Show DISCOURSE delivered vered at the general conference of the church in the tabernacle salt sall lake city sunday afternoon april ath 1895 by JP PRESIDENT RESIDENT GEORGE 0 CANNON REPORTED BY ARTHUR WINTER I 1 will read a portion of the bryth ryth chapter of john the savior was praying 7 unto the father and speaking of his disciples he said for I 1 have given unto them the words which thou davest me anil and they have received them and have known surely that I 1 came out kom from thee and they have believed that thou send me I 1 pray for them I 1 pray not for the world but for them which thou hast given me for they are thine and all mine are thine and thine are mine and I 1 am glorified in them and now I 1 am no more in the world but these are in the world and I 1 come to thee 1 holy father keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me that they may be one as we are while I 1 was with them in the world I 1 kept them in thy name those that thou davest me I 1 have bave kept and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled I 1 and now come I 1 to thee and these things I 1 speak in the world that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves I 1 have given them thy word and the world hath bath hated them because they are not of the world even as I 1 am not of the world I 1 pray not that thou take them out of the world but that thou keep them from the evil they are not of the world even as I 1 am not of the world sanctify them through thy truth thy wordis word is truth As thou hast sent me into the world even so chave I 1 also sent them into the world and for their sakes I 1 sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth neither pray I 1 for these alone but for them also which shall believe on me through their word that they all may be one as thou father I 1 axi aft in me and I 1 in in thee that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast bast sent me and the glory which thou gavett me I 1 have given them that they may be one even as we are one I 1 in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me JF father ather I 1 will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I 1 am that they may ay behold my glory which thou hast given me for thou me before the foundation of the world 0 righteous Fat herthe world hath not known thee but I 1 have known thee and these have amohn that thou hast sent me and I 1 have declared unto them thy name and will declare it that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I 1 in them I 1 have always thought this one of the grandest and most remarkable prayers ever uttered that we have any record of no doubt the son ot of god offered many prayers not in the power of mortal pen to record but this prayer was recorded and it has come down to us it is a prayer that is full of meaning and one that should be especially dear to the latter day saints because the blessings that the savior prayed for on this occasion are the blessings that we need we would not be worthy of the name ot of saints it we did not receive the answer to this prayer in ourselves the servants ot of god that have received the priesthood unless they receive the ful ailment ot of this prayer and exemplified it in their lives would not be in truth his disciples at least to the extent that our lord desired them to be the great characteristic of this church my brethren breth reu and sisters which distinguishes it from all other organizations upon the face of the earth is UNION it is this that has marked us as a peculiar people from the commencement it is this that has given us a higher standing and made us a more notable people than any other character that we possess it is the character that the savior desired his disciples to exhibit not only his immediate disciples but those who should believe their testimony and receive the word that they had to bear to them and the lords prayer in this respect has been heard it was heard in behalf of those who were the immediate sub sects of the prayer his followers but the prayer holds good for all generations and may be claimed by every follower lol lower of christ throughout all time because this union that he prayed for is indispensable to every man woman and child belonging to the church of christ it is also indispensable to the church itself and we can thank god this day that we unworthy as we have been in many respects have received this same spirit of union to a goodly extent not perhaps as fully as we should have it still it has been bestowed upon us and has brought us together knit our hearts in one blended our feelings and made usa usa people of varied races speaking different languages and comin coming g out of different religious organizations one body and cemented us together with a union that Js is most marvelous so we today exhibit this evidence that we are indeed followers of jesus christ and that jesus christ is indeed the son of god because he desired that this should be the great sign by which the world might know that god had sent him and that he was waa his son the savior asked that his disciples might be one as he and the father are one now can you conceive of a oneness more close more complete than the oneness that exists between the father and the son it is impossible for the human mind m ind to get the faintest idea of any difference of opinion or expression or action between the father and the son we worship them as one god not three gods not two gods but as one god the ather father and the son are the two personages pers of the deity with the holy ghost as their ministering spirit or agent we worship them as one we do not separate them in our thoughts and in our feelings we do not appeal to one because we think that he would be more propitious to us than the other we do not seek to separate them in our feelings or in our thoughts or in our worship we do not think that if we can approach one of these beings that we are more likely to obtain favor from him than from the other no feeling of this kind ever enters into the heart of a child of god they are one jesus in all his revelations makes it plain that he and the father are one so much so that in the minds of many they cannot distinguish how it can be that they can be one god and yet composed of two personages and of the holy ghost because according to our human conceptions we cannot imagine such an identity tit kerent of feeling and attributes in two different di personages we are not accustomed cus tomed to this here on the earth when we think of a father and a son of a brother and a brother we think of them as separate individuals their individuality is distinct in our minds this also is the case with our father and the lord jesus christ as personages person a ft but not as the godhead while tle they y are two personages they are aft but one one in feeling one in thought one in mind one in every everything thi n g in fact f ct ain in every direction in which their power is or can be exercised and in itil all the records that have come down to us from the son of god there is one thine that stands out clearly and prominently throughout all the teachings and acts of our lord and savior jesus christ and that is his entire devotion to the father his complete submission to the will of the father and his oft expressed desire to know and to do that will it is wonderful the submission that the savior manifested in his life when we think of his great dignity and the position that he occupied we are told that there was once a rebellion in heaven the prophet joseph and sidney rigdon beheld in vision and they recorded that which they saw in this language abid this we saw also and bear record that att ah angel of god who was in authority in the presence of god who rebelled against the only begotten son whom the father loved and who was in the bosom of the father was thrust down from the presence of god and the son