Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Brigham Young

The gospel is of a character that a man may be benefitted by it if he will, but it has no help for the man who fails to take advantage of that which it offers. It is a perfect system of self-development. A man can rise to the most exalted heights, if he will; or he may loiter by the way, waste the day-light until he is overtaken in his darkness and thence must grope his way, because he failed to take advantage of the light.

Today is our day, brethren and sisters. We cannot hope, when the night comes, when the grave has demanded its own, for the development and progress that is available to us today. These bodies of ours God has given us for development. We are separated from them when we go into the grave. We are not ourselves, we are only partial when the body and the spirit are separated. Why will we loiter, instead of developing that which is perfect, the human soul. Separated, it is a divided thing; together, it may rise to the most exalted height. We preach to the world faith. Have we faith? We preach to the world repentance. Do we repent? Do we place our feet each day upon the mistakes of yesterday, using them as stepping stones to a higher life, to the new birth symbolized by the baptism of water? Have we taken to ourselves every day the new birth of the Spirit? Have we risen to more exalted heights? Are we in closer communion with God than we were yesterday? If not, we have failed to take advantage of opportunity offered in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Elder Brigham S. Young, Conference Report, April 1927, Afternoon Meeting 59

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