Mormonism a world-wide religion
Charles Penrose's vision for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Soon after concluding his term of service as president of the European Mission Charles W. Penrose, an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints returned to his home in Salt Lake City. Less than a week after he returned from Europe he spoke at a conference of the Ensign Stake, of which he was a member.
The implications of many of Elder Penrose’s remarks point to a more expansive and global faith. He notes the developments of the Church in different locations and states that the gospel is for all people regardless of circumstances, race, etc. Elder Penrose also makes geographical emphasis by stating that even the remotest peoples deserve to have an opportunity to accept the gospel. As part of his remarks, he comments on the state of the Church in Europe and developments that occurred during his mission.
The unscripted sermon, using some language that might be uncomfortable today, provides a fascinating insight into Elder Penrose’s views on several issues and the apostle’s vision of the Church. Part of ‘Mormonism’ according to Elder Penrose was to declare Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. Given that similar message was shared at the most recent General Conference and from other conferences we can see that it has been a recurring theme. Enjoy the sermon!
A discourse by Elder Charles W. Penrose at the Ensign Stake Conference, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
Sunday, June 26th, 1910.
It is with the greatest difficulty that I am able to control my feelings, so as to address this congregation this afternoon. Not that this is a new position to me, for I have occupied it many times in years that are past. I have desired, with a strong longing, to be present with the saints in the Salt Lake tabernacle again and look upon their faces, to hear the music from this lovely choir and the music from our good old organ. I call it the "old" organ, although it has been made young again; and I hope that all these old friends of mine will be made young again, so that they may enjoy the last days of their existence on the earth. To look upon them, to feel the influence that proceeds from them, and to have the privilege of worshipping in this congregation, in this conference, as a member of the Ensign Stake of Zion is, indeed, a joy to me. I do not know whether I shall be able to make you all hear the sound of my voice this afternoon, as I have not been accustomed, for some years past, to address a congregation of anything like the size of this present assembly. Again, before leaving the old country I contracted a cold which has somewhat affected my vocal organs; but I will endeavor to make you all hear, if possible. I must say that I have nothing prepared to deliver on this occasion, but trust entirely to the inspiration of the time; and indeed, this has been my method of addressing congregations in the old world. Sometimes subjects have presented themselves to my mind before standing up in the midst of the people, but as a rule they have been dismissed before I attempted to speak. I have endeavored to address the people as the Spirit of the Lord moved upon me.
I can say to my dear friends here in Salt Lake City that I return to my home with joy and with pleasure, and with thanksgiving and praise to the Lord. I have traveled many thousands of miles since I left this city in October, 1906; I have sailed on many seas, traveled a great deal upon the railroads as well as upon the vessels that have crossed the waters; and in every instance the Lord has preserved me from accident, from harm, and from sickness, and I have been able to return home with a good degree of health and strength. President Young was just asking me how long I have been in the ministry. I told him it is close on to sixty years. I was ordained an elder, to go out, without purse or scrip, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the great city of London, January 6th, 1851. That will give you some idea of the length of my missionary labors, if not the exact period of my age. I do not care to tell you about that, not that I am ashamed of it, by any means. On the contrary, I am thankful in my soul that I have been able to endure so long in this good and great work, and I hope to endure, I was going to say, unto the end; but I do not look for any "end."
There will come an end, no doubt of that, to the period of my mortality, my earthly existence; but I do not expect to die. I may have to lay my body down in the dust, as all do, because it is appointed unto man, once, to die; and after that the judgment, the scripture says. But, when we pass from this earthly position and period of our lives, we shall find a wider scope of life and a larger field for our labors and our exertions in the great cause to which we are all devoted, when we enter into that vast region commonly called the "spirit world," where people go when they "die," when their bodies are laid in the dust. Thank the Lord, I understand fully that that is not the end of our existence, but merely a change into another phase of it. We speak of "this life and the life that is to come"; but really it is all one life, only there are different periods of it and different stages, different phases, different surroundings, different experiences, but they are all for the education of the sons and daughters of the living God, who existed before they came into the body, and will exist when the body is slumbering in the ground. So that I do not expect any end to the work in which I am engaged, when the experience called death comes, but rather to be better prepared to aid in its furtherance in a wider sphere of labors; for the gospel of Jesus Christ is to be preached to every creature, and there is but one gospel as there is but one God for us to worship, and one Savior and Redeemer, His Son Jesus Christ. So there is but one plan of redemption and salvation for the human family. That being so, in the justice of God, who is the very embodiment of that eternal principle, all His children must, at some time and in some place, become acquainted with that gospel, learn what it is and have the opportunity of receiving it and obeying it, or of rejecting it if they will—for the principle of free agency is an eternal and abiding principle.
