We here and the Saints everywhere rejoice in the inspiration, the hope, the counsel, and the blessing of the great message of President Grant. May he live yet many years to give us his wise leadership.

SATAN'S POWER BEING EXERCISED

I humbly pray that while I stand before you, I shall have an interest in your faith and prayers, that I may be able to say something that will be encouraging and up-building in these times of stress. These are trying times. Satan is walking up and down throughout the earth  Job 1:7 He is wielding a power and an influence greater than ever has been before in my generation. We shall be able to keep the commandments of the Lord and carry out his work only as the Lord shall give us help, give us strength, and only as we shall live for those blessings,

It has been our boast—I was about to say—that God has poured out upon us in the last one last one hundred years since the establishing of the gospel a fulness of knowledge and of wisdom as to matters spiritual, not only, but also as to matters temporal never before equaled in the same time in the whole history of the world.

I need not recount to you the achievements in science, in art, and in all that is done to make life comfortable and secure. We have harnessed the forces of nature in a way they have never been harnessed before. God has been prolific in the showering upon us of his blessings, and yet, he having so blessed us and so brought things to our service, we are now engaged in using every one of them that is available and usable of art and science to the destruction of our fellow men. Nothing that art or science has done but is used now to kill.

THE LORD TRIED BY THE ACTS OF MEN

We sometimes speak of our trials. I wonder if we remember what must be the trials of the Lord. He was sorely tried in the days of Noah. He was tried with Sodom and Gomorrah. He was tried by Israel. He has been tried in our day. I am sure he is being tried now. We alone, we of the older men—not the youth whom we have sent out to fight our battles—we are responsible for the conditions in this world. God will expect us, of this group of priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—he will expect us to act as the ten righteous who could have saved Sodom and Gomorrah, if Abraham had been able to find so many  Gen. 18:32

PREPARATION FOR RETURN OF SOLDIERS

We hear a great deal today about postwar planning. It relates primarily, always, to our economic life. I am not much impressed with this planning, because in my view there are too many uncertain elements connected therewith to enable us wisely to plan. We shall have to wait and see what the postwar brings through forces and elements over which we have no control.

But there is one bit of postwar planning that we can do, and to that I would like to refer. Our boys, children almost, have gone out to do battle on the battlefronts of the world. We sent them out boys, in their innocence, in their inexperience, in their joyousness. We are going to have them back men, premature men, who have undergone trials of which we know nothing, who faced death consciously, day after day. Some of them will return—we hope most of them—glorious in their triumph over temptations and sin, able to take their place as the leaders of this people and as the leaders of the nation, seasoned in righteousness, seasoned in courage, seasoned in everything that goes to make a man and a servant of God.

But some are coming back wounded in spirit and in mind by hate, by revenge, by a willingness to kill, and sometimes by a will to kill, wounded and corrupted under compulsion in thoughts and acts and concepts which have never entered our minds and hearts. They are coming back questioning, questioning sometimes even the existence of a God who, as they look at it, would not tolerate such things as they have gone through, they not understanding that we have brought these ills upon ourselves. What are we going to do with these?

I am not thinking of their making a livelihood. That is the least of the problems. I am wondering into what kind of homes we are going to bring these boys back. Is there to be contention; is there to be fault-finding; is there to be discord? Is it to be to homes without faith, without righteousness, homes in which unchastity dwells with its corrupting curse? Or are we to bring them back into homes of patience and charity, into homes of righteous living? Are we going to bring them back into homes of confidence and of love, of chastity, of respect for their fellow men? Are we going to bring them back into Latter-day Saint homes, and there carefully nurture and rebuild, until they shall once more become as near as may be normal men? Are we going to bring them back into homes of faith in God, faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, and his atoning mission and sacrifice, faith in the restored gospel and in Joseph Smith, with all that that implies?

That is a bit of postwar planning that can be done by every man and the head of every family in this Church and in this nation, and in the world. It is a postwar planning that requires no knowledge of new elements. It is a postwar planning that merely requires that we shall live the gospel, seek the Spirit of the Lord, ask his help, a planning that requires that we and our families shall live in accordance with the principles which he has given to us. How can we do that? By prayer, by keeping the Word of Wisdom, by love, by respect for the rights of others, by that companionship in the home between mother and father, brothers and sisters, that can take the wounded soul back to the bosom of the family, and make it whole.

I urge upon you Latter-day Saints this postwar planning. It is your duty to your own; it is your duty to yourself; it is your duty to your God. It is within the reach of each and every one.

The Savior, commenting to the multitude after John's disciples had come and asked about him and whether he was the Savior, said:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light  Matt. 11:28-30

God grant that to every father and mother, to every wife there will come the power to prepare themselves to receive back and nurture to health and strength the wounded soul which may come to them after this great war is over, that those who return may once more become useful members of the Church, and of society, and so shape their lives that they, too, may come to rest in glory in our Father's kingdom, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen.