Discourse 1895-09-07
No. 10. Vol. LVIII. Thursday, . Price One Penny.
DISCOURSE BY PRESIDENT WILFORD WOODRUFF.
THE following discourse was delivered by President Wilford Woodruff, at
the Davis Stake Conference, in Farmington, September 7, 1895:
How little we knew when we were born; how little we knew when we
were boys and girls; and when we arrived to manhood and the Spirit of
God led us to have faith in the revelations of God, and not to join the
sectarian world, still how little we knew what lay before us and the pur-
poses of God concerning us. I can bear testimony to the truth of the
discourse we listened to this forenoon. We live in a very important day
and generation. We live in the midst of important works of God, and we
little knew in early youth and manhood that we ourselves had been pre-
served in the spirit world for seven thousand years, to stand in the flesh
in the last days, to be called of God to labor in His vineyard and to build
up His Church. Nevertheless these are truths. The Lord has never set
His hand in any age of the world to perform a work unless He has pre-
pared an element to carry out that work. That is our condition as Latter-
day Saints. In my youth I attended Sabbath school under Dr. Porter, a
great minister; but the very moment I began to read the Scriptures and
learn what was in them, that very moment there was a spirit told me that
that Church and Gospel that I read of in the New Testament were not on
the earth. I never heard a minister acknowledge the necessity of the
works that followed the teachings of the Savior and His Apostles. No-
thing would make them angry quicker than to tell them that these were
the works of God and would be again established on the earth. The clergy
would be immediately stirred up if they heard of any one advocating these
things—a thing which I frequently did in my early manhood. I felt that
I could not join any church unless I could find one that taught those
principles which I read of in the New Testament—a church that enjoyed