It exists in all intelligent beings, the sons and the daughters of the great God who has given them that privilege to choose light or darkness, truth or error, good or evil, to take which course they prefer. Although there are, of course, many influences surrounding them, either for good or for evil, to which they may yield themselves, and to which they may become subject, yet in them, inherent, God-given, God-planted, is the principle of free agency, the power to receive or to reject the truth; to live according to light, or to walk in darkness. So, at some period in the history of all the sons and daughters of Adam's race, there must come a time when they can hear that which God wants them to do, and take their choice. Whether they be in the body or out of the body, they are the same persons; people are not changed, simply because they “shuffle off this mortal coil.” They are the same persons as they were before they came into the body, and will be the same when they pass out of the body. Every individual soul will preserve its own identity, worlds without end. So, I say, there is a grand and glorious work to be performed, and I do not expect to cease my exertions and labors when the time comes for me to depart hence. I shall go, I presume, as I have done ever since I have been in the Church, where I am sent, and try to do the work allotted to me, and to do it with my might, to put my powers and energies into it, and to perform such duties as are incumbent upon me to the extent of my abilities.
This gospel that the Lord has revealed anew in the latter days—the old gospel brought back again—is to be preached to every creature. You have often heard about the coming of the angel spoken of by the apostle John, in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Revelation, the sixth and seventh verses; and it is our forte, so to speak, is our mission on the earth to carry that gospel to all the world. We can't all of us go there individually, but we can all help in the dissemination of this gospel. It is to be preached to "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people," and I am thankful that so much is being done now to accomplish the work. It is the special mission of the people called Latter-day Saints to accomplish that great labor. There are other things for them to do, but that is their special work—to send the gospel to earth's remotest bounds, that all people, of all races, and tongues, and creeds, and religions, shall hear the one gospel while they are in the body, while they are in the flesh, that they shall have an opportunity of understanding it and of receiving it, or of rejecting it if they please.
Sometimes when our missionaries go out in the old world, among the good Christians that they find there, they are interrogated in this way particularly by the ministers of the various Christian denominations—"What do you come here for, you Yankees? What do you Yankees want to come here for, and bring another religion? Why don't you go to the heathen?" Sometimes we respond, "Well, that is just exactly what we are doing. What is a heathen? A heathen is a person who does not know the true God, one who does not know anything about the real Deity. You people here are worshipping something that you know nothing about; and the wisest and greatest orators among you, the greatest theologians, the finest pulpit orators cannot explain to anybody what God is. They can tell you what He isn't, but they cannot tell you what He is. They don't know, themselves, and it is a very hard thing to make somebody else understand that which you do not understand yourself." Now, in the Christian world there are millions of very good people who are doing the best they know how, and are worshipping according to the creeds they have received from their forefathers. Of course, there are many of them who do it merely as a matter of form, but there are very many good, honest people who are in the dark concerning God, concerning His purposes, His designs, His ways, His commandments. They are going along in the beaten path trod by their forefathers, without thinking very much about God or about His personality, or His attributes. So we go to them, as part, if you please, of the heathen world, to tell them something about God, what His designs are concerning the human family, and what He requires of them. Now, we do not say this in any spirit or desire of ridicule, but to bring them to a comprehension of the fact that we have something to tell them. They are as people were in the time of Jesus Christ; worshipping they knew not what. You remember, our Savior, in one of His conversations, said to the people, "Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." When the apostle Paul was upon Mars' hill, viewing the altars that had been erected to different kinds of deities he said he saw one altar erected to the "unknown god," and he said, "Him, therefore, whom ye ignorantly worship, declare I unto you." So our elders, when they go out to the world, whether to people in the far east, or those in the far west, whether they talk to Christians or Pagans, they have to declare unto them that which is to them an unknown God. When our Christian friends are asked to tell us what God is, they tell us that He is without body, without parts, without passions; that His centre is everywhere, and His circumference is nowhere; that He has nothing in Him or about Him in common with what we call matter; that He takes up no room, although He fills all space; that He is immaterial and incomprehensible. This is how they sum up their knowledge about Deity: "The Father is incomprehensible; the Son is incomprehensible; the Holy Ghost is incomprehensible; and yet there are not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible." This ought to be very comprehensible to anybody, but, unfortunately, there are a great many people who cannot grasp it, and I confess to being one of the number.1
