EVIDENCE OF INSPIRATION DERIVED FROM THE WISDOM IN THE PLAN PROPOSED FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE TEMPORAL CONDITION OF MANKIND.
The New Dispensation of the gospel of Jesus Christ does not regard alone the spiritual welfare of man; it contemplates also his temporal salvation. That is, it looks to the amelioration of those conditions which today render the lot of by far the greater portion of the human race so hard to endure.
Nothing can be more patent to the understanding than the fact that the basis of all our commercial or other industrial enterprises, is selfishness. The selfish desire for wealth that ease and luxury may follow and be enjoyed, or power wielded that shall administer to family pride or vain ambition, seems to have taken complete possession of the thoughts of civilized man, and well nigh fills up the sphere of his activity. Almost unconsciously selfishness has been intensified in our modern life. The inventions of our time have greatly multiplied human conveniences and luxuries. Ease that springs from affluence has been brought within the reach of a greater number of people than at any other time in the world's history; yet those who have entered within the charmed circle of the enjoyment of ease and luxury are not satisfied. Something is lacking to the completeness of their contentment. They see for one thing the instability of their wealth, and note what small affairs may wrest it from them. So that the fear of losing what is possessed is well nigh as tormenting as the inability to gain riches. The wish to permanently secure that which is possessed, and in like security have it descend to their posterity occasions as much anxiety and effort on the part of the rich, as the determination to come to the possession of wealth occasions the less fortunate—the envious poor.
Instead of this wider distribution of comforts and luxuries among mankind contributing to the sum of human contentment, it has increased its restlessness; for luxury being more commonly paraded in the face of the masses has maddened all with a desire to possess it, and, failing in that, life is felt to be scarce worth the living. But possession is possible only to the few; the great mass of humanity is excluded from its attainment.
This success of the few and the failure of the many divides civilized communities into two classes—the proud and the envious. It also results in the division of communities into capitalists and laborers; the former living in affluence on the proceeds of their wealth, the latter, for the most part, eking out an existence on the insufficient means secured through their labor. Capital, it must be said, feels power and forgets right; labor in its despair grows desperate and violates the law. Capital, to secure and perpetuate its interests, combines into huge corporations which control production and the markets, waters its stock, bribes legislatures, congresses and parliaments; oppresses labor in its wages, robs the people; and having thrived by its chicanery and fraud, laughs at all attempts to wrest from it the spoils in which it revels.
Labor, to protect itself against the ever-increasing greed and power of capital, forms societies and leagues and asks not only what is easily recognized as its rights, but often demands that which capital cannot give. Each confident in its ability to coerce the other, lockouts and strikes follow, with the result that not infrequently the conflict ends in civil strife, lawlessness and bloodshed.
Meantime wealth accumulates in the hands of the few; and if every year does not see the condition of the masses growing worse and worse, it is a fact at least that there is no just proportion between the increasing gains of the capitalists and the wages of the laborers. As a result, the bitterness between employer and the employed increases every year; and the sphere of our industrial activities, instead of presenting a scene of harmony and good-will, where the interests of both capital and labor are recognized as existing in common, and the welfare of both dependent on each, it represents more nearly the scene of two hostile camps where distrust and jealousy have arrayed the respective parties for deadly conflict.
Philosophers and philanthropists who have seen and deplored the evils of our modern system of economics have not been wanting; but only a few have ventured to propose remedies. Of these some have suggested cooperative methods in trade, in manufactures, in commerce and other labor, with an equal distribution of profits, as not only securing the conservation of energy, but also a more equitable basis of economics than our present individual and competitive methods. Many attempts have been made to carry out these principles in practice, and for a time, in several instances, partial success has been attained. In the end, however, human greed, weakness, or individual necessity, real or imagined, together with inability to make the system universal—a condition necessary to the system's success, according to the claims of its advocates—have proven too much for these attempts at co-operation, and the several enterprises have either drifted into the hands of a corporation or become the concerns of individuals, or else have been absolutely abandoned.
Others seeing the failure of voluntary attempts to secure the benefits of the co-operative system, have advocated the enlargement of the powers of the State to the extent of consigning to it the management of all industry; so far taking control of the individual as to compel him to work, according to his capacity and remunerate him according to his wants.