and was called perdition for the heavens wept over him he was lucifer a son of the morning some have called him the ike son of the morning but here it is a son of the morn morning ing one amon among many doubtless this angel ng I 1 was a mighty mighty out doubt the record that is given to us concerning him clearly shows that he occupied cu aed a ve very high ig p position t that at he e w was t thought ou lit a great deal of M and that he was mig mighty ty in his sphere so much so that when the matter atter was debated con berning the earth and the plan of salvation he was of sufficient importance to have a plan which he proposed as the plan by which this earth should be peopled and the inhabitants thereof re deemed his plan however was not accepted but it was so plausible and so attractive that out of the whole hosts of heaven one third accepted his plan and were willing to cast their lot with him now the difference between jesus and lucifer was this jesus was willin willing to submit to the father he had bad his plan afan which was accepted everything that has come down to us coupled with our own experience in relation to the effect of the spirit of god upon the heart leads us to the conclusion that if jesus had proposed a plan that would not have been accepted by the father he would not have rebelled against the father nor against the son of god who might have proposed the he plan which was accepted but how different was it with Luci lucifer ferl because he could not havel his way he was determined to wre wreck k everything he would pull down the throne of the eternal father and destroy everything he was not one with the fhe father if he had been that rebellion would not have occurred now it is a remarkable fact which completely verifies and establishes the truth of the record concerning this rebellion in heaven that from the time adam appeared on the earth and children began to multiply and increase the spirit that lucifer exhibited in heaven has been manifested on the earth when he has had power to influence men and women he has filled them with precisely the same spirit that he manifested in heaven before man came upon the earth that spirit made its appearance in cain and the bible shows us that it was continued from generation to generation era tion the book of mormon is filled with the same testimony but we need not depend upon the records that have come to us for illustrations of this and testimony concerning it we ourselves in our own persons in our own organization as a church have seen the same spirit and the same results that attended its manifestation in ancient times and even as far back as the time of which I 1 speak before the earth was peopled we have seen the spirit of rebellion exemplified in our church as it was when we were in our spiritual existence president woodruff dwelt upon this in his remarks this morning he showed us the effects of that spirit ir i t in those who entertained it it is agu but t a repetition of history history has repeated itself all the time in in thi the church of god the book of mormon is full of it that re cord shows how the sons of lehi divided some listening to lucifer and entertaining the spirit of rebellion and others entertaining the spirit of god and seeking for its love and union those who yielded to the spirit of lucifer sought the destruction of the others and not being willing to submit to that which was ri right t they rebelled against their lather father they determined to have their own way regardless of the rights ot of others and that mat history from the beginning of it to the end shows clearly the operation ot of these two influences the spirit of god bringing the people into union and love and the spirit of lucifer which god in his own wisdom and for his own purposes has permitted to come upon the earth to test us working out destruction wherever it could get possession of the people to manifest itself through until it wrought the entire destruction of two races of of people on this continent the jaredine Jar edite race and the race it is wise for us to look a little into our own position and see if we can profit by the lessons of the past no trouble ever came upon the people and I 1 like to refer to them because the record is a most complete and interesting one except through their departing from that spirit of union of which I 1 have read in this prayer of the saviors Savior ls when they lived so as to receive the fulfilment fulfillment of this prayer and were united they prospered on the right hand and on the left 1 7 he earth was blessed for them it yielded of its richness and every element of wealth contained in the earth and there is no part of our earth that is so rich in all the elements of wealth as this blest continent was at their command but in those days of prosperity when everything flourished some man or some faction would arise in their midst filled with pride and vanity and love of the world yielding to the spirit of lucifer and proposing plans of various kinds in order to disturb the peace of the people of god and to create dissension among them it was the fruitful source of all their woes boes no trouble ever came upon that people only through their yielding to this spirit of dissension and of rebellion which had come down from the council that was held before the world was peopled all the prophets who spoke concerning the destruction of the nation were led to attribute the downfall of that people which they by the spirit of prophecy saw would surely come to the fact that they would fall into disunion the savior and the prophets predicted that four generations after the coming of the son of god would live in peace and jesus rejoiced over them he said how great his joy was about the generation which lived when he visited them for he said that not one soul would be be lost and so it would be for four generations but after that a falling away would come they would listen to the spirit of satan they would lose their love and divide and the result would be their entire annihilation as a nation our own experience my brethren and sisters is very similar to this can any of you put your finger on any serious trouble that we have had that has not had its origin in professed latter day saints dissenting from us and turning against us I 1 tell you as it has been said already in this conference there is no power on earth there is no power in the domains of the damned that can shake or disturb this people if they are only united no matter what course we may take so long as it is in righteousness if we are united we can stand against the world and all its assaults we can stand not only against visible enemies but we can stand against the invisible hosts of darkness which lucifer has at his command and we can stand unshaken and unmoved amid the tempests that may break upon us or whatever may be the character of the assault that may be made upon us united we are strong we are strong as the almighty our father in heaven and as his son jesus when lucifer ae led away one third of the hosts of heaven with the hope of destroying the plan of salvation and bringing to naught the purposes of the father but bat when dissension is sension comes in our midst when disunion manifests itsell itself when vou see men who call themselves latter lafter day saints yielding to the spirit of satan and rebelling in in their feelings against the spirit ol of god and the work of god then there is cause for apprehension anal and for us to tremble if we ever dutremble do tremble because that is and always has been ther the fruitful source of our troubles and it always will be union therefore ought to be the keynote of the entire people as it is the chief corner stone of the superstructure of the church it ought to be more desirable than anything else among us how shall we obtain it shall we have it by each man having his own way and |