One of the principles that we have to declare to the whole world —Christian and Pagan, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, black and white, yellow or copper-colored—everywhere, throughout the world, is this, that God is our Father, that we are in His image and His likeness, for every seed begets of its own kind. That is a principle that we should all understand, and if we comprehended it fully it would do away with a great deal of the vain philosophy of the latter days, uttered by so-called scientists, that which is nothing more than vain philosophy, and that is the doctrine that is commonly called evolution, although in that there are a great many things that are true, but the great theory of the evolution of species, one into another, is not true. For you will find in all your experience and in all your observations that every thing that produces, begets of its own kind. The apple does not bring forth the plum, nor the pear the orange. One kind of animal does not bring forth another kind. There are different varieties of all the species in the animal and in the vegetable kingdoms, but each produces of its kind, and always will, forever and ever. The seeds that were planted in this earth, in the beginning, came from other worlds; and it is an eternal process, without beginning and without end. When we come to understand that, it will do away with a great deal of latter-day false philosophy.
Well you, my friends, who are gathered in this tabernacle this afternoon, no matter what may be your parentage on the earth, no matter from what country you may have sprung, no matter what may be your relationships, your creed, your notions, your ideas, your birth, or your ancestry on the earth, you are all the children of the Holy One. The spirit of man is the offspring of God. It did not come out of the dust; it was not formed out of earthly elements; but it has come from above: and as Jesus of Nazareth was with the Father before the world was, as we are told that He was "in the beginning with God," so were you. God has revealed this to us in the latter days. It is something that the ancients understood, and those who understand this principle now can take up the old book, the Bible, and can read in it evidences that the ancients comprehended this great truth: but the world to-day is in ignorance of it. The world has been led by the notions, the opinions, and the vagaries of men so that they have departed from the true and living God, and have gone into darkness and error and heresies. These have multiplied, and so sects and denominations or religions have multiplied in the world. Now, it is part of our mission to declare the living and the true God, for if you will read the text that I have just cited— the fourteenth chapter of Revelation, sixth and seventh verses, where we are told an angel was to come and bring the gospel, the "everlasting gospel" to the earth, “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,”—you will see that he was to cry with a loud voice, “Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters,” showing that when the angel should come, it would be at a time when the people were not worshiping [sic] Him who made heaven and earth, and the seas, and the fountains of waters. Now, as I say, it is part of our mission to carry this gospel to all the world; that is what we are for; that is what we were reserved for, in the eternal heavens, before our spiritual beings were sent down on the earth, like the Savior's was, to tabernacle in flesh. He was the Son of God in the spirit, and so were we; but He was also the Son of God in the flesh, and that is one difference between that great Being and ourselves. He was “the beginning of the creation of God,” we read in the scriptures, “the first-born of every creature.” He certainly was not the first-born in the flesh; that was our father Adam; but he was called the first-born of every creature, and he was, in the spirit world; and that is why He is pre-eminently the Son of God in the spirit as well as He was afterwards the Son of God in the flesh.
We have to proclaim to all the world, then, the true and the living God. Who is He? Why, Jesus told them: He is our Father. Do not worship, He says, after the manner of the heathen: “'they think they shall be heard for their much speaking,” and so, when you want to pray, do not load down the Deity with titles; do not begin to utter all kinds of wonderful names, but simply say, “Our Father—" Where is our Father? Why, the Christians say that He is not a person, and therefore He is everywhere, throughout all space; He does not take up any room, not as much as the point of a cambric needle; but He is omnipresent and fills all space, yet occupies no room. But Jesus Christ said, “When you pray, after this manner pray ye. Our Father which art in heaven—” Yes, that is where he is—in heaven. Jesus declared he came forth from the Father to the earth, and was going back to the Father. There would be no going back, if the Father were here. But after his resurrection, He sent a message through Mary whom He saw in the garden: “Touch me not, Mary: for I am not yet ascended into heaven, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God.”
