William C. Dunbar

“ Is it not singular that men professing to be servants of God and ministers of salvation, when they quote Scripture, should only quote part of it? This is the course pursued by the ministers of nearly every denomination in Christendom. One will take a pivot or a wheel, and leave all the rest of the machinery; another will do the same, and so on, and if we were to examine the whole, we should perhaps find that all of the principles of the Gospel are scattered amongst them, but all of them reject some portions of it. ”

“ Now, if it has taken all the knowledge that we have, all the testimony that we have received from the Almighty, to carry us through to the present moment; if it has taken the power of the Holy Ghost and the Spirit of God to enable us to stand and resist the various opposing influences by which we have been assailed since we obeyed the Gospel, it will take the same testimony and the same understanding to enable the rising generation to carry off this kingdom triumphantly in spite of all the combined opposition that may be brought against it. ”

“ Some of these have come to dig in the mountains, to extract the silver and get a fortune; they care nothing about religion of any kind. There are others here who consider they have a mission to undermine "Mormonism," and who think the only way for them to do that is by undermining the education of our young people. They say, "We can only reach the young, so far as faith in "Mormonism" is concerned; but if we succeed in making the rising generation skeptical, "Mormonism" will be a thing of the past and almost forgotten in the next generation." ”

“ So it is with our young—they must not expect to study "Mormonism" by reading novels, but they must read the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Millennial Star, Orson Pratt's Works, the Voice of Warning and many others. These are the works our children must study if they ever find out for themselves the truth of the principles of "Mormonism." And besides doing this, they must also pray unto the Almighty for the testimony of his Holy Spirit. How did we, now growing old in the work, get a knowledge of its truth? ”

“ They say to the sects—"Why, you have not got the watch, you have only got one of the wheels, one of the pins or fingers, or you have only got the case, and there is nothing in it, and it requires the case with all its contents properly arranged to tell the time of day correctly; in other words, if you would teach the people how to be saved in the kingdom of God, you must teach them to obey every principle of the plan of salvation." ”

“ If a son or a daughter belonging to any one of us should say—"Father, I know you have always taught me to believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and you say that God has revealed it to you, but he has not revealed it to me and I do not know it," shall we get mad at them, and resort to coercion in order to make them believe as we believe? ”

“ There is a class of so-called religious men whose aim is to make our young folks skeptical; there is the apostate, who is either an infidel or a deist, working to accomplish the same object; there is also the Gentile, who is a deist or a freethinker, and does not believe in God or in a life hereafter; and they all feel that it is their special mission to undermine what we have been doing during the last twenty years to establish in the minds of the rising generation the truth of the principles which we have espoused, and which we know to be true. ”

“ I have heard some say that they thought we made too much fuss and talk about the rising generation; but when we take into consideration the circumstances in which we are placed as Latter-day Saints, we shall see that this is not the case. We are connected with the kingdom of God, established in these last days never to be cast down again. We are not connected with a system of religion which is to expire when we expire, but with one which is to exist when we are gone, and there is a prospect of a great many of us departing this life before very many years more pass away. ”

“ If you were to attend the Sabbath schools of our friends who are not of us, you would probably hear these principles taught. But this is not in accordance with the Bible, for that teaches that God made man in his own image. If you want to know what the Almighty looks like, look at man, only he is in a fallen condition and clothed with humanity. ”

“ A watch can not tell the time unless it is combined and united together, every wheel and pivot in its place, with the mainspring in good order. It takes the whole machine to tell the time of day, and when a man says—'I have got the watch,' and he has only got a wheel, a pivot, or a pin, the face, mainspring, or case, he does not tell the truth, whether he knows it or not. ”

“ It is true our children have been raised and grounded, as it were, in the principles of "Mormonism:" they have grown up and have scarcely heard anything else. It is not these little ones here that I am so much concerned about, but it is the young men and the young women, from sixteen to twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, who go out in life for themselves. ”

“ Here, my young brethren and sisters, is another great distinction and difference between the Latter-day Saints and the rest of the Religious World, and if you were to study the Bible sometimes—I do not say it is necessary to throw away every other book and study the Bible only—you would come to an understanding of these principles for yourselves, then you would know why your fathers and mothers declare that they know "Mormonism" is true. ”

