I remember a conference years ago in which someone following Bishop Richards spoke of the still small voice. I may fit that description today after this wonderful and energetic and lovely message from Bishop Buehner.

My heart is full of gratitude today for many things. I am very grateful for the rain, and for the lovely weather which preceded it, each of which is a blessing suited to our needs. I am very grateful that we may meet in this marvelous old building. I am grateful for the privilege of missionary service on these grounds for the past six years. One cannot have intimate acquaintance with these buildings day after day and not acquire in his soul an appreciation for them and for those who built them.

These buildings attract others, in addition to us. I remember the guide tour which was joined by a sweet woman from an eastern city. As we left this building she, who had come with some preconceived negative notions about Mormonism but had been touched by what she heard and felt here, turned to her husband and almost reverentially and with a tear in her eye said to him, but still with her notions, "George, isn't it marvelous what ignorant people can do?"

Well, it has been a great blessing these years to be able to tell such good people, and many thousands like them, that the people who did the work which we enjoy here today and each day, were not ignorant. They were people of courage and faith and dignity and initiative and integrity, who were always willing to give up conveniences and comforts but never their convictions; they were not ignorant people.

It has been a great privilege also to know, as we have learned to love these buildings and those who built them, something of other monuments which they left us, not so physically tangible, but infinitely more important. Last night as I walked through these grounds at a late hour—and I make a habit of that, I commend it to you, for these are beautiful and thoughtful and wonderful hours, in the early morning and late evening—I thought of the words reported to be inscribed on the tombstone of Sir Christopher Wren, the great British architect and builder. It is said that there is written on the tomb of this man who built more than fifty chapels in London, including St. Paul's, and was one of the great architects of his day, these words: "If you seek his monument, look around you."

I suggest to you that as Latter-day Saints it isn't very difficult to look around us and see the monuments left by those who worked here so well and courageously, and with such integrity, so long ago. In the moment or two available, may I suggest two or three of these other monuments which they made available, to us: the monumental blessing, for instance, of truth and testimony, of spiritual knowledge, of freedom from the sins of the world; the monumental heritage of possibility for personal union with God, for peace in this life, and eternal life in the world to come; the monumental gift of great books of scripture, in which are written not only the lessons of life, but the great revelations of God to men. And with these and all the other monuments, they left us the monument of work, which they were willing and able to perform. O how we need to learn it.

With a knowledge of these monuments they dedicated to us, there comes the sober second thought expressed well by Goethe, the great German poet-philosopher, who said: "What from your fathers' heritage is lent, earn it anew to really possess it," which is to say that while these great blessings of monumental value come to us from our pioneer forebears, they are of such a nature that they may be really possessed only by him or her who is willing to really earn and merit them.

There was the day, and I recall it with pleasure, when a man came here, a man from the government of Israeli, in fact he was a ministerial official of that nation. I happened to be late in the evening, and there weren't many people around, and I had a casual and very pleasant talk with him. He was a jolly fellow of the kind Brother Buehner has been talking about, a little bit corpulent and pleasant and humorous. He was a Jew of intelligence, with rabbinical training in fact. He asked many questions of interest about us and our faith, and I had the privilege of telling him as best I could of the great truths, monumental truths, that had come to us from God through our forebears. He invited conversation about our relationship, him and me, and I told him we were cousins in a real sense, that we both came from the family of Israel, and I identified myself as being of the lineage of Ephraim. He leaned back, gasped, and said, "Say again." And so we began to repeat, "Through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and through Joseph to Ephraim, came the covenant blessings; many of us are of Ephraim."

"Well," he said, "I came to America to learn about agriculture. I came to Utah to learn about irrigation. I expected to learn many interesting things, but I never expected to find the lost sons of Ephraim."

He went away. He came back in the morning. He said, "Tell me again." So we told him, "From God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and through Joseph to Ephraim come the birthright blessings." And we talked for some time, identifying his progenitors, his forebears, with ours, and he left figuratively, almost literally, holding his head in his hands with what he had heard. We have heard from him several times since, he bearing testimony in his own way of this, to him, new and marvelous story. And I thought how grateful I am for the monumental link left me which connects me with all dispensations past, which tells me who I am, whence I came, and what my destiny might be.

I am grateful for many other monumental truths. If it were feasible we might show you a file, full of letters from people of education, wealth, power, prominence, good character, reiterating, each of them in his own words, the simple story one of them told as he wrote, "I found in one hour on these grounds among your people more peace and faith and something to hang to than I had ever known before." Well, these are monumental blessings, but they come to us only as we individually earn them, which is the only manner in which we might really possess them.

May I suggest to you, as I conclude, one other little item which I think will be of interest. I mentioned the great scriptures, these books of truth and revelation, which God has given us. These too must be individually earned to be possessed. It would thrill you, and in a sense make you chagrined, as it has me, to learn the reaction of many great and good people to these scriptures. Let me read you two lines from two letters from a certain doctor from Tel-Aviv. He had had the Book of Mormon. He said, "The first reading has made this material precious for me in another sense. It deals with many problems occupying me, as every man concerned with his and mankind's destiny." And he writes a little later, "I would like to add that I have been deeply impressed by everything that I have read about you, and particularly as a Hebrew scholar, by the true continuation of the Bible spirit in the Book of Mormon."

I will read one other simple sentence from a lovely woman who picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon and who wrote this: "I am reading with greatest delight the blessed truths contained in that book. I never dreamed that the Book of Mormon was like that; in fact, I thought hard things about it and you, for I received my information from articles in secular magazines. I belong to another denomination, but," and get this, "how I rejoice to know the truth and drink in the precious words of men like Nephi and Mosiah and Alma;" and my heart rejoices, and I think to myself, how marvelous it is to be able to drink in the precious words of Nephi and Mosiah and Alma, and yet how many Latter-day Saints have lived and died without ever having known them.

God bless us to appreciate, to understand what the scriptures say. Hear the Lord's word recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants: "For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift"  D&C 88:33

God help us to appreciate the monuments around us. God bless us that we may have sense enough, faith enough, courage enough, to understand that there are marvelous truths that we might really possess, but which we must individually earn anew, if we would have them, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.