Melvin J. Ballard

I remember a gentleman, a minister, said on one occasion, in a private discussion which I had with him, that he thought we were too positive about the things of religion. He thought we had not considered the question of God enough to be able to speak with such certainty. He informed me that he belonged to a church that was several hundred years older than the one to which I belonged, and he said that his church had been considering these questions for a long time and had altered their view and their opinion about a good many theological questions. I granted that that was true; and he ventured the assertion that after we had been discussing these theological questions as long as they had, perhaps we would change our opinion also. And in order to establish his point he used this illustration:

"If you had a problem to give for solution and you selected ten boys to solve the problem, and you gave one of them ten days in which to study it, and then another boy nine days and still another boy eight, and so forth, until you had one boy studying on the problem but one day and one studying ten days; now which boy, at the conclusion of the ten days, would know most about the problem, the one who had been studying but one day or the one who had studied ten days?"

Well, you would have to concede, as I did, that if all things were equal, of course, the boy that had been studying ten days ought to know most about the problem.

"Well, there you are," he said; "we have been studying it longer than you have, and you are one of the youngest churches, and so you are likely to change your mind when you study it a little longer."

"But," I said, "suppose the boy who has had the problem but one day receives the visit of a professor who knows all about the problem and who illustrates it so that now it is perfectly clear to the mind of the boy, who knows most about it, the boy who has thus been aided, only having had the chance to study it one day, or the boy who has been dreaming about it for ten days?"

"Why," he said, "of course, the boy who was thus aided and assisted knew most about the problem."

Then I said: "That is exactly where we stand." Joseph Smith did not know, because of earthly wisdom and his reading of the scriptures, more about our Father in heaven and His Son Jesus Christ, than the learned ministers of the world. Not by that means did he obtain his knowledge, but in the few moments that he knelt in the sacred grove in the presence of the Father and the Son he knew more about God the eternal Father and His Son Jesus Christ than all the ministers of all the world ever have known, or ever will know, except they shall be, in like manner, informed and instructed. So that the wisdom he had came to him from the Source to which men must go if they shall know our Father in heaven.

Melvin J. Ballard, Conference Report, April 1920