Yes, Christ's Father is our Father; the Father of Jesus of Nazareth is our Father; and His God is our God; and as He went to Him, when He was able to go and fit to go—not when He died, but after His resurrection—so when we are fit to go, we will return, also, to our Father and our God, and we will see Him as He is. You can't see a thing that is immaterial. The Apostle John wrote in this way, as you will read in his first epistle, third chapter, second verse: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure.”
So there is to come a time when we will return to the Father, and we will hear the plaudit of “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord,” or the anathema, “Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.” I hope we shall be among the first class; but the point is this: There will come a time when we will see Him as He is. There have been persons who have seen Him to some extent while they have been in the flesh but not perfectly, not fully as we shall see Him in the way John speaks of. Moses among others talked with God, “face to face,” so the scriptures say, but not in His glory. After Moses, as we read in the thirty-third chapter of the book of Exodus, had talked with Him face to face, “as a man speaks with his friend,”—(I wonder how a person could do that with one who had no face)—after he had talked with Him face to face, he said to the Lord, “I beseech thee show me thy glory.” Then the Lord said: "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the Lord said: Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.”
That is what it means, in the Scriptures, when it says that “no man has seen God at any time.” Certainly not, in the fulness of His glory, because He is like a consuming fire. Now, in short, this is the Deity that we have to declare to the world—not some mysterious something or nothing that no mind can grasp, but “our Father who is in heaven,” who will hear our prayers, who loves us, because we are His children. Sometimes He dislikes our ways, and is angry because of our wickedness, but He desires our welfare, and He had a plan prepared, before the foundations of the earth were laid, for the exaltation and uplifting, the progress, the development of His children, that they may go on from stage to stage, from light to light, from glory to glory, and be able to ascend into His presence and see Him as He is, and be one with Him, as Christ is, and as the Holy Ghost is —three separate and distinct individuals, forming the presiding power of Deity, but separate persons in every respect.2
This is one thing that we have to declare to the world, and when we can get the people to listen, and to reason, and take the Scriptures which they profess to believe in, and compare what we say with them, then we get their minds. They can see that what we have is the truth. But there are a great many very pious and also influential persons—ministers— who do not like that kind of thing; it is against their personal interests, against their temporal welfare, against their trade, against their wages, so they try to hedge up our path, and they succeed in a considerable degree.
When I witness their works and ways, I am reminded of the saying of the Savior to the Pharisees, the most pious and pretentious people of His time: “But woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” Verily, they will have their reward. But when we can get people to listen to us, to read our literature, to reason with us, and to compare our doctrines with the scriptures, why, we have their minds and, presently, we have a great many of them, body and spirit, in the Church. Many thousands have received the gospel, through the ministrations of our elders abroad, since I had the privilege of going there and presiding over the European mission. We have about seven hundred or more elders in different parts of the various missions there now.
We not only have to declare the personality of God to the people, but get them into communion with Him, get them to humble themselves and reach after Him, get them to know that He lives and that He is just as able and just as willing to-day as at any time in the past, to listen to the prayers of His people, and to answer them; that He is willing to bless His children, and to commune with them by the power of the Holy Ghost. When we can get them into that frame of mind, then we can lead them along in the path that the Father wishes them to walk in. We have also to declare the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth; that He was, indeed, the Son of God—not merely a great divine of His time, not merely a great philosopher, a great thinker, a master of theology, but as the veritable Son of the Eternal God, and that He came here for a purpose, not only to declare the Father and to manifest God in the flesh—being His “express image” and His exact likeness—but that He, doing no sin, might die for those who were sinners. It would require a long time to take up the full plan of salvation, to go back to the time of the fall, and show why it was and how it was; but suffice it to say that after our first parents sinned and brought death into the world, they had not the power in themselves, as sinners and mortal beings, to do anything for their recovery, except to obey such laws as were given them. Therefore, the way was appointed, and the person appointed to come as a just one, a pure being who had committed no sin, who had obeyed every commandment, who kept the law as delivered by Moses, and who kept other laws before the law of Moses was enunciated, who lived by “every word that came from the mouth of God,” and being pure and innocent and without sin, He offered Himself as a sacrifice for sinners. As He declared, Himself, “No man taketh my life. I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again; and this commandment have I received of my Father.” And He who did no sin died that sinners might live, that they might be raised from the dead and also have the privilege of going back into the presence of the Father, obtaining the gift of endless lives in immortal glory of body and of spirit, in the same degree of light and power, on the same plane of progress as the Father and the Son.
