My brethren and sisters: If I say anything that may be helpful to you this afternoon, it will be because you lend me your faith and prayers, for I sense a deep feeling of responsibility as I occupy your time.

I represent one of the quorums of the priesthood which we call the General Authorities of the Church. You face the General Authorities. We face the great body of the priesthood who regulate, under the direction of the General Authorities, the affairs of the wards, the stakes, and the missions of the Church. To bear that priesthood is a tremendous responsibility, and it is the duty of us who bear it to magnify it, to come to understand through our faith, our prayers, and our Service what the duties of the various offices are and then strive to magnify our calling.

Whenever one accepts an ordination in the priesthood, I take it that there is an implied promise, even if it is not voiced, that he will undertake to magnify that calling. Too many of us, I think, when we fail, lay it to the fact that the devil tempts us. I think myself, we ought to take personal responsibility for it, because when we are endowed with the priesthood we are supposed to have access to our heavenly Father and to his Spirit, which would give us control over all of these weaknesses and temptations, and if we would enjoy to the very fullest the Spirit of God, we would have that control.

Now, the only way to get this Spirit that I know of is to work for it. The Lord has said if we would do the things he has told us to do, we will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God  John 7:17 And we should strive first of all to get that testimony that will carry us through and over all the temptations and pitfalls that may lie in our path. I think that is the only way really to know that the gospel is true, to put it into practice in our lives. There are many of us, perhaps, who feel that the position which we hold is not too important, but I like, as I go through the stakes and meet the priesthood of the stakes, to express my idea that so far as I am concerned, the most important job, if you want to call it a job, and the most important assignment in the priesthood is the one I have. If I can manage to magnify my calling, I should not worry about what other people, either ahead of me or who work along by my side, are able to do. My problem, brethren and sisters, is to magnify my particular calling.

Now the priesthood of the brethren who stand before us is a great and wonderful endowment. All of the grand and glorious privileges that we enjoy as members of the Church come to us only through the offices of that priesthood. We should appreciate it, brothers and sisters; we should love it; and we should strive to magnify it.

This has been the problem, of course, of mankind from the beginning, to live in a manner that would please God. We should strive to do it.

Now, some of us are presidents of elders' quorums, some of us are presidents of seventies' quorums, some of us are presidents of high priests' quorums, and some of us have special offices in this priesthood. Are we willing, and are we determined to accept the responsibilities of these various offices and magnify them?

Brethren and sisters, when I contemplate the fact that the privileges which you and I enjoy are carrying into a life which will extend beyond this one into eternity, then I am overpowered with the thought that I should bend every effort and every power within me to magnify my calling, so I should be worthy of a high and exalted position afterwards. It is within the possibility of every man to do it. That was the design of God, our heavenly Father, that we should come here with equal privileges. The problem is, are we willing, and will we do it? We can if we will. Will we leave this conference with a renewed determination to magnify our callings, and to help the people whom we are set apart to help, we who are leaders of the Church, or will we just think we have had a pleasant time and proceed to forget the admonitions?

Brethren and sisters, we cannot afford to forget the good resolutions that we make when we sit under the spell of these brethren who are surrounding us. We cannot wish ourselves into success; praying will help; but there must be activity if we magnify this calling.

There are many of us, as I said, who are presidents of elders' quorums. The elders' quorum is the largest quorum in the Melchizedek Priesthood, larger than the combined quorums of the high priests and the seventies. If we would strive to benefit and bless the Melchizedek Priesthood, generally, in the Church, it seems that that is the place where we should put special effort, because it is the large group, and it just happens to be, if we can trust the statistics of the Church, the group where our help could be most effective and most noticeable. But do we do it? We, who are presidents of the elders' quorums? Do we sit down with our brethren, privately, and talk over their problems with them, striving to encourage them in their work, or are we content to stand up before them on Sunday morning in the quorum meeting, announce a hymn and a prayer and a speaker, and let it go at that?

Bishop Buehner this morning spoke about the dignity of ward teaching. I believe the best ward teaching that I ever heard of was that performed by a friend of mine on the ditchbank with the boys, the teenage boys of his particular ward. Ward teaching should go right into the homes of the people and attack their personal problems. It is not a matter of the weather or things of that sort. We have discovered in the stake missionary work that in ten years we have picked up seven thousand children whose baptism had been neglected because they had not been taught its necessity. When the stake missionaries found them, they were eager to be baptized, not only willing, but eager. It has always appealed to me that somewhere along the line, some ward teacher, as well as the father and mother, forgot a duty, and the same thing, I think, applies to the elders' quorums and the seventies' quorums.

The duty of a president is to understand the private life of every member of his quorum and do what he can to ameliorate adverse conditions and to enhance the good ones. If we could do that, brethren, as quorum presidents, as bishops, as stake presidents, as high councilmen, think what a wonderful contribution it would be to the welfare of the membership of the Church. After all, brethren, those of us who are here are mainly of that category, or those categories—those of us who are here, whom I am' facing now, are mainly men—who have official responsibility in this priesthood, and what are we doing about it? We are doing a wonderful work, it is true, but we are not nearing perfection in it. When we consider the great number of men who have gone past their majority and into married life without ever having received any priesthood at all, then you will agree with me that somewhere along the line, we have not succeeded in doing what we should do.

When you contemplate the great number of priests who go out of the priests' quorum and never get into the elders' quorum, you will have to admit again that somewhere along the line leadership has failed.

Now, brethren and sisters, we who hold the priesthood have that responsibility. We who hold office in it, presiding offices in it, have perhaps the greater responsibility. We who are the wives, or you who are the wives, I cannot include myself in that, have the responsibility of helping your husbands to do it, and too often it is your failure to co-operate which prevents an officer from fully magnifying his calling.

My appeal today, brethren and sisters, is that we who have this responsibility shall make a renewed effort to understand our problems and to magnify it, and the wives should make a definite resolution that they will never stand in the way of the official performance of the duty of a husband.

May God bless us, not only with an understanding of our problems, but also with the power to do it, I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.