My brethren, as always I come to you in fear and trembling and in humility, and I ask our Heavenly Father to bless me, that what I may say tonight may be of some value to us in our work.

POWER OF THE PRIESTHOOD

I am again impressed, as always, by the strength of the priesthood. I have seen it work in the lives of many men. I have seen them grow under its power and its influence. I have seen men moving in the walks of life of the world increased in power and in influence, far beyond their natural abilities, and I am sure the only reason for it was the possession of the priesthood.

The priesthood, of course, must not be taken lightly, and as I have said to you before, the priesthood cannot be taken off and put back on at will as you would a coat. Once endowed by the priesthood it remains with you. You may forfeit its power, the power may go, but your priesthood is still there, and in the days to come God will judge us by the use we have made of it, and we can no more escape that consequence than we can escape death. That fact should be with us always and never absent from us.

UNITY

I wish again to refer tonight to my favorite subject of unity. I sometimes think that for me this is sort of an air on the G string that I play every time.

I am grateful to Brother Harold B. Lee today for making some variations to my tune. I adopt them: I am grateful for them. But with his permission I want to play my tune again.

I say to you again, brethren, as I have said every priesthood meeting night for years, that if you are united, if you will act as one man in carrying out the purposes of the Lord, there is absolutely nothing that can withstand your power.

LOYALTY

An essential part of unity is loyalty. There can be no union where loyalty does not exist. Loyalty is a pretty difficult quality to possess. It requires the ability to put away selfishness, greed ambition and all of the baser qualities of the human mind. You can not be loyal unless you are willing to surrender. There is no growth mental, physical or spiritual, unless there be some curtailment, some sacrifice, may I say, on the part of him who would be loyal. His own preferences and desires must be put away, and he must see only the great purpose which lies out ahead.

CASES OF DISLOYALTY

I have spoken in the past about loyalty to authority. You remember reference has already been indirectly made to this tonight by Brother McKay, speaking of Peter. You remember how when the Lord told what was going to befall him, the Lord, Peter avowed his loyalty to the Lord. The Lord picked him up very quickly and told him that before the cock should crow he would deny Him the Lord, thrice. And Peter said: "Oh no, though I should die, yet I will not deny thee." And yet before the cock did crow the next morning he had three times denied his knowledge of an acquaintance with the Lord  Matt. 26:31-35

President McKay has referred tonight to the fact that at the cross when the Son of Man was offering himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world there was only one apostle there and that was John  John 19:25-27 The rest, apparently, did not have the loyalty to go and see the Master die.

Loyalty to themselves has been a highly prized and sometimes too rare a virtue with all the brethren who have stood at the head of the Church, some more than others. Joseph suffered from disloyalty, and this has been referred to during the conference, for even those nearest to him plotted to overthrow him and he charged some of them with plotting his death. Brother Brigham had his critics—men who could not be loyal, men whose own ambition, own greed, own objects, prevented them from following Brigham and helping him out. There were tens of thousands, however, who did have the loyalty and who followed.

You cannot have loyalty and be a carping critic. That just cannot be.

OBEDIENCE THROUGH FAITH

Now another point, brethren. Sometimes local presiding officers say, why, why should this be done, why should this course be followed? This does not apply to our local situation and that does not apply to somebody else's situation. Do you remember that after Adam was driven from the Garden of Eden he was offering sacrifice and an angel of the Lord came to him and said: "Why dost thou offer sacrifice unto the Lord?"

He said: "I know not, save the Lord commanded me."

And then the angel explained to Adam what the sacrifice meant  Moses 5:5-9 and the point I want to make from that is that obedience must often precede knowledge.

