As we go out to the stakes of Zion and the wards of the Church, we feel the warmth and the friendliness of the good people who always makes us so welcome, and as we come into your assemblies, there is a friendliness, and we are made to feel at home. But as we meet here in the Tabernacle with all of you together, it becomes a real challenge, and I sincerely trust that while I stand here I may have an interest in your faith and prayers.

COST OF MISSIONARY SERVICE

The other day at the opening session of conference some rather imposing figures were presented. Among them was the cost of our missionary service, a cost amounting to over four million dollars, which comes from the general funds of the Church. To that should be added the contributions of the families that make possible the boys and girls called to the mission field.

We have nearly five thousand missionaries. The average cost for each missionary a month is about fifty-three dollars. That alone would amount to three million dollars a year. Then add to that the equipment, clothing, and other personal accessories, and railroad fares for the missionaries to reach their fields of labor, which costs are largely borne by the families of the Church, and it would probably amount to another million dollars; so that we have something like four million dollars cost in the sending of our five thousand missionaries to the nations of the earth. I doubt that that figure would cover the entire expense. Then, as has been suggested here the money that these boys could earn were they to remain at home represents another imposing figure.

Brother Sonne remarked the other day that the Bishop of York, who spoke from this pulpit a year or more ago, on his return to England had been quite complimentary to the Church. Among other things he had said that the Mormon Church must be a very wealthy institution to maintain such an impressive missionary service.

The funds for that service come from all the people, rich and poor alike, and if the truth were known, it would be found that most of these funds come from the very humble of the Church—those of very limited means. So this does represent a great contribution on the part of Church members, and it brings home to us what it costs to be a Latter-day Saint.

SACRIFICES OF CONVERTS

But there is another phase to it that transcends all the material costs. I have reference to those who have made great sacrifices in coming into the Church. Brother Widtsoe touched on it briefly this morning when he mentioned the immigrants who come here many learning a new language, making new adjustments, the conditions altogether different from those they left in the Old Country. Many of them have had to sacrifice their own kindred and loved ones, being told in some instances that they had to choose between this new religion and their own families, and their new-found religion has been their choice. This has been a common experience in this Church from the beginning.

CONVERSION OF GRANDMOTHER

I remember my worthy grandmother, a Quaker, who was converted in Pennsylvania through the coming of some of the missionaries in the days of the Prophet Joseph. My mother at one time had a great decision to make, one that was to try her to the very depths. Grandmother said to her in her typical Quaker style, "Thee will find that it is not always easy to live the truth, but thee will also find that there is joy and peace that comes in thus living." This grandmother and her people, including her mother and seven daughters, had had the restored gospel presented to them by the missionaries, and they accepted it. They found the witness; they believed. The father in that home was to say to them (a witness of the truth had not come to him), "You can either choose this so-called religion or me." The witness had come to them, and with that witness there always comes a responsibility. The Savior said:

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come  Matt. 24:14

When that witness comes into the human heart, it brings, I repeat, a responsibility—a responsibility that we cannot escape. And this good Quaker grandmother felt that she could not escape it.

She did not believe the Book of Mormon when it was first presented to her. She read it and read it again and she could not get away from it. Finally the witness came, and that's when she made her decision. She had no other choice, and finally she said to her husband, "If that's it, then it must be." So she, with her seven daughters and some of their families, started for Nauvoo.

There was nothing inviting when they arrived in Nauvoo. Nauvoo had been built up and was now a lovely city, but persecution was rampant. The economic conditions of the people were not good; apostasy prevailed; the Prophet was being undermined on every hand; and into this influence came this good family. I wonder sometimes what some of us would do under similar circumstances; and yet they never wavered; they never failed.

President Grant's mother had to face the same problem. She was told that it was either her new-found religion or her inheritance and her family. She chose her religion because she, too, had received the witness.

I have always been thrilled in reading the story of Brother Widtsoe's mother. She may be no different from hundreds of Scandinavian mothers who have come here. They had to make decisions. They had to decide whether it was their relatives, their friends, or this unpopular religion. So I repeat, my brethren and sisters, the foundation of this Church has been laid at a great cost.

BLESSINGS RECEIVED

The cost we pay today is minor—comparable to the great blessings received, it amounts to nothing. The Lord has blessed us abundantly, has given us of his substance that we might use it to build up the Church and kingdom, so that we need have no anxiety about any of these costs. I repeat, they are minor.

But the greatest cost of all is that cost we pay which gives strength and character to our people, a cost that has built a foundation against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.

Now today what does it all mean to us? What did it mean to these good people? I could name many more who made great sacrifices, and we have them today. We have our modern pioneers out in the world who are giving up their all because of the witness they have in their souls. And that will always be. But what does it do? I repeat again what my worthy grandmother said to my mother, that it brings peace and joy to the human heart.

JESUS THE CHRIST

That is why Easter means so much to the Latter-day Saints. It isn't the symbolism, the pageantry, that we are conscious of today. It is the fundamental truth that Jesus is the Christ, that he lives, and what he appeared in this day to the Prophet Joseph.

When I say "in this day," have you ever stopped to think how close that is? There are men sitting on this stand whose fathers knew the man who communed with Jehovah. The man to whom God the Father, and Jesus Christ, the Son, appeared and bore witness again of the reality of the life of Jesus Christ, that the resurrection is true, the literal resurrection as President Clark explained to us this morning in his impressive address. That is how close it is.

STATEMENT OF LOUIS PASTEUR

A consciousness of this truth brings peace to your soul and mine. I read recently a statement by one of the French scientists, Louis Pasteur, who lived about eighty years ago, at a time when skepticism prevailed throughout France. He was trying to prove before the French Academy that the theory of spontaneous generation was not true. When he was chided by his associates for only accepting that which he could prove, he said:

This is not to be taken to mean that, in my beliefs and in the conduct of my life, I only take account of acquired science: if I would, I could not do so, for I should then have to strip myself of a part of myself. There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observation, experimentation, and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children (he had just lost a son in the Franco-Prussian War), and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will and lives in that hope, the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die. The two domains are distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them trespass on each other in the so imperfect state of human knowledge.

He was deeply religious. He had a spiritual concept. Most men of science have that deep concept and a deep humility in their search for truth. He said:

I see everywhere the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the world; through it, the supernatural is at the bottom of every heart. The idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite.

In other words, the spiritual is just as real as is the side of a test tube. The spiritual is just as real as the physical. That was the fundamental doctrine of the Prophet Joseph.

And so today, Easter means something to you and me. It is worth while—this great cost. It was worth while to our forebears, my brethren and sisters, and it is worth while to us. I join with you and with my associates in expressing the gratitude of my heart for the peace that has come to my soul and comes every day, in the confidence and the knowledge that I have of the divinity of this great work.

God help us to be true to it, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.