“ His science and religion would help and sustain each other, and would enable him to bear testimony to the wonderworking hand of God, not only in revealing the true principles of salvation, but also in revealing the laws of nature or the principles of science, and he would embrace both as emanations from the same great Deity. ”

“ I have endeavoured to drop a few hints, to show the necessity of our young people taking a course by which they may attain the same realizing sense of the truth of the Gospel and work of God which their seniors possess. ”

“ We have around us a multitude of children growing up. We are in the habit of calling them children and of treating them as such, and all the time our speeches to them are as if directed to children; but all of a sudden it has come to our notice that some of these children have arrived at the years of accountability. ”

“ No, we may be sorry to hear them make such an avowal, but we must neither get mad nor use harsh language towards them, for that might drive them to do that which we are so anxious to prevent. We must treat them as men and women, or as rational, intelligent beings, and reason with them, and labor with and pray for them just as much as if we were sent to preach the Gospel to the world. ”

“ We take the whole chapter, we want the whole watch. We know we can not tell the time correctly if we only take a part of it, and we know we can not get full salvation in the celestial kingdom of God unless we obey the whole Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation unto all who believe it enough to obey it. ”

“ There are men in our midst who consider they have a mission to perform, and that mission is to undermine our religion. There are many amongst us now who do not believe in and who care nothing about our religion. ”

“ Hence the necessity, my brethren and sisters, of being exercised about the young, and hence the reason that they should have a knowledge of the principles of truth that we have received, that when we are departing this life we can lay our hands upon them and bless them, and set them apart for the work that we have about closed. ”

“ The "Mormons" believe this, but the sectarians believe in a God without body, parts and passions; they believe in Jesus sitting at the right hand of a God without body parts and passions; they believe in a God who loves the righteous, and who is angry with the wicked every day, but yet he has neither body, parts nor passions. ”

“ Some of our sons, for instance, are as old as we were ourselves when we went forth to preach the Gospel, and we see around us a multitude of young men and women who were baptized when they were eight years old, and who, almost unnoticed, have arrived at years when they begin to think and act for themselves. ”

“ There are thousands and tens of thousands of us who embraced the Gospel soon after the Church was organized by the Prophet Joseph Smith, and who are now arriving at an age when we must naturally expect that we will not live long upon the earth, hence, in the minds of all such who reflect, there is an anxiety about the young. Why? Because they have an anxiety about the kingdom of God being perpetuated ”

“ We Latter-day Saints do not believe the world was created out of nothing, but that it was created just upon the same principle that a builder creates a house, that is, there is matter in existence and he organizes it and changes its condition suitable to the circumstances that he wishes to use it for ”

“ So it is, my young friends and brethren and sisters, in regard to the Bible; every religious sect takes that part of it which suits them, and they all say they believe in it, and they have got the plan of salvation. For instance, one sect or party will take faith in Jesus Christ, and say that is all that is necessary for the salvation of man. Another sect will perhaps take baptism, and say that faith and baptism are necessary for salvation, and throw away something else ”

“ They have to go out in life, and they meet with a great many influences now that were not to be found in our midst years ago; for amongst us now are those who are straining every effort to undermine the education that we have been giving to our children. ”

“ A young man or young woman will ask this question, for instance, which is very natural—"Father, I hear you say that all the sects in the Christian world are wrong except the 'Mormons;' but yet I find, when I attend the Episcopal, Roman Catholic or Methodist church, that they quote from the very same Bible which you quote from. ”

“ But if they really desired to acquire any branch of knowlege they would, of course, procure works that treated on that subject, and make it a matter of earnest study. I knew a man who did nothing but study grammar from the time he was fifteen years old until he was twenty-five. ”

“ The gift of the Holy Ghost was conferred upon them, and that Spirit is within them, and if they understood its whisperings and dictates I believe that they would admit they know a great deal more than they now think they do ”

“ To explain this seeming mystery to the minds of the new converts, they would liken the Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ and its organization, to a watch with all its complicated machinery, including wheels, pivots and pins, face, fingers and mainspring. All these properly combined will correctly tell the time of day. "But," said the Elders, "Suppose a man comes along and takes one of these wheels away, and another man takes another wheel, and another takes another wheel; another man takes a pin, and another another pin; another man takes a pivot, and another takes another pivot ”

“ Perhaps the sisters go to service in various parts of the city and among various kinds of people; and the young men, they go to learn trades—learn to be carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, or some other occupation. ”