pants for brooks of water, my soul pants for Thee, O God: my soul thirsts for the Living God.” THE desire for God is the soul’s strongest passion. All else men have forsaken, that they might, “haply, feel after and find Him”. Many have fasted and tormented their flesh, hoping to win

668 IMPROVEMENT ERA sight of Him. That God lives, and that He gives eternal life, are hopes upheld by universal verdict. Who, then, is greater than the prophets and martyrs, or better than all the wise and good, that he should deny, when they believed and exulted? IF nature provides to satisfy earthly cravings, can the soul’s strong aspirations be in vain? If there is refreshment for thirst and hunger, is there naught for the soul but dust? The Eternal One has not scattered His power like smoke. The All-wise has not written His wisdom on the waves. Smoke does not believe itself a rock: waves do not hope to stand like hills. But the soul of man has ever held the hope of immortality. THE thought of God is conscious energy, moulding and com¬ pelling. It is life’s most potent force. That which a man thinks of God’s character he begins to be: his thought of God is his own highest ideal. If he knows God’s love, he becomes just and merci¬ ful, and strong in faith. If he knows God’s power, he borrows strength against trouble, and learns patience in affliction. If he knows God’s Almightiness, he begins to live the life of his eternal world. Any state of living is an abode of joy and peace to him who knows God’s reality. WHEN masons build a house they set stones together, and bind them with mortar. So God builds heaven with the souls whom love may unify. Thus He erects His own eternal habitation. His house not made with hands. LOVE is the one activity in which we may cooperate with God. It is only obedience to His law of life, the end and reason of our creation. All that assists faith or righteousness is only a means of perfecting love. IN desiring love, in loving others, we tread the first step to God’s Presence. Love is the force which urges us to God. It is a gravitation stronger than the pull of suns and planets. It is man’s title to divine heritage. “Whosoever loves is born of God, and knows Him: for God is love.’’ GOD sees through eyes that look with love and good will. Eyes that light with kindness discern God’s likeness in every soul. When, of old. He trod our earth, surely He sanctified our dust for¬ ever. Henceforth, His very image is man himself, the proper object of our love, because of Him. DO we regret gentleness unspoken and kindness unperformed? Do we bewail unworthy words and acts? We merely acknowledge

OUR VERY PRESENT HELP 669 that love has not ruled our lives. Were there naught to repent we had fulfilled the whole law of God. GOD’S law demands only those things which He created us to manifest. Love alone is the law’s fulfilling: it is the all-binding cohesion in the world of life which makes for unity with God. GRIEF, mourning, repentance for sin — they are just loneliness for God: the only real loneliness that the soul can feel. We yearn for absent friends, although, did we but know it, we yearn far more bitterly for God. Because the thought of His love consoles we are assured of His promises. This is the glory of faith perfect in love. GOD shaped the mind of man solely that Almighty Power might be known as Love Divine. That is the greatest of all thoughts. The humble flower dares to love the sun, and we behold the glories born of her marriage with the light. This is a parable of the soul that looks to God. A TRAVELER found an ancient book, and none could spell its writing. A learned man drew forth its meaning, and read anew the glorious song of a forgotten poet. GOD is the poet whose writing few can read, and many spell not understanding. His is also the glorious Song of Life — blessed is the soul that sings it. WHEN God’s voice fell upon the formless earth, the universe achieved creation. Wise men say that He spoke a Word of Power, which was only His own beautiful Name. “GOD” is the Word of Power which could make anew this world of sorrow and of sin. Could all know Him as He would manifest Himself, His tabernacle would be with man. Then there would be no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain any more. WHOSO attends His words enters on the way out of sin, error and the shadow of death. The heavenly life begins for every soul that learns to dwell with God. Whoso has viewed that life, even through the window of hope, ceases to mourn earthly joys, which all leave so soon. WHEN the veil before the Holiest Place is lifted, and He is beheld between the Cherubim, who is it that we are come to worship? No strange majesty oblivious of our being. No ruthless power indifferent to our strivings. No dread tyrant eager to afflict and slay. IT is He who planned the pitying heart of fatherhood and