This is part of what is called “Mormonism,” to declare Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, and our elders are doing this faithfully among all these nations, not only in the European mission which as you have heard, embraces all the missions in Europe and in South Africa, and until recently in Turkey and in Greece, but the elders throughout all the nations of the world—about two thousand of them in number altogether—are proclaiming these things. Now when people begin to believe in the true God and in the Savior of mankind, they want to know what they are to do. Well, they ask this question of preachers in the Christian world, and the universal reply is: “Poor sinner, you can't do anything. There is no power in you to do anything to be saved. Christ has done it all, and all you need to do is to believe in Christ and you are saved right on the spot.” But, that not being in accordance with the Scriptures from which they profess to take their religions, we have to cite them to the Scriptures and show what there is to do; and so, when they ask us the question, we have to reply as Peter did, on the day of Pentecost, when he preached the first gospel sermon after the resurrection, under the influence and power of the Holy Ghost. When they ask us what to do, we say, “Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” That is what Peter taught; that is what we preach: that is what our elders are now proclaiming in the halls, in the meeting houses and churches and chapels and in the streets, in the open air, in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and in the various great cities of Germany, throughout Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the isles that are adjacent thereunto, in all these countries, in which I have had the pleasure of visiting and of preaching to the inhabitants thereof, in all these places these things are being proclaimed as the beginning of the gospel, the very first principles which people must receive and obey, in order to advance in the knowledge of God and in His ways, that they may be able to understand and grasp the truths of the everlasting gospel, brought from heaven by the angel of the Most High.
A great many people are obeying the gospel, but there are thousands upon thousands who believe it but have not the courage to come out and embrace an unpopular religion. They believe it in their hearts, right down deep in their souls, but they move along in their own ways and cannot shake off, altogether, their old traditions, nor will they come out from the society in which they mingle and join with the Latter-day Saints, who are commonly called “Mormons.” The idea of being a “Mormon” is something awful, in the minds of many of them, so they will go on in their own way. But a few who have courage, whom the Lord loves—for the Lord loves the brave, those who have courage to do the right—are willing to go out from among their friends and associates, and face popular opprobrium. They meet the scorn of the world; they lose their employment; some are turned out of their habitations which they have rented, because they are “Mormons.” Yet they go forward and obey the gospel, and by faith, repentance, baptism and the laying on of hands, the Holy Ghost comes upon them, and then they know for themselves that they have received the truth. That is why these companies are coming here, nearly every week, from the old world, from all parts of the earth, up here into this mountain land. They do not come here to find out whether “Mormonism is true,” or not, they have already found it out; that is why they are here. They want to come here to join with their brethren and sisters, where they will be in goodly company and have the privilege of exercising their freedom, for liberty is dear to every sentient soul. We believe in it with all our hearts. We proclaim liberty—liberty of speech as well as the liberty to obey that which we believe to be right, so long as we do not infringe on the rights of others. They desire to come up here and join in freedom with their friends and the saints of the Most High, who have gathered in these mountains.