Others have gone even further than this, and proposed not only to make the individual a creature of the State, in relation to the matter of labor and wages, but to control him in all the relations of life, even invading the domestic relations to the extent of abolishing the marriage institution and all domestic government founded on paternal authority. These last two suggestions, with various amplifications, are classed as socialism and communism respectively. The former has many advocates in nearly all civilized countries, especially in Germany and France, where they wield a political influence of considerable potency. The latter, communism, since the abortive efforts of Robert Owen in England, of St. Simon and Fourier in France, and M. Cabet—the disciple of Fourier—at Nauvoo, Illinois, United States, may be considered as relegated to the graveyard of impracticable theories which from time to time have engaged the attention of philosophical minds with a bent for speculation in human affairs.
But bad as our modern system of economics may be, with all its manifest absurdities in the waste of energy, the unfairness in the distribution of the products of industry, still mankind has, so far, preferred to endure its known evils and incongruities rather than to trust their fortunes to the proposed systems of the socialists and communists.
The New Dispensation of the Gospel, however, contemplating as it does the ushering in of that era of peace on earth and goodwill among men of which angels have sung and prophets written, must perforce and does, as I remarked at the opening of this chapter, take account of the social and industrial conditions prevailing, and offers a solution for the difficulties presented which, while within the possibility of performance, is effectual as a remedy for the evils under which humanity groans. Failure to do this would have been a grave defect in a work making the pretensions of that founded by Joseph Smith. Moreover, since what it has to offer as a solution of existing industrial inequalities and evils is either based on or is itself direct revelation from God, the Divine wisdom must appear in the plan proposed for the betterment of humanity's condition. All this mankind has a right to expect of a divine plan for such a purpose, and all this I claim for the plan revealed through Joseph Smith.
That plan does not begin with the community or the nation, and through the community or state seek to reach the individual. While not ignoring the value of institutions or the necessity for favorable conditions, it does not put its whole trust in arbitrary institutions or regulations for the successful accomplishment of its purposes. It comes first to the individual with a cry of repentance, with an appeal to turn unto righteousness. It teaches him that by repentance, accompanied with true and holy faith in God, he may attain through baptism to a remission of sins, to a consciousness of renewed innocence, lost through transgression, and to the possession of the Holy Ghost. This last adds to his own strength, in some degree, the strength of the Almighty God. Through its influence he is guided into all truth, taught a knowledge of the things of heaven, receives a testimony that Jesus is the Christ; by it he is reproved for his errors; commended for resisting evil; prompted in uncertainty; by courting its influence and listening to its counsels he is purified in heart, is purged of his lusts and his selfishness, loves his neighbor as himself, and is ready to seek another's rather than his own good.
It is with an element such as this—cleansed and purified by such a process, and thus made fit for the Master's use—that the plan revealed through Joseph Smith proposes to deal. It is an evidence that other schemes for the amelioration of the distresses of mankind originated in the petty wisdom of man that they did not take into account the necessary preparation of the elements for their model communities. And let me observe, in passing, that that preparation can only be made through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the spirit of it outlined above. It is vain for men to seek to build up communities in which selfishness shall be abolished, and love and goodwill abound, until they have developed in the separate units that are to compose it the same qualities that are to be characteristic of the community; for communities can be no better than the individuals that compose them. As well might men hope to mix to the same consistency pieces of iron and pieces of clay, make a rope of dry sand, or do anything else impossible, as to undertake to organize a society in which want shall be abolished, unselfishness abound, and all the virtues prevail, with men unrighteous, proud, envious, jealous, lustful, suspicious, treacherous and possessed of no higher gauge of right and truth than human intelligence. Here, then, begins to be seen the wisdom of the plan for the temporal salvation of mankind revealed through Joseph Smith: it begins with the individual—with the preparation of the elements.
Next to the preparation of the elements, the plan recognizes the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It also recognizes the fact that the earth is the Lord's; that it is his by right of proprietorship. He created it and sustains it by his power, and man's right to the portions of it he seizes so greedily can only be that of a steward. Following these principles to their legitimate conclusion, the plan contemplates the complete consecration unto the Lord all the possessions of those who accept it. The person who desires to make the consecration brings his possessions to the bishop of the Church, and delivers them to him, with a deed and covenant that cannot be broken.[1] The consecration is complete.
The person so consecrating his possessions, whether they be great or small, if it be a full consecration, has claim upon the bishop for a stewardship out of the consecrated properties of the Church. That stewardship may be a farm, a factory, a publishing house, mercantile establishment, a home with the privilege of following a trade or profession, according to individual tastes, abilities or capacities. The stewardships are secured to those unto whom they are granted by a deed and covenant that cannot b............