670 IMPROVEMENT ERA devised the mother’s love. It is He who paints glory on the flowers of the field, and who notes the pitiful small tragedy of the sparrow’s fall. It is He who hastens to welcome the wastrel limping home¬ ward, and who seeks the lost lamb in the wilderness. YET He it is who binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades and guides Arcturus with his sons: who laid the foundation of the earth, and looses the bands of Orion. Thus we learn that mercy, patience and loving-kindness are the working principles of Omnipo¬ tence. IT is with such a One that we have to do. His arm is strong to help, and His eye is watchful of our needs. As a child seeks safety in its mother’s arms, so the soul of man turns for comfort to the Living God. HE is the Author of life and the Hope of immortality. HE is the Delight in every joy and the Sun of every morning. HE is the Sweetness of early hopes and the calm Content of age. HE is the Glory of wisdom and the Desire of them that seek it. HE is our Shield and our Exceeding Great Reward. HE is light and love; also life, resurrection and the faith that seeks Him. ALL things whatsoever are in Him, and exist only that they may tell of Him. They are measures in His song of the ages, scanned to the rhythm of the moving stars. IN all the eternal years God could be no nearer than He is today. His love is in the highest heaven no more truly than in the sorrow which drives us to Him. We may learn more devotion to Him, but none can scale the towering heights of His love. “In Him we live and move and have our being.’’ But “we are also His offspring’’. GOD binds loving souls together, as threads are woven in a silken web. No death can sever them in His unfailing grasp. Love that knows God defies the distance of earth and heaven: no parting can disturb it. It waits eager at the threshold, sure that the door will open. LOVE is the seed of Everlasting Life sown in the soil of our mortality. It is the echo of God’s voice which first commanded us to be. It is the soul’s response to His insistent summons. It abides in the heart of man, the one unfaltering testimony to immortal Hope. THERE is no death. It is an evening, when we talk of to¬ morrow. It is the shadow of faith’s brief eclipse. It is the dropping

OUR VERY PRESENT HELP 671 of an eyelid which hides the glory of the sun. Thus a man goes forth to his labor until the evening. Like him, when brief tasks are done, the longing soul also returns home. “BLESSED”, says the Master, “are those servants whom the Lord at His coming shall find watching. Verily, He will gird Himself and make them sit down to meat, and will come and serve them”. ENDLESS eternity contains one supermost moment — when, as by promise, we shall see Him as He is. Then shall we behold the One whom our heart has always sought; love’s Very Self, for whose sake all loves have been conceived and born — the Beloved of all love, the One Eternal Reason beneath all devotion. Faith taught us to desire Him, and Hope strengthened our feet on the path¬ way to His Presence. But Faith and Hope are only Love called by other names. LIFE’S darkest hour is God’s hour. It is then that Hope and Faith are kindled, even as lamps are lighted in the night. ITen dawns the unfading day of love and sight, when all life is renewed. As the shout of thunder stabs the silence of a solitary place. God’s light rushes upon the darkness of our despair. Then we shall know — God is here. THY sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon with¬ draw herself; for the Lord shall be thine Everlasting Light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. An Episode of Euthanasia When Death caressed me with her lingering arms. And with cool palms stroked oft my beaded brow. And flashed dark eyes into my nerv'ous sight. I smiled and welcomed her. Was she not very kindi’ Did she not ease the pain that wracked my limbs. And bid me swoon away in misty dreams Where all things beautiful entranced my eyes. And tunes of unborn melodies bid me hear What joy held in reserve for mortal earsi" Because I had no fear, her arms unclasped: And. as a queenly-robed, immortal form. Beautiful beyond all earthly comeliness. She tarried but a moment to impress My lingering vision with her loveliness. And bade me wait till she should come again! Joseph Longking Towmsend Maywood, California