This good work is going on, and there is joy in it. One of the grandest testimonies that we have of the truth of this latter-day work in which we are engaged is this, that all those elders who go out, to the numbers I have mentioned, and labor faithfully in the ministry, two, three, four and even five years, as the case may be, paying their own expenses, return home more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of this work. When they pray to the Lord, He hears their prayers and answers them; He blesses them with joy and comfort and peace in the midst of trials and difficulties which they have to face, and they know that He lives and that He is with them. When they return home in faithfulness, as they do in almost every instance, they come with joy and rejoicing, praising the Lord that they have had the opportunity of lifting up their voices in defense of the truth. Now, God being a just God, don't you think, my friends, that if they were sent on a fool's errand, or if they were sent out to proclaim things that are untrue, that that Eternal Parent, our divine Father, would manifest it to them in some way? But, there isn't a doubt in their minds. They go forth trembling, sometimes in tears; they go out in comparative ignorance of the ways of the world, and sometimes not much informed concerning the principles of their religion, only they feel in their hearts that it is true, but when they return home they come with beaming countenances, with strength and might and manhood; the power of God is upon them; they rejoice in their labors; the Lord is with them and they know it. I say, God being a just Being, if they had made a mistake, if they had gone off on the wrong track, He would manifest it to them; but you never find a man in that state unless he himself has gone off the track and has done something that is evil and wicked and corrupt, then he loses the good spirit; and that is another testimony of the truth of the work in which we are engaged.
I have been away about three years and eight months, traveling around among these young men, urging them to diligence, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in the halls and meeting houses, in the streets, to stand out and not fear to face the mobs that sometimes oppose us. They have been encouraged in their work, and I rejoice in it; and I report to you, my brethren and sisters, that your boys, your sons, or brothers or friends, who are out in the mission field, are doing a grand and glorious work. They are appointed to it; they are ordained to it; they came here as your sons and daughters from the heavens above. God gave them to you, that they might engage in this work; that is what they are doing, and they are doing it wisely and well. They are gaining an experience which is worth more than all the money that they might have earned if they had stayed at home.3
This gospel is being preached to every creature, as far as we can carry it. The mission of the angel is being fulfilled. This gospel is going forward, and every effort made to stop it is aiding in spreading it. We encounter a few individuals who take pleasure in heaping all kinds of epithets upon us, hedging up our way, and prejudicing the minds of the people. But after a while, when their foolish stories begin to fade out of the minds of the public, people begin to see that they have been deceived by these persons, and they want to know something about this gospel. Over in Germany, for instance, it isn't considered strictly within the privileges of the law for our elders to preach—that is, if they are called “Mormons.” If they are called by some other name it does not matter so much, but they are not legally authorized to preach. The people don't like this oppression, and the very means that are being used to prevent their receiving the truth aids in spreading it, and so the work is moving along grandly and gloriously throughout the German empire, as well as in Switzerland, in Holland, Belgium, and throughout the Netherlands mission. There is perfect freedom there. The people are great scripture readers, Bible readers, and the work is spreading wonderfully.
The prospects are good. Thousands upon thousands of respectable people are inquiring into the truth of this thing called “Mormonism.” In good old Scotland, where it used to be a very difficult thing to get the gospel into the minds of the people, a great many are being baptized. You know the Scotch are a very hard-headed race. I notice some Scotchmen in the congregation, but they will take it in good part, I am sure. It is a very hard thing to convince them. They are like the old Scotch lady: Certainly she was open to conviction, but she would like to see the man that could convict her. We find a good many there of the same kind, but if you once get them you have them for good; they are true and faithful. So in old Ireland. That has been a hard field for some time, but the gospel is now being preached there freely, and a great many are being baptized. Sometimes we get a little mobbing there: get some of the wild Irish after us, and they are pretty tough when you meet them; but in spite of all opposition the work of the Lord is going on. I am glad to tell some of my Welsh friends, who seem to think that Wales has been neglected, that after my arrival in Great Britain I went to the Bristol conference and learned there were no traveling elders in Wales. I felt that the time had come when it should be re-opened. We sent elders there and they found some good inquiring people who received the truth. We have a half dozen elders or more laboring in South Wales. They are received with open arms. The gospel is flourishing in South Wales, and so throughout the British Mission, in every part thereof. There are people inquiring into the truth; and upon the continent and in South Africa a splendid work is being done. A great many people are embracing the gospel; branches of the Church are being organized and so the good work is going on. Also, among the sisters there, the women. About 40 Relief Societies have been organized. Sister Penrose organized most of them: and they are aiding the brethren sent into the ministry and are rejoicing in that which they have to do; and they are accomplishing a good and great work. Thank the Lord, He has so ordained it that “the man is not to be without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord.” The sisters are doing their part, as well as the brethren, and everything looks encouraging in the missions there. I am very glad to be able to report this to-day.
