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Show AS A MAN THINKETH By W. M. Everton "As a man thinlceth, so he is." What kind of a genealogist are you? What do you think when you are successful in finding a new ancestor or a new uncle? Do you go home and tell the folks you found four more names, or do you tell them you are delighted that you found the' record of your grandfather Hill and his family? There are so-called genealogists who seem to treat a new-, new-, found grandfather much as the Indian treated his latest victim-its victim-its just another scalp added to his collection. The head hunter counts his scalps, the name hunter counts his names. And then there is the other kind of genealogist, who is lovingly lov-ingly and earnestly seeking the names of the men and women who were brothers and sisters to his grandfathers and grandmothers. To him each of these persons whose name he has found, occupies a particular place in his family. If he belongs to the Mormon church he realizes that each one of these is necessary to make his sealing record complete in the families to which they belong. He sees them not as a list of names, but as real men and women who made homes and reared families, who worked and sacrificed to rear their families in righteousness, in order that the race of good men might continue on the earth. . Persons are always associated with names and in order to designate any particular person we must give the name. With our living relatives and friends the name is a symbol of the person and when the name is mentioned we think of the person and not the abstract name. If we seek to become acquainted with our dead relatives rel-atives so that we can think of them as persons we will find genealogy genea-logy a very much more interesting vocation. And to those who perform ordinance work in the temple, do you not think your work would be more acceptable if you were officiating for real persons, thinking of real persons, speaking of persons and not just names, names, names? You are baptized, not for a name, but for a real man or woman. wo-man. You are endowed not for a name but for a person just as real as yourself. In the sealing room you officiating for husbands and wives and children who were and are families, real families, and not lists of names. Let us speak of them as ancestors, relatives, men and women or children. Some one may mistake our meaning if we speak of them as names. |