We are prone to try to rationalize and to say that the things we cannot understand cannot be. Well how much is there in the physical world that we do not understand and that even the wisest of our scientific savants do not understand. They theorize about it. None of us here, perhaps one or two of us may, but very few of us here, can understand the atom bomb, can understand whence comes the power and the heat of the bomb that cause such great destruction. The fact that we cannot understand it makes no difference at all. The atom bomb, unfortunately, works, and metes out its terrible destruction whether we know or not. Nations, apparently, are prepared to do anything, stoop to any level, to try to discover about the hydrogen bomb which is supposed to be so much more terrible than the bomb we have. Those of us here, the great bulk of us, know nothing about the hydrogen bomb. Does that make any difference to the fact of the bomb, the destruction still comes. The human mind cannot fully fathom the purposes of the Lord. We see them dimly. We see as through a glass darkly, but that does not change the fact that the purposes are there, even though we do not understand them.

LINCOLN'S FAITH

What a narrow measure it is to try and judge and calculate the infinite by the little our finite minds know. A story is told of Lincoln, who was supposed to be a great skeptic in his younger life. When he was down at Richmond as the war was drawing to a close one of his early companions—I think it was General Reynolds—suddenly came around the corner of the tent where the President was living and found him reading the Bible. The General began to twit him about reading the Bible, basing the raillery on the early life, as he understood it, of Lincoln. Then Lincoln said: "Well, I have grown older and wiser. I now read the Bible. I believe all I can and I take the rest on faith."

And that is about where all of us are when it comes to the infinities that are involved in our spiritual welfare.

LOYALTY ONE TO ANOTHER

I want to say a word now about unity in the mass, our loyalty one to the other. It is not enough that you be loyal to those who are in authority over you. You must be loyal, one to another, and you will appreciate on a moment's thought what that loyalty will require in your dealings, one with another. Unless you can be loyal, one to another, the strength of the priesthood cannot be exercised, and I repeat, that means that out of our hearts must go the greed and the avarice, the ambition, that sometimes we let lodge there.

A short time ago some gentlemen came here to write an article about us, and as frequently happens, they came to see the First Presidency, and as frequently happens, their approach was kindly more or less respectful, almost deferential. They were going to do a great job. We have become accustomed to that approach and try to keep our guards up as well as we can. They wrote a story and the title of it, as I recall it, was, "The Mormons Move Over." The implication as I remember it was that we are sort of being crowded out, surrendering our position. We were on the downgrade.

Well, there was a time, brethren, when we moved over as we were bid, or forced, but if we have unity and loyalty we do not need to move over until we wish.

A GROWING CHURCH

This is a growing Church. It has the priesthood of Almighty God in it and directing it, and God will honor His priesthood if we, its bearers, honor it.

I read a story once. A judge was out driving one Sunday morning in Hyde Park, London. He had a coachman and a very spirited team. The park was filled with other buggies, teams, baby carriages and nurses and all the rest, and suddenly his team took fright and started to run away. As the coachmen dodged in and out among the other vehicles, the judge got more and more excited. He could see possible suits for damages for large amounts as he gazed at some of the handsome equipages they were narrowly missing. As the horses gained momentum he moved farther and farther to the front of his seat and then he called out to the coachman: "Henry, for goodness sake, drive into something cheap."

We were "cheap," once. Everybody considered it within his right and it certainly has been within his power to treat us, write about us, talk about us as he wished. But we are not "cheap" anymore, brethren, if we will be united and loyal. And the respect which men have for us is built, almost entirely, upon our loyalty and devotion to the cause which we represent. We do not need to put ourselves into a position where anybody can think that it is his power and his right to write spurious articles about us. They will be written but they will not be believed.

SCRIPTURE READING

One thing more before I sit down. I would like to urge you brethren to read the scriptures, not somebody's interpretation of them. Read them. They are the original sources. You go to them and read them. Make up your own minds about them.

When the Prophet, Seer and Revelator speaks, when he interprets, we follow. So with the brethren when they speak under the influence of the Holy Ghost. We have a growing lot of books, a growing lot of courses of study, but I urge you to read the scriptures, so that you may get your own idea as to what they mean.

I close as I began, brethren, that there is nothing that should be done, that we cannot do, if we shall be united and loyal, united in our purpose, loyal to those who preside over us and to the cause which we represent. That we may be so united and so loyal, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.