Brother Rudger Clawson, one of the twelve apostles, has gone over there to succeed me, and he is laying right hold of the work. We had everything in good shape for him to receive the mission from my hands, so I was able to start for home after he had been there about a week; and I came just as I wanted to. The Lord heard my desire and prayer; and we came home almost like a streak of lightning. Leaving Liverpool at 10 o'clock at night on the 11th—that was on Saturday—we arrived here last Tuesday morning at 7:35, less than nine and a half days from Liverpool to Salt Lake City! When the telegraph was first established here, I think one of the leading messages was, “What hath God wrought!” and I remembered that all the way on this quick journey from Liverpool to Salt Lake City. The first time I took that journey, I was thirty days on the sea in a rolling old tub, rocking back and forth on the sea, thirty days to New York; nine days on the train, two days up the river, and eleven weeks on the plains with an ox-team. Now I came through in less than nine and one-half days. What hath God wrought! What will He yet bring about? We are only at the beginning of the great things that God will bring to pass in this wonderful dispensation, the “dispensation of the fulness of times.” He has commenced this Work, and He will carry it on. We are simply His messengers, His servants. I know this as well as I know I am standing here. He has been with me. It is by His power that I have been sustained in the work that I have been able to do; and so with my brethren.
I rejoice in the prospects that lie before us. I know that this work will conquer: I know it will accomplish that which God has designed it to do, and I say this without any boasting, for without the Lord we could do but very little; but He is with us. “Zion prospers, all is well,” as we have been singing here this afternoon. We are gathered together as the Zion of our God, and God will bring forth Zion in its might and in its strength. We might say with Isaiah of old, who beheld it in vision:
"Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. * * * And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. (Isaiah 60: 1, 3.) “For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron. (Isaiah 60: 17.) I will beautify the place of my sanctuary; and make the place of my feet glorious.”
This is Zion, “the pure in heart,” that is what it means. I do not mean to say that we have arrived at that condition yet; but Zion, the Lord has shown us means the pure in heart; and wherever they are and are organized, congregated together, under the word of the Lord, there Zion will be. Some of our friends in the old world have laughed at our talking about Zion in America. “Why,” they say, “Zion is at Jerusalem.” They forget to read what there is in the Bible concerning the Zion at Jerusalem. When you go home, get your Bible and read the third chapter of Micah. In the latter part of that chapter we read: “They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.” Now hear what follows: “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” Continuing with the fourth chapter: “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Well, the Lord has brought us up here into the heights of these mountains and established His holy temple; and there His ways and His will can be learned, not only in regard to these simple principles that I have talked a little about this afternoon, but those things necessary for the perfection of Zion, of her municipalities and institutions. Zion will grow and flourish in the mountains, and her influence shall go forth to the uttermost bounds of the earth. I am pleased to see all these wonderful improvements that have been made during my absence. In these I delight, and I give credit to all those who have been engaged in them. All these improvements are the beginning of things: and the sons of the aliens will be your plowmen and vine dressers, as Isaiah foresaw it. The Gentiles will help to build up Zion, not in the spirit of Zion, but their good works will redound to the glory of God and the building up of Zion. Let us give credit to every man for the good that he does, and God will see that we get credit for the good we do. There are many splendid institutions in the old world, for the comfort of those that are afflicted, for the sustenance of the poor, for the care of the blind, and the lame, and the halt. There are many grand and glorious benevolent institutions. God will bless those that are engaged in the work of building them up. We delight in all the good that there is throughout all the nations of the earth; we appreciate all, and would give credit to those that are engaged in such good works.4
We are not, as we are supposed to be, believers in the notion that nobody gets to heaven but the “Mormons.” There was a man in England who told a story not long before I left, of a person who died and went to the great gate. After a conflict or confab with Peter, he let the man in; and he said to him, “Now you go along there softly and quietly, and look through that window yonder, then come and tell me what you saw.” So the man went and looked through the window and came back. “What did you see? Now don't talk too loud.” “I saw some people worshiping in there.” Peter replied: “They are the 'Mormons,' and they think they are the only people in heaven and we don't want to disturb them.” We never entertained a notion of that kind. For our religion reaches out to all humanity, of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, as our brothers — sons and daughters of the living God; and we expect, either in this life, in the body, or after we leave here, in the spirit, to help redeem them, to lift them up from a lower condition to a higher, to teach them the truth as it is in the Lord. While we walk in it ourselves and set the example, to try to bring them along in the train according to their own agency and willingness, or unwillingness. Thank God we have learned something of our Father's purposes; for the redemption of His children. Those who know Him not and will not come to Him while they dwell in the body are not eternally lost, for He still reaches after them all, every member of Adam's race; and sometime in the great future He will see that they have the opportunity, as I have said, of receiving the truth, and He has places prepared for them all, according to their conceptions and receptions of the truth. By receiving the truth and living it we become better and more prepared for a higher plane, and so it will be with all the myriads in the spirit world. Sometime or other they will hear the truth as it is in the Lord, and our privilege and blessing will be to help redeem them from darkness, from ignorance, from superstition, and from death, and aid in the grand work undertaken by Jesus Christ, our elder brother, the redemption of the human family, until every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is the Christ, to the glory of God the Father.
This, in brief, is our mission, brethren and sisters. Let us perform it; do what we can here at our home in the valleys of the mountains; send out our sons and daughters and our brethren to the world: gave aid and comfort and help to those who come here from afar. Do not let them suffer for the necessaries of life. Find means of employment for them, and you folks that have come from the old world, do not forget your friends whom you have left behind. Write to them and tell them the truth as it is, so that they may not remain in ignorance concerning our affairs here. And you elders in Israel, who have ministered among the people abroad, and they have been kind to you and helped you, write to them; let them know you remember them; don't neglect them. You brethren who are bishops, and others who can find employment for men, help your brethren when they come home from missions; do not neglect these good boys when they come home from abroad. If they can't find employment, look around and help find something for them to do. Put them in the harness, in the societies and in the organizations; give them something to do. That is what I tried to do over in the mission field. When the boys had something to do every day, they did not have time to get homesick; and when one would get the symptoms, I would send him tract distributing, or give him something else to do. Do not let them go on in idleness.
You brethren who have come home, do not go into by and for- bidden paths; do not forget the injunctions you received before you came away from the old world. Be Latter-day Saints in very deed. Avoid the pitfalls and snares which will be laid for your feet. Serve the Lord; keep His commandments; show an example worthy of the imitation of those who are around you. Remember that you bear the vessels of the Lord; you must be clean and pure in your hearts and in your conduct; then you will be bright and shining lights in Israel as well as throughout the world, and God will bring you into your full stature and into your full glory and power and light, as men holding the holy priesthood. He will set you up on high, and you shall be called “the priests of the Lord, the ministers of the Holy One,” in this world and in the world to come; and when the grand work is consummated, and you are raised from the dead, in the first resurrection, you will become kings and priests unto God, and will rule and reign in the house of Israel, and bear sway in the name of the Lord, forever and ever.
Brethren and sisters, Latter-day Saints, I love you with all my heart. Zion is my home. Zion is my desire. To build up Zion and carry this spirit throughout all the world has been my work for many years, and I rejoice in it; and today I praise the Lord for His abundant mercies in bringing me home safely, here among you. May His peace abide with you; may His blessings be upon you; and may you grow into a mighty nation whom the Lord will sustain and bless and ultimately bring back into His glorious presence. Amen.5
Charles W. Penrose, ‘Mormonism A World-Wide Religion,’ The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 73, No. 6 (1911), pp. 81-85.
Charles W. Penrose, ‘Mormonism A World-Wide Religion,’ The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 73, No. 7 (1911), pp. 97-100.
Charles W. Penrose, ‘Mormonism A World-Wide Religion,’ The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 73, No. 8 (1911), pp. 113-117.
Charles W. Penrose, ‘Mormonism A World-Wide Religion,’ The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 73, No. 9 (1911), pp. 129-132.
Charles W. Penrose, ‘Mormonism A World-Wide Religion,’ The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, Vol. 73, No. 10 (1911), pp. 148-150.